Sewerville Read online

  “Whatcha got there, Jimmy?” Deputy Caudill asked.

  “Oh, you know, just a little of papaw’s medicine,” Jimmy said.

  “Is that right?” said Caudill. “Papaw’s medicine, huh?”

  “You bet your ass it’s papaw’s medicine,” said Jimmy. “It don’t get no righter than that.” He climbed off his seat and immediately drunk–tumbled to the floor, landing hard on his bony ass.

  Lorna exhaled. She muttered under her breath – the words dumb and motherfucker and a couple others Jimmy couldn’t quite make out – and then she came around the bar in an angry rush. Before his addled brain could fully register just what was happening, Jimmy sensed the pressure of her meaty hands in his armpits, pulling him upward. He reached for the Oxycodone again, a protective reflex to make sure he didn’t lose any.

  With barely any struggle, she stood him on his feet.

  The moment slowed for Jimmy. He felt the floaty sensation of being encased in gelatin. He swayed left, right, back to center, but this time he didn’t go down and felt like that was an accomplishment. He looked at Lorna and grinned, showing a wide mouthful of yellowish teeth. His eyes became happy slits.

  “You smell like a batch barrel,” she told him.

  “Baby, I’m–a buy you a ring,” he said. “We’re gonna get married.”

  Caudill laughed out loud.

  “Really,” Lorna said, disinterested. “And what kind of ring is that, Jimmy?”

  “A big one,” he said. He waited a moment, broadened his smile, “A great big ring, to match your great big fat ass.”

  Lorna measured him up, and smacked him a good one under the ear, and another one on top of his head, boom boom.

  He was too drunk to feel anything. He laughed at her. Then he spit in her face.

  Deputy Caudill jumped up and came at him. He grabbed Jimmy by the back of the hand, smacked his face down on the bar and dragged a greasy spot across the wood for three feet. Jimmy’s nose shattered like a dinner plate on a tile floor; bloody snot poured across his lips and chin, red torrents. Lorna screamed obscenities that curled the paint on the wall.

  It all ran together – the blood, the curse words, the bad bar light.

  Jimmy saw stars and tweety birds and thanked God that the Oxycodone hadn’t already started working. He could still halfway think for himself, with the narcotics not quite flowing through his system. A truck driver with more hair in his mustache than on his head – Jimmy hadn’t seen him in his life until just that moment – held Lorna from behind, his arms around her waist, his biceps bulging out of a cut–off flannel shirt as she fought to get another shot in.

  Meanwhile Deputy Caudill wrenched Jimmy’s arm backwards, yanked him up and shoved him towards the door. The deputy put a violent torque on Jimmy’s wrist, driving it up and into his liver.

  Now this hurt. Hurt like all hell.

  The drugs didn’t work so well now. Jimmy saw fire and smelled brimstone. He thought his skinny body could tear clean in half at any moment, that he could die right there face down in a steamy pile of his own internal organs. It hurt, it damn well hurt bad, and as Caudill pushed him out of the Bears Den and into the cool autumn night, it occurred to Jimmy that high on pills though he might be, this was the first real pain he’d felt in probably six months.

  OUTSIDE

  Deputy Caudill pushed Jimmy out the door and into the crisp Kentucky air. They shuffled across the gravel parking lot in a funky stride that didn’t break until they reached Caudill’s gray police cruiser, which had SEWARD COUNTY SHERIFF blazed in high red italics across both sides.

  As soon as they got to the car, the deputy sent Jimmy flying forward with a hard shove in the back. Jimmy stuck his hands out to brace for impact, but it was too late. He knocked his skull against the steel of the cruiser’s door frame; a sound echoed across the parking lot not unlike that of a watermelon being struck with a tobacco stick. Two seconds later, blood poured out of a new gash in Jimmy’s scalp.

  “You should have gone home, Jimmy,” said the deputy, holding his quarry fast against the patrol car. “Why’s it always got to be like this with you? You actually like gettin’ your ass beat on a regular basis?”

  “Can’t be no other way,” Jimmy muttered. Speech was difficult, the world hazy, heat rising from asphalt. Blood ran down from the cut in his scalp and mixed with the snot that poured out of his broken nose. He spit a thick reddish mixture on the ground.

  Caudill reared back and buried his fist in Jimmy’s gut.

  Jimmy howled, fell to his knees, chunked nasty body fluids all over the gravel. Scarlets and creams and grays and purples.

  “Sooner or later you got to figure this shit out,” Caudill kept going. “And if you can’t, I’m gonna have to figure it out for you. You know what I mean?”

  Jimmy hacked up pieces of his insides. “I guess… guess I do know what you mean.”

  Slow, unsure, he climbed back to his feet. He could barely see anything through the blood, the alcohol, and the pills. He wiped the mess off his face and gradually brought the deputy into some measure of focus.

  He said with defiance, “You a dumb ass motherfucker.”

  “What was that?” spouted Caudill. He puffed out his chest and got ready to whip ass.

  Jimmy staggered forward with a wild swing at his head that didn’t come close to landing, much less to doing any damage. Caudill grabbed the arm mid swing and slung Jimmy face–first into the side of the cruiser again. Jimmy felt two of his teeth shatter as they met window glass, followed by the hot wet splatter of his own blood across his lips and cheek.

  Right after that, Caudill’s knee ground into his liver.

  “You want to finish this here, or down at the jail?” the deputy sneered.

  “Turn me around and find out,” came Jimmy’s answer, tough words through a pained and shaky voice.

  The deputy shook his head and muttered, “All right, have it your way, dickhead.” He spun Jimmy by the shoulders so they faced each other. Before Jimmy was all the way around, Caudill drew back his fist to deliver what he knew would be the blow that would end it, the final blow that would break the fucker’s jaw, knock him out cold, kill him, whatever.

  But not this time.

  This time, Jimmy was quicker.

  As Caudill spun him, Jimmy found his opening. He jumped forward, and drove his shoulder into the blue uniform shirt, up under the lawman’s incoming fist. Both men sprawled backwards. Jimmy drilled his shoulder home as Caudill’s back hit the sharp gravel and absorbed the force of landing. The air blew out of the deputy’s lungs at the same time his neck snapped backward, and the rest of the world went bright white for a second.

  Now Caudill looked vulnerable. Adrenaline shot through Jimmy. In a desperate moment, a frantic moment, a moment of preservation, he clawed his way across the deputy’s blue paramilitary outfit, and with every last bit of wiry strength he could muster, he commenced pummeling the deputy.

  Bone crunched. Cartilage shattered. Blood painted the grey gravel. Jimmy’s fists pounded the big deputy’s face like pistons hammering through a dry engine block until most of his visage was hamburger.

  When the beating was over and Jimmy was satisfied that Caudill wouldn’t be moving any time soon, he reached down and took the deputy’s .38 out of the holster. It occurred to him that everything had blown out of his system – the whiskey, the drugs, the pain. All gone, swept away by a storm surge of fear and adrenaline, leaving behind only the taste of his own blood. It tasted like an old fork: bitter, metallic, awful. He swallowed it anyway.

  Then, he bent down and poked the gun barrel under Caudill’s chin.

  “I’d be careful with that if I were you,” growled a deep voice, from the other side of the cruiser.

  SHERIFF

  Jimmy knew that growl far too well to suit his own tastes. He associated it with the business end of a retractable baton, raining blows down on his back and shoulders. He had faced the growl and the baton at the end of many a
drunken night in Sewardville. They were the first steps in a spiral that always ended on the cold concrete floor of the Seward County drunk tank.

  The growl’s owner stepped out from the driver’s side of the shiny gray police car. Jimmy’s guts dried up in his belly. Deputy Caudill was more than a handful in his own right but now, here stood Sheriff John Slone, tall and muscular, clean shaven, with a sharp face that could have been sculpted out of sandstone. Another beast in a blue paramilitary uniform with a gold badge stuck to his chest.

  He was Walt Slone’s son, every bit of it. He had one hand tucked into the side of his pants, and the other flexed carefully above his unbuttoned gun holster. A Beretta 9mm pistol hung at his fingertips, ready to draw, with a custom Confederate flag inlay on each side of the grip.

  The sheriff smiled, ran his thumb across the stars and bars. Jimmy never liked to see John Slone smile. When John Slone smiled, bad things happened.

  From his knees, Jimmy jerked and turned Caudill’s gun on the sheriff.

  Slone pulled his hand away from his holster and stopped where he stood. “Okay now, just hold up, budrow,” he said, without even the slightest hint of nervousness despite the gun pointed at his face.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” barked Jimmy.

  “Why don’t you put the gun down.”

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Jimmy screamed even louder, as if it might make any dent in John Slone’s cool exterior.

  The sheriff shrugged. “I’m workin’,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  Jimmy squirted to his feet, with the .38 still trained on Slone.

  “Tell me you didn’t just kill an officer of the law,” said the sheriff. His voice was calm, smooth, a cemetery wind.

  Jimmy shrugged. “So what if I did?”

  Slone nodded slowly. He didn’t answer; they both knew what would happen to Jimmy if Caudill was dead.

  For his own reassurance, Jimmy kicked Caudill in the side. A weak groan came out of the deputy’s mouth. He was alive.

  –click—

  Jimmy pulled back the hammer on the .38 and pointed it at Slone’s chest. “I’m gonna ask you again,” he said. “What the fuck are you doing here, sheriff?”

  “I told you why I’m here,” Slone answered.

  Of course Jimmy knew. It wasn’t dumb luck that had put the Sheriff in that place at that time. Walt Slone had told his son to get out there and find Jimmy, and of course there was really only one place to look. He knew Jimmy was at the Bears Den that night, because Jimmy was at the Bears Den just about every damn night for the last twenty years.

  “You tell Walt that I ain’t got any money.” Jimmy said. His hand shook slightly. “I ain’t got no money today, didn’t have no money yesterday, and ain’t gonna have no fuckin’ money tomorrow. How about you tell that to Walt?”

  “I ain’t here for your money,” said Slone. “But what I am gonna do is take two step towards you. I won’t touch my gun. Just two steps up. Okay? Then we’ll talk about this.”

  Jimmy said nothing. He didn’t move.

  “Okay, then,” the sheriff said, and then he took two steps forward, just as he’d promised.

  When John Slone came forward, Jimmy stepped back. His heart beat a little faster, his hand shook a little more, but not so much that he couldn’t hold the gun up.

  KRAKK!

  Jimmy fired a shot into the air and then just as quick, he had the gun back on Slone again. “Don’t come any closer, John,” he said. “We already got one dead. You take one more step and there’ll be another body to clean up.”

  Slone stepped forward anyway. He held his hand out, palms down, like keeping a sick dog at bay.

  KRAKK!

  This time, the bullet tore into Deputy Caudill, right under his chin, spinning out the back of his neck in a crimson splat.

  The sheriff lunged at him, fully intending to grab the .38, stick it in Jimmy’s ear, pull the trigger and get rid of him once and for all. But when the sheriff lunged, his boot slid on the gravel.

  Jimmy heard the loose rocks shifting on the ground and knew what the sound meant. He turned back to see Slone, just as the sheriff regained his balance.

  And that was when Jimmy pulled the trigger again

  KRAKK!

  Again

  KRAKK! Again KRAKK! Again KRAKK!

  Before the echoes faded from the last shot, Sheriff Slone fell to the ground. A circle of blood already expanded across his shirt. His eyes rolled halfway back in his head, and his legs went useless.

  In and around the Bears Den, chaos erupted. Lorna came running outside with a couple of truckers right behind her. Someone screamed “Call 9–1–1!” not realizing that the only officers on duty that night were lying bloody right there in the parking lot.

  Jimmy tossed the pistol to the ground. His brain flashed with a million different images at once but none of them made any sense. In that moment, only one notion made sense. Only one.

  This shit just got bad, that was what made sense. This shit just got real goddamn BAD. GET OUT NOW RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW

  He entered the woods on a dead run.

  Thin whippet limbs slapped at his face and ears, bare of leaves only recently turned color and fallen, but he tore through them without really feeling anything. Although he was rapidly putting distance between himself and the Bears Den, he still heard Lorna’s voice behind him. He could make out what she was saying, just barely, “He’s alive! The sheriff’s alive! The sheriff’s still breathing!” something like that. Something terrible like that, sickening words that put rocks in Jimmy’s stomach.

  He knew that Walt Slone would soon get word about this whole debacle, and as soon as Walt knew that Jimmy was on the run, that would be when the shit got real. Oh, sure, the shit was real now. No question. Jimmy Sumner had just shot two police officers and people in Sewardville tended not to care much for that sort of thing. Goddamn right the shit was real. But soon, Walt Slone would be involved, and when Walt Slone got involved, he would bring all hell to bear.

  Another million mixed–up thoughts blasted scattershot in Jimmy’s mind. Then somehow, his legs found another gear, and one notion overcame all others, blaring:

  RUN! RUN YOU MOTHERFUCKER!

  and then after that

  better find your brother

  find Boone

  (before he finds you)

  RUN

  An hour passed. Two hours. Three hours.

  The clock spun past midnight, towards morning. In all that time, Jimmy barely stopped running. A second here and there, a breath, a wipe of spit from his lips, nothing more. Time was not his luxury. The briars ripped at his shins and the bitter autumn midnight chapped his face, but Jimmy never stopped. He just ran.

  He heard the snap of branches behind him, trampled underfoot by those angry people at his heels, but still he ran. Flashlight beams danced at his back, ten, twenty, thirty, maybe more. But the further he ran the further they fell behind, and thirty lights soon became twenty, and twenty became twelve, and twelve became four, and four became one, and finally the lights and the angry voices faded back into the darkness.

  By then, all Jimmy heard was his own heart sledgehammering in his throat; all he saw was blood spilled on a gravel parking lot; all he felt was the world crumbling. So, he ran.

  ALMOST

  Jimmy stumbled out of the woods just after three in the morning. He knew well the wilds of Seward County, and he knew exactly where he had to go, knew it from the moment the pistol went off and the scarlet stain started spreading across the chest of Sheriff Slone. For Jimmy Sumner there was only one destination, sure as the whole damn world.

  Mama’s.

  When he came out of the woods, Jimmy saw his mother’s house sitting a few yards away. He looked at the dark, peeling old structure from the edge of the backyard. The kitchen light shone an electric yellow beacon in the morning dim, and he could see Mama inside, sitting at the table, both hands around her coffee cup. Alone.
/>
  Then he saw Boone’s truck, parked in the grass with wet tire tracks running through the yard behind it.

  Jimmy’s steps were slow, careful as he walked towards Mama’s house. Frosty grass crackled beneath him, sending shivers up his legs. He half–expected Boone to hear him coming, and shoot him dead right there in the grass. That was why Boone was there, after all. Part of Jimmy hoped that his little brother had shown up there at Mama’s house to finally make things right between them, to spirit him away from Sewerville once and forever, but that was only a small part.

  The rest of Jimmy knew that Walt Slone sent Boone there to kill him.

  As he came around towards the edge of the house, Jimmy noticed the rifle rack hanging in the back window of Boone’s truck. Only there was no rifle on it. Bad sign.

  “Goddamn it, Boone,” Jimmy said out loud. He wasn’t surprised to see his younger brother there – Walt Slone always sent Boone out for the dirtiest work – but not being surprised and not being disappointed were two different feelings altogether.

  He stopped in the yard and thought about what to do next. He couldn’t go in the house. Might as well put the gun to his head himself.

  Before he reached a new course of action, Jimmy heard heavy steps behind him. Someone – Boone goddammit! – said, “Hey!” and before Jimmy could even turn around, he felt a hammer–blow on top of his head, and then his world began a fade to black.

  A cold drizzle blew down from the night sky, the last thing he knew before unconsciousness took him.

  GRAY

  Jimmy woke up slowly, clouds in his brain, his head bouncing against a rain–flecked vehicle window. Whose vehicle? He didn’t know. A steady shower had set in while he’d been unconscious. Early morning had passed to mid.

  He watched the water droplets roll down the glass and slowly, he regained himself. The first thing he realized was that duct tape bound his hands together at the wrists. The second thing was that he was in the woods again, only this time he wasn’t running, he was riding, in Boone’s truck. And Boone was driving. His little brother. Short black haircut, clenched jaw, straight ahead gaze. Boone.