Dry County

by Jake Hinkson

  What money? I text.

  I almost shit when he writes back, YOU KNOW WHAT MONEY

  Gary says, “He has to mean about the money we’re getting from the preacher.”

  “But he don’t know anything about that.”

  “You sure? You didn’t let something slip out?”

  “No, of course not. I’m not a complete idiot. I didn’t tell anybody. And if I was going to tell somebody, I wouldn’t tell him. Are you sure you didn’t tell anybody?”

  “No, of c—”

  The phone dings again. Tommy got tired of waiting. U KNOW WHAT MONEY! THE MONEY U AND GARY THOUGHT U MADE TODAY! LETS MEET!!

  “Shit,” Gary cusses. “He knows.”

  “I don’t understand how he could know about it.”

  “Doesn’t matter now. What’s he going to do? He wouldn’t care, right?”

  “Well, he wouldn’t try to stop us from doing it, but he damn sure would try to get some for himself.”

  Gary just stares at me. “Really?”

  “What do you think we should do? He wants to meet.”

  Gary shakes his head. “I don’t want to.”

  I can tell he’s afraid of getting beat up again, but I’m more afraid of Tommy getting pissed and fucking up this whole thing for us. If he starts talking about it to people, then it could go really bad. “Gary, if he knows, then we gotta talk to him. Like you said, we’re into illegal shit here. They put people in jail for what we’re doing. He ain’t gonna say anything texting or over the phone, and I don’t think we should, either. So, let’s meet him and see what he knows.”

  He nods. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah, okay. Let’s see where he wants to meet.”

  THIRTY GARY DOANE

  I leave the keys to my mom’s car in the ignition, grab my bag, and run back to Sarabeth’s car. I don’t have to run, though. I know they’re in still in bed. As Sarabeth eases us down the sleepy street I grew up on, I look back at my house, dark and quiet except for the front porch light that my father left on for me. I take Sarabeth’s hand.

  We say nothing as she drives back toward town. She doesn’t turn on the radio, so we sit in silence, holding hands, listening to the wind whistle over the car.

  Everything feels different. In some ways, it’s like we’ve been playing around before today. I’m in awe of this new feeling. I love her. She loves me. I’ve never felt closer to someone than I do to her in this moment. I know I can rely on her, and she knows she can rely on me. What an extraordinary thing, so simple, but it feels solid and real, concrete beneath my feet.

  What did I think we were doing before now? So much of our relationship has been based on shared resentments. We hated all the same people. When we first started discussing Richard, I was surprised how much anger boiled up from both of us. What had he actually done to us at that point? Nothing, really. He’d mostly presided over the town’s hypocrisy. He’d blessed the lies the people here tell themselves. He told them that they were good, decent Christians, no matter how petty and small their lives were. We hated him for it.

  We hated the town, we wanted to get away from our parents, and we wanted to wake up somewhere different. We shared all of that.

  But I didn’t know I loved her until now.

  Was she just using me? At first, sure. Sarabeth has been through a lot. It’s been bad for me here, but I know it’s been worse for her. My parents aren’t perfect, but I do know they love me. What has Sarabeth had? An indifferent mother who’s lived with a series of drunks and creeps. Sarabeth did what she had to do to survive. But things have changed now. She loves me, and I love her.

  So now this is it. I need to be strong for her. I need her to be strong for me. We’re leaving town tonight, and that’s that. We’ll call the preacher. Either he gives me all my money tonight, or he gives us enough to get on the road. He can send us the rest in monthly installments. That was Sarabeth’s idea. Smart.

  First, though, we have to see Tommy one last time. We have to figure out what he knows. If he starts something, we’ll deal with it and we’ll deal with it together.

  I look over at her.

  She doesn’t notice me for a while. She’s focused on the road, focused on where we’re going. When she does finally catch me gawking at her, she says, “What?”

  “I love you, Sarabeth.”

  She smiles, gives my hand a little shake. She looks over at me. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  She shakes her head. “That amazes me,” she says. She squeezes my hand. “It really does.”

  I smile at her.

  She puts both hands back on the wheel. The dashboard glows in her glassy eyes. “Don’t get me crying now,” she says with a chuckle. “Save it for later.”

  THIRTY-ONE SARABETH SIMMONS

  When I come to the bridge, I turn onto the skinny dirt road going down to the river where Tommy wants to meet us. Gary’s knee starts bouncing like it always does when he’s nervous. I rest a hand on his leg, and he smiles and nods. The road curves around the hill, blotting out the moon on my side, but through Gary’s window I can see the light skipping across the water. When I get to the bend, headlights leap out of the dark at us.

  I swerve to miss the truck, but when I do the road disappears. I scream. I can’t move, can’t take my foot off the gas. Gary reaches for the wheel, but we’re already racing headfirst down the hill. Saplings snap against our headlights and pine branches slap the windshield. We hit a tree, but we don’t stop. We’re going too fast. The tree bends, grinding under the driver’s-side wheel, and we flip.

  Now is motion and iridescent light and impact and glass bursts in my face and we slam to a stop.

  I close my eyes to stop the spinning. I taste wet dirt. I hear the untroubled river rushing by. When I open my eyes, Gary is half out of the car and half in it, and I try to scream, but I can’t get a breath.

  A man walks up to the car.

  The preacher.

  He stares. He looks frightened. I try to beg him for help, but my mouth is nothing but blood and dirt and glass.

  He walks over to Gary and leans into the car.

  i try to speak to him

  no breath

  mosquito wings screaming in my ear

  blood pooling in my eyes

  no breath

  i cant hear the river

  cant hear the mosquito

  moonlight turns red

  then black

  THIRTY-TWO RICHARD WEATHERFORD

  I creep up my front steps as silently as a thief, but I’m shaking so badly I have to stop before I reach the door and grip the railing. I don’t know if it’s nerves or exhaustion. I just want to collapse on my bed and pass out, but I’m not sure I can. At this moment, it doesn’t feel like I’ll ever be able to get to sleep.

  I close my eyes and wait for a wave of dizziness to pass.

  When I’m ready, I dig my keys out of my pocket. I turn the knob on the front door as carefully as the lock on a safe. As I’m easing the door closed behind me, I realize that Penny is sitting on the living room couch.

  She stares at me in the weak glow of a single end table lamp. Even the stairwell light, which we always leave on at night, has been shut off. There’s no illumination from upstairs, where our children are sleeping, lost in their own particular dreams or nightmares.

  Penny’s hands rest on her thighs, her bare feet flat on the floor. She waits for me to speak.

  Quietly I ask, “What are you still doing up?”

  She stands. She hasn’t dressed for bed and is wearing the same jeans and charcoal jumper she’s been wearing all day. “Come here, Richard,” she says.

  She leads me to the hallway and opens the basement door. Turning on the light, she starts down the stairs. “Close the door,” she says.

  I do, and follow her down the wooden steps. At the bottom, she turns around. Looking small between large boxes stacked to the ceiling, she crosses her arms.

  “Tell
me.”

  “What?”

  She shakes her head as if to say what isn’t good enough anymore. “Tell me, Richard. Just tell me. Just say the words out loud. Do me the favor, after all these years, of just saying the words out loud.”

  I have to plant my feet and steady myself before I can manage to say, “Okay.”

  “You’ve been cheating on me.”

  “Yes.”

  Her mouth tight, she nods. Swallows.

  “That’s not it, though, is it?” she asks. “That’s only part of it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me the rest.”

  There’s a faint ringing in my right ear and the thrum of blood in my temples. The muscles between my shoulders are knotted tight. I can’t bring myself to lie to her. I’m too exhausted, too emotionally wrung. The entire day is catching up with me. And she doesn’t blink. She’s demanded the truth, and there’s no longer any way to keep it from her.

  I take a breath and say, “I’ve put all of us in danger.”

  She just stares at me, her mouth grim. The only evidence of feeling in her is the breath she takes before she says, “What did you do?” She looks closer at my face, my clothes, my hands. “Just tell me.”

  I nod, but I still don’t know how to come out and tell her what I’ve done.

  She says, “Who did you see this morning?”

  I take a breath and let it out slowly.

  “Gary Doane.”

  Her expression doesn’t change. Her eyes shift as she looks from one of my eyes to the other. Then she shuts her eyes for a moment. She nods to a thought she doesn’t vocalize.

  “Tell me the rest,” she says. “Tell me all of it. Don’t make me drag it out of you.”

  I tell her. I’ll tell her all of it, God help me. I don’t try to spin the story. I just tell her, starting with Gary’s phone call this morning, what happened.

  At first, her expression hardens into cold fury. She stares at me, her jaw clenched, her arms crossed low, like she’s holding her stomach. I walked in the door tonight as her husband and the next moment I became a homosexual and an adulterer. Now I’m also a crooked preacher playing backroom politics with Brian Harten. But I can’t stop for her to take it in. I don’t have hours and hours for a conversation about adultery. The wreck was visible from the bridge. Police are probably already there. I need to get her past the merely painful to the truly horrific.

  “Brian stole the money from Tommy Weller,” I tell her. “When Weller found out it was Brian, he confronted both of us.”

  Her face is white, but her voice is steady as she asks, “What happened?”

  “Brian killed Tommy.”

  Her mouth opens.

  “And then,” I say, tears filling my eyes, “in self-defense, I killed Brian.” Even as my voice is breaking on those words, I’m surprised by this surge of emotion, as if there is a part of me forever observing my own feelings like the distant movements of clouds.

  Her right hand rises to her mouth. Her gaze drops to my clothes.

  “You’re telling me the truth?” she says.

  I nod. I clear my throat softly. “Yes,” I say. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry, Penny.”

  “What about Gary? Where is he right now?”

  “He died, too. He and Sarabeth both. They . . . they ran off the road.”

  “Richard . . .” She presses her hand harder against her mouth and stares at the concrete floor.

  For a time, she doesn’t speak. I stand there with nothing to say, nothing to do but wait, amid the wreckage of our marriage, of our family, and wonder what she will do.

  What will I let her do? Isn’t that the real question? Will I let her strike me again or curse me or run past me and wake the children and flee our home before the roof caves in? Will I really let her do that? After all I’ve done tonight, can I really let her call the police?

  As I watch my wife weigh her options, I have a terrible vision. A vision of murder, in this cold and quiet basement, at this dark hour, while my children sleep upstairs. A few days ago, I would have been horrified to have such a vision. I would have believed that such a thing was impossible. This day, however, has relieved me of my mistaken belief that anything like the impossible exists when it comes to human beings. Until today, I’ve shut my eyes and stopped up my ears to the truth the world has been howling at me my whole life. All the people I’ve known, all the tragedies, large and small, that I’ve witnessed—none of it got through to me. I refused to see, refused to listen. I barricaded myself behind walls of Scripture and doctrine. I hid behind the veneer of my own reputation, hidden even—perhaps especially—from myself.

  The things I’ve done tonight have taught me another truth. I’m just a human being, and human beings are capable of anything.

  Yet even as I know this, I also know there’s nothing to be gained by an act of violence committed in this house. I need Penny. If something were to happen to her, it would only make my unmasking by the police inevitable.

  There’s something else, too. She hasn’t run out of the house yet. She’s still here. And when she looks away from me and stares up at a blank space on the ceiling, I realize she is staring in the direction of the children’s rooms. Yes, I’m capable of anything. But then again, so is she.

  “I should call the police,” she says.

  I nod. “Perhaps you should.”

  “You think I won’t?”

  “I think you’ll do whatever is best for the children.”

  “Of course, I’m going to do what’s best for the children.”

  “Of course.”

  “Is that all you can say? ‘Of course’?”

  “I can tell you why you shouldn’t call the police.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is almost over. Because everything that’s happened tonight will be attributed to the actions of other people. Because everybody who died tonight died as the result of choices they made. I’m the only person involved who has no obvious connection to any of this. If we do nothing, if we act normal, we’re safe.”

  For the first time, she looks like she might cry. “Safe? That’s not the point. What about Gary? Or his parents?”

  “He set out to seduce me so that he and that girl could blackmail me. I’m sorry about what happened to Gary, but he wasn’t an innocent victim in any of this. Neither of them was. You have to understand that.”

  “That doesn’t make it okay.”

  “There’s no okay. There’s just what is. If I go to jail tonight, it won’t bring anyone back to life. It won’t relieve anyone’s suffering. It will only hurt our children.”

  She stares at me. “You’d use our children to protect yourself . . .”

  I shake my head. “I’m not using them. I don’t care about myself anymore. When I threw Brian Harten off that bridge, a part of me went into the water with him. I deserve to go to jail for what I did tonight. I know that. And if you need to call the police, then I’ll understand. You want to do the right thing. But if I go to jail, it’s going to traumatize our children for the rest of their lives. They’ll all have to pay for my sins.”

  She closes her eyes. “God help me.” She holds up a hand. “Just . . . shut up.” Finally, she opens her eyes. “How do you know the police aren’t on their way here?”

  “Because I’m not personally connected,” I say. “Gary and Sarabeth, Brian and Tommy—they’re all connected. I’m just Gary’s pastor. There’s nothing to connect me.”

  “Texts and voicemails with Gary?”

  “Just a handful. Nothing that wouldn’t seem professional, just a pastor talking to a troubled member of his congregation.”

  “And no one else knows about you and Gary?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “As far as you know?”

  “Yes. I have no reason to think Gary and Sarabeth would have told anyone else about their blackmail scheme. And I have every reason to think
they would have kept it a secret.”

  Gradually her gaze drifts to the floor. She shakes her head and runs her fingers through her hair, down her scalp, until she’s clutching the back of her neck. Her face is blank, slack, lost in thought, until something occurs to her and she looks at me.

  “What happened to the money?”

  The question takes me off guard. “The money? It’s with Gary and Sarabeth.”

  She stares at me. “You said they ran off the road.”

  “They . . .”

  “You ran them off the road.”

  I chew the inside of my cheek for a moment before I say, “Yes. It was the last piece. For them to take the responsibility for what happened . . .”

  “They couldn’t be around to tell the truth,” she says.

  I say nothing to that.

  She says, “And then you threw the money inside the car.”

  “Yes.”

  She closes her eyes. I wait for her. She looks like she’s in pain when she finally says, “Are you sure you didn’t leave any footprints?”

  I let go of a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Yes,” I say.

  THIRTY-THREE PENNY WEATHERFORD

  I open my eyes and look at the man standing across from me in our cold, dark basement. We’re surrounded by boxes of birth certificates, Sunday school drawings, and report cards. Medical records and holiday decorations. The history of our family.

  “Richard, I need you to . . .” I have to stop and steady myself before I can continue. He just stares at me. “I need you to tell me everything that happened today. Tell me everything you left out. Who you saw, and when and where you saw them, and what you said to them.”

  I hear the words come out of my mouth, but my voice sounds hollow and disconnected from my body. My vision drifts to some middle distance between us. I should call the police. But if I do that, Richard will go to prison, and I’ll be left with no money, no house, no friends. Nothing but five damaged children and all these boxes. He’s brought disaster to our door, but I’m the one who has to open the door and let it in. And I can’t do that. God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on an altar in order to prove his righteousness. Abraham was ready to do it. But I’m not. I’ve reached the limit of my righteousness. I would rather lose my soul than sacrifice my children.