She looked up. “I asked around. I didn’t know where else to go, Cole.”
She began to cry. She leaned against him and felt so small, like there was nothing at all inside her. He wondered what his grandmother had thought when she opened the door to find this orphaned-looking woman standing there. She was pale and skinny, wearing a flimsy hippie dress and raggedy cardigan. Greasy hair, heavy eyes. But his grandmother had invited her inside; that was what mattered. He could hear her now in the kitchen, the clattering of pots and pans.
“It’s gonna be all right,” he said. “It’s gonna be all right.”
He combed his fingers through her wild hair, no longer bleached, and when she lifted her head, his shirt collar was wet with her tears.
“It’s Terry Rose,” she said. “He’s gone crazy.”
He turned on the TV so that his grandmother would not hear them. “What happened?”
She talked so fast that a few times he stopped her and asked her to slow down. She told him that Terry had gotten involved in a bad crowd, that he’d been running drugs and owed money. He’d also been cooking up his own crank in an empty trailer; he’d stolen a bunch of ingredients from Walmart, right before he was fired. Rubbing alcohol, match boxes, iodine, cold medicine, Coleman’s fuel, Red Devil lye.
“But he was using more than he sold, and he wasn’t very good at cooking. He was getting all paranoid. Thinking the cops and other dealers were after him.”
“What about Kathy?”
“His wife?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. She left a couple of times, but he begged her to come back. He’d clean up for a few days, stop seeing me. But he couldn’t stay away.”
She asked for another cigarette. Her fingertips were stained yellow with nicotine. He handed her the pack, and she shook one out. It was strange to see her in this room, with its pale green carpeting and beige walls, the worn and unfamiliar furniture, yet everything neat and orderly, his grandmother’s touch.
“Then what?” Cole asked.
A couple of days ago, she said, they decided to go clean. They were tired and worn out, and wanted their lives back. They locked themselves up in the trailer where they’d been cooking the meth, and at some point, Charlotte finally fell into a deep sleep. When she woke up, Terry was gone. She felt sick and wasted and tired, and she searched the trailer, but there was nothing left, no scraps to snort or smoke. So she hitched a ride over to Terry Rose’s. She’d never been there before. It was a nice two-story, the sort of house that belonged to a family, to people who lived good lives. She rang the doorbell again and again, screaming his name, until he came flying down the stairs. She could see his wife beyond him, wide-eyed, scared, but Terry slammed the door behind him. He grabbed Charlotte and dragged her around to the side of the house and asked what in the hell she thought she was doing.
“I said I’d tell his wife everything. I said I’d go to the cops. I didn’t know what I was saying. I just wanted him to come back.” As soon as the words had left her mouth, Terry pushed her up against the house and held her there by her neck and told her he would kill her. If she ever said anything about him to anyone, he would find her and kill her. She looked at Cole helplessly. “He’ll do it. He’ll kill me.”
“He won’t kill you. He wouldn’t hurt you.”
“You don’t know him. He’s changed. He’s turned mean.”
“I’ve known him a long time. He’d never kill anybody.”
She rubbed her eyes like she was seeing double. “I’m just so tired, Cole, I’m so tired, I don’t know what to do.”
He put an afghan over her and stroked her hair until she fell asleep, then he went into the kitchen where his grandmother was making sandwiches.
“That girl needs some meat on her bones.” She dipped a butter knife into a jar of mayonnaise. “You think she’d like a glass of milk?”
“Maybe.”
She looked at him. “It’s drugs, ain’t it?”
He nodded.
“What’s she on?”
“Speed.”
“You don’t do that, do you?”
He told her that he did not.
“Is she going to be all right?”
“I don’t know.”
He sat at the table and she fixed him a plate with a sandwich, chips, and baked beans. She sat across from him. She was nervous, but wanted to talk.
“Did you hear about Blue Tiller?” she asked. “This morning I went out to get the mail and Betty Colbert was out on her porch and she said that Blue’s missing. Nobody knows where she went to.”
“Is that right?”
“They want people to keep a lookout for her.” She paused. “I don’t imagine they’ll find her.”
“You don’t?”
“Blue’s been around a long time. They won’t stop her, no sir.”
Last night still seemed like a dream, the mountain man, Blue’s hand on his face, but now his grandmother was telling him that it was real. She was right, they’d never find her. He sat there with his grandmother for a while. He wondered how much she knew about what he did; she was not stupid. She counted on the money that he brought in.
After Charlotte woke up, he brought her the plate his grandmother had fixed and a glass of milk. She thanked him, but could not eat or drink. “I got to get out of here.”
“You need a ride?”
“Yeah. I wrecked my car a while ago.”
“You want me to take you home?”
“My brothers kicked me out.”
“You could stay here.”
“No, I got to go. I mean, I need to leave Dove Creek.”
He wondered if she’d loved Terry Rose, but it was not a question he could ask. He told her he would help her. She held the glass of milk in her hands like a kid, but did not drink from it. She talked about going clean. She thought she could do it. She’d been so close.
When they decided to go, his grandmother walked them to the door.
“Thank you,” Charlotte told her, “thank you so much.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble, honey. You take care now.”
Cole drove Charlotte to Pineyville and waited for her in his pickup while she ran into the brothers’ trailer, where she still had some of her things. When she came back, she was carrying a bulging backpack.
“Anybody you need to say good-bye to?”
She shook her head. “There’s no one.”
He drove her to the bus station in Zion. On the way, she talked more about Terry Rose, how if it was true that the cops were onto him, he would sell all of them down the river the first chance he got. “You know he sent those boys in to beat up Reese Campbell,” she said. “He owed Everett, and he told him that Reese was the one, that he owed a lot more than he did. He was behind it.”
“I know it.”
“He’s gonna try to get to you. He’ll want something from you. You gotta be careful.”
“He won’t mess with me.”
“He ain’t the same boy you knew in high school,” she warned.
Cole parked at the bus station and handed her an envelope and told her not to open it until she was inside. She thanked him. There were tears in her eyes.
“Be careful,” he said.
“You too.”
She leaned over and kissed him, and he grabbed her, held on to her for a few seconds, desperately. Then he let go. The man at the pawn shop had been right all along, it was cash going to a junkie. He hoped she wouldn’t spend all of it on drugs, that she’d at least get to wherever it was she was going. He did not stay to watch her board the bus or to find out where she was headed.
There were still a couple more of his suppliers to do business with. First, he drove up to Clay’s Branch, to see if Leona’s mail order had come in. The place looked as pretty as always. Towering sycamores, bone-white paper birch trees. The blooms of fire pink and wild blue phlox shone like pieces of colored glass from the roadside. It reminded him of home, the way it used to look. He used to walk in the woods beside his
grandfather. Sometimes it was easy between them.
There were two pickups parked out front, loaded up with Leona’s belongings. Cole thought about turning back, but then cut the engine. Sunlight turned the tops of the trees gold, like they were blooming with hundreds of pears.
“What do you want?”
A man stood in the doorway, glaring at Cole. He looked to be in his late-forties, maybe older. His gut spilled over his waist, and his muscle T and jeans were dirty, like he’d been crawling around in the mud.
“We said we’d have everything out by tomorrow. Can’t you wait a goddamn day?”
“I just came to see Leona.”
“You ain’t with Heritage?”
“Nah, I’m a friend.”
The man walked into the yard, regarding him warily. “A friend of my mom’s?”
“My grandma is friends with her. Dorothy Freeman. I just came to check on her.”
He squinted, then seemed to relax. He took off his cap, wiped the sweat from his brow. “We got her moved into a nice little trailer down in Stillwell. We took her this morning.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. My sister’s staying with her for a few days.” He spit a glob of tobacco. “It’s hard for her to give up this place, but there ain’t nothing we can do. They’re gonna start blasting and everything else. She can’t stay here.”
The money would probably go to the kids, Cole thought. Leona didn’t want it.
“You want me to tell her you stopped by?”
“Nah, it’s all right.” He wondered what had happened to the mail-order prescriptions, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
“Tell your grandma she can visit her anytime at her new home. She’d like that.”
He remembered Leona once saying that she wished she was strong enough to take a walk through the woods. Cole should have taken her. He could have helped her. Let her lean on him. Held on to her arm and led her to the trees. Instead he had just given her money and pocketed her medicine. That was what he did best.
There was just one last old person to see, and then he would be finished. For good. Glassy-eyed geese and plastic rabbits stared at him as he walked up the pathway. Harley McClain came to the door fanning a bundle of Popsicle sticks in his hand.
“Come on in, I got something to show you.”
Cole followed him into the living room and looked around at all the houses and churches. “You’ve been busy.”
“You know what they say, idle hands are the devil’s tools.”
“When I saw you last month, you said you were stuck.”
“Well, I was. I was getting a little bit discouraged on it,” he admitted. “But then one morning I woke up and it was like I was filled with all this inspiration. I got to work right away, and I tell you, I haven’t been able to stop.” He did seem more energetic. His eyes were dilated, cheeks ruddy.
“Your doctor got you on something new?”
“Oh yeah. I can’t recall.” He sorted through a stack of papers, handed them to Cole. He read over them and learned that the old man was now on a high dosage of Zoloft.
Harley gave Cole a paper sack holding bottles of Ambien, Oxy, and Xanax.
“You’ll be all right without the pain medicine?”
“Oh, I ain’t in any pain.” He grinned. “You remember that cathedral I was building?”
“Yeah.”
“I finished it.”
“Well, let’s see.”
He led Cole into a back room. It was bare except for a twin bed and the biggest, most elaborately designed Popsicle building that Harley had ever made. It was probably four feet around, with spires and windows and staircases, and stood as high as Cole’s waist.
“Jesus, Harley. You ought to enter that in some kind of contest.”
He was beaming. He told Cole that he hadn’t felt this happy in a long time. He had so many ideas, he told him. Castles, skyscrapers. He wanted to build cities. Maybe an entire world.
“Hell, I believe you can do it, Harley.”
“I feel like a new man,” he said.
On the way out, Cole drove past the stripped sites and the orange-tinted creek that was littered with an old washer and dryer, a rotting mattress. Devil’s Pike had been spared from the spill, but it didn’t much matter. The land around here had already been ruined years ago. Harley was living in the middle of this mess and he would always live here, among his little houses and churches and figurines; he would go on pretending everything was fine in his pretty little made-up world. Maybe that was the easiest way to live, but Cole did not think he could do that anymore.
The next day he went over to Reese’s. He remembered the dread he used to feel every time he came over here, but it wasn’t like that anymore. He knocked, and after a minute, Reese peeked through the living room window, then swung open the door.
“What’s this?” Cole took in the emptiness of the room. “Where is everything?”
“Sold it, gave away what I couldn’t sell. Even the crippled cat. Gave it to some neighbor kid.”
There were still a couple of folding chairs, a dented boombox, and a plastic milk crate that held an ashtray and the King James. Two duffel bags sat by the door. The floor was dusty; on the walls were bright squares where pictures had once hung.
“Pretty soon nobody’s gonna be left in the whole goddamn state,” Cole said.
“You’re staying, ain’t you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.”
They sat in the folding chairs, and Cole looked Reese over. He thought he looked better than he had ever seen him look. He was sober and his face was full, his skin had color. He wore jeans, a white T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he was barefoot, as usual. He’d cut his hair and it stuck up in little spikes, made him look younger. The bruises on his face had faded, but he was still scarred, he’d always be scarred.
“You sold the house?”
“Yeah. Didn’t get much for it, property value’s gone down so much. But Ruthie has a lot of antiques, and I’m taking them with me. They’ll sell for more somewhere else. Everett and those fuckers were so dumb, they stole the shit that wasn’t worth anything, left the antiques behind.”
“Where you going?”
“Floridy. Hot weather, the beach. Gonna take Ruthie’s ashes and let them loose in the ocean.” He sighed. “She never went there, but I know she’d like it. You ever been?”
Cole shook his head. “I used to think about it a lot.”
“It ain’t for everybody. But I got a cousin down there. He’s the religious type.”
“So it’s true,” Cole said.
Reese’s eyes were bright. “My life is changed, buddy. It’s like now I can see. I’ve been woken up.”
“Was it Cutter?”
“Sure, he helped. He helped me quit drugs and get all the demons out.”
There was a long pause, then Cole said, “You ain’t given up smoking though.”
“No, not yet.”
“And drink?”
Reese grinned. “I can’t do it all at once. I ain’t too good with the cussing neither.”
“Just don’t start preaching at me. I can’t stand it.”
“Well, I’ve done a lot of sinning.”
“No testimony either.”
Reese laughed. “I’m gonna miss you, son.”
Cole reached for another cigarette. He felt rattled. He didn’t know what else to say to Reese. Charlotte’s words, He’ll sell us all down the river, came back to him and he asked Reese if he’d seen Terry, and Reese said, “I’m done with him.” Reese had also heard the talk.
“I gotta get out of town,” he said. “Before the pigs bust me.”
“You got anything on you?”
He hesitated. “I better not lie no more, now that I’m born again, right?” He admitted that he had a little bit of speed for the drive, the last thing he ever bought from Terry Rose. “But this is it.”
“I could have given you
something,” Cole said. “You shouldn’t buy from him, after what he did.”
“It wasn’t Terry that beat me up, he didn’t have the balls for that. Anyway, he sold it to me for real cheap.”
“He still cooking?”
“Nah, I don’t think he did that for very long. Wasn’t any good at it. Word is he’s been skimming from Everett. He’s desperate. Fucking desperate.” He raised his eyebrows. “He’s looking for you.”
“For me?”
“Yeah, I told him I hadn’t seen you in a long time. Told him I’d heard you was getting out of the business.”
“What’s he want with me?”
“I don’t know, but he wants something. Terry Rose always wants something.” Reese sighed, stretched out his long legs. “Bet you never thought this could happen to me, old Reese getting saved.”
“I never gave it too much thought.”
“I wish Ruthie was still alive. I wish she could see me now.”
But Cole recalled Ruthie with her wigs and nail polish; she never would have tolerated Reese getting religion.
“Brothers used to talk about Jesus when I was in the pen. Somebody or another was always preaching. But they never reached me. I was too hard, too lost.”
“What did it this time?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I’ll tell you, when I went to church and heard that Cutter boy speak, something changed.” He pointed to the Bible. “I don’t understand most of it, but I’m trying. You get it though, don’t you? I bet you could tell me a lot of what’s in there.”
“That’s not with me anymore.”
He wasn’t exactly surprised about Reese finding God. Hadn’t he witnessed his grandfather convert the most broken-down sinner? But when Reese started to tell him more, Cole stopped him. “I told you not to start preaching. Anyway, I got to be going.”
“I just feel like things are going to be good, like I got a new start.” He paused. “I’ve thought about all the bad things I’ve done, and I just don’t want it anymore. Luke said it’s about letting go. I might still feel the desire, but let it go.” His eyes were hopeful. “I ain’t gonna burn. I ain’t gonna be that way no more.”
Cole sighed with disgust. “You know, I don’t think God much cares.”
The Evening Hour Page 26