Legion of Despair: Book Three in The Borrowed World Series (25 page)

Buddy wasn’t sure how many verses they sang, but when the last notes died both men were smiling. “I reckon if there was anyone out tonight with ill intent, we have clearly broadcast our position,” he said.

“It would require a callous and Godless man to kill someone singing the ballad of Rose Connelly,” Lloyd pointed out.

Buddy stopped in his tracks. Lloyd, his reflexes slowed by persistent jar-nipping, took another step or two before he could get word to his feet to stop.

“Do you recall me leaving a light burning in my house?” Buddy asked.

Lloyd looked up the hill, squinted, and could make out a dim glow in the windows of Buddy’s living room. “No. We turned the lamp out last night and didn’t turn one back on this morning,” Lloyd said. “We’ve had company.”

“We may still have company. Are you armed?”

“Hell yeah.” Lloyd withdrew his infamous nickel-plated .32 caliber from his waistband.

“Is that the .32?” Buddy asked.

“It is.”

“Are you planning on killing them or just piercing their nipples with that thing?”

“Everyone is a damn comedian around this place,” Lloyd said.

Buddy started up his driveway, moving off the gravel and into the quieter grass. He had his .45 automatic in his hand. “I’d feel better if I was a sight less drunk,” Buddy admitted.

Lloyd followed behind. “My family has historically done some of their best killing while drunk.”

“It wasn’t their best killing if
you
know about it,” Buddy replied. “The best killing remains a secret between you and your maker.”

Despite their drunkenness, they were soon at Buddy’s porch and found no one outside waiting on them. Buddy walked entirely around the house while Lloyd watched the front porch.

“I didn’t see anything,” Buddy said. “I’m going to go up on the porch and look through a window.”

“Be careful,” Lloyd warned. “One creaking board and we’re busted.”

Buddy took the steps slowly, avoiding those spots he knew were creaky. Moving from the steps to the porch, he froze when a board emitted a loud pop as he put his weight upon it. Lloyd cringed and readied his pistol but no sounds came from the house. Buddy started breathing again and resumed his creep toward the living room window.

With no electricity, natural light was of more importance than it had been a month ago. For that reason, Buddy had left the curtains completely open. As he neared the window, he could see fully into his living room. He waved at Lloyd to come up.

Lloyd started up the steps, then tripped, his pistol skittering noisily across the porch. Fortunately, Lloyd had put the moonshine jar in his pocket when he drew his pistol or it would have shattered. Buddy cringed and anxiously watched the men in his living room, both hands closed around the grip of his pistol. They didn’t stir.

“I guess we know they’re deaf now,” Buddy whispered. “That’s useful intel. Now get up and get over here.”

Lloyd slowly rose to his feet and finally made it to the window. He took in the scene. “Ain’t that a sight. It’s like they’re watching television or something.”

Buddy nodded. “More like some damn Goldilocks story from the end of days.” He turned away from the window. “The back door is quieter. I’m going around. You stay here and try to hold the noise down. Did you find your gun?”

Lloyd held it up.

“Try not to hurt yourself,” Buddy said, then disappeared around the house.

Lloyd stood watching through the window, his eyes moving from man to man and seeing no movement. In less than a minute, he could see a shadow and knew that Buddy had made it in the house. Buddy crept into the living room and stood crouched behind one of the men. Still, the men did not move. Buddy used his pistol to poke one of the men in the head, receiving no reaction. He moved to another, then the last, and came and opened the front door.

Lloyd stepped in cautiously, his pistol raised and aimed in the direction of the men. “Are they drunk too?”

Buddy shook his head. “Dead.”

“Dead?” Lloyd was confused. “How?”

“I have an idea,” Buddy said, then went to the kitchen.

Lloyd stepped to each man and verified for himself that they were not breathing. When Buddy came back, he had an open pill bottle in his hand.

“They each took a few of these pills,” Buddy said.

“And they all overdosed?” Lloyd asked incredulously.

“No,” Buddy said. “They were poison. I needed them for a little project. You remember the one I told you I’d been working on when you found me walking up the road?”

“I remember that, but I don’t remember anything about any poison pills,” Lloyd said.

“I might not have mentioned them,” Buddy said. “The pills were what you might call
tangential
to the story.”

“So you’ve had those in the kitchen the whole time I’ve been here?”

Buddy nodded.

“What if I had taken one of them?” Lloyd asked. “For a headache or something?”

“These ain’t headache pills,” Buddy said. “They’re serious pain meds.”

“Well put them in a safe place,” Lloyd said. “I don’t want to wake up with a hangover and die trying to find a Tylenol.”

*

After a peaceful night and a sound sleep, Jim felt like a new man. Every morning, he awoke with a new appreciation for his bed and blankets. Despite his wife’s insistence that they needed some fancy bedspread called a
duvet
, each night Jim folded the duvet off to the side and climbed under a stack of quilts his grandmother had made for him when he was young. Except for a few scattered nights here and there, most of them in hotels, he’d spent nearly every night of his life under his grandmother’s quilts. He wondered if she’d considered that as she made them, that they would follow him for his entire life and never leave his side. While they may not have had any magical powers to dispel bad dreams or bring happiness, Jim attributed them with helping him maintain a connection to his past and his family. If he had anything to say about it, he would take his last breath one day while under one of those quilts.

Jim went to the kitchen. As usual, his parents were up already. Nana was reading and Pops was out enjoying the cool of the morning.

“Have you had coffee yet?” Jim asked.

His mother shook her head.

Jim went out back onto the screen porch and shook the red tank that attached to the Coleman stove. It still held enough fuel for making coffee. He pumped the tank to pressurize it, then started the stove. He wasn’t a fan of percolated coffee, so he put a teapot on instead. He preferred to make his coffee with a GSI Outdoors H2JO. It was a coffee filter that screwed onto the top of a Nalgene water bottle. You put coffee in it, then poured hot water over it until the filter was sitting in the water. The filter was made in such a way that the water bottle’s lid would then screw onto the top of the filter, making a leak-proof assembly. As the coffee steeped in the filter, a good shake every few minutes assured a nice strong brew. Jim thought it made the best cup of coffee he’d ever had in his life.

When he’d made coffee for his mother and himself, Jim took a cup out to his dad. He was sitting in the backyard watching the fields from a camping chair.

“What are we getting into today, Jim?”

“Gary is supposed to be here early. He’s probably already on the road. I’ll radio him in a few minutes and see how it’s going. Then I guess we’ll spend the rest of the day helping them get settled.”

“I’m going to drink this coffee and sit right here for now. Let me know when breakfast is ready,” Pops said. “I’m hungry.”

Jim went inside and found his radio. He’d also turned his off last night to preserve the battery. He checked the time: 7:05 A.M. He turned the radio on and held it to his mouth. “Gary, you on?” No response, so he tried again. “Gary, this is Jim. You read me?”

Jim went back outside with his dad and set the radio in the cup holder of his camping chair. “Breakfast will be in about twenty minutes,” he told his dad.

“I guess I can make it until then.”

The radio crackled. “Jim, this is Gary.”

“There he is,” Jim said. He picked up the radio and held the transmit button. “Jim here.”

“We got held up,” Gary said. “We’ll be there but it may be a couple of hours.”

Jim’s brow furrowed. There was
something
in Gary’s voice. “Everything okay, buddy? You guys okay?”

“Not really,” Gary replied.

Jim could hear him struggling to speak. He was getting worried.

“What’s going on, Gary?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”

There was a long pause.

“Gary?”

“We’ve got to dig a grave, Jim,” Gary said, struggling to keep his voice steady. “We had trouble last night.”

Jim had to ask
who
but he hated to say the words. He’d known Gary for a long time. If he’d lost a daughter…

“It wasn’t one of the girls, was it?” Jim said, struggling now with his own words. “Tell me it wasn’t one of the girls.”

“No,” Gary said. “It wasn’t. We lost Dave, though.”

“Ah shit,” Jim muttered to his dad. “I can’t believe that. They were so close to getting out of there.”

Jim thumbed the transmit button. “I’m sorry, Gary. Is there anything we can do for you?”

“No,” Gary said. “Just give us time to dig a grave and have a little service. Needless to say, Charlotte is a wreck. She also got a little banged up last night.”

“What happened?”

“I’d rather not get into it on the radio,” Gary said. “Give us a few hours and we’ll see you.”

“Okay,” Jim replied. “Be careful.”

Jim dropped the radio back in the cup holder.

“Did he say what happened?” Pops asked.

“No,” Jim said. “I do know they’ve been having trouble with thieves and trespassers.”

Pops shook his head. “I was hoping things were getting better. I don’t like hearing things like this.”

“Keep hoping, Dad,” Jim said. “Keep hoping.”

*

Jim had a selection of rusty farm gates in his scrap pile. Every time he saw a neighbor replacing one, Jim would see if he could get the old one. With a little welding, he made them into a variety of different things for his farm. His woodshed, for example, was entirely made of welded together gates with a roof on top of them. He used gates the way thrifty crafters used pallets.

He selected two of the least decrepit to install on the road in and out of their valley. Since Gary wasn’t coming for a few hours, Jim could use that time to put the gates in place. He attached bolt-on pallet forks to his tractor bucket and used those to carry the sixteen-foot steel gates. He stopped at one of the sheds and picked up a tamping bar, a pick, and some old, rusty gate hardware. From his shop building, he grabbed a brace-and-bit, a pipe wrench, a tape measure, and a four-pound hammer. At the barn, he attached a PTO-driven posthole auger to the back of the tractor. Outside the barn, he had a stack of old locust posts and he selected four of the larger ones.

He went back in the house and told everyone his plan.

“Do you need me to go with you?” Pops asked.

“No,” Jim said. “I’m going to take Pete and we’re going to swing by and get Lloyd. That should be enough.”

“Good,” Pops said. “I hate anything to do with digging holes.”

Jim smiled. He understood.

“Pete, you ready to go?” Jim asked.

“What do I need to take?”

“I’m taking my weapons, a bottle of water, and a snack. You should do the same.”

“You all be careful,” Ellen said.

“We will. It’s a simple job and we won’t be long.”

Jim drove the tractor up toward Buddy’s house with Pete riding on the fender. When they reached Buddy’s gate, Pete hopped off to unlock it so that Jim could drive through.

“It’s locked,” he said, holding up the chained padlock for Jim to see.

Jim nodded. “I guess I can’t blame him for that,” he said. “I’ll just walk up to the house.”

“All the way up there?”

“It’s not that far,” Jim said.

“How about you go and I guard the tractor?” Pete offered.

“Okay,” he said. “If you see anyone coming, I want you to get off the tractor and come straight to the house. Understood?”

Pete saluted. “Aye aye, Captain.”

Jim shook his head, and set off at a jog up the hill. Buddy’s house was about two hundred yards off the road, sitting on top of a low, treeless hill. Jim paused at the edge of the yard to catch his breath. That was when he noticed the dead men stacked like firewood on the porch.

Jim immediately threw his rifle up and went on alert. He ran to Lloyd’s Scamp and ducked behind it. He continued to watch the house for a minute but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“Lloyd!” he yelled. “Buddy!”

There was no response and he yelled again. This time the front door creaked open. “What in the hell are you yelling about?” Lloyd asked.