by John Hart
“Where am I?”
She looked away, and yelled at someone below. “He’s awake.”
Johnny tried to rise, but was belted into the hammock. “What…?”
“You spent most of the night thrashing about. I thought you might fall.”
“I’m going to be sick.”
“Go ahead, then. Get it over with.”
“It’s Cree, right?”
“Don’t talk to me like we’re friends.”
She slipped from view, and Johnny tried to gather his thoughts. This was his hammock, his tree.
That meant Aina was long dead.
So is Marion.…
Johnny’s stomach flipped again, and he almost lost it. He touched his face, the tree. “Jack! Are you there?”
“I’m here!”
Of course he was.
Jack.
Good old Jack.
Johnny lay still, and rolled the dream in his thoughts.
Isaac …
Twisting in the hammock, Johnny cupped his body around the unexpected hurt that was Isaac. Isaac had raised John and stood by his side. Johnny pictured him on the Persian rug before the bedroom fire. He saw Aina’s eyes as she toyed with him, then Isaac’s face as the understanding spread.
Isaac …
John had been speechless.
It’s okay …
It’s not …
For your wife, Isaac had said. For the mother of your child, and for you …
John Merrimon had wept at the kindness, the sacrifice.…
“Hey, man. Are you coming down?”
Johnny knew that some kind of trouble waited below. He could feel it in his friend, and in the Hush, felt cops and movement and anger. He tuned it out to think again of the life he’d never lived. Verdine had warned him of the dangers of dreams. Life can pale, she’d said. This life, yours.
“Johnny, man, come on. I want to get the hell out of here.”
“All right, Jack. Keep your pants on.”
Stripping off the belts that held him, Johnny descended to find Jack and Cree, the both of them dirty and sleepless. “Here. Thanks.” He handed over the belts.
“You okay?” Jack said. “You’re bleeding.”
“What?”
He pointed, and Johnny touched his throat, dotting his fingers with blood.
“It’s just a scratch,” Cree said.
But Johnny recognized the lie. The line on his throat was straight and razor thin. “The hell?”
“I said it’s just a scratch.”
“What’s going on here, Jack?”
“All right, listen…”
Jack spoke like a lawyer laying out the facts of his case. He kept it linear and clean: the cave, the cops, the bodies. Johnny drank it like a sponge. He ignored the feelings, the thoughts of so many dead in this place he loved. “What about you?” He gave Cree the full stare. “Why do you care about any of this?”
“You’re not the only one with questions.”
Johnny filed that under half the story. She kept her eyes neutral, but couldn’t hide the dislike and distrust, the awareness so entrenched, it was animal. She looked like Aina; she had Aina’s blood. Johnny’s spine prickled. “Why were you in the tree?” he asked.
“Someone had to watch you.”
Johnny touched the line on his throat. “What day is it?”
“You’re shitting me, right.”
Johnny wasn’t. He could have been in the hammock for two nights, or even three. His whole body ached. The hunger was crippling; so was the thirst. “Just give me a minute.”
He turned away, needing time to think. Cops were in the Hush, and Sheriff Cline was dead. Cree seemed to know things, or at least feel them. “You say they found someone alive in the cave?”
“I think he’s in ICU.”
Johnny looked down on the distant swamp. He wanted his life back, his home. But then there was Jack.
“We need to leave,” he said. “Now.”
“And go where?” Johnny asked.
“Someplace they won’t find you.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong. This is my home.”
“Trust me, J-man, as your friend and your lawyer. You don’t want to go down there until things have settled.”
Johnny decided not to argue. He needed food. He needed to think about the dream and Cree, and what it all meant.
“Okay,” he said. “I know a place.”
* * *
Leon’s was empty so early in the day, but Leon was there. Johnny saw him as they crossed the field beyond the washout. He was turning meat on the giant cooker in the back of the sprawling bar. Johnny recognized the tilt of his head, the massive shoulders. Even before he turned, Johnny knew what was coming.
He looked like Isaac.
It was the broad face and deep-set eyes, the steadiness and the easy smile. Johnny saw it slide onto his face, then disappear just as quickly. He looked at Jack and Cree, then closed the lid on the cooker and wiped his hands on an apron. “What’s all this, then?”
“Good morning, Leon.”
“Johnny.” His eyes flickered on Jack, but settled on Cree. “Young lady.”
“How’s your chest?”
She said it flatly, and Leon didn’t smile.
“You know each other?” Johnny asked.
“We’ve met,” she said, and after that it got awkward. Cree said nothing else, and Leon had trouble meeting her eyes.
“You’ll be wanting breakfast, then?”
“Yes, please.”
“Sit anywhere. I’ll be along in a minute.”
Johnny led the way inside, and they took a table with views of the bridge. “How do you know Leon?”
“You know how this place is,” Cree said. “People go back. Everything’s connected.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“Do I owe you an answer, really? You of all people?”
The anger that time was unmistakable, and Johnny didn’t need a special awareness to catch the implication.
Your family owned all of this.…
All of us …
They’d met only once before, but this was something new between them. Johnny thought he understood. “Does the name Verdine mean anything to you?” She looked away, jaw twisting. Johnny leaned closer. “What about Aina?”
“Aina?” She said it fiercely. “You’re asking me about Aina? You?”
“That’s right.”
Her fingers found a knife on the table. “Just order your breakfast, all right. Order your white eggs and your white toast, and don’t pretend to know me.”
But Johnny thought maybe he did.
“I’m going to call Clyde,” he said. “Jack, can I use your phone?”
“No signal.”
“Then I’m going to get some air.”
Johnny walked out onto the first covered porch. When he was clear of the window, he dropped into a crouch and let himself go for just a minute. It was too much all at once: the dream and the waking from it, bodies in the Hush and this sense he had of Cree.
She’d wanted to kill him.
He’d wanted to kill her back.
That line still ran from one side of the wall to the next. Recognition. Emotion. Aina and John Merrimon.
“Jesus Christ…”
His palms were rough on his face, but real. What else was real? What else was insane?
Behind him, the screen door screeched and Isaac stepped out, carrying coffee. “You look like you could use this.” He handed down the cup, and hooked a thumb at the door. “Bacon and eggs,” he said. “How about you?”
“Throw in some pancakes and grits.”
“Jeez, man. Hungry much?”
Johnny didn’t smile back. With the light on his face, Leon didn’t look quite so much like Isaac. He had the same shape, but was not so large. The eyes were lighter.
“Are you all right, my friend?”
Johnny looked away. Isaac. Leon. Who was he kidding? Th
ey looked the same. “I’ll eat out here, Leon. Thanks.”
“Your friends?”
“Make an excuse for me, will you?”
Leon went back inside, and came out later with breakfast. Johnny took it to a chair at the nearest table and ate by himself. Sunlight was bright in the east, but the day was still cool. That changed as Johnny worked his way through the eggs and pancakes and bacon.
The sun rose higher.
A cop car rolled onto the bridge.
* * *
Leon was making biscuits when Johnny ghosted inside, closing the door with a whisper of sound. “Everybody down, everybody quiet.”
Leon came into the room as the other two stared dumbly.
“Cops,” Johnny said.
Moving to the window, Leon watched the car roll to a stop. He disliked cops as much as anyone, but he’d never seen Johnny Merrimon care one way or another. “Sheriff’s deputy,” he said. “Grayson. I’ve met him before.”
“Get rid of him,” Johnny said.
“Why?”
“We’re not here, okay. You never saw us.”
Leon was enough of an outlaw to lie for just about anyone when it came to the cops. “Clear the table. Get in the kitchen.”
They did what he said, and Leon stepped outside with a rolling pin in one hand and white flour halfway up his arms. The deputy met him under the second roofline. “Leon,” he said.
“Deputy Grayson.”
“I’m looking for someone. Was wondering if maybe you’d seen him.”
“Nope.”
“I haven’t given you a name yet.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve been here since five thirty. You’re the first person I’ve laid eyes on.”
Grayson frowned, taking his time. “He lives back that way. Johnny Merrimon. You heard of him?”
“Most everyone has.”
“Does he come here?”
“Why do you care?”
“We think he killed Sheriff Cline.”
“Am I supposed to be sorry for the loss?”
Leon wasn’t. Sheriff Cline had caught him once running bare-knuckle fights in an old barn five miles down the road. Gambling, assault, illegal liquor. He’d dangled those charges for ten hard minutes, then walked away with a wink and a nod. He liked to eat and drink, as it turned out, mostly for free. He liked to slum it, too: farmworkers, waitresses—the poorer, the better.
“You know, the sheriff always had a soft spot for you, Leon.” Grayson crossed the last porch and peered in the windows. “He knew you stepped over the line from time to time, and chose to look the other way. You should respect that memory. You should help me out.”
“Your sheriff took more than he gave.”
“Maybe. Maybe you’re being unfair.”
Leon leaned against a post and crossed his arms, the rolling pin like a child’s toy in his large hand. “You say he had a soft spot. Fine. Maybe he did. Or maybe he let me slide because of the dirt floors and rusted roof, and because I keep pickled pigs’ feet on the bar. Maybe he liked eating and drinking for free, and liked young women, too. Maybe he was a white man feeling good about his whiteness. Maybe he was no friend at all.”
“It could have been like that,” the deputy said. “Could just as easily have been that he was a simple man in a complicated world, that he liked your ribs and whiskey, and thought you were doing no real harm with your fights and your gambling, your moonshine and your tax-free cigarettes. Maybe he talked to me about it once or twice. Maybe he explained to me that he could relax out here in a way he never could in town, that there was beauty in simplicity and that paved roads weren’t always good things. Maybe he thought you and yours got short shrift in this world, and deserved a little compassion. Now—” A card appeared in the deputy’s hand, and he put it on the table. “—every cop in the county is within a few miles of here, and none of us are leaving until Johnny Merrimon is dead or in cuffs, so do us all a favor. You see him, you give a jingle.”
He tapped the card once, then crossed the dirt lot and slid into the county cruiser. When he was across the bridge and gone, Leon brought Johnny and his friends out of the kitchen. “Is it true the sheriff’s dead?”
“It’s true,” Jack said.
Leon kept his eyes on Johnny. “Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Why did you run?”
“Who says I’m running?”
“You’re here, aren’t you? The cops are looking.”
Johnny leaned onto his elbows, not smiling but almost. “There’s not a cop alive who could find me in that swamp. Not a thousand cops at once, not in a thousand years. Not even you could find me.”
“That’s pride talking.”
“Maybe.”
“What about you?” He spoke to Cree. “You’re what? Eighteen years old? Why are you involved with this mess?”
She shrugged, and he looked at Jack.
“I go where Johnny goes.”
Leon followed the glance, and let his gaze linger on Johnny’s features. He was the only city boy Leon had ever liked, the only white face. “Do you want me to get you out of here?” he asked.
“Where would we go?”
“My grandmother’s place,” Leon said. “She knows you. She knows Cree. Besides, no cop would go there.”
“Is that right?” Jack asked.
“Oh hell yes.” Leon stood, and was certain. “Not even the sheriff bothered Verdine.”
* * *
Johnny kept his eyes on Cree as the three of them slid into the rusted, dirt-strewn bed of the pickup truck. Leon got them low in the bed, then drew up a tarp to cover them. “Stay down and still,” he said. “It’s not far, but Deputy Grayson won’t be the only cop on the back roads.”
“It seems over the top,” Jack said.
“And yet I have no reason to lie.”
He tucked the tarp around them, weighting the edges with bits of cinder block. The space beneath the tarp was blue and dim; it smelled of gasoline and old grease. Cree was curled on her side beneath the cab window. She was watching Johnny’s face, and trying to conceal her emotions. For another man, it would have worked, but bits of awareness lingered, and Johnny knew two things at once: that, in Cree, the anger was winning, and that Leon did, in fact, have some reason to lie. It was a cloud on his thoughts, a flicker when he thought no one was watching. But Johnny could watch with his back turned and his eyes closed. From under the tarp, he saw Leon clear as day.
He steered the truck across the bridge.
He was unhappy about the lie.
“How do you know Verdine?” Cree asked.
“She knows things,” Johnny said. “I sought her out.”
“What things?”
“Stories of your family.”
“That’s none of your damn business.”
“Stories of my family, too.” Johnny watched the resentment move on her face. If emotions were color, hers would be purple-black, streaked with red. “Tell me about Aina,” he said.
“Screw you.”
She turned away, but Johnny saw the battle inside.
A blaze of orange, he thought.
A bonfire in the night.
* * *
Leon drove slowly, and dust rose as the old shocks complained and gravel pinged off the undercarriage. Verdine was doing things that made little sense. He humored the old lady because she was all the family he had left in the world, and because she’d been harmless, more or less. Keep an eye on the swamp, she’d said. Keep an eye on Johnny Merrimon. He’d never actually expected to meet Johnny Merrimon. He was just a name, a kid.
Leon rolled his right shoulder, feeling stitches pull where the little bullet had gone in, tumbling. It had torn through his pectoral muscle, glanced off a rib. Even now, he didn’t know why they’d gone to that rat-box apartment in that rat-box city.
Six years.
That was the length of their unlikely friendship. Johnny was white. His stepdad was a cop. Then there was Leon’s
abiding distrust of white society. Verdine had raised him that way; she’d fanned the flames.
Look what they have.
Look what we have.
It had never been pleasant to look at straight on, but the woman had a hole in her heart that a hundred years of life had never filled. Small as she was, she was always hungry.
Bring him to me, she’d said.
Every chance you get.
Leon glanced at the tarp in the rearview mirror. Last Christmas Johnny had given him a pair of deerskin gloves he’d made himself. Before that, it was a rifle scabbard, and before that a wild hog, not just fully dressed but carried through the hills on his back besides. Leon had been hunting the deep woods for almost fifty years, and knew how hard it was to carry two hundred pounds of meat over broken ground. That was blood and sweat, serious hard work. What did an old woman want with a man like that? Leon turned the questions as he drove. She was crazy, he decided. Just a crazy old woman.
But he thought of the hunger, too.
When the turn came he took it, his truck rolling through the stream, then up the far bank. Verdine was on the porch, standing and watching.
Like she knew they were coming.
Like she was waiting.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The first reporter arrived at nine minutes after eight. Tom Lee learned of it from the rookie he’d left on the roadside specifically to make sure no one wandered into his crime scene.
“Uh, Captain Lee? Come in, please.”
Lee keyed the mike, already unhappy. “What is it, McGreevy?”
“Uh, sir. I have a reporter here.”
“What?”
“Yes, sir. Um, Ellie Pinkerton.”
Lee pictured Ellie Pinkerton in his mind’s eye. Late thirties. Moderately well known to the Raven County voters. She had a small overbite, and a voice too high-pitched for serious news. “Can she hear me right now, McGreevy?”
“Yes, but—”
“Walk away, son. I’ll wait.” He didn’t want to wait; he wanted to hit something. When McGreevy came back on, he said, “What the hell is a reporter doing on my crime scene?”
“Sir, I—”
“How did she find out?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she say? Wait, scratch that. Give me your cell number. We’re not doing this on an open channel.” The rookie gave his number, and Lee dialed it. “What does she know about my crime scene?”