Lightwood Read online

Judah turned his eyes back to Sherwood and Sherwood nodded slowly.

  “Fair enough.”

  “And I’m sorry I been ducking your calls. Again, I was trying to sort things out, get my head on straight, you know. I was just feeling all spun up and weren’t sure how to deal with it. I needed some time to think.”

  Sherwood clasped his hands on the table in front of him.

  “I’m assuming you thought of something.”

  Judah wrapped his hand around his beer can, but didn’t pick it up. He stared hard at the logo on the aluminum.

  “I know I seemed against it before, but I’ve come to a decision. I’m back on board. With everything.”

  Judah still kept his head low, but raised his eyes up to his father. Sherwood cracked half a smile.

  “Everything, huh? Everything like before, where I could call you if I needed a driver? A lookout? Or everything like the way I know I can count on Levi for everything?”

  Levi turned away from the car lot and grunted. He had been half listening to the conversation between them, but now he turned his full attention to the table. He scowled at Judah and didn’t look away when Judah glanced up at him.

  “I want you to be able to count on me for everything. I want in. All the way in. I want a full piece of the action.”

  Levi rolled his eyes and went back to watching the lot. Sherwood turned his mouth down at Judah and then pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket.

  “Smoke?”

  Judah took one from the offered pack and they lit their cigarettes in silence. Sherwood exhaled a cloud of smoke in Judah’s direction and smiled.

  “What made you change your mind, son? You didn’t seem all the way convinced the last time we spoke.”

  Judah tapped his cigarette on the edge of the table and watched the ash drift down onto the floor.

  “Well, I guess I gotta thank Ramey.”

  Sherwood snorted and slapped the table with his wide palm.

  “Don’t tell me you’re in love.”

  Judah shrugged his shoulders.

  “I don’t know. I just know that I’m done with that crazy bitch Cassie. I’m done with Colston. I want to stay here in Silas, with Ramey, and like you said before, to do that I gotta have something going.”

  Judah licked his lips and stared hard at Sherwood.

  “I missed my chance with Ramey before and I ain’t meaning to miss it again. I want to give her the kinda life she deserves. But to do that, I’m gonna need the money. So I’m in. I’m telling you, I’m all in.”

  Sherwood rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand and considered his son. Judah was looking across the table earnestly, waiting for a response. Sherwood dropped his half smoked cigarette in his beer can and shook his head. He grinned.

  “Ramey Barrow. Got her claws in you bad, huh? I guess I was always waiting for that to happen. Could always see it coming. She’s a helluva woman, that one.”

  Judah nodded, his face serious.

  “Yes, she is. She’s really something.”

  RAMEY CHECKED the safety on her gun and quietly closed the door of the Cutlass. The tall, brittle weeds rose up and brushed against the tops of her boots and her bare legs as she crossed the unkempt yard and walked up to the house she had spent so much time in as a child. It was this same house that her father had brought her to for weekend barbeques and parties with the Cannon clan. She had raced bikes around the sprawling acres of sandspurs and scrub pine with Judah and Benji when they were seven and tasted her first sip of whiskey at one of the bonfires behind the house when she was nine. She had been smacked in the face on the sloping front porch by Sherwood and given sacks of cold biscuits to take home by Rebecca. Years later, Judah’s Aunt Imogene had done the same, understanding Ramey’s inability to provide for her younger sister and keep her father in line. The Cannon women had always seemed to know that Ramey was struggling, but desperately trying, to be the woman her own mother never had the courage to be. As Ramey crept up the creaking porch steps she remembered that she had always felt safe at the Cannon’s house, even when it was just Sherwood and the boys, even though she knew Judah didn’t always feel her sentiments.

  Ramey reached for the front screen door, but let go of the handle when she heard a low growl from the end of the porch. She turned the gun on the dog, but relaxed when she saw it was only Sherwood’s pet hound. Ramey had played with the mutt when it was a puppy. She slowly reached her hand out.

  “Easy, Fred, easy.”

  The old dog’s tail wagged once when it heard its name and approached Ramey to sniff her outstretched hand. Satisfied, it sauntered down to the end of the porch and dropped off the edge to disappear into the cool dirt beneath the house. Ramey looked over her shoulder to survey the property again and was assured that she was alone save for the dog and the crows screaming in the pine trees. She jerked open the screen and tried the door, but it was locked. Judah had told to look for the key under a tin ashcan by the door and she hunted for it and found it. The front door moaned as she pushed it in and she hesitated again, trying to be certain that no one was waiting for her inside. She knew she didn’t have much time; it was only a five minute drive from the house to the salvage yard and she wasn’t sure how long Judah would be able to keep Sherwood and Levi occupied. Ramey braced herself and entered.

  The layout of the house was the same as she remembered, though the contents had altered drastically since Sherwood had been on his own. Ramey stepped through the shadows of the living room and noticed the line of empty beer cans on the greasy coffee table and the heaps of dirty clothes on either end of the sagging couch. The framed painting of a vacant eyed Jesus holding a lamb still hung over the television in the corner, but next to it was taped a poster of a naked model winking and brandishing a machine gun. An American flag had been hung in front of the window to keep out the light, but enough filtered through for Ramey to make her way down the hall to the bathroom.

  She quickly checked the bedrooms to make sure that they were empty and then nudged open the bathroom door with the toe of her boot. She slipped inside and looked around. The cramped space smelled of unwashed socks and standing water. A dark ring had formed in the toilet bowl and the plastic shower curtain was crumpled on the cracked linoleum floor. Ramey stepped around it and opened what used to be the linen closet. As Judah had assured her, there were no longer any towels stacked neatly on the shelves. Instead, she found Sherwood’s safe.

  Ramey pushed her hair behind her ears and knelt down in front of the steel box. She laid the 9mm on the edge of the tub and pulled the list of numbers Judah had written down for her out of her back pocket. As with the location of the key, Judah had guaranteed her that Sherwood’s combination would be predictable, one of several sets of numbers that Sherwood used over and over again. Ramey recognized the first combination as Rebecca’s birthday. There were two more sets scrawled on the paper after that. Ramey bit her lip and started punching in numbers.

  SHERWOOD PICKED up his empty beer can and tapped it on the table.

  “If there’s nothing else, son, we need to get going. I think Levi’s getting restless.”

  Sherwood laughed and glanced at over at Levi, pacing back and forth in front of the open bay doors. Levi scowled at them and set his rifle against one of the rusting tool cabinets.

  “I just don’t like being out in the open here, having pansy-ass conversations about Judah’s feelings.”

  Judah felt his cellphone vibrate in his front pocket and put his hand over it. Sherwood stood up to throw the beer can in the trash and Judah pulled out his phone as soon as Sherwood’s back was turned. He snapped it open under the table and his heart sunk when he saw the text: WRONG #. Sherwood looked back at the table and frowned.

  “You done with that?”

  Judah kept his phone under the table in his left hand and took a swig of beer with his right. Sherwood watched him drink.

  “Uh, yeah. It’s done.”

  Sherwood picked up the beer and tosse
d it toward the trashcan. It missed and bounced, skidding underneath one of the lifts. Sherwood didn’t bother with it.

  “All right, let’s go.”

  Judah wracked his brain, trying to think. He had given Ramey all of the combinations he had known Sherwood to use in the past. His mother’s birthday, Sherwood’s favorite ball players’ numbers, the street address of the house Sherwood had grown up in. He always used the same numbers. Always. It was as guaranteed as the fact that Sherwood would eat at the Mr. Omelet tomorrow morning. Judah looked around the garage, trying not to let the panic show in his face. His eyes searched the decorated walls, looking for anything to jog his memory. He caught Sherwood looking at him strangely.

  “You all right there, son? You look like something just crawled up your shorts and bit you in the balls.”

  Judah looked at Sherwood. Over his shoulder, Judah noticed the red, white and blue recruitment poster hanging next to a row of mounted hubcaps. Instead of Uncle Sam, a pinup girl with cleavage spilling out of a star spangled corset beckoned with a curled finger. Judah sat up straight.

  “I was just thinking, you got a beer I could take with me for the road?”

  Sherwood frowned, but turned around and opened the mini-fridge. Levi was already halfway to the truck. Judah quickly pounded six numbers into his cellphone under the table and pressed send. 12-01-69. December 1st, 1969, the day Sherwood’s older, and only, brother had his birthday come up in the first draft lottery for the Vietnam War. Dixon hadn’t lasted three weeks in the jungle and though Sherwood had volunteered for the service a year later, he had never forgiven Alexander Pirnie for pulling his brother’s number and had never let his sons forget the date their uncle had been selected to die.

  Sherwood slammed the refrigerator door closed and turned to Judah.

  “Thought there was another can in the back, but it’s Diet Coke. Who the hell put a Diet Coke in there? Next thing you know, I’m gonna open it one day and there’ll be low-fat yogurt sitting right there on the shelf. Jesus.”

  Judah stood up and shrugged.

  “Maybe Levi’s trying to lose weight. Trying to slim down for bikini season.”

  Sherwood laughed and pointed toward the chains for the roll down bay doors.

  “Pull those down, we gotta get outta here.”

  Sherwood walked out into the sunlight and Judah grasped the chain for the first bay door. He slowly began to pull it down, trying to stall as long as he could until he knew that Ramey had been able to open the safe. His cellphone vibrated in his pocket and Judah yanked the chain down and slammed the heavy metal door flush to the ground. He dug his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. Judah thought he was going to choke when he saw the text: WRONG!!!

  Sherwood yelled at him from the parking lot.

  “For Christ’s sake, Judah, what’re you doing? Pull that other door.”

  Judah slowly walked over to the second door and put his sweating hands on the chain. He knew that Sherwood and Levi were watching him, so he began to tug on the chain, dragging out every movement as he desperately tried to come up with one more number. There had to be one more number. The flash of panic taking hold of him was clouding his brain and he couldn’t think of anything but the rush of the seconds passing. The second bay door hit the ground and Judah looked around the walls of the garage frantically, searching for something else that might job his memory. His eyes came back to the large recruitment poster and the busty girl smiling seductively. Judah whispered to himself.

  “Holy shit.”

  It was worth a shot. And it was the only shot he had left. He snapped open his cellphone and pounded in the numbers: 38-24-36. He pressed send and ran toward the back door of the garage. He had to try and buy Ramey just a little more time. He pulled the door shut behind him and called out to Sherwood just as he was climbing into the passenger side of his pickup truck.

  “Hey, wait!”

  Sherwood stepped down and huffed.

  “What now? We gotta go. As much as I appreciate this overture, you coulda just told me this over the phone. I know you don’t really know what’s going on, but Levi and I don’t need to be sitting ducks out here. And you shouldn’t be, neither. Go on back to Ramey’s and sit tight. I’ll call you in a couple days after I’ve taken care of some things.”

  Judah jammed his hands down into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. He was waiting for his cellphone to vibrate in his pocket. Why wasn’t she texting him back? He looked up at Sherwood, appealing.

  “Okay. But I just wanted to say that this really means a lot to me. Us being a family again. I want us to be like before I left. The Cannon family. A force to be reckoned with, you know?”

  Sherwood looked at Judah’s wide eyes and cracked a smile. He walked over to him and rested his hand on Judah’s shoulder, shaking him slightly.

  “I know. Family first, son. Always, family first.”

  Sherwood clapped Judah on the back and halfway pulled him to his chest. It was the closest thing to an embrace from his father that Judah had felt since he was a child. He raised his own hand and placed it on Sherwood’s back. They stood like that for the briefest of seconds and then Sherwood pulled away and turned back toward the truck. He called out over his shoulder.

  “I’ll call you. Go on home to that woman of yours, son. Go home and enjoy yourself. She’s part of the family now too, I guess.”

  Judah nodded appreciatively, but his mind was racing. What had happened? Why hadn’t Ramey texted him? Judah waited until Sherwood heaved himself up into the passenger seat and Levi spun the truck out of the parking lot, kicking up a spray of sand. As soon as the truck was out of sight, Judah yanked out his cellphone and looked at the screen. No text.

  “Damnit!”

  Judah punched in a number and stood in the blistering, dust-clouded sunlight and sweated. He squeezed his eyes shut and listened to the echo of the phone ringing. He didn’t wait for hello.

  “Tell me you got it. Ramey, please, tell me you got it.”

  He heard a car door slam on the other end. She was panting into the phone.

  “I got it.”

  Judah ran his hand over his face and sighed with relief.

  “You’re beautiful. Now get the hell out of there as fast as you can. They’re on their way.”

  The table was silent save for the scuffing of chair legs scraping back across the concrete floor and the creak of leather vests as arms were crossed, cigarettes pulled out of pockets and wounded limbs adjusted. Slim Jim sat in his customary seat, directly to the left of the head of the table, and surveyed the men before him. They were a miserable lot, beaten and dejected, keeping themselves together with prescription pain killers, bumps of speed and waning adrenaline. The bandage on Toadie’s shoulder smelled rancid, overpowering even the ripe smell of six men who hadn’t showered in days. Legs’ eyes were red-rimmed and his knuckles bruised and swollen from punching the side of the clubhouse when Slim Jim and Jack came back with the news that Long John was no longer among the living. Tiny was staring hard at the pack of cigarettes in his hand as if unsure how it had gotten there. He had already been lost to the club for days, caught up in a fog of Oxys. Only Ratface seemed to still harbor any enthusiasm. The prospects weren’t usually allowed to sit at the table and Slim Jim knew that he was taking his inclusion as a sign that he and Toadie would be patched in soon.

  For Slim Jim, the worst sight was Jack O’ Lantern. Though he still occupied the coveted space at the head of the table, Jack was more a ghost than the president of an outlaw motorcycle club. He hadn’t spoken a word to Slim Jim since they had witnessed the trailer explode and his silence was unnerving. Slim Jim was used to Jack O’ Lantern’s irrational temper, his blind rage and his unending swearing in the face of tragedy. When his father had finally succumbed to liver cancer, Jack had finished off a bottle of Wild Turkey and tried to fight the entire bar and half the dining area of a Applebee’s. He had taken a crowbar and smashed out car windows in a drugstore parking l
ot after the funeral, screaming his head off like a deranged Viking. That was the Jack O’ Lantern that Slim Jim knew and was comfortable with.

  But so far, Jack hadn’t yelled. He hadn’t swung his fists, he hadn’t picked a fight, he hadn’t ridden his motorcycle a hundred miles an hour down the highway. When they had returned from the trailer, Jack O’ Lantern had poured himself three shots of whiskey, downed them in succession and without ceremony, and retired to his recliner to stare at the wall while Slim Jim had to break the news to the rest of the Scorpions. And though he had risen from the Lazy-Boy when Slim Jim asked to call a meeting, and assumed his position in the president’s chair, he was still staring out into nothingness. Slim Jim waited for Jack O’ Lantern to call the meeting to order, but realized that Jack didn’t even have the motivation to raise the gavel. Since there was no need to quiet anyone down or get anyone’s attention in the first place, Slim Jim cleared his throat and began speaking slowly.

  “I know what you’re all thinking. I know that you’re done. You want to go home and have the chance to grieve for Long John in peace.”

  Legs and Toadie nodded slightly when they met Slim Jim’s eyes.

  “God knows I want the same thing. I want to be finished with this entire mess. I want to wash my hands of every drop of this and move past it. But not yet. It ain’t time yet.”

  Slim Jim waited out the muttered grumblings circling around the table. He looked over at Jack O’ Lantern to gauge his reaction. Jack had turned his head toward him and Slim Jim could see the bitterness in his friend’s blue eyes and the tension in his jaw. At least he was registering what Slim Jim was saying.

  “I think it’s time we were all on the level with what’s been going on this past week.”

  Legs spoke while keeping his gaze directed down at the table in front of him.

  “You mean how the Cannons have just ground us into the dirt?”

  Slim Jim shook his head. He couldn’t look at Jack O’ Lantern. He was about to directly defy an order from his president, something he had never done before.

  “The Cannons stole our money, yes. And have every reason to go war with us after what we did to that kid. But the Cannons ain’t the ones set the fire round the clubhouse. They ain’t the ones who blew up Long John and are keeping us holed up here away from our families and kids. Screw the Cannons.”