“I’d hate to think it was any of you. Whoever it is, you better be prepared to lose your job, you better be prepared to go to jail, just like that goddamn pillhead.”
They filed out of the room; nobody spoke. Cole picked up a stack of charts and tried to look busy. He felt like people were looking at him, but he wasn’t afraid. He felt protected by the old people. They knew things, the old people. Like Mabel Johnson. Even the ones who babbled senselessly, or who screamed at him, or who threw things, hating their own bodies and fearing death. When they looked at him, they saw something deeper.
For the rest of the day, as he checked on patients, he also rummaged through drawers. This might be his last shot. He slipped fifty dollars in his shoe, filched a half-empty bottle of Vicodin. His hands were shaking and he almost returned all of it. But he didn’t. He didn’t return anything.
After his shift ended, he went out to his truck and checked his phone for messages. There were four calls from Reese, one from Lacy asking him to pick up a six-pack on his way over, and a short, barely audible message from Charlotte Carson. He had not heard from her since the night he saw her with Terry Rose. The sound of her voice startled him, and he felt a sudden rush of longing. He called her back and it rang eight times. No answer. He hung up, called Lacy. She’d rented a movie for them, she told him, and Sara Jean was at her sister’s.
“I’m running late,” he said. “I’ll be there soon.”
At Reese’s two pickups were parked in the driveway, the house blazing with light. Cole sat in his truck, the vents kicking out hot air on his face, and watched the house for a while, but nobody went in or out. Now that Ruthie was gone, her prescriptions would be cut off. Maybe Reese didn’t care; maybe now he only wanted crank. But he must have needed something, to call so many times. Something felt wrong. Cole tried to call Charlotte again, but now he wasn’t getting any service. He turned his truck around. There was a pay phone at the Exxon. He pulled into the parking lot and grabbed a handful of quarters from the collection of change that was piled up in one of the cup-holders. It was blustery and cold, the wind smacking against him. Six rings, then Charlotte picked up.
“God, I’m so glad you called.”
“What’s going on?”
“Cole, I need to borrow a little. I’ll pay you back, I promise.”
“Ask Terry Rose.”
“That’s who it’s for.” The connection was not good. Charlotte talked fast, her words speedy, wild. Cole only heard bits of what she said. He asked her to repeat herself.
“It ain’t for me, it’s for Terry. He’s afraid to ask you, Cole, but he’s in trouble.”
Cole was shivering, the phone freezing in his hand. “There’s nothing I can do.”
“I’m afraid he’s gonna do something stupid. He owes people, people owe him.”
“Well, then he should tell them to pay up.”
“That guy, you know the one.”
“Who?”
“That guy, that fag.”
“Reese.”
“He owes Terry. He owes him.”
“I was just about to head over there. Look, I’ll talk to him. He’s been upset, you know, Ruthie and all. He’ll pay up.”
“No, don’t go over there now.”
“Why not?”
The operator cut in, and Cole dropped in more change. “There’s something you ain’t telling me,” he said. “You better tell me.”
But she jumped around with her talk, confessing how nervous she was and how she should have gone to New York like she said, until after a while she wasn’t making any sense and he’d run out of quarters and the wind was biting his face. He said he had to go, and she began to cry, and though he’d never heard her cry before, he knew she was not crying out of sorrow but that she was strung out and had hit some wall of paranoia, and he gently set the phone on the cradle and zipped up his jacket and got in his truck. He should just drive up the mountain, where Lacy was waiting for him. There would be no trouble. Movie, beer, sex. It was right there in front of him, a shining light.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Reese said. “Goddamn, I was wondering when I’d get to see your face.”
“Here I am.”
“Check you out, doctor.”
Cole entered the smoky room, nodding to the others. He felt stupid and conspicuous in his scrubs, and wished he’d brought along a change of clothes. Three tough-looking country boys and a woman who had the gaunt, collapsed face of a speed freak were passing around a bottle of Rebel Yell. An old Bon Jovi song, “Wanted Dead or Alive,” was playing on the stereo, rock stars who wanted to be cowboys. Reese sat in the rocking chair, cigarette in hand, eyes heavy. He wore jeans and a western shirt with pearl snaps and a cowboy hat. He was barefoot, wiggling his toes.
Cole patted his shoulder. “How are you, man?”
“I told you, you should have done it. You should have helped me out, helped Ruthie. It was bad, man. Real bad.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s over now. Fucking over.” He sighed. “Go grab yourself a beer.”
Cole navigated his way through the mess of the kitchen. Empty liquor bottles and beer cans sprouted from the counters like kudzu. The refrigerator was bare except for a nearly empty bottle of ketchup and a case of Miller. He wondered when Reese had last eaten. A bitten-into piece of toast on a saucer, a box of saltines. How many kitchens had he been in over the last year that were not stocked? Homes that were not heated. The dark and cold and empty.
He sat next to Reese and lifted the beer to his mouth and listened without interest to the talk; the two younger men, his age, were arguing about some girl they knew, if she lived around here or not, until the third man, who looked old enough to be their father, with a receding hairline and pale blue eyes, told them to shut the fuck up. The woman sat on his lap, and his hand twitched nervously on her knee.
“Settle down there, Everett,” Reese said, grinning. “This is Everett,” he said to Cole. “That’s Laura. And that’s Tommy and Wes. This here is Cole.”
“You from Dove Creek?” Everett said.
“Yeah. Up at Rockcamp.”
“He’s all right,” Reese said. “Don’t worry about old Cole.”
Everett stared at him intently, then reached into his jacket and took out a small bag of crank. He used a razor blade to cut up the lines on an old National Geographic. When Cole passed, Everett said, “I thought you said he was cool.”
“He is. He’s cool, man.”
Everett looked at Cole suspiciously, then snorted a line. There was nothing worse than hanging out with crankheads. Paranoid and temperamental and stupid. They’d get some crazy idea in their head, and you couldn’t convince them otherwise. Cole wished he’d never walked through that door. The woman wanted to know why he was wearing a doctor uniform. When he told her, they all began to laugh. Cole took a long pull on his beer. The one named Tommy, with speedbumps all over his face, said he was sick of this music, and he searched through the pile of CDs. “All your shit sucks,” he said, then finally decided on Lynyrd Skynyrd. “Honky-tonk.”
“Turn it up,” said Wes, a squat, chunky guy sporting a classic mullet. Tommy hit the volume and Laura yelled, “Fuck yeah.”
Reese turned to Cole. “I need a new direction in my life.”
“I hear you.”
“I never knew how much of my time I spent taking care of Ruthie. Now there’s all this extra time to kill. I might take off, go somewhere else.”
“Where to?”
“Down south, maybe. Somewhere new. Start over. Don’t you ever just want to start over?”
“I don’t know if I’d know how to.”
“I’m sick of spending my time with fuckers like this,” Reese said, getting loud. “Stupid fucking rednecks.”
“Take it easy,” Cole muttered.
But they heard and they glared at Reese, like they’d been waiting for this. “Listen, you piece of shit,” said Everett. “Let’s get this taken care of.”
“I already told you I ain’t got it. Terry said he’d give me another day. I’m good for it.”
“But Terry owes me. And guess what? I don’t want to wait another day.” Everett nudged Laura, and she sighed and climbed off his lap. When he stood up, Cole saw that he was much bigger than he’d thought. He was over six foot, his arms bundled with muscle. “Terry Rose should be doing this himself, but he’s a pussy,” Everett said.
“That’s the truth,” Reese agreed. He went over to the stereo and took out the Lynyrd Skynyrd and put in some kind of techno music that pounded the walls. Then he began to dance, shaking his hips and fluttering his hands.
“Reese,” Cole said.
“How about a little dance?” he asked in a falsetto.
When Reese touched Everett’s arm, Everett swung and busted his nose, blood spraying everywhere. Cole jumped up, but the other two grabbed him.
“I ain’t got it,” Reese whined in a tone that was not unlike the one that Jody Hampton used. Cole had never seen him act like this, his toughness gone, nothing but a junkie.
Wes and Tommy held on to Cole, their fingers digging into his arms, and he stood as still as he could, watching Laura prance around, fingering Ruthie’s candy dishes and glass figurines. “What a bunch of shit,” she said with disgust.
“Take the stereo,” Reese said. “The TV. Whatever.”
“I want the goddamn money.” Everett looked over at Cole and suddenly seemed to remember that they were not alone. “What the hell are you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
“You should’ve sent him out of here before you started all this,” Wes said, his voice right at Cole’s ear, tickling.
“Shut up,” Everett yelled. Everyone was quiet but the techno music grew faster, wilder, the synthesizer beats like little flashes of light, a man singing “oh yeah” over and over.
“Cole, help me out,” Reese said.
“What?”
“Loan me the money.”
Everett, as if suddenly bored, turned to his crew. “Let’s trash this place.”
“Fuck yeah.”
They descended on it like a storm, hurling Ruthie’s dishes, overturning furniture. They knocked over the stereo and the music stopped. This was Cole’s chance to run like hell, but he just stood there, watching.
“Jesus, stop it,” Reese said.
Then Cole saw the pistol. It was a .45. Everett pulled it from his waistband. “You think this is some kind of game, you fucking faggot?”
The gun seemed to bring Reese back to who he was, and instead of acting whiny and scared, he glared at Everett, unafraid even as blood gushed from his smashed nose. Cole breathed deeply, trying to gain control over his tongue, his mouth, his words.
“H-h-how—”
Everett turned the gun on him.
“How much does he owe?” he managed to ask.
He told him. “You got that?”
“I can get it.”
“Now.”
“I got it. I got most of it.”
Everett slowly lowered the gun. “If you’re lying, I’ll kill you.”
“I ain’t lying.”
Everett sent Tommy to follow Cole out to his truck and he unlocked the glove compartment and blocked it from Tommy’s view. He was too stupid to look. There sat the revolver. Unloaded. Cole left it and took out a roll of bills.
They went back in, and he handed Everett the money. “It’s all I got.”
“Where’s the rest?”
“That’s it.”
Everett looked at Reese. “You’re lucky, motherfucker.”
Tommy and Wes hoisted the TV, while Laura ran around taking random items. They smashed up and knocked over whatever else they put their hands on, plates, glasses, chairs. Everett held the gun on Reese, who did not look away, and Cole stood still and wished for all of this to end. Then, as suddenly as it started, it was over. They stood in the midst of the destruction and looked around them and Everett slid the gun back in his waistband.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Reese mumbled something.
“What?”
“I said, now you can all go home and suck each other’s dicks.”
Everett’s gigantic fist shot out like a spring and cracked Reese’s head back, but Reese didn’t go down. He lunged like a wild dog, socking Everett in the eye. When Everett stumbled backward, Reese went for the gun, but the other two grabbed on to him. It was all happening so fast. Cole, hating Reese and hating all of them, pushed his way in and tried to tear Tommy off of Reese.
“You got the money, you got what you came for, just go,” he said.
But now he was caught in the mix of limbs. He landed one wild punch, then a pair of hands grabbed him and threw him against the wall. Everett, heaving like a bull, stood inches from his face. Reese had been wrestled to the floor by Tommy and Wes.
Everett pulled the gun out and Cole stared into the barrel and saw only darkness. “You queer too? You a faggot, a cocksucker?”
“No,” Cole said, feeling himself tremble. He closed his eyes. Trying to stop his shaking. His voice was locked up, his tongue felt torn. Everything in him was cold. When he opened his eyes, the gun was still pointed at him. “No,” he said again. “No I ain’t.”
His voice was loud but sounded like it was coming from far away.
“Everett, come on.” It was the woman, standing in the doorway. “Let him go.”
The gun hovered in front of Cole’s eyes. He heard Reese’s muffled curses, saw him on the floor. Saw the skinny woman, like some apparition in the doorway. Saw Everett’s empty eyes, the cords of his neck, a vein in his brow popping out.
He lowered the revolver. “Get the fuck out of here or you’re gonna get hurt.”
Cole just stood there for a second, hearing the loudness of his own breath. Then he looked again at Reese, bleeding, his arms pinned up behind him. He started to take a step toward him, and Everett got in his face.
“Are you stupid? This is your last chance, asshole.”
Now Cole felt like everything was moving in slow motion. He went toward the open door. Toward the cold air. He looked at Reese and didn’t know what to do. I can’t save you. The thought filled him, repeated itself in his mind, calmed him. There was nothing he could do. He slowly backed out of the house. The woman was now outside, slumped on the porch swing, smoking a cigarette. Cole heard shouts, fists. He knew that the neighbors must have heard also but their lights were off; nobody would report this, nobody would help. Reese yelled his name, but Cole kept going.
“Hey,” the woman called after him.
“What?”
“They won’t kill him or nothing. They’re just cranked out.”
He didn’t know what to do. He found himself in his truck, trying to start the engine, still shaking. He had a gun, but no bullets. Stupid. He didn’t know where he was going. Felt like a pussy. What could he do? He couldn’t call the cops. He drove around aimlessly, then pulled over at an old cemetery where high-schoolers liked to party. He zipped up his jacket and cupped his hands over his freezing ears, but he could still hear Reese calling for him. The night was dark, no stars, but the sliver of moon reflected a faint light on the leaf-covered ground. Beer cans, plastic flowers, crosses. He felt panicked and confused and angry. He walked over the dead and around the headstones that sprouted from the ground like white and gleaming stumps. He passed by a statue of an angel with folded wings, then went up a little slope to where some of the graves dated back to the 1800s. He couldn’t save him, he thought, couldn’t even save himself. He sat on the cold ground, leaning against a worn and shoddy-looking headstone, and thought about the bones all around him and underneath him turning to dust.
He finally started to calm down. Now he could feel the ache in his knuckles from the punch he threw, the tenderness of his jaw where someone had clocked him. He felt calmer. Not scared, just sickened. Jesus. He couldn’t just sit here. He got up and hurried back to his truck. Dread spreading throu
gh him as he turned onto Reese’s street. The trucks were gone, the house dark. Cole gently pushed open the door, hesitating. The three-legged cat brushed against him. He flipped the light switch. Broken glass and overturned chairs and splattered blood. He heard a groan.
“Reese?” he said.
He found him in the kitchen, crumpled on the linoleum, near a pan of spilled cat food. A long trail of blood was smeared across the floor from where he’d been dragging himself. Cole turned him over and his face was unrecognizable, blood, flaps of skin, bone. He ripped open Reese’s shirt but didn’t see a bullet wound; all of the blood was coming from his face. He tried to lift him, and Reese screamed. “My ribs,” he said, clutching onto Cole. Then, “No hospitals, man.” Cole knew the drill. No cops, no doctors.
He’d been beaten to a pulp, but was still conscious and breathing, and after he took a deep breath, he put his arm around Cole’s neck. Cole half dragged him, half carried him into the living room. He moved the broken things from the sofa, then lay Reese down. For the next hour, he wiped blood from his face. He went over to Ruthie’s side of the house and searched through over-the-counter and expired pills. Found iodine and peroxide, a couple of Ace bandages. He wrapped ice in a washcloth and placed it on Reese’s face, and gave him whiskey and Oxy for the pain. As Reese bit down on the rolled-up National Geographic where Everett had cut the speed, Cole struggled to remove his bloody cowboy shirt. Naked chest, tattoos, dark matted hair. Queasy, Cole wrapped the bandage around him and taped him as best he could. When he was through he took the magazine out of his mouth and Reese let out a long sigh, then asked for a cigarette.
“You’re gonna get yourself killed,” Cole told him.
“How come you left me?”
Cole fumbled with the lighter. Not looking at Reese, he said, “I had to. He had a gun.”
“We could have taken them.”
“He had a gun,” he repeated. He finally got the cigarette lit and transferred it to Reese’s bloody mouth.
The Evening Hour Page 18