The Posthumous Man Read online

  "She needs her rest," the girl answered. "She wanted to come, but she needs her sleep."

  I nodded.

  The girl lit a cigarette. "What's the plan?"

  "First," I said. "I should tell you what all has happened."

  "Okay, but where am I going?"

  "Get on Melnyk and drive toward the interstate."

  While the girl drove and smoked, I told her everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. I told her about killing myself, about Felicia and the twins and Stan and the truck. I didn't tell her about Carrie. When I finished, she shook her head.

  "What's your best bet on what he's thinking?" she asked.

  "I have to proceed like Felicia is still alive and she's helping Stan. I want to believe that she didn't have a part in setting me up, but we'll have to see about that."

  The cigarette bobbed in her lips as she said, "I was thinking in the shower."

  "About what?"

  "There's really millions of dollars involved in this deal?"

  "Yes."

  "And you think we can get it from Stan?"

  "If we can get back to the warehouse and get to that truck first, then yes."

  She leaned into the wheel and floored the gas. "Holy fucking shit."

  When we got to I-40, the interstate lay black and empty and Three tore onto it and pushed the truck as far as it would go.

  She said, "I was thinking in the shower that if I get that money you was talking about, I can get the hell away from here. I could sell the place to one of Arnold's old cronies. A lot of people have problems buried in that trash heap. I bet I could sell the place to one of them with no questions asked and then, with the money I get from that and the money I get from Stan, I could get away. Far away from this place."

  A swift, unmistakable guilt expanded in my solar plexus, a sensation like falling unexpectedly. What was it? The fear that she would get hurt? The fear that I would give her a dream that would die in front of her?

  Then, worried, she said, "What if the truck ain't there?"

  I said, "Then he's probably already gotten to it. If the shipment is gone, then I think we're done. But listen, I was thinking, if that does happen you can still sell the place, right? You can still get away. You don't have to be Arnold Thickroot the third anymore."

  "Be a lot easier with that money," she said.

  The truck rattled down the interstate at its maximum speed, about ninety miles an hour.

  "You thought about where we should meet him after we get the truck? Someplace quiet and out of the way?"

  "Yes," I said. "I know a place."

  * * *

  The grounds of the Arkansas Fence Company sat in the still blue darkness of 3 a.m. Three cut her lights and engine and we coasted up to the edge of the grounds.

  We got out, and she handed me her father's shotgun.

  "I loaded it while you was in the shower," she whispered. "The safety ain't on, so all you got to do is point it and pull the trigger."

  We covered the gravel lot between the road and the warehouse on foot. Along with a pair of eighteen-inch bolt cutters, Three carried her shotgun with the ease and familiarity of a favorite tool. I held my gun carefully and tried not to shoot myself in the foot.

  When we got to the warehouse, no one seemed to be around. The big doors were closed and padlocked, but Three handed her gun to me and snipped off the lock with the big cutters. As she pulled open the creaking metal doors echoes clattered off into the night.

  "Jesus, that's loud," I said.

  The space was darker than outside. But there in the shadows sat the truck.

  "That it?" she asked.

  "Yeah."

  She pulled a small flashlight from her back pocket. I hadn't thought to bring one, but at her young age, Three was already more practical than me. She shone a narrow beam on the back of the truck.

  I lifted the latch on the back and raised the door.

  "That," I told her, "is what all this mess is about."

  The pallets of boxes, shrink wrapped in plastic, glinted dimly against the beam of her flashlight.

  "Let's go," I said.

  "Where's the key?"

  I stared at her.

  "Elliot ..."

  "Shit."

  "For Christ's ..."

  "Shit!"

  "There's gotta be ..." she shone the flashlight across the warehouse to a small glassed-in office tucked back in the corner. "There's got to be keys."

  She ran over to the office and went inside. I stood in the dark and watched the light flicker as she went through drawers.

  I was recalibrating our plan when she came back to me jiggling some keys. "One of these should work," she said.

  She had five different spare keys, none of which were marked. She got it on the third try and unlocked the door to the truck.

  "You're lucky I'm here," she said proudly.

  "I know. Believe me, kid, I know."

  I turned on the truck and backed it out. We rolled across the parking lot, and I stopped at her truck.

  "You want me to drive this big one?" she asked. "You don't seem like a guy would know how to drive an eighteen footer."

  "Thanks," I said, "but I've driven my share of U-Hauls and church buses."

  "Okay," she said. She handed me her father's phone. "Stan's number is under S. Mine is under 3, like the number not the word."

  "Okay."

  "I'll follow you."

  I waited until she got to her truck and then we pulled out. Heading toward the mountains, I took a deep breath, took out Arnold's cellphone, and called Stan the Man.

  A beeping. My breathing.

  I thought of the signal bouncing from place to place.

  A click.

  Stan's voice, unmistakable: "Thickroot."

  "No, Stan," I said. "Arnold decided to retire."

  His breathing.

  I would've sworn I could almost hear him smile. "Elliot ..."

  "After all we've been through tonight, Stan, I thought we were friends. We talked Jesus and the Apostle Paul. We ripped off trucks and bled bodies. And now, after all that, you tried to have me killed?"

  "Perhaps this is a discussion we should have face to face and not over the phone," he said.

  "Sure," I said. "First, I want to talk to Felicia."

  Without saying anything, Stan put her on.

  "Elliot?" Her voice. Was it worried? Or just surprised?

  "You okay?"

  "Yes. I—"

  "That's enough," Stan said. "That was her. Why don't we get off the phone?"

  "Where should we meet?"

  "How about the place with the stuff?"

  "Mm," I said, "I don't think so."

  "Why not?"

  "Cause the stuff's not there anymore."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I got the stuff."

  "Elliot ..."

  "Stan, shut up. I have the shit. I want to meet to discuss a switch."

  Silence.

  "You still there?" I asked.

  "Go on."

  "I want Felicia. And I want a million dollars of the cash you got from Fuller. You owe me that."

  "We never agreed on that."

  "Yeah, well, when you tried to have me murdered, I decided to renegotiate the terms of our contract. With the twins out of the picture, you can spare a million."

  "Perhaps talking about this on the pho—"

  "Do I sound like I give a shit about being heard? Do I sound like I'm long term planning?"

  "You sound like you've gotten greedy."

  "The cash isn't for me. You bring the money and Felicia."

  "Where?"

  "You know the town of Quigley, north of Fowler about forty-five minutes?"

  "Yes," he said. "It seems like there used to be a church there. About a year or so ago."

  "That's the one."

  "I recall the preacher burned it to the ground."

  "I'll be there. A million dollars and Felicia. Then you get yo
ur stuff back."

  I hung up.

  -CHAPTER EIGHTEEN-

  Something Underneath

  Quigley was a little town scattered for a few miles along Highway 65 in the foothills of the Ozarks. The speed limit dropped to thirty-five miles an hour inside the city limits, but even going that slow you could blow through town in under five minutes. From the highway, there wasn't much to see. Gas stations, fast food franchises, and car repair shops alternated with an almost systematic exactness, a pattern broken only by the occasional house of worship.

  I turned off the highway by the Waffle House—the only place occupied at this hour—and Three trailed me down a skinny side road snaking a path through the trees. About a mile down the road, I pulled the truck behind a defunct wholesale bedding outlet.

  After locking up the truck, I climbed in with her. "Okay."

  "Question."

  "Sure."

  "Why stash the truck here?"

  I gestured for her to take us out the way we'd come in. As she did, I said, "I watched Stan kill two people in a couple seconds. One of those people was a cop who was maybe six feet away and pointing a gun at him."

  "You're saying we're fucked."

  "I'm saying it's a good idea to tip the odds as much in our favor as possible. If Stan shows up and the truck isn't with us and he doesn't know where it is, the odds of him killing us on the spot go down. This way he gives us the money and Felicia and we lead him to the truck. It slows the process down. That's my thinking anyway."

  I directed her down a tangle of back roads and short cuts that eventually deposited us in front of a chipped and rusted metal sign barely peeking out from an overgrow of weeds:

  QUIGLEY FREE-WILL BAPTIST

  WHERE JESUS IS STILL LORD

  "That's it," I said.

  Three crept down the road. Outside, everything was quiet. There was no breeze to speak of, no birds singing nor crickets chirping. Only the heavy rolling crunch of the truck's tires.

  After a while, the road gave way to the parking lot of the church. In the bruised blue moonlight, I could make out the black skeleton of the building. It wasn't much except a few charred planks stabbing at the sky, but I could see it clearly.

  She pulled the truck into the lot and parked away from the remains of the building. We got out.

  I took a breath and walked toward the ruins, clutching my shotgun with both hands. Tufts of grass stuck out of the pavement. All that remained of the above-ground level of the church were scorched and rotted planks, but amid the ashes and dirt and broken glass there gaped a rectangular hole. Even in the dim moonlight, I could see the stairs leading down into the lower level.

  I walked past the hole to the side lot where I'd once parked my car every day. Beyond it, dew glistened on old playground equipment.

  The girl behind me stayed close.

  I turned back to the hole.

  Three had a small pocket flashlight. She took it out and stepped toward the hole, but I stopped her.

  "Give me," I said.

  She handed it to me.

  Without saying anything else to her, I turned on the light and walked downstairs.

  Rotting swatches of red carpet stood out like open sores on the creaking steps. Some chunks of burned paneling still clung to the walls, but by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs the paneling disappeared completely and gave way to a blackened concrete corridor. The melted remains of a stack of chairs slouched against the wall, and a little further down, scorched baby swings hung like stalactites from the ceiling. As I inched down the corridor, long shadows scratched at the walls, and bits of glass and plaster and wood crunched beneath my boots.

  Portions of the ceiling had burned away and mold covered what was left. Humidity dripped from exposed pipes and splashed on my head and hands. Sweat stung my eyes.

  I stopped and wiped my face with the back of my flashlight-hand, momentarily throwing the corridor into darkness.

  Then I heard breathing.

  I dropped to a crouch close to the wall, and the flashlight nearly slipped out of my sweaty fist. I held onto it, though, and threw light onto the single doorway at the end of the corridor.

  "Hello," I said.

  The breathing stopped.

  "Hello," I said again, a little louder.

  Help me, someone said.

  Sweat still stung my eyes, but I didn't move.

  Help me, the voice said again.

  "Are you alone?"

  Yes, the voice said.

  I inched toward it, keeping low to the ground. I stopped at the doorway at the end of the hall. I could not see inside, but I could smell something.

  Beneath the stink of burned wood and melted plastic, beneath the pungent rot and mildew, I could smell blood.

  Please, the voice said.

  I stood up and looked in the room.

  -CHAPTER NINETEEN-

  The Damnation of Brother Stilling

  It was a giant. He lay chained down on a makeshift table of an old door and two sawhorses. He wore soot-covered slacks, a filthy dress shirt, and a thick, bloody bandage on his right foot. In a pool of blood beneath the table lay a hatchet and half of his foot.

  I threw the light into the corners of the room. It had once been a nursery, and burned cribs still sat against the walls. Other than that, we were alone.

  The giant shook as I approached him. He'd been beaten and tortured. Dried blood caked his hair and streaked down his face, but his hazel eyes were open and alert and terrified.

  "Reverend," I said.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Yes. He took another breath. Though his voice trembled with pain and fear, it was thick and sonorous, and I could tell in an instant what he must have sounded like as he preached. He spat out some blood and said, I never meant to hurt her.

  "No," I said. "But you did."

  He wept.

  "Shut up," I said.

  Do you know how many people I helped?

  "Does it matter?"

  Only if the teachings of Christ are true. If they are, then I've helped ensure the eternal salvation of men, women, and children. God has used me as an instrument to pull souls out of hell. I've done good in this world. In this world and in the next.

  "None of that matters."

  No?

  "No."

  You thought it did. For most of your life, you thought it did.

  "I was wrong."

  You're mad at God.

  "Yes."

  You're mad at God for your own sin.

  "No. I'm mad at God for not existing. I'm mad at the men of God who made me false promises. They told me I wasn't alone. But I am."

  You yourself were a man of God.

  "Which is just another way of saying I was a liar, too. I lied to myself. I lied to everyone around me. I told lies in this building everyday, promised people a home in an invisible heaven far away. It all seems so ridiculous to me now that it makes me sick."

  Perhaps. But what about your sin? How will you redeem what you've done?

  "The only redemption is deciding what to do next. The sin is mine. I'll bear it myself."

  You can't, he said. It will destroy you.

  "It already did."

  Creaking on the stairs. I shone the light down the hall, and after a moment the girl appeared, pale and small, at the bottom of the stairs. She clutched her shotgun in front of her.

  "What the hell are you doing down here?" she asked.

  When I didn't answer, she stepped tentatively into the basement.

  The hallway was as dark as a mineshaft, and our only illumination was the tiny flashlight. She crept toward me. Stagnant air boiled around us, and sweat cut scars through the soot that collected on our faces.

  "What are you doing down here?" she asked. "Are you talking to yourself?"

  "Him," I said.

  "What?"

  I turned.

  No one.

  The girl watched me. "Why are you down here?"

  "T
his used to be mine," I said.

  "Your church?"

  "Yes."

  "Who burned it down? Muslims?"

  "I burned it down."

  She stepped closer in the dark to try to see me more clearly. "You?"

  "Yes. About this time last year."

  "Musta been awful pissed to burn down a church."

  "I was mad at God. You can't get angrier than that."

  "Why was you so angry?"

  I turned away from her and shone the light across the ruins of my church. "I used to tell people in this building every week that believing in God is believing in his promises. The promise that Christ was who he said he was. The promise of eternal life. The promise of protection and guidance. 'Though I walk through the valley of shadow of death I shall fear no evil.' That kind of thing. I believed it, too. With all my heart. I lived those promises.

  "Any why not? I was blessed. I had a wife who loved me. The only woman that I ever loved. We met in college, and we just clicked right away. We got married and went to seminary and roughed it the first couple of hard years. Then God led us here. My first full-time pastorate. The first time I walked in this building I almost cried. Maybe this is just a little podunk town in the middle of nowhere, but I thought God had put me here for a purpose. The promises, you see. Then we had our baby. We'd been trying for a while and then we came here and got pregnant almost right away. The promises.

  "Then came August 4th, 2007. We woke up late. We rushed through breakfast and Carrie ran off to work. I loaded up the baby to take her over to Carrie's mother's house. Usually Carrie took her. Then I came to work. I was here half the day. Ate lunch at my desk. I was sitting here writing a sermon when the phone rang. Carrie. Asking me why I hadn't dropped the baby off.

  "I ran down the hall. Down the stairs and outside. To the parking lot. To my car. Right where I left it. Where I parked it everyday."

  The flashlight dropped to the ground.

  The girl picked it up. She turned it off.

  "Your baby ..."

  The ash smell filled my nose. I inhaled it deeply.

  "I'd forgotten her. She'd gone to sleep in her car seat behind me. I parked, collected my briefcase and my lunch from the passenger seat and walked into work. I sat here in the house of God doing the Lord's work while my daughter died in the parking lot."