“Shut the fuck up. Penalty for late payment. Thousand dollars, and be grateful I ain’t rattin’ you out to the DEA or burning you out my own damn self.”
Beside me, I heard Waylon draw in a long, angry breath, then exhale slowly through his mouth. His breath, warm and redolent with tobacco, wafted directly into my face. With a sense of impending doom I clenched my jaws tight, but there was no holding it back this time, and I began to vomit. Up came the Kentucky Fried Chicken I’d consumed at eighty miles an hour. Right behind it came the mashed potatoes, biscuits, and gravy. Duke yanked free of Waylon’s grip and began slurping up my lunch. As my retching and coughing continued, Orbin’s head snapped in our direction. “What the hell is that?” demanded Orbin.
“Vernon, you got somebody over there waitin’ to bushwhack me?” Waylon clapped a hand over my mouth, and Vernon squawked a desperate denial. “I swear I’ll shoot you both, you son of a bitch.” I could hear angry footsteps crashing toward us.
“Wait,” Vernon yelled. “It’s just my dog. He ate a dead coon this morning—
been thowin’ up all day. Duke, come here, boy. Duke! Git over here!” Vernon’s command was directed as much at us as at Duke. Waylon reached down, tore the dog from my spattered lunch, and flung him away from us. Duke stumbled out of the brush and loped into the clearing. “There you are, Duke.” Vernon sounded a little less scared. “You still sick, buddy? I hope you done learnt your lesson ’bout eating roadkill.”
Crouching behind the fallen pine, I heard Orbin shout. “Hey! Git, dog! Git, goddamnit!”
“Aw, he ain’t gonna hurt you,” said Vern. “He just wants to—”
“Git!” I heard a dull thud, the sound of a boot hitting flesh and bone. A yelp of pain and confusion split the air. I peered over the trunk.
“Damn you, Orbin Kitchings, you had no cause to kick my dog.”
I saw the deputy strike Vernon again, knocking him flat this time. When he did, it was as if a circuit was completed deep within the dog’s instinctual brain. The gentle, dopey hound began to roar and snarl, lunging and snapping at the deputy. Orbin launched a series of flailing kicks, which the dog met with flashing jaws. Suddenly the big dog hurtled backward, twisting in midair, as the crack of a gunshot reached us. Duke crumpled to the ground, and after a moment’s shock, Vernon scrabbled over and threw himself onto the animal’s body, sobbing. The deputy stood over him, the gun pressed to Vernon’s head now.
Beside me, I felt Waylon stir and start to rise. His face was purple with rage. I grabbed his arm, but he shook me off and stood, drawing a pistol from his combat pants. I scrambled up and hissed in his ear, “No, Waylon. He’ll shoot Vernon. Then he’ll shoot us.”
Waylon turned a murderous gaze on me. “He’s got to die,” he muttered. “I’m gonna kill that black-hearted, bottom-feeding cocksucker.”
“You can’t!”
“You watch me, Doc.”
“Wait,” I whispered. “Do you want Vernon to die? Even if you could hit him from here, you can’t be sure he won’t pull the trigger.”
Waylon clenched his jaw and glared furiously from me to the deputy and back again. Crouching down again, he propped the pistol on the fallen tree trunk, taking careful aim at Orbin. He held so still I wasn’t sure he was even breathing. The deputy stepped away from Vernon, but he kept his gun pointed directly at the man on the ground. “Vernon, you stay where you’re at, and not another damn word out of you. You have that thousand when I come back in two weeks, or I’ll shoot you like a dog, too.” He backed away and climbed into the chopper, the gun still pointed out the open door. Only when the engine had spooled up did he withdraw the gun and slam the door. Seconds later he was gone, leaving behind a vortex of dry leaves and fresh grief.
CHAPTER 28
O’CONNER POURED WAYLON ANOTHER shot of whiskey—his third, by my count, and I was counting pretty closely, as I was depending on Waylon for a ride back to my truck. “I know you want to,” O’Conner said for the hundredth time, “but killing him won’t help. It’ll ruin your life, and Vern’s too.” Waylon just snuffled and shook his bearlike head.
“What turns a man into something like that,” I asked O’Conner, “all mean and hateful inside?”
O’Conner shrugged, as if he had no clue, but I was reasonably sure he possessed some insight, so I waited him out. Finally he spoke. “Well, Cooke County alone—the hardscrabble life that requires a man to break the law or break his back just to get by—is enough to harden anybody,” he said. “Anybody predisposed to it, at least.”
“But this goes way beyond hardened,” I said.
“Well, then there’s the Kitchings family itself—sort of the Cooke County of families.”
“How so?”