Something Bad (33 page)

“I’ll be damned,” Thibideaux said. “I know this book.” He snapped his head upward and shouted in the high-pitched, twangy voice of Northeasterner. “Where did you get this? What are you doing here?”

Gabe’s mind was still slowed by the recent blow to his head and neck. His voice was low. “I was getting the book for someone.”

“Who wants this book? Where is this man?”

Gabe tried to think fast. He needed a good lie. One that was believable. Not good at this, he thought. Just say something.

“I don’t know who wants it. I just agreed to get it for some man from Rother. Met him at Herndon’s Edge. I don’t know who he is or who the book belongs to. He just said he wanted it for a friend. I don’t know who that friend is.” He looked at the floor so he wouldn’t be rattled by the surreal image of his tormentor.

“What’s your interest?” Thibideaux said. “Why’d you accept this job?”

“Fifty dollars.” Gabe studied the floor. “The man gave me fifty dollars and told me to bring him the book.”

Thibideaux stepped closer so his right shin was against Gabe’s left shoulder. “Was the man a priest?” He seemed to spit out the last word like it tasted bad.

Gabe’s mind started to clear so the next lie came easier. “No. He was chawing a big lump of tobacco and he cussed.”

Thibideaux nudged Gabe with his shin. “Why does this person want the book?”

Gabe added playing dumb to his lying. “I asked, but he just said, ‘None of your business.’“

Gabe heard Thibideaux flip through the Bible again, and then step backwards into the hall. He heard a muffled flip, the sound of a book flying through the air, and then contact with the fireplace grate.

From the hall, he heard Thibideaux’s voice, back to that of a southerner.

“Your friend will have to do without this book.”

Gabe heard a “Ha” sound and then igniting flames. The smell of burning paper filled the rectory. He slumped on his hand and knees. His increased clarity of thought was accompanied by a parallel increase in his pain, mental as well as physical. With the Bible gone, his thoughts turned to survival. Just get out of the rectory alive. Can’t stand yet—dizzy on all fours. He crawled toward the doorway.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Thibideaux make a sweeping motion of his right hand. A large segment of plaster fell from the ceiling and struck Gabe on the head. He collapsed face first on the floor and pieces of broken mirror dug into the skin of his right cheek and forehead.

Once again, he willed the spreading darkness of unconsciousness to back away to the periphery of his mind. The acute pain he felt seconds before was dulled, but throbbed with his pulse. Double time, but regular. Why regular, he thought. This was worse than leaving the Tri-counties. He looked up at Thibideaux and a warm trickle of blood ran into his eyes, clouding his vision.

Thibideaux seemed to hesitate. He must still need me, Gabe thought. It cleared some of the haze from his head. He thought he heard a command: “Stand up,” but his attempt to regain his equilibrium was compromised by the blood that clouded his vision. His world spun. He felt like he was going to throw up.

“Stand up!”

The second command registered, and through reflex, he started to his feet. Pushing his upper body off the floor, a wave of dizziness nearly turned the room dark. He grasped his knees with his hands and hunched until the darkness retreated. He pushed again with his hands and staggered backward a half step until he stabilized in an upright position.

Thibideaux’s hands slid apart, as if he were calling a baseball player “safe.” The floorboards under Gabe’s left foot gave way and his left leg fell through the floor. It met no resistance in the crawl space until it contacted dirt, two feet below the floor. The impact put an oblique shear on his left knee, which buckled with a loud pop. Gabe whelped and collapsed sideways on the floor, writhing in pain.

Thibideaux hurled his right arm upward and the sink came loose from the wall and smashed into Gabe’s ribs. Pain shot through his torso and seemed to magnify with each breath. He compensated with shallow breaths, but the lack of oxygen brought back the light-headedness. A familiar command startled him. But it was less urgent than before.

“Stand up.”

He’s not going to kill me, Gabe thought. At least not here.

He pushed himself onto all fours, really threes, and started to crawl into the hall. Each movement amplified the pain in his ribs, and as he dragged his left leg, its pain fought for attention. He found a new focus, an incentive. Cory Dean. He wanted to see Cory Dean.

Thibideaux’s New Orleans accent thickened. “It doesn’t matter what you do. You won’t interfere with my work here.” A chuckle, then his voice turned serious. “But take this to heart. You’ve had two chances now. You won’t get a third. Go. Now. And never come near me or the rectory again. Go.”

Thibideaux walked into the living room and the chair whirred a welcome.

Gabe crawled to the rear bedroom window and fell out headfirst. He broke his fall with his hands and right shoulder, which set off an electric shock of pain in his chest. He managed to roll onto his right side and come to a stop without further damage to his left knee, and without hesitation, he crawled across the rectory yard and into the woods where he collapsed on his back, still breathing fast, shallow breaths.

Halfway through the woods, the pain in his body and his modified breathing took a toll on his consciousness. He felt lightheaded, disoriented and nauseous.

Visual hallucinations, swirling and flashing lights, added to his fatigue. He wanted to go to sleep.

His subconscious took command—he low-crawled over to the overhang of a vertical rock outcropping, pushed the vegetation aside, and rolled into a shallow concavity he and his friends had called their cave years ago. They had retreated to this hideout whenever they were under siege by imaginary hordes during their games of youth.

He pulled the vegetation back over the opening and rolled flat on his back. The daylight faded, but it wasn’t the same as the spreading darkness he felt following the blows to his head. This was a more peaceful fade to black. This was sleep.

Gabe shivered and a contractile jerk punctured his sleep with a stab of pain that radiated throughout his body. Daylight had declined and the air carried a chill. Close to suppertime, he thought. Got to get home or Deena Lee and Wanna will be in a panic. Through the pain, he managed to crawl the rest of the way through the woods, to his truck.

He let out a loud scream when he pushed on the clutch, but the gearshift slid into second. He tried to let the clutch out slowly, but couldn’t. It popped, so he hit the gas to compensate and the truck sputtered and lurched, but kept running. Second gear would have to do.

He ran through two stop signs on the way home and pulled the truck up to the steps of the farmhouse as the sun gave a last call at the horizon. He threw open the door of the truck, slid down on his right leg, and hopped up the two steps onto the porch.

Wanna and Deena Lee met him at the front door. Wanna was first to speak.

“Gabe, where you been? We’ve been worried sick.” In unison, Wanna and Deena Lee let out a loud gasp.

Their exclamations weren’t in sync, and they didn’t use the exact same words, but the summed expressions came to Gabe as, “My God. What happened to you? Are you all right?”

“I’m okay. I just want to lie down,” he said as he hopped through the door.

The women each grabbed an arm and helped Gabe over to the living room couch where he collapsed with a loud groan. He pulled his good leg up and motioned toward the left. “Can you help me get my leg up? The knee’s hurting me bad, so take it slow.”

Deena Lee nudged Wanna out of the way and lifted Gabe’s leg. She paused each time he grimaced, and placed a throw pillow under the injured knee so it was propped at a slight angle.

Wanna was at the phone. “I’m going to call Doc. Should I call the sheriff, too?”

“No! Put the phone down,” Gabe said. “I just want to sleep for a while. Doc’ll have me going all over the place soon enough. Just let me get some sleep. And don’t bother with the sheriff. There’s nothing he can do. Put the phone down. Please.”

She walked over to the couch and looked him in the eyes. “I’ll do as you want, but first you tell us what happened.”

Gabe needed another good lie. He hadn’t lied this much in his entire life, but he couldn’t worry about that now. He would settle with the One Who Matters later. There was a job to do. Even with a battered intellect, his mind was quick.

“I guess I made the acquaintance of four young fellers from Rother. They were upset about the football game. I rubbed it in a bit and they jumped me. Can’t identify them, though. They were all wearing hats with the brims curved, so I couldn’t see their faces. One had a beard. That’s all. I can’t even remember what kind of car they drove. It all happened so fast.”

“You can’t remember anything else?” Deena Lee said. “What were they wearing? What color were their hats? Anything?”

Gabe closed his eyes like he was trying to picture the attack. It also gave him time to think. “No. First thing they done was club me in the head. With something hard. From then, I was only partially there. No sense calling the sheriff. Nothing he could do.”

Wanna went back for the phone. “I’ve got to call Doc. You look hurt bad.”

Gabe raised a hand in her direction and shouted through the pain in his ribs. “Don’t. I just want to sleep. You can call Doc first thing in the morning. I’ll not argue it then. Please.”

Wanna put the phone down.

Deena Lee leaned over Gabe’s face. “You have to let us clean you up a bit.”

He was too tired to argue, so he allowed his body to relax into the couch, which seemed to half swallow him. He was on the verge of slumber several times, but each time he was jolted back by the pain of a wet washcloth or a bandage.

Deena Lee left his knee alone. When she pulled his shirttail from his pants to check on his ribs, a large manila envelope projected from his waistband. “What’s this?” she said and pulled it out with a tug.

Gabe’s mind raced. Memories of the day were garbled into out-of-order snippets. He couldn’t remember the envelope or what was in it, or how it got in his pants. But he had a strange feeling that the contents were extremely important, and that it was imperative that no one, including Deena Lee and Wanna, knew what they were.

With the last remaining shred of quick thinking left to him, he forced out a punctate message—a few syllables with each exhalation, more for effect than out of necessity. “It’s just … some important … tax papers. You can … take a look … but I’d have to … explain them to you. Bring them here … and I’ll explain them.”

Wanna grabbed the envelope from Deena Lee and walked over to the roll-top desk on the other side of the room. “I’ll just put it in the taxes drawer. No need to explain them. You know how much I hate tax stuff.”

“Me, too,” Deena Lee said. She placed a hand on Gabe’s cheek. “Don’t worry about any taxes tonight. You just get some sleep. We’ll have Doc out first thing in the morning. If you need anything in the night, one of us’ll be sitting here watching over you.” She looked at Wanna, who gave a nod of agreement.

“I’ll sit up with him,” Wanna said. “You need your rest to look after Cory Dean.”

Gabe barely heard Wanna’s offer. He headed for the peaceful embrace of sleep.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
came too early for Gabe, but his deal was made. Doc was already looking at his knee when the fog inside his head cleared, just as the fog outside of the house rolled in.

Doc’s palpitations of Gabe’s knee were gentle at first, but Gabe protested, to let Doc know the full workup wouldn’t be fun.

“So, Gabe, how’d this all come about anyway? I’m told you were jumped by a group from Rother.”

Gabe’s mind ran in serpentine thoughts instead of straight lines. “What I told last night was what I know, or at least what I knew then. I can’t remember much at all today. I know I was hit over the head and kicked around a bit. Don’t know how the knee got hurt.”

“Can you tell me anything about the four men who did this to you?”

Gabe put his right hand over his eyes and rubbed his temples with the thumb and fingertips. “I’m not even sure there were four. If I said that last night, it must be so, but I can’t remember it so clearly today.”

“Do you remember what kind of car they were driving?”

“Sorry, Doc. I got no idea. Maybe something’ll come to me later. And tell Wanna I’ll be sure to call the sheriff if I remember anything important.”

Doc turned around and shook his head at Wanna. She shrugged her shoulders and looked at the floor. Doc turned back to his patient and his injured knee.

“I’m going to bend your knee up part way, like this.” He forced Gabe’s leg up so it formed a ninety degree angle, with his foot planted on the couch. “Now I’m going to have to pull up on your lower leg. You let me know if it hurts you.”