Dry County

by Jake Hinkson

I ask, “Did something happen?”

  “Well, Carl got shot.” He says it simply, without inflection, as if he were telling me his son had lost his job.

  I’m staggered. “Good Lord, Randy. Is he okay?”

  “Yeah. Shot in the leg. He called us last night. Denise went down there this morning. She called me before I come over here. Says he’s okay.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was doing some kind of deal. You know he lives in Southwest Little Rock. You know what that means.”

  “Drugs.”

  “Yeah. We know he sells them. Bobby told us that much. Well, yesterday afternoon Carl was sitting around his apartment with some guy, a friend of his, just hanging out. This guy’s not there ten minutes when there’s a knock on the door, and they answer it and a couple of black guys come in. I guess they knew the other guy, Carl’s friend, like he’d invited them over. But then one of these black guys pulls a gun and tries to rob Carl. So Carl pulls his gun, ’cause of course he just happens to have his gun on him, and shots were exchanged. This is Carl’s story, anyway, the story we got, and the story he gave to the police.”

  “What do you think the truth is?”

  “I think Carl’s a drug dealer and these guys tried to rob him.”

  “Okay. And Carl got hit in the leg?”

  “Yeah. Tore up his thigh but missed the bone and arties. Lucky wound, all things considered.”

  “Anybody else hurt?”

  “Well, yeah, he killed the guy with the gun.”

  “Wait, Carl killed a guy yesterday?”

  “Yeah,” Randy says, looking down at his hands.

  “My Lord.”

  Randy nods.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Reaping what I sowed, Richard. Plain and simple fact of it. You plant sin, you grow sin.”

  He puts a big hand to his face.

  I reach over and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, man.”

  He nods.

  I squeeze his shoulder. “I’m just so sorry.”

  He drops his hand to his thigh and says, “I just don’t know what to do, Brother Richard.”

  “It’s hard to know what to do,” I say. “But the first thing you got to do is to reach out to the Lord. He’s there for you. He’s listening. He’s got a plan.”

  Randy stares into my carpet. “You know I want to believe that . . .”

  “Romans 8: ‘And we know that all things work together for the good of those that love God.’ All things, brother.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s never too late to pray, Randy. He’s always listening.”

  He nods. “That’s right. I’m gonna pray on it.”

  “I know you will. You want to pray on it right now?”

  “Yessir. It’d mean the world to me if you’d do the praying, Brother Richard, if you’d take this to the Lord for me right now.”

  “Of course.”

  We bow our heads. I pray, “Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you today to ask that you protect Carl, that you heal his body, and that you heal his heart.”

  Randy’s voice cracks as he prays, “Yes, Lord. Please.”

  “Bring him into the fold, dear Lord. Bring him home to his mother and father, bring him home to you. And touch Bobby, too, Lord. Bring this family together and heal them, Lord. Be with Randy and give him the wisdom and strength to lead his family to you.”

  “Yes,” Randy prays.

  “We know you’ll do this, Lord, because you are the great healer.”

  “That’s right,” Randy whispers.

  “And, Father, we thank you and praise your name for bringing Randy into the family of God. We praise you, and we thank you for these last eight years. For what you’ve done in his life and in Denise’s life.”

  “Amen, amen,” Randy whispers.

  “We pray all of this in the holy name of Jesus. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Randy says. He looks up at me with tears still in his eyes. “Thank you,” he tells me. “Really, Richard, thank you.”

  I pat his big hands, still clasped together for prayer. “You’re very welcome, my friend. And I’ll tell you what, let’s go see your boy on Monday. You and me. Do you think that would be a good idea?”

  Randy nods. “Yes. Thank you so much.”

  “No need to thank me. I’m happy to do it. Maybe this is the moment the Lord has put before us.”

  “Could we keep this quiet until then, though? I’d appreciate you not telling no one about it.”

  “You sure you don’t want the church to pray about it? I know our prayer warriors would have your back.”

  “I’d just as soon keep it quiet. I don’t mind you telling Penny, of course. I just ain’t in a hurry to have everyone know about this.”

  “Of course. You have my discretion.”

  He climbs to his feet, flicking the last tear off his cheek with his meaty fingers. His voice rises, signaling a shift in mood.

  “You going up to the church later?”

  “Yeah. I have to help out with the Easter program. Gotta go over my narration.”

  He smiles. “Long as I’ve known you, I don’t know how you get up and talk in front of all them people.”

  I open the door and slap him on the back. “All part of the job. I reckon the Lord picks the talkers to do the talking.”

  Randy says, “Speaking of people talking, I heard something down at the cement place this morning. Someone said that Ray ain’t quitting after all. He told them he was going to stay on.”

  “Really?”

  “What I heard.”

  “Maybe that means Ray is bailing on Brian.”

  “That’s what I thought. If Ray bails out, you figure Brian will throw in the towel?”

  “No,” I say, tapping my finger against my lips. “Brian’s the one with the real fire in his belly. I always got the sense that Ray was just along for the ride. Brian was always the engine of that partnership.”

  Randy says, “Still, though, things sure don’t look good for Harten.”

  “Sure don’t.”

  As he steps onto our front porch, he says, “Okay, Brother Richard, see you tomorrow.”

  “Yep, see you then.”

  “And we can talk about going to see Carl on Monday,” he says. “I’ll know more then.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I nod. “Of course.”

  Monday. How do I get to Monday?

  As I watch him walk out to his truck, I can feel the nausea again.

  I close the door and walk back to my office. I stop in the hallway, next to the wall of our family pictures.

  How do I get to Monday?

  Now is not the time to panic. Now is the time to work out how to make this work. Focus.

  How do I get to Monday?

  I go into my office, and as I’m sitting down, something Randy said comes back to me.

  Things sure don’t look good for Harten.

  Brian Harten must be quite desperate right now. The vote is going to go against him. Everyone knows it. He has to know it, too.

  He must hate me.

  Yes, of course, he hates me.

  But he must also be desperate.

  I wonder how desperate.

  FIVE BRIAN HARTEN

  Roxie ain’t happy to see me.

  “It ain’t your day to get the kids,” she says.

  “I know.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  There’s a truck in the driveway next to her car. I nod at it. “Whose truck?”

  She leans against the doorway and crosses her arms. She’s got on a blue tank top and the Captain America sweatpants that the kids got her a couple of Christmases ago.

  “Jeff’s.”

  “Who the fuck is Jeff?”

  “Jeff is the guy who drives that truck.”

  “And why is Jeff’s truck parked in your driveway? Where is Jeff?”

  Roxie is kind of skinny, small tits, no hips. She’s got freckles and brown
hair and brown eyes. When we were married, I got kind of tired of having sex with her. No, not tired. I just got used to having sex with her. It was like driving to work, wasn’t much new to see. Now though, with her arms crossed and her face scrunched up and shitty, I’m kinda turned on by her. Her neck looks so soft, and her hair is brushing across her freckled shoulders. If she wanted to have sex right now, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

  But she ain’t thinking about sex.

  “It ain’t none of your damn business who I see,” she says. “We ain’t married. I don’t come around your house first thing in the morning asking you about who’s having breakfast.”

  “He spent the night?”

  “I’m fixin’ to shut the door unless you got something else to say, Brian.”

  “I’m just saying, I think I got a right to know who’s in there eating cereal with my babies.”

  “They’re having bacon and eggs, and all you got to know is that he’s my friend and he’s here.”

  “Bacon and eggs. Since when do you make bacon and eggs for people?”

  “Ugh.” She shakes her head and starts to close the door, but I stop her.

  “Okay. Hey, I ain’t here for none of that, anyway. I came by to ask if I could borrow your car.”

  She stops and frowns and looks over my shoulder. “Where’s your car?”

  “Broke down.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Alternator, I think. I got to get it checked.”

  “Why you need to borrow my car?”

  “I need to run over to Morrilton.”

  “Why?”

  “You got to know my business?”

  “If you want to borrow my car.”

  “I need to go see Tommy. He owes me money. I need to get the money so I can pay to get the car worked on.”

  “He gonna be in this early?”

  “He usually comes in early on the weekends to get away from Carmen and Sarabeth. He’ll do paperwork or make some calls or whatever. Half the time he’s just sitting there watching TV.”

  She nods and grabs her purse from the coatrack and pulls out the keys. She holds on to them, though. “When will you be back?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Like ten thirty.”

  “I don’t know. Noon, maybe one? Two at the latest.”

  “Two at the latest.”

  “Yeah.”

  She hands me the keys.

  The floorboards are full of a bunch of crap. McDonald’s wrappers and old comic books and pieces of the kids’ schoolwork. Roxie’s car has always looked like a rolling trash can. I never understood that. I keep my shit nice. That’s the point of having it, ain’t it? For it to be nice. Never made sense to me to buy a vehicle and then treat it like a dumpster.

  Still, it feels good to be in a car and not to have to walk. I cross the Little Red River Bridge, pass the church, and I’m pointed out of town. Couldn’t make this trip walking, that’s for sure. Nice of Roxie to let me borrow it, I guess.

  No, fuck that. She only let me borrow it so she could rub my face in it later. Today or tomorrow or a fucking year down the road—at some point that bitch is going to throw this back in my face.

  Jeff. Who the fuck is Jeff? Not Jeff Black? No, couldn’t be. Maybe Jeff Whatshisname who works at Walmart.

  I don’t know. Guess it don’t matter. No use in getting jealous.

  I ain’t jealous anyway, not exactly. If Jeff wants to put up with Roxie’s bullshit, better him than me.

  I would love to fuck her, though. One last time.

  Guess ol’ Jeff is fucking her now.

  Whatever.

  Away from town, the highway curves into the trees. Trees, trees, trees. The north of Arkansas ain’t nothing but trees. The bottom of the state ain’t nothing but swamp. I prefer the trees, I guess, but sometimes I think I should have got out of here. Sure, I left Van Buren County, but where did I go? One county over. What good did that do me? Here I am, right back where I started. No money. No family. Driving my ex-wife’s car on my way to see my ex-boss.

  Real success story.

  Tommy’s Bar is closed, but his truck is out front next to the statue. He always parks next to the statue. Not enough that he built a goddamn statue to himself, he’s gotta park next to it.

  The statue is stupid-looking. Tommy tells everyone it’s “cold cast bronze,” but I was there when he bought the damn thing, and I know for a fact that it’s just resin with some bronze powder mixed in. So, it’s eight feet of bronzey-looking resin, on top of a four-foot concrete pedestal, and it’s supposed to be Tommy in his prime, with a three-foot-long baseball bat propped up on his shoulder. It’s a shitty statue, and it doesn’t even look like him anymore since he got beer fat sitting on his ass behind the bar. When he was a high school baseball champ and got a college scholarship, he was lean and mean and eighteen. Now he’s just another fat redneck.

  He don’t know it, though. He thinks he’s the statue.

  I park next to a couple of cars in the lot and go inside. The chairs are up on the tables, and Tommy is behind the bar. There’s two girls at the bar with him. I don’t know them. Maybe they’re new waitresses. They’re both young and pretty. One’s Chinese, or Korean maybe. Don’t see many Asian girls around here. Must be adopted.

  They all look me over when I come in, and I see Tommy smile.

  He leans back so far he almost bumps his head on the Louisville Slugger mounted on the wall. “Harten, my man. The entrepreneur returns.” He’s wearing beige cargo shorts and a tight pink polo shirt that makes him look like a big nipple.

  “Hey, Tommy, what’s up?”

  The girls are sitting on barstools playing 21 with Tommy. They have pennies in front of them. He has dollars. I’ve seen him play this game with girls before—him betting dollars and them betting pennies. He just does it to show off. The girls never mind. Basically, he’s paying them to hang around with him.

  He says, “You know Ka and Britney?”

  The girls smile at me. Ka is the Asian girl. Britney is a blonde.

  “No.” I nod at them. “What’s up?”

  They nod back and look at each other. Ain’t sure what to make of me yet.

  Tommy shuffles the cards. “What’s shaking, Harten?”

  “Oh, not much. Thought I’d come by to pick up my check.”

  “Check for what?”

  “Paycheck.”

  He doesn’t even look at me when he says, “Last I checked, you don’t work here no more, Harten.” He looks up at the girls and smiles. “Hey, ‘Last I checked you ain’t got no check.’ That’s a . . . whadaya call it? Like a rhyme?”

  “A pun?” Ka says.

  “Yeah, a pun.”

  I say, “You still owe me from last month.”

  “Last month?”

  “Yeah.”

  He shuffles the cards, pulls one out, looks at it, slides it back in, and keeps shuffling.

  The girls have stopped smiling. Ka looks at Britney. Britney keeps looking back and forth between me and Tommy.

  “Last month,” I say.

  “Hm. How much you think I owe you for last month?”

  “You don’t know how much you owe people?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I do. I do. Which is where I get confused, because I’m pretty sure that I don’t owe you nothing. You quit before the end of the month.”

  “I worked, Tommy. You owe me three hundred bucks easy.”

  He puts down the cards on the counter and looks at me, his dumb-ass eyes squinting out from his fat face. “You didn’t even show up to work that last day.”

  “I called Katy and let her know.”

  “You ain’t supposed to call another employee; you’re supposed to call me. You left me high and dry.”

  “I had shit I had to tend to.”

  “You up and quit on me over the phone by calling a waitress. That’s some weak sauce, my friend. That dog don’t hunt.”

  Ka looks nervous. Britney smiles.
/>
  “You still owe me, Tommy.”

  He shakes his head. “You left me in the lurch that night. I gotta deduct that.”

  “That ain’t how it works.”

  “Plus, I had to pay someone else to pick up the shift.”

  “So? What’s that got to do with—”

  “So, I’d say that leaves us about even.”

  I don’t really know what to say. I know this asshole is never going to pay me what he owes me. Tommy is a shitty boss to the people who work for him. And me? I’m just a guy who used to work for him.

  I shake my head. I ask the girls, “Y’all just hire on here?”

  They both stare at me.

  “Do y’all work here?”

  Ka nods.

  “Then just keep in mind what you’re seeing. This is who Tommy Weller is.”

  “Okay,” Tommy says. “Why don’t you get out of my bar?”

  “Motherfucker owns four businesses,” I tell the girls. “You know that? Course you do. He tells anybody who’ll listen. Got that statue out front here of himself with a baseball bat. Which is hilarious since literally nobody in the state of Arkansas gives one warm shit about baseball. And where did he play baseball? Big leagues? No. Minor leagues? No. In college. Yeah, I mean, who the hell doesn’t love college baseball?”

  Tommy asks, “Where’d you play, Brian?”

  I don’t even look at him. I tell the girls, “He flunked out of college, by the way. He was there a year before he flunked out.”

  Tommy says, “And then I come back here and started four successful businesses, Brian. How many businesses you own?”

  “I got one on the way.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Ain’t the way I heard it. Way I heard it is Van Buren County ain’t gonna let you in there.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Tommy smiles and says, “Yeah. We sure will.”

  I look between the three of them. Britney is barely keeping a lid on a laugh that’s gonna let loose before I even hit the parking lot. Ka looks kind of horrified by the whole thing. And Tommy is grinning like he just yanked down my pants.

  I turn around and stomp outside. I jump in Roxie’s car like I’m about to tear out of there. But all I can do is sit and stare at the shadow of Tommy’s big plaster baseball bat over the hood.