by Hank Early
He’d once promised me that it would be my fate too. And the thing about it was, I’d never for a second doubted him.
“Can you tell me about Edward?” I asked.
The only sound was the road crunching beneath the tires, the wind against glass, the tireless pitch of time outside the car. I saw the dead man in my yard, his car sliding neatly between the rows of corn in the Devil’s Valley. I saw my father standing in front of the congregation, about to hand me the cottonmouth that would ultimately bite me and change my life, an endless journey of time in the twitch of a synapse. All of it winding down to this. What could I do to make my life meaningful, to fulfill the promise of hope I’d once felt before I’d seen the corrupt underbelly of the world?
“I’ll tell you,” Eleanor said, at last, “but you have to promise me you’ll find a way to help him, even when you hear how impossible it is.”
“I promise,” I said, knowing there were some promises you made because you had to and not because you thought you could keep them.
“Edward told me he was gay when he was twelve,” she said, keeping her eyes on the road. “I knew before that, of course, but I dreaded the day when he figured it out. When he accepted it himself. I actually prayed that the day would be delayed, that it would dawn on him in his twenties sometime after he was far removed from his father’s control, but none of my prayers have ever been answered. That’s probably why Jeb and I aren’t married anymore. I mean, sure there was some abuse and the affairs, but I knew that was part of the deal going into the marriage. I wanted to believe Jeb was onto something greater, that even if he was a flawed man, he was right about something bigger. I wanted to believe he believed in God, that he was a sinner, sure, but also a man who aspired to more.” She slowed the car around a sharp bend, and I took a moment to try to process what I’d heard. Edward was gay? She said this as if this bit of news was already understood, as if it were common knowledge.
“Anyway, when he told me, I tried to keep it a secret from Jeb, of course. We were already divorced at the time, but still in constant contact because of the two boys and the alimony payments he was always trying to stiff me on. I kept my mouth shut and encouraged Eddie to do the same, but when Eddie turned fourteen, he had a boyfriend, and he wasn’t shy about it at all. I mean, he knew not to bring him around his father or even to act ‘gay’ around him.” She made a face. “That probably sounds terrible, but Eddie does act the part sometimes. He plays it up. Fine. Wouldn’t bother me except for the possibility of his father finding out, so I tried to encourage him to tone it down. He wouldn’t do it unless he was around his father. But eventually, word got back to Jeb. You know how these things work in small towns.”
I nodded. I did indeed.
“Jeb lost it. I mean, he really lost it. He showed up at my place, demanding to see Eddie. I thought he was going to kill him, so I told Eddie to lock his door. Jeb broke it down. I called the police, but Jeb called them too. He told them not to come. Can you believe that? He told them not to come and they didn’t.”
I could believe it. If I had my timeline correct, this would have all happened under the last sheriff, a man named Doug Patterson, a man who’d found himself quickly and easily corrupted by Walsh’s influence.
“The only good thing that came out of me calling the police was it calmed Jeb down a little. When he went back to Eddie’s room, he just ranted and raved. He told him being gay was a myth, that it was my fault for babying him too much. He said he’d fix it. And then he left.”
“So he sent him to a reform school with a bunch of other boys? Did he really think that would fix him?”
“You’re not serious, are you?”
“What?”
She shook her head but didn’t explain. We’d come to a sharp rise in the road, and she dropped the Volvo into second gear. A small ramshackle building with a crooked sign hanging out in the front window lay at the end of a dirt drive. The sign said Open, Come on in.
“What’s this?”
“A place Jeb used to bring me when we were dating. After the divorce, I started coming here again. It’s quiet and the beer is cold.” She looked over at me. “You do like beer, right?”
I nodded, once again amazed by all the hidden places there were in Coulee County. For such a small area, it was brimming with secret places, like a cabin you find in the woods whose cellar opens up into a cavernous and subterranean world. It was one of the only places I could think of where a man could lose himself and still be within ten miles of everything else.
She parked, and I held the broken screen door for her as we went in. The place had plank wooden floors and wooden siding covered with old paintings of fishermen and hunters in cheap plastic frames. A small bar jutted out from one wall and had room for exactly three stools, two of which were occupied. One man sat, nursing a nearly empty glass of beer. He was somewhere north of sixty, I guessed. His skin was thick with wrinkles and his jowls were heavy, giving him the appearance of a man tortured by his own age. Two seats over sat a young slip of a man dressed in a dark suit at least a size too large. His blond hair was slicked back, revealing large blue eyes framed by red cheeks. He looked too young to be drinking, but he had a can of Miller Lite sitting in front of him, and when he saw me looking at him, he picked it up and drank half of it, his eyes never leaving mine.
The bartender was an obese, middle-aged man who didn’t bother to look up from his magazine as he said, “Cans are two-fifty, bottles three. A glass is extra.”
Eleanor looked at me. “Can or bottle? Glass or no glass?”
“Can, no glass,” I said, and reached for my wallet.
“It’s on me,” she said. “Sit down somewhere. Maybe near the back?”
I found the table closest to the restroom in back. Of the three men in the bar, only the youngest seemed interested in us, and his interest seemed confined to me. He continued to give me what I could only call challenging looks as I settled in.
I ignored him and tried to think through what Eleanor had told me in the car. Had Jeb’s reaction to Eddie’s sexuality driven Eddie to act out in some way, landing him at the Harden School? Or maybe Jeb had used the school as a way to hide his son, to send him away so he wouldn’t be an embarrassment. My bet was on this second option.
Eleanor returned with two cans of cheap Mexican beer. “It’s my favorite,” she said. “Drinks like cold water but packs a little punch. Nothing better on a hot day.”
I thanked her, and we both opened the beers and drank deeply. I was aware that the young man at the bar was still eyeing me aggressively. What was it with young males, so many of them always looking for a fight? I couldn’t help but wonder how he’d react if I stopped ignoring his intensely aggressive gapes and stood up, walked right over to him, and looked him in the eye.
Instead, I turned to Eleanor. “Neat place.”
She lifted her can. “The beer’s always cold, and I like the memories. I suppose it’s strange to treasure memories with a man I can’t stand now.”
“I don’t think it’s so strange,” I said.
“I figured you’d be a nice guy,” she said, and I thought from the look in her eyes that maybe the alcohol was already getting to her.
“Why’s that?”
“Simple. Jeb hated you so much. It got to the point he’d become so twisted that he loved evil and hated good. The worst part of it was that in his own mind, he believed it was the other way around.”
“Most men tend to believe they are working toward the good. It’s human nature. Some men just have the capacity to fool themselves more than others.”
“I thought that too, at first. But not anymore. He’s not fooling himself. His eyes are wide open. He knows what he’s doing and he likes it. That’s the very definition of evil, if you ask me.”
I couldn’t disagree with that either but wondered why we were spending so much time on Jeb. “I want to go back to Edward,” I said. “You seemed surprised a moment ago at my description of the school.
What was that about?”
She gave me an odd look. “What do you think the Harden School is?”
I shrugged. “Reform school. A place where they try to straighten bad boys out, I guess.”
“That’s what it used to be. But then Jeb changed it.”
“Excuse me?”
Well, Jeb didn’t change it single-handedly, but he did help fund the change. The school was losing money in the late 1990s. Apparently, there weren’t as many ‘bad’ boys. Or something. Whatever the reason, it was going under, and Harden came to Jeb with an idea. Change the mission of the school.”
“Why would he come to Jeb?”
“They’ve been friends for years. And, more importantly, he knew if he could get Jeb on board, everything would go more smoothly.”
“Okay, so what was the new mission?”
“Reparative therapy.”
“What’s that?”
“Conversion therapy. The Harden School specializes in converting gay boys. Trying to make them straight.”
I drank the rest of my beer and put the empty can down on the table gently. Conversion therapy? I’d heard of such places, but they’d always seemed far away in states like Kansas or Arizona, not right here in Coulee County. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I shouldn’t have been surprised. Coulee County was, in many ways, the ideal spot for something like this.
“So, Dr. Blevins—”
“He’s the therapist, the man they brought in to fix these kids. And because of his reputation, which is somehow good, people keep sending their boys there, and the school is now making a lot of money. And I do mean a lot.”
“So …” I said, trying to piece it together. “You said Jeb helped change the mission of the school. So he loaned them money?”
“That’s right.”
“And now that the school is successful, I assume he’s getting repaid several times over?”
“That would be my guess. Is there anything you can do to help Eddie?”
“Maybe. Tell me more.”
I had to force myself to focus as she began to talk. The problem was my mind kept going back to Joe. Maybe I’d finally stumbled upon the connection. One line from the letter that was lodged in my memory told me I was right: “The authorities believe in the same tenets we do, tenets as old as time and as unshakable.”
Joe had been a former student at the Harden School. And if my instincts were correct, he’d been a former student with a story to tell.
19
“At first, I told myself it wouldn’t last. That they would see they couldn’t break Eddie. I swear I don’t know where he got it from, but Eddie is tough, and he’s determined, and he knows the difference between right and wrong. Ain’t that something? A daddy like Jeb Walsh, and he still turns out to be a great kid.”
I smiled. “Sometimes the apple does fall a long way from the tree.”
“And sometimes it doesn’t,” she muttered. “Our other boy, Andy, is evidence enough of that.”
“So what happened?” I asked. “Did they break him?”
She shook her head. “Not yet, but I swear they’re determined to. There’s only so much one person can take.”
“Have you thought about going to child services?”
“I have. In fact, I spent nearly a month on the phone with them trying to get someone from their office to the school. The problem is they don’t find me credible.”
“Why not?”
“Jeb has spread lies about me being on drugs and spending time in a halfway house.” She closed her eyes and kept her face still, as if she were trying to endure a great pain. “The drugs are a lie. I did have a breakdown earlier this year, but it was over Eddie. It wasn’t a halfway house. I simply checked myself into a psychiatric care center. They put me on some medication. I’m doing better. But nobody ever wants to hear that part. All they hear is Jeb telling them in that ‘aw-shucks, I’m just a simple country boy’ voice he’s fucking mastered how his wife went crazy and his youngest child is at reform school because she wasn’t a good parent and let him run wild.”
“I’m sorry.”
She waved me off. “I should be apologizing to you for the way he treated you. I’m not even married to him anymore, and I got an earful about what kind of a special liberal snowflake you were.”
I shrugged. “If being a snowflake means taking care of others, I’m fine with it.”
“Exactly. My thoughts as well.”
I glanced over at the kid at the bar in the bad suit. He was still darting glances this way. None of them were friendly.
“About three months ago, Eddie called me. They get to make one call a month. Can you imagine that? One call every month? Hardened criminals get more than that. He’d told me before how he and another boy had hit it off. They were friends, but I knew by him saying friends, he meant they were thinking about being more than that. A month or so later, he called and said they were ‘dating.’ What that meant at a place like that, I have no idea. But I was happy for him. I just told him to stay out of trouble. I told him there was no way he could let anybody find out. I wanted to tell him to stop immediately, but I hadn’t heard him sound so happy in months. I couldn’t bear to do it.”
I didn’t like where this was going. I felt myself getting tense just listening to her talk now, and the next time I glanced over at the kid, he was glaring at me with a kind of naked hatred that made me want to punch him in the face. It was one of my flaws. Injustice made me angry. Anger made me violent. I was working on it.
“So, the last time he called—this was three months ago, in March, maybe early April—he was in tears. It took a while for him to tell me what was bothering him because he was crying so much. When he finally got it out, I was stunned. ‘Mama,’ he said, ‘they killed him.’ I just started crying right there on the phone with him.”
“Wait,” I said. “His boyfriend was murdered?”
She shrugged. “He’s dead. The school claims he committed suicide. There’s a waterfall behind the campus. They call it—”
The screen door swung open. I turned and saw two men enter. The Hill Brothers. As interested as I was in Eleanor Walsh’s story, I couldn’t focus on her words. Instead, I sat transfixed as the two men approached the bar, both of them crowding around the kid who had been looking for a fight. Neither man acknowledged him as the taller one leaned against the bar and said something to the fat bartender, still slumped in his chair. The bartender’s face changed when he saw the brothers, and he pulled out two bottles of beer, twisting off the caps before passing them over. No money exchanged hands as the two boys took the bottles and scanned the small, hot room. The long-haired brother lifted his bottle and touched it to the side of his hairy face. As he did, his shirt rode up to reveal a scarred midsection and the top of a pearl-handled revolver protruding from the waistband of his blue jeans.
Their eyes never stopped, never rested, flitting around the room like there might be an attacker lying in wait among us and they’d need to be ready. They still stood too close to the young man in the suit, and his anger had shifted away from me toward them.
I turned back to Eleanor. “Hold that thought,” I said softly. “I want to see this.”
The Hill Brothers had finally given the kid some space, as one of them stepped toward the door and the other one settled in against the far wall. It seemed odd to see them like this, still at last, their ceaseless motion finally stopped. Whenever I’d seen them before, they had always been on the move, and their long, dogged strides had become almost a part of their character. Now I saw a different side of them. Now their attitude was somewhere between fuck this place and we’re going to stay for a while.
Just when I was about to turn back to Eleanor, the kid said something under his breath. When no one reacted to his words, he said it louder. “Assholes come in like they own the place.”
Neither Hill Brother acknowledged him. Instead their eyes went from their beer bottles to the windows, back to me and El
eanor at our table, an endless cycle, like each stop was a note in a song with its own curious tempo.
“Hey,” the kid said, looking at the taller Hill Brother, the one with the bowl cut. “I’m talking to you.”
Bowl Cut looked at the kid briefly before setting his beer bottle on a table and pulling out a pouch of tobacco. He reached into the pouch for a huge hunk of dark leaves and stuffed it down deep into his jowls. He sucked on it for a while, then opened the window behind him and leaned out to spit.
“Livingstone!” the kid cried. “You gonna let him chew tobacco in your place?”
Livingstone sat up in his chair behind the bar. “He ain’t hurting me.”
“And what about paying for them beers? I want a free beer too.”
“They got a tab, Slim. You better just mind your own business.”
Slim slammed his beer can on the bar, and for the first time I realized he wasn’t just drunk, he was also filled with something else, something that had found him when he was a young man and stuck inside him, something that managed to drive him and move him and imprison him all at once. There were places in these mountains where they say bad water messed with young people’s minds and made them insane, incapable of living in polite society. Maybe that explained what we were witnessing.
“I don’t think it’s right!” Slim said. He stood up and stepped in front of Bowl Cut, jabbing a finger in his face. “You need to take your uneducated asses back to the woods.”
Bowl Cut lifted his beer bottle to his lips and drank it empty. Then, instead of putting it down on the table, he turned it over in his hand until he held the bottle by the throat, the fat end jutting out from his grasp like a baseball bat. With a sudden and terrifyingly efficient motion, he slammed it into Slim’s head. The bottle exploded, glass flying all over the small room. A piece landed in my hair, and I brushed it out as I stood up, reaching for my .45. Two things happened before I could get it out. Slim hit the plank floor with a hollow thud. The other Hill Brother pulled out his pearl-handled .38 and aimed it at my face. His eyes settled on me, still for the first time. There was nothing in them. Nothing to make me think he wouldn’t shoot me, nothing to make me think he’d care if I was dead or alive.