The door opened again, bells jingling, and Cole looked up to see a woman waving at him.
“Hell, is that Jody Hampton?” Terry looked at Cole. “What’s she want?”
“Hold on.” Cole made his way over to Jody and took her by the elbow, steering her to the door. He told her he’d be out in a minute, and on his way back to the table, he glanced at the cop. Nothing to worry about. The guy had his nose buried in a newspaper, didn’t have a clue.
“Listen, I gotta go.”
“You got something on the side with Jody?” Terry grinned. “Don’t worry, I won’t say nothing. But before you rush off, I want you to meet my son. And say hi to Kathy.”
Kathy, still pretty and aloof, hooked her blond hair behind her ear and looked up at him with steely eyes. “Hi, Cole.”
“Hey.”
The boy’s name was Terry also. Same curly dark hair and dimples and squinty eyes as his daddy. He must have been eight years old by now.
“Hey, little man.”
“This is my old friend Cole. Say hi.”
“I hate mashed potatoes,” the kid said. “I want McDonald’s.”
Cole again said that he had to be going. “I’ll see you around.”
“Hell yes,” Terry said enthusiastically. “Let’s get together one of these nights.”
Jody was sitting on a slatted bench outside, chewing the ends of her hair. Cole motioned for her to follow him to his pickup.
“What in the hell are you doing?”
“I saw your truck—”
“You know how it works. If you don’t like it, go to someone else.”
She looked like she was about to cry, and he reached over and pushed her greasy hair out of her eyes. Jody Hampton had been a couple of years behind Cole and Terry in school, the kind of girl that the boys went to when they were sad or afraid, or just plain horny. Not one of those boys had stayed by her side. Instead she’d married a drunk from Bucks County who ran out on her a couple of years ago. Now here she was, hair unwashed and a line of blackheads risen across her forehead like bug bites. She still had pretty blue eyes.
She handed Cole a sweaty wad of cash and he gave her a few Oxys that were wrapped in foil and she smiled and said he was a good man. Then she got in her banged-up Buick and turned down the road that would take her to her hamlet. Cole didn’t go anywhere. Not yet. He sat in his pickup and watched rain clouds roll across the land. He and Terry used to think that they would leave here one day too—Charlotte wasn’t the only one. They had talked about Texas or Florida, someplace where they could get to the ocean. But they were just teenagers, didn’t know anything. The sun disappeared behind sky the color of wet cement; he could smell the oncoming rain. He watched from his truck as Terry Rose and his family came out of the Wigwam. They crossed the street, the boy running ahead. Kathy reached for Terry’s hand. At his wedding, Terry had grabbed Cole’s hand and said he was like a brother, and this was both the truth and a lie. Now he watched his old friend get in his truck and drive away to his house with the big bathroom and double-car garage, his wife next to him, his son with his face pressed to the rear window, waving good-bye.
Cole punched in the lighter and turned down a street in Stillwell known as Blacklung Block; on bad days, the entire neighborhood turned gray with coal dust. Tonight the streets were quiet. Yellow light shone from a row of old coal camp houses, and through the windows he could see flickering TVs and silhouettes of people who stayed home, who lived happy, good lives. Families in front of the TV, eating popcorn, playing Old Maid. Like Terry Rose and his family, maybe.
He parked in front of the duplex and lit a cigarette. Knowing all along that this was where he would end up. He stopped by a few times a month on business, and he guessed by now that he also considered Reese Campbell a friend. But he could never shake the underlying feeling of dread that he carried with him whenever he came over here. Not alarm, just a low humming in his gut, like a slight fever he couldn’t shake. At least tonight there were no cars in the driveway, except for the antique ice blue ’61 Cadillac that was always there, like an anchored boat.
Cigarette butts and crushed beer cans littered a patch of dead roses. Though Reese rarely left his house—living like a shut-in, just like Ruthie, the owner who lived on the other side of the duplex—he was famous for his parties. A three-legged cat was perched on the porch steps, meowing. “Hey Gimp.” Cole lifted it under his arm like a football and rapped on the door. When there was no answer, he let himself in. The house was pitch-black, and he hit the light switch. Nothing happened. He set down the purring cat.
“Who the fuck is in my house?”
Cole ran into something with a sharp edge and yelled out. Reese’s laughter broke through the shadows.
“It’s me,” Cole said, massaging his thigh. “What’s wrong with the light?”
“Turn on the one by the chair.”
Cole stumbled around until his hand touched a slender floor lamp. A dim yellow light fell over the room, and Cole blinked. It looked the way it usually did, Ruthie’s antiquated furniture (pale rose sofa, old-fashioned table lamps) mixed in with what Reese and his friends left behind (overfilled ashtrays, crumpled cigarette packs, empty bottles of Jack Daniel’s).
“This place is wrecked.”
“Had a few guests last night. Fuckin’ slobs.”
Reese was sprawled on the sofa with a flimsy throw over his lap. His thick dark hair was matted and slept-on, and there were heavy rings under his eyes.
“What were you doing in the dark?”
“Trying to sleep. What in the hell do you think I was doing? Just settin’ here thinking?”
“You want me to go?”
“I’m up now.” He rubbed his eyes. “I hope to Jesus you got a cigarette for me, blondie.”
Cole lit two, handed one to Reese. “Got any beer?”
“Should be some left.”
In the short time it took Cole to walk into the kitchen and back, Reese had already dozed off. His T-shirt hung off him, a couple of sizes too big. Too much speed, Cole thought. He removed the lit cigarette from Reese’s hand. A jagged scar zipped across his cheek, a souvenir from jail, and his nose was permanently crooked after being broken so many times. Still, he was not ugly. High cheekbones like an Indian, pale blue eyes. He was thirty-six, but could pass for twenty-six.
The cat had nosed open a box of old pizza and ate quickly, tugging on the cold, rubbery cheese. A kitchen timer beeped, and Reese opened his eyes. “Time for Ruthie’s medicine.”
“How is she?”
“Still dying.”
Ruthie Roberts, a childless widow, had taken in Reese after his parents and little brother were killed in a car crash. Rumor had it that eight-year-old Reese had crawled out of the burning hunk of metal without a scratch, and that Ruthie was the only one in Dove Creek who wanted him. But it wasn’t anything that Reese talked about.
“What are you going to do with her?”
“Same thing I’ve been doing. I ain’t sticking her in no hospital, and I’m sure as hell not putting her in that dump where you work.” Reese hitched up his jeans. “If any riffraff shows up, don’t let their asses in.”
He sauntered across the room to the shared door that led to Ruthie’s side. By now Cole was used to Reese’s queeny walk, but the first time he saw it, he’d been shocked, his face hot with shame, or maybe fear. He’d never seen a man move like that before. Cole still didn’t care for Reese’s homo ways, but usually now, whenever he saw him swing his hips or flick a wrist, he looked the other way, his mouth no longer filling with disgust. Still, it was difficult to understand, a fairy living in Dove Creek. How he did not get himself killed.
He’d been hearing about Reese Campbell for a long time, but didn’t meet him until a couple of years ago at a party. Cole knew it was him by the web of tattoos that wound over his arms and hands—it was well known that Reese had been locked up several times and that with each release, he’d come out with more ink and more meannes
s. Later in the night, while Cole was fishing a beer out of a tub of ice, Reese had come up behind him.
“Hey handsome.”
Cole had quickly turned, clutching the beer to his chest like a bouquet. Reese grinned. “You’re a nervous Nelly.”
He told Cole he was looking to get high. At the time, Cole had been dabbling in pot, selling to a few high school students, a couple of old hippies. When Cole named his price, Reese said, “I’ll give you half that.”
“For an ounce?” Cole had scoffed. “No way.”
Reese had stared at him, still grinning, but as he stepped toward Cole, the grin vanished. Cole had backed up and stumbled against the tub, melted ice sloshing all over his shoes.
“All right, all right,” he’d said, the stutter rising like a fever.
Then Reese had suddenly laughed, startling Cole.
“I was just fucking with you, son.”
Since that night, Cole had watched Reese pull the same act with others, tough country boys moving out of the way for his sashaying sissy hips. Sometimes it backfired, especially when he was high. He’d get too brave, too mouthy. Flirting or spilling secrets about which rednecks had followed him out to the bushes, wanting what their wives wouldn’t give them. On more than one occasion, Cole had shown up to find Reese bloodied and busted up. Though Reese had friends all over Dove Creek—roughnecks who hated queers but partied with him—they would never call Reese one of their own.
Now he tossed Cole a prescription bottle. “I got a couple of ’scripts filled. One for Ruthie, one for you.”
Cole read the label. “Hundred and sixty milligrams.”
“Terminal cancer. You’re getting the cream of the crop, son.”
Cole handed over the envelope of cash. He had started dealing as a way to help pay his grandparents’ medical bills, but now he felt like he could not stop. It was the same with the stealing. He’d palmed a couple of wedding rings, a little cash, from the old people for no reason at all, other than for a quick thrill. But now it was a part of him. Who he’d become, or who’d he’d always been.
“God bless the pillheads,” Reese said.
“Amen,” Cole echoed.
He paid Reese more than he did the old people, but this was fair since it was Reese who had actually pointed out what a gold mine Cole was working in. Reese used to deal coke, but now was too scared of getting sent back to the pen; he said he did not care about the money anymore, as long as could keep Ruthie medicated and himself well stoned. He taught Cole how much the pills went for on the street, told him who was looking to buy.
“You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“It’s been a while.” Reese yawned. “You ought to think about changing your line of products. You’d make a hell of a lot more with meth.”
“I only sell what’s doctor-prescribed and FDA-approved.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Reese said, rolling his eyes.
Cole did not try to explain that he actually liked the old people, and that he did not want to be mixing up chemicals and dealing with paranoid tweakers. Explaining all of that was like explaining why he didn’t use drugs in the first place. “You’re about the only dealer I know who doesn’t use,” Reese had pointed out before. “I find that strange, son.” Cole had tried just about everything, but he liked reading about the drugs more than he liked taking them. Learning about their components, side effects, dosages. His mind retained the information easily, the way it did with scripture.
They cracked open beers and clinked the cans together, though they did not say what they were toasting to. Reese turned on the stereo and Johnny Cash confessed that he had fallen into a burning ring of fire. They talked about people they knew, who’d been busted and who was getting divorced and who’d been laid off.
Reese asked after Charlotte.
“She’s all right.”
“Better keep an eye on that one. I expect she’s got a little taste for her own kind.”
Cole had heard it before. When Charlotte returned to Dove Creek, a swarm of rumors followed her, including that she’d been a stripper at a lesbian club up in Cleveland. Cole didn’t pry. Charlotte said what she liked best about him was that he knew how to keep his trap shut. She told him that she had worked in a tattoo shop and played drums in a band, and he didn’t ask questions.
“She ain’t no bulldyke.”
Reese looked at him like he was slow in the head. “There’s more than one kind.”
“She likes what I give her,” Cole said testily. It was like this every time. He didn’t know what he was doing here, drinking beer with an ex-con faggot, who as sure as they were sitting here would one day fall into his own burning ring of fire.
“All right, simmer down.” Reese lit another cigarette. “What else is going on? Your granddaddy still living at home?”
“For now. The family is itching to put him in the nursing home. I don’t think my grandma wants to, but she won’t stand up to them.” He hesitated. “I wonder if I’m doing him wrong, if I should move in and take care of him all the time, like you do Ruthie.”
“That’s a bad idea.”
“How come?”
“Ruthie ain’t a mean old preacher. Anyway, you better be moving them out of there instead of you moving in.”
“What for?”
“Before that coal company blasts y’all out.”
“Hell, you’d think nobody ever mined coal before in West Virginia, the way everybody’s carrying on.”
“Well, from what they say … You better go ’fore you catch cancer or something.”
“I think this’ll do me in first,” Cole said, indicating the cigarette.
“Let me tell you something. I see the way Ruthie’s doing, and I don’t ever want to go like that. Remember that for me. If I don’t go quick and easy, you shoot me dead. All right?”
“Please. I ain’t going to jail for your ass,” Cole quipped. Reese waited a beat, then burst into his loud, horsy laugh. Cole grinned uneasily. He could never predict how Reese would react, that was the thing. Couldn’t figure out which of them held the power. With everyone else Cole did business with, there was no confusion, no uncertainty: they wanted something from him, and he gave it to them. It wasn’t a bad thing, what he did. People needed him, counted on him. He gave them what they asked for. He made this life for himself. It was his.
Chapter 3
Cole carried two coffees into the bedroom, one with milk and three spoonfuls of sugar, one black and unsweetened, and set the mugs on the plastic milk crate next to the bed. He pushed open the window, heard the trilling of field sparrows. Charlotte was sleeping, tangled up in the sheets. He leaned over her and lightly traced her tattoos, the eagle feather on her shoulder, moving down along her pale arm where a thin snake slithered, around to her stomach, where a lightning cloud twitched. Though she descended from the Scots-Irish like just about everyone else around here, Charlotte liked to think she was connected to the old Indian ways.
She blinked.
“Morning,” he said.
She brightened when she saw the coffee and held the mug in both hands like a little kid. “That’s a nice thing to wake up to.”
“It’s about all I can do. I don’t have much else.”
“Cigarettes and coffee, that’s all I need.”
Last night, she’d shown up around two a.m., doped up and wanting to get laid, still wearing her Walmart vest. Now she looked like she wasn’t exactly sure how she’d ended up here.
“What time is it?”
“Almost eleven.”
“Let’s spend the day in bed.”
“Can’t. I’m going to my grandma’s for dinner.”
“Saturday dinner?”
“Nobody could go tomorrow. Anyway, it’s nothing big. It’s just that my cousin’s gonna be there. You want to come?”
Charlotte just looked at him. “Please. I’ve heard enough about Preacher Clyde Freeman to know a girl like me isn’t welcome.”
“
Oh, he don’t say much now. He’s too far gone for that.”
But she said that she was going to call in to work instead, to see if she could pick up any extra hours. “I been fighting them tooth and nail to get twenty hours a week. Terry Rose is talking to them for me.”
“He’s got that much pull?”
She looked at Cole like she’d just remembered something.
“What?”
“Last night Terry was asking where he could score. I told him you could hook him up.”
“What did you tell him that for?”
“Why not? That’s what you do.”
“You don’t need to be telling everybody.”
“It’s just Terry Rose.”
“I ain’t selling to him.”
“Why not?”
“I just ain’t.”
“I’d like to know what happened between you two.”
“Nothing happened. I just don’t trust him, that’s all. I’m not selling him anything.”
“Okay, whatever.”
“Is that who you got high with last night?”
“Jealous?” She stared at him, smoke rising around her face, the sheets bunched up around her legs. Her bare breasts were small and pink.
“I just don’t want to see you get hooked,” he said, walking off to the shower.
He stood for a few seconds under the icy spray and then adjusted the knobs until the water steamed. He did not like the idea of Charlotte getting high with Terry Rose. He’d thought that Terry was living the straight life, with wife and kid. But what did he know? He still couldn’t even believe that Terry was back. One time, when they were sixteen or seventeen, they’d gone to a party in the woods, and Charlotte was there, hanging on to Terry, laughing loudly at his jokes. Cole was quiet, watching; Terry would tell a girl anything she wanted to hear. The next morning, he called to say that Charlotte Carson was a sweet piece of ass. He said maybe Cole could get with her next, he’d set them up. Or maybe they could take her together. But like most things with Terry, it was all talk. Back then, Charlotte had never even looked Cole’s way.
After he slipped on jeans and a T-shirt, Cole made the bed with the sheets pulled tight, hospital corners, the way he did at the old folks’ home. He straightened his room and tossed yesterday’s clothes into the laundry basket. Then he walked through the trailer, drying his head with a towel. None of his relationships ever lasted more than a few weeks, and he’d never expected this one to.
The Evening Hour Page 3