Dirt Merchant

by T. Blake Braddy

  “Well, then,” I said, “if I had to pick some advice, I’d say it’s important for newlyweds to spend as much time talking as watching TV.”

  “Why, that’s right good advice. Leila, don’t you think that’s good advice?”

  The sound of a girl from the ‘burbs. “Oh my god. So good.” She was busy on her phone, typing out the coordinates to their next location.

  “Well, you two look happy,” the bridesmaid said. “Think you’ll ever tie the knot?”

  I felt the heat flush my own cheeks, and Allison’s, too. “Oh, I—”

  “He ain’t the marrying type,” Allison interrupted.

  “Like, how? He doesn’t want to, or you just having fun with him?”

  “Little of both,” Allison said, laughing along, and she nudged my ribs.

  “Well, I can tell you: I’ve already been through two of them myself, and they are a lot of work.”

  “Twice divorced, the bitch,” catcalled one of the women in the rear.

  Our friend tossed a dildo-shaped toy in their direction. “Don’t listen to them. My first husband, he walked out on me when I miscarried. Sack of shit, he was. No lost love there.”

  “And the second one?” Allison asked without hesitation.

  “Died,” she responded just as quickly. “He was the one. The right one, at least. Met him not six months after, you know. He convinced me I was missing out on life, really living it. Like, he added something that made life make sense.”

  “And he passed on?” Allison asked.

  She snapped her fingers. “Wish I could say he died in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it was cancer. Goddamn fucking cancer. Just snuck right up on him and took him down.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Allison said.

  “He was having these stomach aches. Figured it was what we was eating, so we started shopping at Whole Foods, buying organic produce and whatnot. Usual stuff kept happening. Got worse, so we took him in for an MRI, and there it was. Laid out just as clear as day, once the doctor explained it. After that, it went quickly. He got sick, and he died. Didn’t even have time to mourn. I was in shock. Just so sudden.”

  “So sad.”

  She nodded. “Part of me thought it was a big joke. Like, someone would step out of the shadows and tell me it wouldn’t go like that, that we still had four decades together. It wasn’t fair. I’ll tell you something: Life doesn’t give a shit about fair, and if there is a God, He doesn’t give a shit about fair, either.”

  She sucked on her dick straw, an unintentionally comic end to her story.

  Three blocks further down the promenade, a cop pulled beside us and flashed his lights.

  “This man bothering you?” he asked. He was eyeing me with an intent for something.

  “Fuck no,” said our bridesmaid. “He’s been with us all night. We need protection in the big, scary city, don’t we girls?”

  A cheer of elation erupted from the group, and glittery tiaras and dildo-shaped straws went skyward. They held them like swords, brandished weapons against the tide of age and responsibility. Plenty of them were married, and a few had mentioned kids, so this represented an escape.

  The one cop eyed me a little more closely than I’d have liked. I had flashes of fighting my way out of this, of taking down a couple of beat cops in an effort to stay free of The Law’s powerful reins.

  Would I go full rogue, or not?

  In that moment, it was the question I knew plagued me the most.

  But, surprisingly, the cop turned his gaze to the bachelorette party and sighed.

  “All right,” the officer said. “You all be safe, and keep it to a dull roar, now, you hear?”

  They exulted at this exchange and screamed long after the taillights of the cruiser had disappeared into the distance.

  Our bridesmaid said, “Well, I reckon y’all have served your purpose. We’ve had our first encounter with a cop. He didn’t rip off his pants, but you can’t win ‘em all.”

  I said, “You keep her safe. This is her night, after all.”

  Virginia leaned in and whispered, “I give it five years. Tops. Y’all should think about going public. Life’s too short to pretend you don’t care. Bye, now.”

  We ducked into a nearby coffee shop, one dude sweeping the back area while above us wishy-washy acoustic music played on.

  “You’re welcome to use the couches until I get all closed up,” he said, brandishing a wan smile under his mustache. He was hipster, head-to-toe, a subculture with which I was becoming altogether familiar with the further I ventured from Lumber Junction. He had tattoos and glasses, too-tight T-shirts and cutoff jean shorts that would have been laughable even back when I was in high school.

  By way of thanks, I tossed a few dollars in the tip jar and took up residence next to Allison on a couch overlooking the main street.

  It was a cold night, beautiful for what it was. People walked by, covered up and shouldering against the wind. People-watching had never been much of a hobby of mine, but with no place to go and cause trouble, it was a kind of relaxing endeavor.

  The bottom dropped out of the sky, and rain poured in sheets, sluicing down the street next to the curb. People ran with their hands or their jackets covering them. I settled in and felt the comfort of not being on the receiving end of the Good Lord’s torment.

  “What’ll we do, you know, once this horrible business is over?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  And I didn’t.

  I repeated myself. “I just really don’t know.”

  “Well,” she said, nestling into me, “what is it that you wanted to do with your life? Get fucked up cannot be one of your answers, either.”

  “Get away from the person I was.”

  “Oh, don’t be so mordant. You must have had dreams. There have to be places you want to go, things you want to do with yourself, other than step in front of bullets.”

  She let me ponder it, all the while counting off all the exotically-named locations she wanted to visit. As she ticked off the beaches of southern France and the mountains of South America, I tentatively stepped out of my cave and tried to feel some of the same joy at considering the rest of the world.

  Finally, I came to the conclusion that, no, I didn’t particularly care to learn Italian or go see the Queen and her jewels, or scale the Great Wall and slide across the deserts of northern Africa.

  Allison stared at me with a curious disbelief.

  “With all you’ve read? Bullshit,” she said. “You’re just afraid you’ll have fun, for once. Your life has been toil and misery—”

  “And yours has been a goddamned tea party?” I replied.

  “I fucked up. Really, I did. I dropped face-first onto the pavement for most of my twenties, but I’ll be damned if that’ll keep me from dreaming. You think because I fucked up, I’ll always be a fuck-up?”

  I said, “I just meant to say—”

  “You just meant to say I should stay in my place, maybe hope for some crumbs to slide of the side table. Like good fortune only happens when the sevens are aligned.”

  “Something like that.”

  She regarded me with pause, and I half-expected her to excoriate me, but instead she continued staring. Then, she leaned back into my arms and stared out over the bruised evening sky.

  “Give it time,” she said. “Just give it a little bit of time, Rolson.”

  After a few minutes, she was snoozing in the crook of my arm. The sun would be up soon, she’d be gone, and my bed would be empty. I tried not to think of that inevitability, but like every pleasant moment, this one just sailed up and into the ether. No matter how I clawed at it to stay put — death and violence lay just over the horizon — time dragged forward.

  I kissed the crown of her head, and she mmmed at me before slipping further into my embrace.

  Then, it sort of did happen.

  For the first time in my life, I imagined a reality that wasn’t the here and now, the lightless stretch of p
avement that was my life. My existence had consisted of outrunning my headlights, and now I could contemplate a space and time that did not revolve around avoiding arrest.

  I considered seriously a life free of Lumber Junction and the people in it. I wondered what it would be like to be shut of the world of my childhood, and though it was difficult, the prospect of freeing myself of the tethers of the past was enlivening. I could be a different person, living a different life than the one fate had set out for me.

  But Allison was the main picture puzzle piece I needed to make things fit, and though I didn’t tell her, I thought of how crucial she was to this whole thought experiment.

  I mean, I still had to survive this carnival ride of a murder investigation but I could envision a positive future.

  I thought of white sand beaches and backwoods treks, of things I wish I’d experienced up to now but had neglected in lieu of more carnal and substance-dependent desires.

  It felt like spending imaginary millions.

  Allison snapped awake a few minutes later.

  “Think of anything?” she asked, yawning.

  “Part of me wishes I could just go back home,” I said.

  “What the hell would ever take you back to that place?”

  “I mean — well. If I could go back, just have my life back before the dreams started coming. Before I stumbled on a dead man’s body, I’d have been lost in my own blissful ignorance.”

  “But you’d still be lost,” she said.

  I shrugged. “I see what you mean, though. Sometimes I think, if I could have just found a way to take a job that’s just good enough, maybe work a simple 9-5, I could have sidestepped all of this. But then, I wonder. Was I ever the kind of person that would have been happy with it?”

  “I never thought of it quite that way.”

  “Life ain’t what could have been,” she replied. “You know I spent my formative years learning how to tap dance?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  She smiled. “My mama thought she was going to be a stage mother, a constant helicopter presence over my upbringing. Had me singing and dancing every single day, Sundays included. She didn’t realize there wasn’t a market for another Shirley Temple in the 1980s.”

  “Huh.”

  “I think maybe things could have been different for me, had she not pushed me so hard. So much pressure. She put me in pageants, pushed me to win everything I entered, and when I didn’t, I couldn’t handle the disappointment.”

  “So you started drinking.”

  She shot a finger gun at the air in front of us. “Perzactly. But who knows: what happened to me put me right here in this moment with you, and right now, I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”

  If not for the hell awaiting me back in the wilds of the Jacksonville underground, I’d have said the same thing.

  She drove us back to the hotel room she’d rented and we barely pushed through the door before we collided in that carnally familiar way.

  My mouth on hers, yearning to be part of her. Hands moving along familiar curves. Pressing flesh and cloth together where desire coincided. Ripping away the false contentment of emotional distance.

  She ripped my shirt off, yanked at the button on my jeans. I reciprocated, unhooking her bra with one hand as the other explored the secret areas of her body. She dropped back onto the mattress, and I followed her down.

  And then everything went as it should have, only better.

  Later. Lying sideways atop the sheets of the hotel bed, staring blankly and emptily at the ceiling, spent in more ways than one. The sun had begun to peek through the room’s blinds. The future I had dreaded just a few hours ago was becoming the present.

  “I don’t want to go,” she said.

  “I’m not kicking you out.”

  “Three days is not enough,” she sighed.

  “Tell that to Jesus,” I responded, swiping one hand over my stubble.

  I sat up. She did, too. She pulled a cigarette from her pack and lit up. A rebel in a non-smoking room.

  Through the wall, a TV blared news regarding the Yankees / Phillies World Series.

  “Go away with me,” she said suddenly, as if the thought had just occurred to her.

  I blinked. “I can’t,” I said. “Things are in motion. The wheels started up well before Savannah, and they’ll take me where I have to go, but I can’t veer sidelong from the road I’m headed down until I’m satisfied.”

  “Will that ever happen?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  She slapped me. When I didn’t react, she slapped me again.

  “I’m beginning to see your point,” I said.

  She wiped her eyes with the back of one hand. “I’m here,” she said. “Whatever you’re into, I’m in it, as well. I’m not going to shy away from what you’re doing in Jacksonville. How bad is it?”

  “Pretty bad,” I said.

  “Drugs?”

  I shrugged.

  “Guns?”

  An upturned corner of one mouth.

  “Killing? Are you killing people?”

  That was the one I didn’t quite know how to answer. She ran one hand through her own hair, tucked some behind one ear. Nodding. Looking down at my feet. Taking all of this in.

  She took a good, long drag on her cigarette.

  “Room’s paid for through the end of the week,” she said. “I want you to stay here, chew on the thoughts of what you’re doing, decide if it’s all worth it.”

  “Why don’t you want me helping Deuce?”

  “I’m not opposed to you protecting your friend. I don’t want you dying.”

  “I’ve said it before. I can’t turn my back on Deuce. Once this is done—”

  “Use the room, either way. It’s here. It’s paid for. Deuce and the rest of them probably want a break from you for a few days, either way.”

  “I don’t contradict you there,” I said.

  No answer. She just sat and smoked in silence.

  I had always fallen for women who used me to further their own selfish needs. Vanessa, God love her, had been my first love, and yet she also dragged me through a pit of despair for the better part of our marriage. I was no Georgia peach myself, but I was completely broken in the wake of Hurricane Vanessa.

  But Allison…

  Here was someone who knew what was best for me, was actually telling me what I needed to hear, and here I was, fighting the truth.

  Part of me knew I should just give in and go away with her.

  But I thought about Deuce, meditated on his uphill struggle, not just with the death of his brother but what else was going on in his life. He had stuck up for me when nobody else would, and now I owed him. It was a truth I couldn’t speak to Allison, and I suffered through her coldly emotional response, as a result.

  Did I say any of that? No. I let the discomfort grow and shape itself into a dividing wall.

  Once she had enough of me, she packed her things and walked out.

  I escorted to her car. A silent walk, so far as that was concerned. She got in, closed the door, and drove away. I watched her go, hoping it wouldn’t be the last time I saw her.

  3

  I didn’t mean for anything out of the ordinary to happen while the room was rented out to me. Allison had paid, and I wouldn’t spit on her hospitality, so I took my vulnerabilities to the bar.

  I had no reason to get my ass on my shoulders, but Allison divulging a frivolous sexual encounter during a lapse in judgment really bothered me. Trying to shrug it off as I had the night before had only pushed it forward...to now.

  I was being a hypocrite. I realized that.

  I realized that I was also being petty and selfish, but I learned a long time ago that feelings are never invalid. They may be bullshit. They may be counter to reality, but how you feel can’t be directed by higher purpose. It’s just a reflection of who you are.

  Who I was: an insecure, hapless alcoholic with a virulent rebellious str
eak.

  And I was exercising it in full force at this establishment chock full of booze.

  I was also in a holding pattern with Deuce. Things had ended awkwardly, and I couldn’t quite put my head around what should happen next.

  Part of me — a fairly large part — knew that I would go back to my former mission as Deuce’s attack dog, but another, more inexplicable inner territory burned with an uncertainty I wasn’t ready to deal with.

  I wondered what would happen if I just walked away.

  I seriously contemplated it.

  What would Deuce do were I to pick up shop and leave town? Could I just swoop in and take Allison somewhere else?

  Easy to contemplate, impossible to work out.

  The conversation with Deuce was awkward but doable. I told him I needed a few days’ respite, that I’d be back in a couple of days, but that the last little stint of hell-raising had spent me. Since I was in Florida of my own volition, all he could do was sigh and assent to it.

  And, for a time, the skies lifted a little bit. There was a lowness driving me right into a purgatory of my own making, so maybe it was a good thing for me to recuperate a little bit.

  Of course, I ended up sipping bourbon splashed with Coke and listening to the dirges of a dying culture. The music, I didn’t understand. Songs too bright without joy and too dark without soul. Like a ten-year-old in a fit of rage. Still, it was loud, and the room was dark, so I forgave all but the constant glare of the regulars.

  In the middle of it was Allison, dancing thigh-to-thigh with the tatted-up douche bag who’d elbowed me at the Landing. Every other backbeat, she rolled her hips into him, making contact in a place which had rendered me weak-kneed and pleading only nights before.

  I tilted irrevocably to one side, and the ground came up to meet me. I realized eventually that it wasn’t Allison at all. My mind was playing tricks on me, but it was too late to change course. I was half-in and half-out of the tank and sinking fast.

  Eventually, I made an awkward alliance with the college students — or just drunk post-adolescents — crowded around me. Guess I was tired of sitting and drinking alone, and the part of me that wanted to raise hell could not be satisfied.