Chapter 39
June 1997
Jake felt as if he could throw up. Phil and Stan climbed out from beneath the tree first, and then Jake followed after them. No one made a sound.
“What are you going to do?” Stan finally asked, trying to sound brave but failing.
“I dunno,” the man said in a wispier voice than Jake would have expected.
The man was just as nervous as they were; and, for the first time, Jake wondered if perhaps the man wasn’t as vile as they’d imagined.
“Are you going to kill us?” he asked.
“Look,” the man said, “I just wanna get outa this place. I’ll let you be if you tell me how to get out.”
“I want my gun back,” Stan said sternly. “You took it from my house, and I want it back.”
The man snickered. “Sorry kid, but I need this, too. I don’t wanna use it, but I will if I have to. Now how do I get outa here?”
“Give me my gun, and I’ll tell you.”
“Do you think I’m playing around with you?” the man screamed, pointing the gun at Stan.
Jake held his breath. His friends simply stared at the weapon, too afraid to move or speak. The man seemed cautious and lowered the gun a moment later.
“I’m sorry, alright. I just wanna leave.”
“Why did you do this?” Jake asked, eying an overstuffed duffle bag in the man’s hands. “Why take so much?”
The man looked at the three of them and shook his head, throwing his hands in the air. “I just need it is all.”
“Follow that creek,” Jake said calmly. He had come to the conclusion that there was no point in risking their lives if the man was willing to let them live in exchange for simple directions. “You’ll come to a small bridge, and there’s a trail just past that to the left. Follow that trail up and over the hill. It’ll dump you out on the road about a mile down.”
The man seemed surprised and relaxed a bit. “Thank you. Now all of you get back under there and wait about a half hour,” he looked at Stan and shrugged, “and sorry about the gun, kid.”
“Whatever,” Stan replied bitterly. “Sell it for whatever child support or drugs you need it for.”
The man turned on him furiously, but Jake grabbed Stan’s arm and pulled him toward the tree before anyone could say anything else. They struggled to fit beneath the fallen tree as the man turned to go, but then the unexpected sound of footsteps stilled them. The boys froze as the man aimed his weapon somewhere above their heads.
Jake’s heart pounded, and he wished he could warn whoever it was that was coming, but doing so would only make things worse. The man tucked himself behind a forked tree, took aim between the two round trunks, and prepared to shoot whoever it was that was approaching. The footsteps above them slowed as they crept toward the precipice. Jake closed his eyes, not wanting to see what came next.
“Behind the tree!” Stan suddenly shouted.
Gunfire erupted.
Jake sank down, holding his ears as Phil began cursing as loudly as he could. Something slammed into Jake; and, before he knew it, he was being pulled from beneath the tree’s trunk. The cold metal of Stan’s gun pressed against his cheek. He struggled and screamed but couldn’t break free.
“Drop it,” the man with Stan’s gun shouted, but his words were immediately drowned out by a loud crack and the sound of thunder splitting Jake’s skull.
It lasted for only the faintest of seconds, but in that short time Jake saw the end of the showdown. The man stumbled under Jake’s sudden weight. Another loud crack made the man scream, though the sound was like a dull echo in the back of Jake’s skull, and they both fell. Jake’s final moments seemed like a slow eternity, like time had stopped. He never felt the ground as he hit it. He couldn’t retain what he was seeing. The darkness came, the pain subsided, and nothingness enveloped him until even that was gone. This was for the best, however, because the last thing he saw would have surely broken his heart.
The image would have been of a traumatized Phil Guthrie, the horrible events not yet registering in his fragile mind; he’d have seen Stan running toward him, his face frozen in a terrified scream as the guilt of his choices ripped him apart; and above them both, with an expression of pure disbelief and terror, Stanley Cromwell Sr. would have been frozen with the smoke still rising from the barrel of his gun, facing the realization that he had just shot the boy who was like a son to him. No, Jake didn’t retain any of this; for, as he fell, all memory of the moment faded, as if it were all a dream—and then there was nothing at all.