WHEN COLBURN OPENED HIS eyes again it was night. He lay flat on his back on the floor and he tried to sit up but when he lifted his head he felt the rush of pain and then he touched his fingers to the bruise that stretched across his forehead. A vine reached through the gap in the floor and tickled his ear and he slapped it away and he sat up. Looked around. The rain had come and gone while he lay unconscious. Water dripped from the ceiling. Frogs groaned into the night. He wondered if he was alone. Wondered why it hadn’t been worse.
He got to his feet and staggered a couple of steps and caught himself against the wall. Took Celia’s dress from the nail. He wrapped it into a ball and walked out of the house and into the dark. Unsure of which way to go but he started anyway. Rainwater dripping from the cover above and he slipped and slid on the wet ground. He heard things moving in the dark and it kept his eyes darting back and forth and his pulse jumping, disoriented and dizzy and seeing creatures that may or may not have been there. Maybe she’s here somewhere, he thought. Maybe there is another house or shed underneath that only the boy knows about and that’s where he took her. Colburn ambled about in the wet dark. Trying to get out. Flashes of thought that made sense. The way the boy sat at the end of the bar when Celia fed him or gave him a cold bottle of Coke and he never said a word, only watched her with his head hung low, stalking her with his sunken and darkrimmed eyes. Pushing the cart along the sidewalk in front of the bar more often. Coming inside more often. Sitting in the same spot and nodding and staring and he didn’t know where the boy could have hidden or how he could have known she was down by the spring but it did not matter how it all fit together, the dress was the answer.
He had to get down and crawl, the wet dirt caking on his hands and knees. He poked his head up through the vines to look around and the moon fought through thin clouds and silhouetted the hillside. He ducked down again and kept crawling, pushing between the bushes and weeds and remembering the machete he left behind. Feeling the rise of the valley and when he poked his head up through the vines again he saw the two white dots of the headlights. Their beams shining on the shed in the backyard of Celia’s house. He was then able to climb up from beneath and step over and across the vines, his knees rising high and his arms held wide for balance as he navigated his way up the hillside. Cuts and scratches across his arms and neck and bleeding now.
He fought his way out of the kudzu. Bent over with his hands on his knees and caught his breath. Gripping the dress. And then he rose back up and walked into the shine of the headlights. Covered in dirty trails of sweat and blood. His lank hair stuck against his head and neck and a red welt across his forehead. Colburn waited there for someone to move or to say something and he wanted it to be a friend or at least someone he could reach out to and say I have to go find that boy right now and come with me. Come help me. He wanted this though he knew no such thing existed. He was alone. He moved closer to the front of the truck and a voice called for him to stop right there. And then the door opened. He raised his arm to shield the light and he was about to call out to the dark figure that had moved around to the side of the hood when he saw the steel shadow of the shotgun barrel.
“Where is she?” Dixon said.
Colburn lowered his hands and took a step toward Dixon but Dixon shoved the barrel toward him and said don’t you fucking move.
“What’s in your hand?”
“It’s not what you think,” Colburn said.
“Show it to me.”
“Shit, Dixon. Get the hell out of the way.”
“Show it.”
Dixon raised the shotgun and lined the barrel with Colburn’s forehead. The headlights shined across the valley, the two beams the only thing separating the two men and bugs danced in the light and the engine hummed. Colburn let the dress fall from his fist and it dangled from the straps wrapped around his index finger.
The barrel began to wobble as Dixon’s hands began to tremble.
“It’s not what you think,” Colburn said.
“It’s exactly what I think.”
Dixon shook. He choked down grunts of heartbreak.
“Get down,” Dixon said.
“You need to listen to me.”
“Get down.”
“I found the dress and I know where it came from. You gotta take me to Myer.”
“Shut up,” he said. His voice shaking like his hands and not the vision of strength and power he wanted to be but instead crumbling.
“You have a wife,” Colburn said.
“Don’t you tell me nothing.”
“Think about her.”
“I said shut your goddamn mouth,” Dixon said. The barrel rose and the blast came with a whitehot flash as Dixon fired over Colburn’s head. The shot echoed across the valley, a tumble of sound that didn’t seem to stop. Colburn threw his hands over his head and cowered, then dropped down to his knees and tried to shrink into the earth and with his eyes closed and ears ringing the bootheel smashed against his forehead, mashing the already tender bruise from where the shovel had smacked him. He fell to his side, writhing in pain as Dixon stood over him and Colburn could not wait any longer and he said it was the boy. The boy with the shopping cart that you see all over town. He had the dress and he’s got other shit of mine and hers out there in that house. I swear to God I just came from out there and I’ll show you. Jesus I’ll show you just don’t shoot again. I swear to God. Colburn propped himself with one arm and raised his hand to Dixon and said please.
“Get up and get in before I kill you,” Dixon said. “I don’t know what the hell you did but I could kill you right now and wouldn’t nobody give a damn. Not one damn soul.”
Colburn reached out and grabbed the truck bumper and pulled himself to his feet. He moved for the passenger side but Dixon said hold on. You’re driving and if you move one muscle the wrong way I’ll shoot your ass. He then motioned with the shotgun barrel toward the driver’s seat and Colburn passed through the headlights and then sat down behind the wheel. Before Dixon could make it around to the other side Colburn shifted into drive and stomped the gas. The truck wheels spinning and spinning in the wet ground and Dixon panicked, jumping back with a quick little dance and getting his finger on the trigger as the truck fishtailed forward. Dixon raised the barrel and yelled and Colburn eased off the gas just enough for the tires to gain traction and then came the blast and the back window shattered. The glass exploded all around Colburn as he ducked down but kept his foot on the gas. Raising his head again just in time to dodge a pecan tree and then making it onto the gravel. Another blast across the night that found no home as Colburn slid onto the road and raced toward town.
He stopped at the pay phone outside the gas station and he dialed zero. Asked to be connected to the sheriff. Yes, it’s a motherfucking emergency. Myer was pacing in his living room when the phone rang and ten minutes later he pulled into the gas station and found Colburn sitting on the tailgate of Dixon’s truck like some sullied mannequin. Celia’s dress draped across his lap.