Sail Cat Road, Chapter 22
The last chapter of Sail Cat Road, the sequel to No Good End, is below. It was posted tweet-by-tweet daily on Twitter (http://twitter.com/ttaylordude). For the prequel, please go to: www.nogoodend.com. Thank you for your time.
The metal fishing boat with the 25-horse Merc was nosed up onto the slanted mud bank. They stopped for a second to see if anyone was near.
A small cabin was visible through the trees. No movement. People were talking loudly behind them in the direction of the café. Dogs barked.
Gus jumped in the boat and cranked it with two pulls. Jolene was second in. Jimmy pushed it out and pulled himself up and over the side.
A muddy V frothed from the prop. Gus pointed the boat upstream. Police always looked downstream. The Gulf, and freedom, was down there.
No one would suspect upstream; Gus knew that. So did Jimmy. Jolene only wanted to move away quickly. She did not care in which direction.
Jolene lay low in the boat so it would look like two men out fishing. She reloaded her clip from extra rounds in her pockets.
Moss hung from tree branches almost to the water like whiskers from flood-bent trees. To the south, thunder ached over the swamps.
Snakes made S’s through the chocolate water and a small alligator wallowed in mud below a broken, grayed pier. Mosquitoes chased the boat.
Thick brush hugged the rotting riverbanks. The Merc churned against the current. A bridge was ahead. Not good news. Cops loved bridges. Gus slowed.
“Faster," said Jimmy. "They ain’t up this far yet,” Gus twisted the handle harder. Jolene lay on wet, dead wigglers soaking her clothes.
I moment of cool shade darkened the three as they went under the bridge. On the other side, the sun revealed a fish camp ahead.
“Nobody over there,” said Gus. “There’s a five-gallon gas can on that landing. Let’s see if it’s full of mixture.”
Jimmy slid .45 caliber rounds into his extra clip. “Get it and go. This will be the first place they look. Ease up and I’ll grab it.”
Jolene studied the cabin. No one. She scanned the trees. No trucks. “Fishing must suck here,” she said. “Rednecks fish anytime, anywhere.”
“It’s Tuesday. They don’t fish on Tuesdays,” said Gus. “Tomorrow, they’ll be back. Maybe tonight. They’re working or drinking now.”
“They were going to collect on me,” said Jolene. She dropped her arm over the edge and scooped amber water and wiped her face.
“These are some committed sons of bitches,” said Gus. “They’ll keep coming. There’s no shortage of them. That's what happens with money.”
Jimmy gazed into the treetops. “There'll soon be a shortage of them. The thing about chasing is, sometimes you catch what you don't want.”
“They’ll just send more,” said Jolene. She looked at Gus and changed the subject. “So after all this, you want to be my daddy now?”
Love is hard to see in a person so flawed, but that’s exactly what he saw in his daughter’s eyes, still rimmed in the purple of her beating.
He nodded and she took it for what it was worth. As screwed up as they were, this was her family. None of them had anyone else.
Gus had known little about love beyond Bren. Jimmy never tried to understand it. Jolene had mistaken it for everything from sex to drugs.
Calmness settled between the cypress trees just long enough to let their minds wander about things beyond their present predicament.
The sound peeled the calm from ripples behind the boat. The impact was metal on flesh, exploding bone and the copper smell of blood.
From behind a bent tree, Ritko dropped the scope from his eye. He only needed to kill one of them. And the one he wanted was down.
There was no screaming, no splashing, no panic. Dying is seldom as dramatic is it in the movies. Mostly it is just quiet and final.
The boat drifted to the right toward the far bank and nosed into the brush. Ritko walked away in the direction he had come.
The low clouds hung above, observing the violence with no visible change. Clouds see their share of inhumanity, making no judgments.
