Then the iron bell began to clang, faster and faster, and she saw the preacher, Stephen Cole, pulling the tolling rope, not with the leisurely announcement of a wedding or a Sunday service, but with all the ominous urgency of a warning, so hard that it shook the belfry and made the cross stand crooked.
2009
FORTY-NINE
He reached into his parka, pulled out a lighter and a pack of Kools. “You wanna smoke?”
“That that menthol shit?”
“Of course.”
“What the hell.”
Isaiah slipped two cigarettes between his lips, lit them both, handed one to Jerrod.
“Ain’t this some shit.”
They sat perched on a four-foot ledge, midway down the icy head wall.
“You got the first-aid kit in your pack?” Jerrod asked, his voice straining with pain.
“Nah, it’s in one of the duffel bags back at the mansion.”
“Fuck.”
“Hurts bad, huh?”
“Holy shit, man. A little morphine would really hit the spot.”
“It looks bad.”
“I haven’t looked.”
“No? You can see the bone—”
“Shut the f**k up. I don’t wanna hear that.”
It was snowing so hard, Isaiah had to cup the end of his cigarette to keep the ember dry. Jerrod took an aggressive drag, leaned back against the rock he’d slammed into feetfirst on his fall down the mountain. Both legs were stretched out, but the right one had rotated almost ninety degrees, so at a passing glance he appeared to own a pair of left legs.
“You think Lawrence is lying?” Jerrod asked.
“Did at first. Now I’m not so sure. I think he may be just as pissed as we are.”
“So no gold.”
“Nada.”
“Fuck, this hurts, man. Talk to me. I gotta keep my mind off it. What were you gonna do, say we actually found it, managed to get the gold out of these mountains?”
“So, say it turned out to be twenty-four mil, right? That’s eight apiece. Well, first off, I’m in debt over two hundred thousand. I was gonna pay that shit off, put enough aside to send the kids through school, set me and Shari up so we didn’t have to work. Then after that, say I got four mil left to play around with. We were gonna build this tight palace, man. In one of those upper-class all-black suburbs of Atlanta. We’d already sketched a design. Shit. Home theater. Exercise room. Huge master bedroom. Twelve-foot ceilings. Big pool. Jacuzzi. Basketball court. Giant grill out back. Kind of place my kids would wanna come back to after they were grown and gone. Christmas or Thanksgiving, it’d be me and Shari, our three kids, about a hundred grandbabies running around. I’d have liked that.”
“Shari knows what you’re doing out here?”
“Me and Shari, we synced, man. No secrets. That’s the only way. She’s my partner in all things. So how ’bout you? Any big plans for your share?”
Jerrod tossed his cigarette over the ledge and groaned.
“Come on, baby, you gotta keep talking. Chase that pain away. You seen worse.”
“No, actually, we have a winner.” Jerrod closed his eyes, tucked his gloved hands into his armpits, shivering violently. “I didn’t even need eight million,” he said.
“You’d have stayed in Colorado?”
“No, I was gonna head up to Alaska. Last frontier, right? Find some land out in the middle of bumfuck. Where there wasn’t even a road in.”
“You Daniel Boone motherfucker, you.”
“Maybe in the Chigmits, the Aleutians. Put a cabin on a big lake. Always wanted to get my pilot’s license. I’d buy a little floatplane, and the only time I’d ever leave would be to go for supplies. Just live out there and fish and hunt. Forget about all the shit I’ve seen.”
“I hear that.”
“Nobody’d ever see my ass again.” Jerrod gritted his teeth. “I never been so cold, man.”
“Think Stu would’ve got his shit together with his share?”
“I think he’d have just drunk himself to death faster, and with better booze. Damn, man, this is getting worse and worse.”
Isaiah flicked his cigarette away. He stood up, peered over the ledge, staring down into roiling snow and bottomless dark.
“How’s it look?” Jerrod asked.
“Steep as shit. Can’t even tell how much farther down it goes.”
“We got a situation here.”
“That we do, brother.”
“You aren’t hurt bad, are you?”
“Just my head and my pride, but they hurt like a motherfucker.”
“You foresee any way of getting me out of here?”
Isaiah sat down, put his hand on Jerrod’s shoulder, shook his head.
Jerrod nodded. “Afraid you might say that.”
“Just don’t know how we’d explain our way out of this one, partner.”
“I’m sorry. I f**ked that jump up.” Jerrod wiped his eyes. “You ain’t gotta apologize for shit.” A catch in Isaiah’s voice, too.
Jerrod said, “Look, if it’s gotta be this way, I can’t just sit up here by myself, wait to freeze to death. Not in this kind of pain. You know what I’m saying?”
“I feel you.”
“There’s no other way? You sure?”
“I don’t see it.” Isaiah pursed his lips together and cocked his head, his brow furrowing up as his eyes welled. “Serving with you, man,” he said.
“I know. I know. Same here. Let’s just get this the f**k over with, huh?” Isaiah took up his machine pistol and racked the slide. His eyes burned. He couldn’t see, had to wait a moment, letting them clear, not wanting to f**k any part of this up.
“You wanna pray or something, Jerrod?”
“Wouldn’t know what the f**k to say. Haven’t prayed a day out of my whole life. God ain’t a fool if He’s up there, and I don’t wanna insult the Man, particularly now.”
“Anything you want me to take care of when I get out of here? Anybody you want me to go see, let ’em know, give ’em a message or—”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know. Your parents.” He smiled. “Your harem of bitches.”
“Nah. Nobody’ll notice.”
“You ready, then?”
Jerrod drew in a deep breath, looked all around at the rock, the snow, the darkness, the cliffs, taking heed of this cold ledge where he was going to die. “Yeah.”