It made sense. Simon was a Burroughs. But they weren’t going to take him to the lush green banks of Burnt Hickory where his father and brothers were buried, or the garden up near Cooper’s Field that held his grandfather and great-grandfather. They would take him deep into the backwoods by the Western Ridge, out by Johnson’s Gap. Out where the graves went unmarked, unnoticed, and forgotten. She bet they’d already dug the hole. She cupped the side of Val’s cheek and stared at the cracks in his face, dug there by decades of events like this one, and something passed between them like static current. They shared a moment of crushing sadness that tightened her chest and suddenly made it hard to breathe. It was the kind of sadness brought on by turning corners that led you to places there was no finding your way home from. They had both looked deep within themselves and found an ugliness that couldn’t be stuffed back inside. She’d seen that look on the faces of people before, but now she understood it. Now she owned it.
Mike had already spread the canvas across the linoleum and kicked Simon’s body into the center. He was wiping up blood from the floor with a roll of paper towels from the kitchen with no more thought than if he were cleaning up spilled milk. He smiled at her and she recognized the sadness in him, too.
“Katie,” Val said, “you need to go. There’s no more reason for you to be here.”
Kate nodded to Mike, who went back to work on the floor; then she turned and left without another word.
She’d only just pulled the hospital-supplied Dodge Caravan onto I-85 when she heard the first noises from her passenger waking up in the backseat. She turned the volume on the radio from low to off and adjusted her rearview mirror to get a better look.
“Where are we?” Clayton said. His voice was groggy, coarse, and dry from the pain meds, and he wanted to scratch himself all over. An IV bag swung from a special hook above the window and he rubbed at the tubing taped to the top of his left hand.
“We’re going home, baby. You just rest.”
“I been resting for three months,” he said.
“You’ve been healing for three months. Now the resting starts.”
“I don’t want to rest.” He scratched at the stubble on his chin. The doctors at the trauma center had shaved him. He hadn’t shaved in more than twenty years. He wasn’t happy about that at all. Kate didn’t mind it, though. She liked his face.
“Clayton, you got shot. Twice. You should be dead. So if the people who saved your life say I need to take you home and let you rest, then that is exactly what I intend to do. And I’m not listening to any arguments.”
Clayton sipped his ice water through the straw of a huge plastic cup and laid back against the mountain of pillows Kate had him propped on. “Well, how about some singing, then?” he said. “Will you listen to some singing?” After three tortured verses of “Up on Cripple Creek,” Clayton faded back into the oblivion of a morphine drip. Kate left the radio down so she could listen to him breathe over the hum of the highway. After a while she was convinced it was the sweetest sound she’d ever heard. She knew eventually they would have to talk about the things that had happened out here, about the things that happened on the mountain. She knew there would still be questions about whether or not Clayton was guilty of anything. She was sure there would be more federals at their front door with their notepads and sunglasses and their accusations. And she was sure they would deal with it. But not today. Today her husband was breathing. He was alive. He was going to be a father. The right kind of father. They were getting a late start, but they were going to be a family. She didn’t feel one ounce of regret for what she’d done. She’d do it again if it needed doing. Several times she thought about taking a hard left and just going somewhere new. It was a new day. She had a cousin in Augusta, and an uncle she’d never met in Huntsville. They would take them in. They had to. They were family. But she didn’t take any hard turns. She kept the van headed toward Bull Mountain. It was her home. It was Clayton’s home. It would be her son’s home.
And no one was ever going to take that away.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank my wife, Neicy, for being my beautiful distraction, and for always keeping me grounded (“Baby, we got an offer on the book!” “Good, we need a new sofa.”), and for introducing me to life in North Georgia. Without her, there wouldn’t be a Bull Mountain. Thanks to my mom for always being supportive regardless of the swearing. Thanks to Zelmer Pulp, my writers group/gang, made up of some of the most talented people on earth, including Ryan Sayles, Chuck Regan, Chris Leek, Isaac Kirkman, and Joe Clifford. Now that there might actually be someone watching, I think we better burn down the clubhouse. Seriously, though, Google their names and buy their books. Tell them I sent you. Thank you to Brian Lindenmuth at Spinetingler Magazine for holding me up high enough to be seen by the big dogs. Thank you to Ron Earl Phillips for publishing my first story at shotgunhoney.net. Thank you to Susie Henry for lending me her woman’s perspective, and thank you to Dan Adams of the Dan Adams Band (look them up and buy their records) for providing Bull Mountain with a soundtrack. You may be living in Austin, buddy, but you’re a Georgia boy through and through. Thank you to my boys at the firehouse for all the stories. Keep it in the house, fellas.