Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

mouth.
    It was after several minutes of this that we heard sirens in the distance. There were blue-and-red lights caught in the tops of the bare trees down the road.
    This road was in the town of Southampton, and it was the Chief’s boys on their way now.
    “It’s time for you to go, Mac.” White puffed from his mouth when he spoke. “They’ll find a way to make trouble for you if you stay. Just go, I’ll take care of things here. It won’t do anyone any good to have you locked up tonight.”
    The trees that lined the road above were full of lights now. The Chief’s boys were pulling in, one right after another.
    “You’ll have to hurry to make it before the cold gets to you,” he told me quick. “I’d say, considering what you’ve already been through here, that you’ve got maybe ten minutes at the most before things start to turn shitty for you. At the most.”
    “Don’t worry about me.”
    “My cell phone is in the cab, on the passenger seat. Take it with you. Grab a flare from the glove compartment, in case you get into trouble. C’mon, go, I’ll take care of this.”
    “I’ll see you, Aug.”
    I climbed out of the back and went around to the passenger side door of the truck, leaned into the warm cab, and removed a road flare from the glove compartment and grabbed Augie’s cell phone from the seat.
    “Call Eddie, have him come and get you. Don’t waste time. You don’t have long.”
    I heard voices from the road above then. I told Augie I’d see him soon, then turned and ran blind up the shallow bank and into the open field beyond. I couldn’t move fast, my legs were spent and my lungs ached, but I ran as best as I could toward a ditch and once there lay in it so I was out of sight of the pond and the road above it. I could hear the cops, their voices, I could even hear the squelching of their radios. I looked up over the top of the ditch and could see that I really hadn’t gotten that far away at all.
    I called Eddie on Augie’s cell phone. Eddie’s wife, Angel, was working the dispatch. She said that he had taken a fare to the airport in Islip and wasn’t due back for an hour. I hung up and started thinking that a night with the Chief’s boys might not have been so bad after all. My soaked jeans were beginning to freeze, hardening into something like cardboard. The material burned where it touched my skin, and creases felt like dull blades trying to cut me. I realized then there was one other person I could call. The number came to me as I dialed. It was a number I had dialed a few times the summer before.
    It was late, and the voice that answered was groggy and young-sounding. I wasn’t sure what I would have said had one of her parents answered.
    “It’s Mac, Lizzie. I need to speak with Tina. Is she there?”
    There was a brief hesitation, and then I heard the phone get handed off, then muffled talking, and finally Tina’s voice.
    “Mac?” she said. “What’s going on?”
    “I need your help,” I told her. “Listen to me carefully.”
    After I hung up I made my way out of the ditch and started across the frozen field to the roadside. I bent low so no one could see me. As I went I could watch the Chief’s boys making their way down the incline and around the pond to Augie’s truck. Paramedics were with them. There were flashlights and a lot of calling, but no one looked out into the field. I stumbled several times, more out of weakness than clumsiness.
    I made it to the roadside not long before the car appeared. It had taken me several minutes to cross that field. As the car slowed for me, the passenger door opened, and I climbed inside as fast as I could. I didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead, through the windshield. I didn’t have to look to know that it was Tina beside me, and by the car I knew it belonged to Lizzie’s parent’s, and that she would be driving.
    I told Lizzie to continue on, but slow. The car moved forward, toward the scene of the accident, toward all those lights and the cops running about. I didn’t want us to make a suspicious U-turn, I didn’t want to get pulled over in the middle of the night with two sixteen-year-old girls. And I wanted to know that Augie was going to be okay.
    Tina reached into the back seat and pulled out a blanket and put it around my shoulders. It didn’t do much. I was shuddering violently. Tina turned up the heat full blast and one by one aimed each of the vents toward me. But I could barely feel the air