The Bourbon Thief, Page 22

  aglow in the light of the lantern. Levi swatted at a mosquito and the light danced in his hand, flashing a yellow aura over the knotty oaks and dripping Spanish moss. Levi saw eyes peering out from behind a tree. A raccoon? He hoped so.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can. Can’t promise I’ll answer it,” Bowen said.

  Levi asked. “The bedroom upstairs. Tamara’s bedroom. Nash wanted to bring her here?”

  Bowen stopped walking. He looked up at a break in the trees where the stars were looking down.

  “He did.”

  “Why didn’t he do it, then?”

  “That house you’re staying in belonged to old Robert Maddox back in the day.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Guess he’d be Tamara’s granddaddy.”

  “You mean great-granddaddy.”

  “Right,” Bowen said. “Robert built that little place in the twenties. A hunting and fishing cabin. George Maddox didn’t use it much, but Nash sure did.”

  “What did he use it for?”

  “Different kind of hunting. Different kind of fishing.” Bowen grinned at Levi and arched his eyebrows. “I was his big catch.”

  “I see.”

  “I stayed with him when he came down here and he came down here as much as he could. We’d settled in together real nice. It was safe out here. Safe is hard to find for men like us. Nash wanted a divorce, wanted to start over. And he wanted Tamara, too, but knew her momma would put up a fight. But what’s that they say? Possession is nine-tenths of the law. He was going to take Tamara and get her settled down here, fight it out for her in a South Carolina court that’s going to side with money over Momma.”

  “If Nash wanted her down here, if he wanted to get divorced and start over with you...why didn’t he? Why did he kill himself instead?”

  They’d made it to the end of the little dirt road and stood in the middle of the big dirt road.

  Bowen crossed his arms over his chest and looked up at the night sky. The only light came from their lantern and the stars above that shone through a break in the canopy of trees. A million stars. Levi had rarely seen so many. He knew some people looked at the vastness of the universe and it made them feel insignificant. Not Levi. He looked up and saw only the beauty and was thankful he had eyes to see it.

  “George Maddox was your daddy,” Bowen finally said.

  “I know he was,” Levi said.

  “You wish you didn’t.”

  “Too late now. Ignorance may be bliss, but who really wants to be ignorant?”

  “You do,” Bowen said. “I’m telling you right now that you do.”

  “What about Nash? He was my half brother. I want to know why he died before I ever got to know him.”

  “Then you have to know your daddy was a bad man.”

  “So I hear.”

  “He’s worse than you heard. Nash would come down often as he could, anything to get him away from that wife of his. Then he’d start feeling guilty about leaving Tamara alone, so he’d pack up and go back. One week the guilt gets him worse than usual and he goes back a day early to surprise Tamara. Instead, he finds his wife in bed with Big Daddy.”

  “Virginia Maddox was sleeping with George Maddox? Her own father-in-law?”

  “Not a lot of sleeping going on, I don’t imagine.”

  Levi’s mouth opened a little.

  “George Maddox fucking his daughter-in-law.”

  “Oh, he had his reasons, I’m sure. Then again, they all have their reasons, don’t they? Reason number one being ‘I wanna.’ Second reason? He was an evil man. And he knew Nash hadn’t laid a hand on his wife their entire marriage, and George wanted another boy. Nash wasn’t the sort of son he wanted. Neither were you. But if George got a baby out of Miss Virginia, everyone would think that baby boy was Nash’s baby boy. George wanted another son and he was willing to do anything to get it. But if Nash were dead...”

  “If Nash were dead, then nobody would think Virginia Maddox’s baby was a Maddox baby. Goddamn.” Levi scraped a hand through his hair, rubbed his face. “He told you all this?”

  “In a letter he left me.”

  “Did he... He didn’t say anything about me, did he?”

  “In his letter? Nah. But he talked about you before. He kept tabs. Said his daddy hired you to manage the ponies, but Nash knew the truth about it. George wanted you around to scare Nash into behaving. You were plan Z, you know.”

  “Plan Z?”

  “Plan A was Eric inherits. Plan B was Nash’s child. Nash’s child was a girl, so plan C was Big Daddy and Virginia’s boy. Don’t even ask me what plans D through Y were. I don’t want to know.”

  “And I was plan Z—the last resort.”

  Bowen nodded. “That you were. If Nash didn’t do his job, give George little boy grandbabies, well, there was always you. George threatened Nash more than once that he’d leave every penny of that old Red Thread money to you. I don’t think he meant it—plan Z, after all—but it kept Nash in line. You were light, light enough to pass. And Nash knew you loved the ladies as much as he didn’t. He knew you’d have no problem giving the Maddox line all the baby boys George could ever dream of.”

  “I wasn’t his son. I was a walking, talking threat, and I didn’t even know it. You know something—George Maddox always told me I was welcome to bring girlfriends over to the house to take them riding. I thought he was being nice. Turns out he wanted Nash to see his brother with a girl.”

  “A girl?”

  “All right, lots of girls.” Levi had taken George up on that offer and brought his girlfriend of the week over to Arden to go riding. It impressed the girls, yes, but it also reminded a too-precocious Tamara Belle that her crush on Granddaddy’s groom was a sweet fantasy and nothing more. Or at least that was what it was once upon a time.

  “Before me, Nash had his fair share, too. This island was the Fire Island of South Carolina, if you know what that is.”

  “I know.”

  “You and Nash are a lot alike. I can see it. He was a sweet evenin’ breeze and so’re you. You breeze in at night. Breeze back out in the morning.”

  “I used to be that. Not anymore. I got a seventeen-year-old wife I have to keep an eye on. No more breezing out.”

  “You’ll breeze, you’ll see.” Bowen turned and faced the road. “And I will breeze myself home.”

  “You drunk as a skunk.”

  “So’re you.”

  “You oughta let me walk you halfway there at least.”

  “I got my own escort somewhere. Where’d that boy go?”

  “Boy?” Levi asked. Oh, my.

  Bowen put two fingers in his mouth and whistled so loud Levi winced. Bowen did it again and not one minute afterward a dog trotted out of the woods and down the road. It was a medium-size dog, short white fur with triangle ears sticking straight up and an eager smiling dog face.

  “There he is. Come here, White Dog.” Bowen slapped his thigh and the dog ran to him.

  “That’s a white dog, all right,” Levi said, scraping his hand over the dog’s coarse fur. He was all muscle and gristle and blind obedience. “What’s his name?”

  “White Dog,” Bowen said. “Ain’t you, White Dog?”

  “You named your white dog White Dog? You couldn’t think of anything better than that?”

  “He’s not White Dog because he’s a white dog. He’s White Dog because that’s the shit they put in the barrels. It goes in white dog and comes out bourbon. But we won’t put White Dog in no bourbon barrel for four years. We won’t do that, will we, White Dog?” He scratched and rubbed the dog’s face. Levi only rolled his eyes.

  “So you can get home with White Dog’s help?” Levi asked.

  “Through the woods and over the river. That’s that. You sleep well, man. That’s my house. Take care of it.”

  “Your house? I thought Nash left the island to Tamara.”

  “He left her the island. He left me the house. B
ut you keep it. I don’t want it.”

  “You mean it? We’ll pay you for it.”

  “You come work for me at the cooperage and that’ll pay for it. Truth is, I couldn’t sleep in that place if you paid me. Too many ghosts around here.”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “You will if you stay on this island long enough. You’ll believe anything.”

  And with that, Bowen gave him a drunken sort of salute and started off down the dirt way. He and White Dog, and they hadn’t made it ten feet before Levi called after him.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Levi said when Bowen turned around.

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Sorry about Nash. Sorry I’m in your house with my wife, and you’re not in it anymore.”

  “Go home,” Bowen said. “Go home to your wife.”

  “One more question.”

  Bowen glared at him.

  “Stop asking questions,” Bowen said. “You’re not going to like the answers you get one of these days.”

  “Did you love him?” Levi asked. “Nash, I mean.”

  Bowen narrowed his eyes at him. “Why do you care?”

  “Because he was my half brother, and I never got to love him. His wife didn’t love him. His father didn’t love him. I hope somebody did.”

  “I loved him,” Bowen said. “Wish I hadn’t, but I did. The Maddox family is cursed, they say, and I believe it. And once you touch one, get inside one, the curse is in you, too. Someday you’re gonna wish you hadn’t married into that family, breeze.”

  “I was born into it. If it’s cursed, I’m cursed.”

  “You’re cursed.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “It keeps the curse away,” Bowen said. “It keeps it all away.”

  Bowen started off down the dark road again and in ten steps he’d turned invisible, nothing left of him but the sound of his whistling as he walked away, White Dog at his side.

  Levi adjusted the wick on his lantern and headed back to his house. He didn’t blame Bowen for thinking the Maddox family was cursed, but Levi couldn’t believe a superstition like that. Curses weren’t real. Curses were voodoo. Any bad luck the Maddox family had, they’d brought upon themselves. Eric Maddox had run off and joined the army during a war instead of going to college or signing up in the National Guard like most of the other fortunate sons did. Nash had killed himself when he probably ought to have killed his father—their father. And Tamara...she wasn’t a Maddox by blood. If there was a curse, she was immune. And Levi had grown up outside the family, away from George Maddox’s influence. No, he and Tamara would be fine.

  As he mounted the front porch to the house, Levi allowed himself one smile as he took off his dirty boots to leave on the front porch. Bride Island. Julien St. Croix. Louisa. Little dead Philip. Jesus, Bowen almost had him there. But that was a good story. Almost good enough to make Levi believe this island was cursed and the family was cursed and everything the Maddoxes touched was cursed.

  He wasn’t cursed. Bowen just wanted to scare him. But Levi wasn’t scared. In fact, Levi was home. Right here on this island, he was home. And not a curse to be seen.

  The Forest of Eden, that’s what this island was. His Eden. And his Eve was waiting for him in bed right this second.

  Levi opened the front door and found Tamara standing in the living room.

  “Levi, don’t move,” Tamara said, holding a gun in her hand aimed right at him.

  22

  “Tamara...” Levi’s blood went cold and still as ice.

  “It’s right at your feet,” Tamara said. “Don’t move.”

  Levi looked down. Curled on the floor, frozen in a tight coil, was a copperhead snake. If Levi put his foot out, he could have touched the head of it with his toe.

  “Back away, Levi,” Tamara said. “Real slow.”

  “I can’t.” The door had shut behind him. He’d have to step over or around the snake to get the door back opened. The snake was looking right at him and Levi’s heart was pounding from his throat to his guts. He knew if he moved, even one muscle, that beast would spring forward and clamp down on his leg or on his bare foot, and he had no idea where the hell the nearest hospital was, but it wasn’t nearly near enough.

  “I can’t shoot it with you right there,” she said. “I might hit you.”

  Or if she missed, the snake would strike, scared by the sound.

  Levi had left the lantern on the porch, too. Otherwise, he would have dropped it on the snake. All he could do was stand there and sweat and count his heartbeats in his ears.

  “It’s moving.” Tamara lowered the gun and aimed at the snake.

  It was moving, but not in any direction Levi wanted it to move. Its head was lifting, eyes still trained on him.

  Levi’s feet were riveted to the ground. He was five seconds away from hyperventilating. He tried to focus on Tamara standing there in her little baby-doll nightgown holding a pistol he didn’t know they had. But all he could see was six feet of copperhead snake sliding his way.

  “Get a broom,” Levi said.

  “It’s too close to you. We don’t have time.”

  Levi’s body shook so hard he heard his teeth chattering. Tamara took one tiny step forward and Levi sensed the snake tensing. It coiled tighter, lifted its head higher. A mad, bad terrible thought hit him right then. Was Tamara going to kill him? Wouldn’t that be nice for her brand-new husband to die so suddenly, so tragically, but would it be tragic if she inherited every penny?

  When he spared a second glance at her, he saw her finger shaking on the trigger.

  She was going to kill him. A tiny thing like her couldn’t handle a gun that big. The recoil would send her flying. Her hand could hardly hold it. She’d aim for his feet and shoot him right in the chest. But maybe that was what she wanted.

  “Tamara, don’t shoot.”

  “Levi, I’ve got to. It’s moving.”

  “Don’t. You’ll hit me.”

  The house turned silent as a tomb. There was nothing to hear but his breathing, her breathing and the snake’s belly rustling along the floor. The snake’s triangular head rose off the floor an inch or two and its long black tongue flicked here and there, tasting the air, tasting Levi’s fear.

  Tamara stepped right and the floor creaked.

  “Tamara?”

  “Hush.”

  Levi hushed.

  Tamara tapped the floor with her foot.

  The snake seemed to like it. It swiveled its head toward her. The copperhead pushed away from Levi and toward her. Levi reached behind him and opened the door as slowly and carefully as possible, not wanting to startle the snake into striking.

  “Run, Tamara,” Levi ordered when there was enough distance between him and the snake to speak. “Run upstairs. Run right now.”

  “There’s this verse in the Bible,” Tamara began, her voice soft like it came from far away. “Says a believer can pick up a venomous snake and not be harmed. Mark chapter sixteen, verse eighteen.”

  “The Bible says a lot of things,” Levi said. “We don’t have to believe them all.”

  “What if it’s true?”

  “It’s not true. None of it’s true. There was no Adam. There was no Eve. There was no ark and no flood and you can’t pick up a copperhead and not get bitten.”