When the sheriff stepped toward her, Nadine didn’t have time to think, much less do anything as Lester swung the iron over his head like it was a fly swatter, and that was when Nadine let go of everything, dumping the whole box onto the porch as she sucked in a day’s worth of that wicked air.
The iron landed hard, and the sheriff’s eyes squeezed shut as he reached back with his hand, a reflex no doubt, since of course there was no way he could know what had just happened to him. He grabbed hold of his head, the wash of blood seeping through his fingers and spilling down his forearm. He staggered forward, each step pulling him closer to the ground until he finally fell to his knees, the blood painting the crabgrass below his face with tiny red specks.
Nadine leaned back hard against the screen, her hands pressed to her teeth. The sickness in her pushed at her throat and she knew that any second it would be all over, over the porch, her clothes, everywhere. Lester paced the sheriff from head to foot, hovering down at him like he was a deer shot out of season. “Oh, Lester,” she cried. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“Damn it, Nadine.” He drew the tire iron far behind him and hurled it overhead, launching it into the forest in an unexpectedly long arc. “Don’t you turn on me now.”
For a moment she felt like she was lifting from the floorboards, like she might float right over the railings and be carried off by the breeze. She took hold of the post and then came down the porch steps to get a better look at the sheriff, to see what Lester had done to him. His eyes were open just slightly, though she had no idea if he was seeing anything out of them. His chest rose and fell in broken, random waves, the tiny blades of grass at his face quivering with each breath.
“We need to call someone,” she said.
“Go get the wheelbarrow from behind the garage,” Lester said. He circled around the sheriff’s body and went to the passenger side of the Skylark, swinging the door open and climbing inside. “Load up as many bags of quicklime as you can get in there!” he shouted.
Nadine stumbled back and felt the porch step dig into her ankle. She would not move up those stairs again, and she would not go to him. She would not answer him, or even look at him. She just couldn’t do it.
“Nadine,” Lester said, standing up and slamming the car door behind him. “You hear what I’m saying to you?” Something moved at his side, the metal catching the sun just so as he drummed it against his leg. He was doing that on purpose, she knew. All for her.
“Why do you got the gun, Lester,” she asked. “It’s just you and me here, now.”
“I don’t know who’s coming,” he said, walking back to her. “And to be honest, baby, I don’t know what kind of shit you might pull from one minute to the next.”
“Oh come on, now,” she said, taking hold of the porch railing and forcing a smile. “It’s me.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
He followed behind her to the garage, where he watched as she piled the bags of quicklime into the wheelbarrow. He didn’t hold the gun on her, like she was some kind of prisoner, but he didn’t tuck it away, either. He held it there at his side, slapping the barrel against his thigh like it was something he had to do in order to keep from going to sleep or something.
She gritted her teeth until the ache reached up into her head. “This is crazy, Lester,” she said. “I don’t need to be any part of this.”
He took two steps toward her. “You were there when them China people came through here, right?” he said. “You fed ’em, made up their bed. You lived off the money I made from it. You’re just as much a part of this as I am.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Push me far enough and find out how much I care about fair.
He took the red passport from his pocket and flung it at her, sending it ricocheting off her chest. She bent down to pick it up, thumbing to the little square photo inside. The man looked to be Lester’s age or thereabouts, fat teabags under his eyes, waves of curly hair crashing from either side of his head. There was not an ounce of happiness in that face.
“It’s Russian?” The print was a kind she had seen somewhere before, maybe in the movies, or one of her magazines.
Lester moved back from her, leaned against the side of the garage and gave a jittery nod, a single drop of sweat holding onto the tip of his nose. “It just happened,” he said. His arms fell loose at his sides now and his body slouched, as if some imaginary plug had been pulled and drained half of Lester onto the ground.
The possibilities settled in her gut like a coil of snakes. “What just happened?” She took a step toward him, as if the conversation should be more private than it was. “What did you do to this man?”
He swiped his hand over his face, then brushed it down over his trousers, leaving a dark, damp patch against the denim. “If you’d of hustled your ass to get there when I called you, I wouldn’t of been stuck in that jail all night, would I?” He held the pistol at his side now, and Nadine noticed then a rub of blood over the flannel of his shirt. The old sheriff’s blood.
“By the time we got back to the car it was a fucking oven inside there,” he said.
“The trunk,” Nadine said.
“He should of only been in there for an hour, hour and a half, tops. It should of been fine.”
“Oh, Lester.” Nadine felt the sick coming on again.
Lester looked at her so coolly, so resigned. “Let’s get a move on,” he snapped. “Before half the police in the state show up on this drive.”
Just as she could see that the plywood had already been pulled back, the miasma of decomposition enveloped her, fruity and thick. Nadine navigated the wheelbarrow as best she could, the bucket top-heavy with quicklime and rocking like a boat, all the while Lester paced beside her, the pistol now tucked into his waistband. In each hand he held a black plastic garbage bag, swinging them at his sides like he was ringing bells.
“What are we doing with all this?”
He ignored her, instead pitching one garbage bag into the well, and then the other, both in a gloriously high arc.
She set down the wheelbarrow and went to pick up a bag of lime from the top.
“Hold on,” Lester said. He looked at her hard, and she knew in an instant what was working inside that head of his. His eyes twitched as they held onto her gaze, almost vibrating, and it was only when she glanced up the hill toward the house that he gave her the slightest nod of his chin.
“No,” she said.
“Nadine.”
“I said no, Lester. The man’s not even dead.”
“You don’t know that. And if he’s not now, he sure as hell will be soon enough.” He reached out and took hold of her arm, and she snapped it back from him. “Nadine,” he said.
“Don’t you dare touch me,” she said, glancing down at the pistol tucked there against his belly.
He paused for the shortest of moments, a snapshot, really. Eyebrows raised in surprise. Lower lip sunk like a caught fish. Shock, maybe, that she should stand her ground like that. But just as suddenly the moment was gone and he came at her—his hands out at his sides, the fingers curled like roots.
“Woman,” he hissed, reaching for the gun, “I’m gonna make you wish I never picked you up that day.”
It all happened so quickly, quicker than the sheriff and the tire iron, and absolutely a hell of a lot quicker than it had to have been for that poor Russian. Nadine’s arms left her sides like they’d been attached to springs, launching out in front of her before she even knew what she had done. She struck him squarely in his stomach, the blow against flannel like pressing on a baby’s blanket, so soft and peculiarly warm against her bare hands. It all gave way so easily. What had pulled at Lester’s face only seconds earlier let go of him, his mouth dropped slack, his eyes as wide as they had ever been. He took three or four steps back to keep his balance, to regain control over what his body was doing, thanks to her. Unfortunately for him, they were only two steps from the well.
With the exception of a single, primal howl, he dropped as easily as Otis had, though there was a good deal more from Lester in the way he carried on, the windmill of arms, a futile effort to grab hold of what was not there. Within a blink, he disappeared into the blackness and it was only when the sharp cry rose up, like a dog’s yelp, that Nadine finally had a sense of how deep things were down there.
“Don’t tell me what to wish for,” she said, spitting into the black pit. “You son of a bitch.”
She took up the wheelbarrow and dumped it and all five bags of quicklime into the opening. There was the sharp, momentary echo of the metal’s impact and that was it. Taking the corner of the plywood, Nadine slid it over the opening. And as she walked back up the hill to the house, she paused every few steps or so to look over her shoulder, to remind herself of how quickly that spot hid itself once you got a certain distance from it.