XXVIII: Mr. Bad Example
Sawyer figured out the town within a few minutes of arriving at the borderline. The only stretch of highway kids drove down was the little spit of highway that cut into the seas of blue ridges and marble-caked metamorphic rock, from the McDonald's to the Burger King. He figured that there was little else for these kids to do but go from one fast-food joint to another. He wasn't jealous of their boundaries.
Still, it was better than what he'd had, and he was jealous of that, at least. He drove his beater hard, jerking it around corners, pulling up to stop signs as seriously as possible, his foot stomping all too hard on the brake pedal. Maybe it was the claustrophobia of the town. Maybe it was too close to the plantations. He felt out-of-place in the mountains of northern Georgia. Perhaps he needed to go further South. Perhaps he needed to find somewhere tropical in which he could lose himself.
If it worked for Jimmy Buffett, it'll work for Jimmy Ford, he thought, wincing after a moment at the unconscious use of the nickname. There was something fake about it, though. It was no longer his name. He had not used it for years, and it was almost as if James Ford had died back when he had run his first con. The twenty-something guy driving the car was not the nineteen-year-old kid that had first taken it out for a spin, having purchased it on odd-job wages.
Some highschool morons in a pickup roared past him, drinking beer. One lobbed a can at his car, and he felt it ping the hood, but kept driving. He wouldn't get into a drag race with these kids. There was no reason to rise to their bait. Likewise, there was no reason to feel guilty as he drove past the rickety church that proclaimed in cheap marquee lettering, 'He Knows What You Did Last Summer', although he did have to grin at it despite himself.
I sure did a hell of a lot, he thought. But on the other hand, I didn't do much of anything. He had nothing to regret, anyway. He hadn't killed anyone, hadn't hurt anyone, really. If anything, he had even done good: When he saw that little boy, the kid of David and Jessica, he had fled. Surely that deserved some points for doing good, he suspected, and then he knew that it didn't really matter. He could never make up for what he had done to people. There was no point in trying.
What Sawyer had to do now was to get away from Kilo. Where better to go than some hick town in the middle of nowhere? They wouldn't find him here, and when he got tired of it, he just needed to move on. That was an easy enough thing to do. He had only his aunt up in Roxboro, and he'd visit her soon, so other than her, he had nothing to stick around for. The gypsy life was getting old, though. Maybe this was where he could stay. If only, he thought, suddenly wistful.
He was fooling himself, though, he suddenly realized. It would never happen. The hundred and forty grand would run out, because he was no good at saving the stuff. It would be spent on booze, a new set of wheels, maybe some paperwork to cover his tracks, and he would be off again. He had never fled a con job before this last one, but he knew enough about the life by now – months and then years of having perfected the art – to know that he would have no luck from the windfall. In a way, living hand-to-mouth from con to con was easier. There was less responsibility. It was freer. He liked it better that way.
–––
He could tell the diner wasn't much of anything from the way the menu was laid out. It was cheap paper, onion-skin more than anything really worthy of typing, and across the top was printed, 'SOUP DU JOURE.' 'JUICE.' 'SALAD.' Something struck him as odd about that list. He suspected it might be the French. But he didn't speak the language, just knew that it looked fishy. Maybe if I'd gone to college, he thought, a sudden vision of Mark Boswell in his mind. He had not heard from Mark in ages. What was the guy doing now? Probably some hotshot lawyer in Memphis. Mark got all the breaks. He, Sawyer, got none of the breaks. He expected the fellow would be doing well, though.
The waitress looked more like a nurse than a food server, and her breath reeked of stale coffee. She hovered over him like he was a pariah, something to be watched. Maybe he was. Nobody knows me here, Sawyer thought, and they don't want me here either. Their dislike suited him fine, though. As long as he didn't give them reason to alert the authorities, he would simply stick around, and not get in their way.
"Whaddaya want?" Something about the voice struck him as odd, in its high range. He had asked the same question once. But he had not done so at a diner, and he had not followed up the question with, "Special's the meatloaf. I think we still have a few pieces left, darlin'."
He squinted towards the short-order window. From the look of the meatloaf, long moldering and half under tinfoil, he expected they had more than a few pieces. He was not about to help them out with their efforts to get rid of the day-old special, though. Instead, he told her, "Burger's fine."
"Fries?"
He could feel the money starting to slip away already, even as he nodded. "Yeah. And a Coke. Thank you, ma'am." He gave the older woman his best million-dollar grin, making an effort to be polite. It didn't hurt, even if she didn't look like she had money enough to be a good mark. From the way she turned away, something funny and apparently quite foreign passing over her face, Sawyer figured that nobody had looked that way at her in a long time, so long that the notion of charm was all but foreign to her. He lit up a cigarette, taking a drag, and leaned against the counter, the money weighing heavily in his pockets and his briefcase.
The burger was old, and the fries were cold, but Sawyer was grateful for any sort of food, even if it was bad. This little hole-in-the-wall town didn't strike him like a place that had any four-star establishments. Then again, the remoteness was why he had chosen it. He devoured the hamburger hungrily, barely stopping for breath. The waitress, infatuated despite herself and the relatively cold line he had given her, watched him the entire time. It was all he could do not to stop and make some cutting remark, but he did not want to poison the well quite yet.
"Carryin' around a lot of money, aren't you?"
The opening salvoes to a conversation Sawyer knew quite well had just been given. Ordinariy, the invitation to a con relieved him; now, when he wanted nothing more to hide from the mess he'd caused, he felt doubly nervous. He set down his burger and turned to face an older man – not Kilo; Kilo was black and this guy was white – broad-shouldered but shorter than Sawyer himself.
The man observed, "You paid with a hundred. And people don't pay with hundreds, unless they have more where that one came from. And I bet you even keep it in a briefcase, like a real Volunteer businessman. Yeah, I saw your license plates. You know, if I didn't know any better, son, I'd figure you for a real live con man. Got a name?"
Sawyer smirked tightly at that, unamused, and set down the burger. "Sawyer," he told the fellow, extending a hand.
The other, older man did not take the hand. He did, however, give Sawyer his name. "Hibbs," he responded. The lead-in to the inevitable question was quicker than Sawyer had expected, but not uncomfortably so. No alarm bells went off. "What sort of jobs do you do?"
A proper response demanded simplicity. That was it. Sawyer met Hibbs' glance firmly. "What do you need done?"
–––
A quick shower in the bathroom at the end of the flophouse hallway, a shave, and Sawyer collapsed on the box-spring mattress without having unpacked any of his gear. There was no point to doing so. He would leave this lousy place tomorrow. Hibbs had given him a hell of a proposition, and he would do it. The thought entered his mind, You sold your soul to the Devil at that diner, and if anyone charges interest, it's him. He had not sold anything with which he was reluctant to part, though. It was such a simple task that Sawyer couldn't believe that there was no catch.
He supposed he would find out through experience, though. That was the way he preferred to learn. Books were fine, studying other guys on a job was great, but there was nothing like running a con yourself to learn things. Each time, he discovered more and more about himself, and even if he had not liked what he had seen, at least he had seen it.
Hibbs had seen it, too. He could tell, from the way the man spoke to him upon learning that he would do whatever the guy needed to be done. The fellow had undoubtedly figured him as a smooth con, a man of action, and he would do his best not to disappoint Hibbs. He had already been a disappointment to Kilo, and he knew that would come back to haunt him sometime. For now, though, he had a new boss, and he would do his best to follow Hibbs' orders. He wasn't too worried. Whatever he was asked would be fine.
He tried his best to sleep. Sleep was difficult to come, though. It always was. Each time, he would lie there and see everyone's faces before him. It was worse when he finally got some shut-eye, though. The dreams weren't just sleep-induced visions. There was something real to them, something solid, and it was harder to look away from the faces he saw there than those he saw in sleep-deprived, drunken hazes.
This time, however, it would not be bad. Really, Hibbs asked nothing much, he reflected as he lay there, watching the fan spin overhead. The man asked only for a job in Atlanta and a second in Tampa, and that would be an easy enough thing to do. So Sawyer would head further south again. Florida had gone weird for him last time. Perhaps it would be weird again.
But he trusted Hibbs – not that the man was telling him the truth, because Sawyer knew he was lying about ninety percent of what he said, but that he had offered Sawyer an opportunity to make more money. Here was his chance to pay Kilo back, waiting there with Hibbs and his friend Parks, and he would do his best to repay the man. He still felt badly about that whole thing, and he suspected maybe he even felt a bit guilty towards Kilo, for scamming him in that way.
No, you don't. Stop being so sentimental about it. You feel no guilt, because you're a bastard, and you've always been a bastard. Maybe even literally, for all you know. You're as bad as any of them. Worse, because they're honest with themselves about what they are, and you, you can't see that you're every bit as vicious as they. The voice rose, unbidden, and he swallowed, turning away from it, looking towards the window, vertical blinds sending small slits of light across the room.
He would help Hibbs on his jobs, and then he would pay Kilo back, and everything would be fine, then, he told himself. It would have to be all right. He could not go on like this much longer. He did not want to die a con-man. He had different plans. He wanted to see the bastard dead that effectively killed his parents, even if it killed him. He wanted to die as his parents' champion.
Sawyer shut his eyes and began to make out shapes in the pinpoints of light and patches of darkness. He knew the dreams were coming again, so he thought, I need to get totally drunk next time I want to sleep. I can't dream clear-headed anymore. Nothing good ever comes of it.
Perhaps that should have been a warning. He felt no dread, though. He felt no fear, either, simply guilt, and as crushing as that was, there were no predictions in it. He felt no fear about the future. Later, that would strike him as ironic, maybe even funny, if it weren't so pathetic. All he could think of now, though, was how far he had gone -- how far he was gone -- for another man's death.