Retribution
Wayne dropped the phone back in his pocket and stood from his seat on the lift gate of his truck, peeling off his jacket and dropping it into the bed. The night was cool, but he’d been moving around and he knew he’d just end up getting it dirty if he didn’t take it off. He’d stay warm enough.
He walked through the woods behind his trailer, down a faintly marked trail he and Eddie had made when Eddie was little. They’d used it to get to a good fishing spot back then, or to take Eddie swimming, and he knew the little lean-to cabin he’d taught Eddie to build had probably been used to smoke weed when Eddie was in high school and tried not to let Wayne know he was doing that. He kept it standing, more as a memento than anything else, but it came in handy a couple of times a year when he’d go fishing and get caught in the rain or just wanted a place to sit and think without the old ladies in the trailer park nosing into his business, and his feet could carry him there without him even having to pay attention.
The tiny clearing the cabin sat in came into sight, and he crossed to the building and pushed open the door, which swung crazily from the one still-connected hinge. Wayne stepped inside, making a mental note to fix that before it got any worse: Eddie was sentimental; it’d break his heart if the old place fell apart.
“Well,” he said to the tarp-wrapped bundle on the dirt floor of the cabin, which didn’t respond to the sound of his voice. “Didn’t mean to keep you waiting, but I had to take a call.”
Wayne pulled the tarp to drag the bundle out of the cabin and into the edge of the trees, rolling it into a freshly-dug hole with his foot and bending to his shovel to cover it over with earth. In short order he was sprinkling pine needles and twigs over the smoothed dirt, and a casual look would never reveal anything was there. He paused, briefly considering if a prayer would be appropriate, then shrugged. The parts of the Bible Wayne Munson kept to ran more along the lines of ‘an eye for an eye’ than the ‘forgiving those who trespass against you’ ones.