The White Road

Little Tom rose up with the shotgun to find the room empty and a dead man on the floor. He swallowed once, then moved to his left, making for the end of the counter. He got three steps when the wood splintered at the level of his thigh and the bullets ripped through him, shattering his left femur and his right shin. He collapsed and screamed as his wounded legs impacted on the floor, but still managed to empty both barrels through the cheap wood of the bar. It exploded in a shower of shot and splinters and shattering glass. He could smell blood and powder and spilled whiskey. His ears rang as the noise faded, leaving only the sound of dripping liquid and falling timber.

And footsteps.

He looked to his left to see Louis standing above him. The barrel of the SIG was pointing at Little Tom’s chest. He found some spittle in his mouth and swallowed. Blood was fountaining from the ruptured artery in his thigh. He tried to stop it with his hand but it sprayed through his fingers.

“Who are you?” asked Little Tom. From outside came the sound of two shots as Clyde Benson died in the dirt.

“Last time: you recall a man named Errol Rich?”

Little Tom shook his head. “Shit, I don’t know…”

“You burned him. You ought to know.”

Louis aimed the SIG at the bridge of the bartender’s nose. Little Tom raised his right arm and covered his face.

“I remember! I remember! Jesus. Yes, I was there. I saw what they did.”

“What you did.”

Little Tom shook his head furiously.

“No, you’re wrong. I was there, but I didn’t hurt him.”

“You’re lying. Don’t lie to me, just tell me the truth. They say confession is good for the soul.”

Louis lowered the gun and fired. The top of Little Tom’s right foot disappeared in a blur of leather and blood. He shrieked then as the gun moved toward his left foot, the words erupting from his gut like old bile.

“Stop, please. Jesus, it hurts. You’re right, we did it. I’m sorry for what we did to him. We were younger then, we didn’t know no better. It was a terrible thing we did, I know it was.” His eyes pleaded with Louis. His whole face was bathed in sweat, like that of a man melting. “You think a day don’t go by when I don’t think about him, about what we did to him? You think I don’t live with that guilt every day?”

“No,” said Louis. “I don’t.”

“Don’t do this,” said Little Tom. A hand reached out in supplication. “I’ll find a way to make up for what I did. Please.”

“I got a way that you can make up for it,” said Louis.

And then Little Tom Rudge was dead.

In the car they disassembled the guns, wiping every piece down with clean rags. They scattered the remains of the weapons in fields and streams as they drove, but no words were exchanged until they were many miles from the bar.

“How do you feel?” asked Louis.

“Numb,” Angel replied. “Except in my back. My back hurts.”

“How about Benson?”

“He was the wrong man, but I killed him anyway.”

“They deserved what they got.”

Angel waved his assurance away as a thing without substance or meaning.

“Don’t get me wrong. I got no problem with what we just did back there, but killing him didn’t make me feel any better, if that’s what you’re asking. He was the wrong man because when I pulled that trigger, I didn’t even see Clyde Benson. I saw the preacher. I saw Faulkner.”

There was silence for a time. Dark fields went by, the hollow shapes of brokeback houses visible against the horizon.

It was Angel who spoke again.

“Bird should have killed him when he had the chance.”

“Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe about it. He should have burned him.”

“He’s not like us. He feels too much, thinks too much.”

Angel sighed deeply. “Feeling and thinking ain’t the same thing. That old fuck isn’t going away. As long as he’s alive, he’s a threat to all of us.”

Beside him, Louis nodded silently in the darkness.

“And he cut me, and I swore that no one would ever cut me again. No one.”

After a time, his companion spoke softly to him.

“We have to wait.”

“For what?”

“For the right time, the right opportunity.”

“And if it doesn’t come?”

“It will come.”

“Don’t give me that,” said Angel, before repeating his question. “What if it doesn’t come?”

Louis reached out and touched his partner’s face gently.

“Then we will make it ourselves.”

Shortly after, they drove across the state line into South Carolina just below Allendale, and nobody stopped them. They left behind the semiconscious form of Virgil Gossard and the bodies of Little Tom Rudge, Clyde Benson, and Willard Hoag, the three men who had taunted Errol Rich, who had taken him from his home, and who had hanged him from a tree to die. And out on Ada’s Field, at the northern edge where the ground sloped upward, a black oak burned, its leaves curling to brown, the sap hissing and spitting as it burst from the trunk, its branches like the bones of a flaming hand set against the star-sprinkled blackness of the night sky.