by Jay Nadal
“I kind of thought when you were ready, you would come to us,” Brandon offered apologetically. “And if you were in a bad place, I didn’t want Madison to see it.” His voice firmed up when talking about his daughter. He wasn’t sorry for putting his daughter first. Beth took his hand.
“You were right not to,” Cade assured him. “I guess. I don’t know. I can’t be sure of anything from that time. After Elaine left, I let my job take over. I sometimes think I might still end up at the bottom of a bottle.”
“No, you won’t. Because you’re not like dad. My little girl thinks you’re a hero,” Beth told him. “And you won’t let her down.” A fire burned in her green eyes that only a mother could conjure. A reluctant smile twitched Cade’s mouth.
“No, ma’am. I wouldn’t dare.”
5
The rest of the day had passed well for Cade. He played with Maddie and watched the Cowboys-Patriots with Beth. He bantered with her like when they were kids. It was like old times, though he knew he was seeing their childhood through a filter. Brandon was putting Madison to bed. Beth had gotten serious. She was direct. She wanted Cade to talk, and to his amazement he felt the urge to respond. For the first time, he wanted to talk. But he stopped himself.
“Brandon told me what the Dexters are doing to you,” he said.
Beth just stared at him, then launched herself to her feet and stalked across the room. Outside, the sky was red and gold from sunset. A streetlight right outside glared in through the living room window.
“I assume you’re not the only ones.”
“I guess not.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can’t just keep paying?”
“Gee, Tommy, do you think?” Beth rounded on him. “In case you haven’t noticed, we have a little girl to protect.”
“I noticed.” Cade was on his feet now.
“Everything we have is in that business. We can’t afford to move. So, unless we can find someone to buy it from us, we’re stuck with the Dexters. And guess what? The only people looking to buy an auto shop in the middle of backwoods New Hampshire are the Dexters.”
“They want your business?”
“Yes. But with what they’re offering, we couldn’t afford to get out of here. There’s a family down the street been trying to sell for two years. No one wants to move to Burford. The fucking Dexters have got everyone scared.”
“And have you been to the police?”
Beth’s laugh was a hair from tears.
“Well?”
“Hey, will you two keep it down?” Brandon came into the room.
“No,” Beth replied to Cade’s question.
“Well, why in hell not?” But he already knew the answer. The Dexters wouldn’t still be around if they were vulnerable to local sheriffs. Probably paid off.
“Why do you think? Jesus, you used to be a cop. You know how it works.” Brandon crossed the room and tried to put his arms around Beth. She shook him off and stepped away.
“I do. But what else are you going to do—let them bleed you like a tick until you’re ready to sign away your business for any price they name? ’Cause that’s where this is going.”
“I told you not to tell him,” Beth spat.
“They came to the shop, honey.” Brandon took a step toward her again.
“Don’t.” Beth fixed him where he stood with a pointed finger. “You promised.”
Cade took a breath, but Beth wasn’t about to back down from either of them.
“And you can shut the hell up. I don’t want to hear it. Fucking men.” She stalked out of the room. They heard the back-door screen slam.
Cade and Brandon stood for a moment.
“I’m going after her. She’ll calm down. She didn’t want you to have to deal with this on top of everything else.”
“Beth was wrong,” Cade said emphatically.
“There’s a lot of skilled labor coming into town with the mine. A lot of out-of-state people with money. Once they have it properly running, all we have to do is find a buyer for the house and we can get out.”
Cade nodded wearily. He stared at one of those damned pictures. Three happy people grinned back at him. Two thousand miles from Sunnyside where people tried to claw their way out of misery over the backs of their neighbors. Even here. He thought of Clinton Reeves. Full of hate for a world that had kicked him into the gutter from the day he was born. Even here he couldn’t escape.
“I need to get air. Go talk to your wife. Make it up to her. Maybe I should find a hotel.”
Brandon caught his arm. “No way. You’re not going anywhere. You’re part of my family now.” He gave a lopsided grin. “Like it or not.”
Cade grunted and clapped his shoulder. “Don’t wait up.”
Burford had darkened around him as he walked. Cade had no particular direction at first. He walked with hands in his jacket pockets and head down. The lit windows of houses on Riverside Drive crept into his peripheral vision. His teeth ground until his jaw ached. His right hand clenched for a gun he had left behind somewhere in the West Texas desert. It had felt symbolic to throw it away before coming here to reconnect with Beth and her family. This place where a gun surely would be the last thing anyone needed.
At an intersection, he turned downhill, making a conscious decision to head toward the river. Down there were more glaring sodium lights and the distant sound of music. Main Street must have been somewhere ahead, curling around the foot of Meers Hill. Perfect place to pick a fight. Up ahead, an old man carefully lowered a flag from a pole outside a grocery store. He wore a white apron over a shirt and tie. As Cade got closer, he could see the man wore sleeve garters. He appeared to struggle to bring the flag down smoothly, his left arm jerking. As Cade approached, he looked away from his task.
“Say there, young fella. How ’bout giving me a hand with this?”
His voice cracked as he peered out at the world from behind a prairie squint. He had the vestiges of a beard around his mouth, white and failing, just like the hair on his head.
“This arm o’mine gets stiff sometimes after it’s been raining. And this cord is damned hard to handle.”
Cade made to walk past, but the man grabbed his arm with his right hand. That hand at least had an iron grip.
“Hey! Now, I’m talkin’ to you. What’s the matter, don’t you care for the flag of this country?”
Cade stared at him from beneath the shadow of his cap. The old guy wouldn’t be able to see his eyes in the gloom, but he wasn’t for backing down.
“All I want you to do is work the cord while I gather in the flag so it doesn’t get dirty on the ground. Can you do that for me before you go on and get drunk with all those other fools down there?” He jerked his grizzled head in the downhill direction.
Cade put out a hand and took hold of the cord above the old man’s wavering left hand. It shook as the man took it away. Cade lowered the flag as the man gathered it and folded it expertly. The tremor had moved up his left arm now.
“Here.” Cade put out his arms for the cloth. “Before you drop it.”
The man pushed the neat bundle into Cade’s arms.
“Grateful,” he gruffed in a tone that said it was the least he could have expected. “Bring it inside. Name’s Charlie.” A bell rang over the door as he went inside. Cade followed.
The store was lit by the cooler at the back. There were three aisles of shelving crammed with goods, with more shelving against the wall that rose almost to the ceiling. They reminded Cade of the dry goods store in old westerns. A ladder on wheels stood to one side of a counter, atop which was an ancient cash register. Charlie went behind the counter and unlocked a cupboard with a key hanging from a chain around his neck, tucked beneath the apron. Cade handed him the flag.
“Thank you. Now go on if you want to. You’ve done your good-citizen bit.” He glared as he spoke, as though Cade’s presence was a hindrance.
“You’re welcome, Charlie. Been a real pleasure,” Cade intoned acidly, touching the bill of his cap and turning to go.
“You friends with that Brandon Collins, ain’tya,” Charlie blurted.
Cade stopped. “Yeah. You got a problem with him?”
“Hell no. Brandon’s a good man. Saw you in Brandon’s car headin’ up the hill earlier. What’s your name, son?”
“I thought you wanted me to go.”
“And I still do. Think I like standing around at this time of night talking to a complete stranger? I just asked your name.”
“Cade. Tommy Cade.”
“Texan.”
“Yep.”
“Thought so. Spent some time based out of San Antonio when I was in the Air Force. Recognized the accent. So, how do you know the Collinses, Tommy?”
“Beth Collins is my sister. How do you know them?”
“I knew Brandon’s dad. Served with him. Known Brandon since he was a babe in arms. Babysat for little Maddie lots of times, too. So, now we both know we’re friends. Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing walking the streets of Burford at this time of night?”
“You interrogate everyone who happens by?”
“Hey, I’m entitled. I’ve been here longer than all the houses up there on Meers Hill. Look here, do yourself a big favor. If you’re looking for a beer, I got a crate of Sam Adams out back and a couple of cigars, if you’re a smoking man.”
Cade’s urge to do violence faded. The anger died away beneath Charlie’s rough hospitality. “A beer would be great.”
“Main Street ain’t what she used to be. All the decent places have been closed down or taken over. Nothing but trouble down there these days. Come on in. A friend of the Collinses is okay with me. Come on now.”
Charlie stomped off down one of the aisles and through a door at the back, unlocked with another key from the chain. Cade followed. They went through a storeroom and into a backyard surrounded by a high brick wall. A wooden gate stood opposite. Charlie hauled a plastic chair from a pile beside the door. He opened a cooler next to the chairs and pulled out two stubby brown beer bottles, which he cracked open on the hinge of the door.
He took a seat with a sigh and then reached back to tug on a piece of string. A single lightbulb lit above the door.
“Mighty hospitable of you, Charlie,” Cade said politely, tipping the bottle toward him.
Charlie took a cigar out of his pocket, bit off the end, and spat. He offered another to Cade.
“I’m trying to quit,” Cade told him.
“Suit yourself. Anyway, any friend of Brandon is a friend of mine. So, what do you think to our little town, Tommy?”
“I’d forgotten what it’s like to live in a small town, truth be told,” Cade admitted. “Where I come from, strangers don’t invite folks into their backyards to share a beer.”
“Where’s that, then? Dallas? Fort Worth? You’ve got the look of the military about you.”
“Houston. Police. You’re ex-military yourself, then?”
“USAF. Flew cargo mostly. South East Asia, Germany, lot of places. Got invalided out in ’61. I was a navigator on a B-52 out of Dow AFB in Maine. Bird strike. Sparrows. ’Bout a million of them. One engine blew out, and that ignited the other and took out enough wing surface on one side to leave us in a death spin. That’s why I have the flag outside. At 16:37 every day, I lower the flag and salute, to remember the time we crashed and lost a bunch of good guys. You didn’t answer my question, though.”
“I liked it a lot better before I heard about the Dexters,” Cade answered. He was watching the old man’s reactions. Charlie spat.
“Dexters are a bunch of snakes. Started with old Henry Dexter. Made his money bootlegging during Prohibition. Billy Dexter turned out the same as his grandpa—mean. Real mean.”
“They’re into protection,” Cade said.
Charlie took some long draws on his cigar. “Yes, they are. Cost me most of my Air Force pension. I know the Collinses are having their own problems with them. Zach Green had to sell his place on Havens Road last year. Took a big loss. He had a good little body shop before they came along. And Pete Zalinski, who owned the Leaping Salmon over on the west side of town. Even old man Nevers. They took his land away from him. And that’s nothing but a few acres of grass with some rusty old rails running through it. Close to Brandon’s shop. Did it just to be mean, I reckon.”
Cade leaned forward in his seat. “They a big family?”
“Not that many of them here in Burford. Billy and his wife, Angie, and the two boys, Jimmy and Bobby. And a lot of thugs who used to run with Jimmy when he was a kid. Real lowlifes. I’ve watched them. Left to go their own way by their no-good parents. ’Til they drift into the orbit of someone like Jimmy Dexter. Damn shame.”
“They got the cops paid off?”
“Cops? We ain’t got cops here. We got Pat Joseph. That guy is a waste of air. At least one of his deputies is a decent enough fella, but that guy. He’s been on the take his whole career.”
Cade rolled the beer bottle between his hands. He had taken a single drink. Charlie finished his and hurled the bottle into an old oil can across the yard.
“Not what you expected, huh?”
“No. No, it isn’t. Thought I had left all of this behind me.”
“As long as there’s people living together in one place, you’re going to get some like the Dexters.”
“It shouldn’t happen.”
“That’s the real world, Texas. Shit happens and the good guy doesn’t always win.”
“Brandon and Beth are struggling to hold on. They can’t quit and they can’t fight. So what are they supposed to do?” Cade drained his bottle in one long swig and then hurled it into the can.
“I was born in this town, seventy-one years ago. I’ve lived here my whole life apart from my time in the military. Spent thirty years up on Shell’s Ridge. Drill helper, driller, blaster, foreman. You name it, I did it. Union man. Union rep for the last ten years. They built this town on guys like me. This whole country was. What’s happening here is no different to what’s happening everywhere, even the White House, goddamn me for saying it. Crooks prosper and blue-collar guys like you and me go to the wall. In my day, a bunch of guys would have got together, and old Billy Dexter would get what’s coming to him.”
“You saying I should round up a posse?” Cade said dryly.
“Son, there ain’t no one left in this town to be in a posse. Maybe men are still men down in Texas. They ain’t up here in New Hampshire. You know something, this town used to be thriving. We had the mine, even our own railroad. Every year the town got bigger, more people moved in. And all they wanted was to work, wanted to build. Then the economy took a dive. Railroad closed, and that choked the mine, ’cause they couldn’t get the ore out cheap enough. Then the weeds come up. Billy Dexter lent money to folks out of work, taking their property when they couldn’t pay, then realized he didn’t even need to lend in the first place. He could just take it.”
Cade stood. His mind made up. “Thanks for the beer, Charlie. Good to have met you.”
“You ain’t heading downtown still, are you?” Charlie stood, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and plugging in his cigar.
“No. I’m heading back to Beth and Brandon’s place.”
“Glad to hear it. When I saw you coming down the street, I knew it wasn’t going to end well if I didn’t do something. You had the look of a man ready to kill someone.”
“Pretty dumb to be getting in my way, then,” Cade said, pushing the cap back on his head.
“I’ve laid no claim to brains, son. And at my age, there ain’t much left to be scared of. Don’t do anything stupid now, y’hear?”
Charlie gave him a clap on the back that staggered him, then led Cade back through the store to the main entrance. Cade picked up a bottle of root beer in an old-fashioned glass bottle and dropped two dollar bills onto the counter. Charlie made them disappear quick
. As he opened the door, a woman’s scream pierced the night.
6
Cade was through the door first. He looked up and down the deserted street. Then the scream came again. It came from down the hill. He took off running without a thought.
“Be careful, darn it. Be careful,” Charlie called after him.
Cade reached an intersection and this time heard running heels and a snarling male voice. A girl appeared from around a corner. She struggled to tear free a shoe. She wore a dress with a short skirt and a low-cut top and had hair that looked like it had started the night up before it had become disarrayed. A man chased her up the hill. No, not chasing, stalking. He caught her and flung her against a wall before letting her run on, sobbing and still fumbling at her shoe.
As Cade watched, the girl ran in earnest. The man ducked around a parked car and emerged in front of her, arms wide apart with a sinister laugh. It sounded familiar to Cade. She screamed again, turned to run, but he caught her, lifting her off her feet with one arm around her waist. The other hand tangled in her hair as he yanked her head back.
“Come on now, sugar,” he cooed. “I want some of what you give other guys. I’ve heard about you. Come on now.”
He pulled her down a side street. Cade ran toward them.
“Hey!” he shouted.
The man stopped, looking over his shoulder at Cade. It was Bobby D. He wore the same clothes he’d had on that morning, and the previous night, too. His lank hair hung about his face in a tangle. He stared through it balefully at Cade.
“This isn’t any concern of yours, pal. Take a hike.”
He raised one arm, and Cade saw he held a switchblade. He waved it in the air, letting the light glint off the blade. “You wanna see this bitch get cut? Back off and you won’t have to watch.”
“Ain’t going to happen,” Cade told him. There were houses either side of the street in this part of town and cars in the driveway. No lights came on. No one wanted to be part of trouble.