by Hank Early
Was she crying?
“Oh,” she said. “I’ve spent the last year praying for you every day. I have never felt such conviction about anything in my life than I have about the way our whole community treated you.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Really. I’m here because … well, are you interested in making it up to me?”
“Absolutely.”
“Wait here.”
* * *
An hour later, Stephanie had made the necessary arrangements to ensure that Susan and the kids could stay in one of the preschool rooms. She called the current minister, a man named Art Stebbins, who I gathered had been hired as much due to his outsider status as his theology. Stebbins said he’d bring by some cots and blankets when he came up later in the day, and some food too.
The only problem was Rufus. I’d purposefully told him to wait in the car because Rufus carried all the same baggage I did without the Marcus name to help ease the judgment. And let’s be honest. Rufus knew how to piss people off, especially the unenlightened, like he would assume these people were.
“I’ve got one more favor to ask,” I said.
“Okay. Name it.”
“There’s a blind man I know…”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah, he needs a place to stay too.”
She raised an eyebrow. “His name wouldn’t happen to be Rufus, would it?”
“Yeah. You remember him?”
“How could I forget? He’s not the kind of man to keep his nose out of anything. Do you know he was the only person who showed up to protest the new wing we built under Brother Stebbins? Oh no, I don’t think that is going to fly with our members.”
“Here’s the thing, Stephanie. The members don’t have to know. What if I promise Rufus will behave? That he’ll keep a low profile?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“It can be our secret. No need to even tell the pastor.”
“I don’t understand why he has to come too. He should be able to take care of himself.”
“He’s blind. But that’s not the reason I want him to come. He can take care of himself. I want him to be here to help Susan take care of the kids.”
Susan, who’d been very quiet through all of this, cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to wonder about a church that picks and chooses who it helps. I don’t remember Jesus refusing the leper because he wasn’t good enough.”
Susan had a kind of sternness that seemed to be the province of teachers and librarians. When she made a point, she made it clearly and firmly, and it was very difficult to argue with. Stephanie shrugged. “Fine, but Brother Stebbins can’t find out.”
38
Rufus didn’t like it very much when I told him where we were. He liked it even less when I told him he needed to be invisible and most of all keep his mouth shut. But in the end, Rufus knew it wasn’t about him. It was about those two kids and Susan. So, he went inside begrudgingly, leaving me with Susan’s car and the rest of the afternoon to look for Mary.
I drove back to my house and charged my phone while I fed Goose and made myself a large meal. I stared at the whiskey for a very long time before the beep from my phone finally broke my trance. I looked at my phone and saw I had eleven messages. Ten of them were from Rufus or Susan from the night before.
The other one was from the sheriff’s office.
I listened to the voicemail, expecting to hear something about the warehouse or even the fight in the bathroom with Jeb Walsh.
“Earl, this is Sheriff Patterson. Hell. I don’t know where to start exactly. First off, you need to turn yourself in for whatever that shit was last night. We’ve got your truck at the scene of a break-in at the old warehouse on Summer Mountain. I’ve showed all the patience I can with you. Go ahead and just turn yourself in, and I’ll talk to the DA about making it easy on you. Nothing I’ll be able to do for Ronnie Thrash, though. His antics caused one of my deputies to tear a damn ligament chasing him down the mountain. But—shit—forget that. It’s all minor compared to what I’m about to tell you.”
He was silent for a moment, and I panicked, thinking my voicemail had become too full and cut him off. But then his voice came back.
“Johnny is gone. We found his cell empty yesterday afternoon.” Another pause. “We don’t know how he got out. The deputy on duty stepped away from her post for a few minutes, and we think that’s when it happened. But that ain’t even the real news.”
Another pause. I felt my hand tightening around the phone.
“The real news is what one of my deputies found over near the cornfield. It was a human skull. Well, it was a head, but a lot of the skull was exposed. Shit, it looked like the face had been ripped clean off. It’s going to be a bit before forensics can get back to us, but I have to tell you it look—”
The phone beeped and a female voice said, “End of messages.”
I dropped my phone and tried to breathe.
I’d never had a panic attack in my life until the night Mary went missing. This was my second one. I couldn’t breathe. No matter how hard I tried.
I sat down at my kitchen table and put my face in my hands. I tried to be very still. I fell into sleep quickly, and the dream came in brilliant flashing images, like a film played against the back of my eyelids.
When I woke up again, I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but my breathing was normal. I sat there, swimming in the broken images of the dream, trying to recall the moments that had made me sweat and shake and gnash my teeth just moments earlier.
The train was coming in the dream, the sound of it shaking the whole dark world. I looked up and saw the moon, full and bright in the sky. I was in the cornfield, surrounded by the tall stalks. Corn silk blew down like ragged threads from some tantalizing thought I could not quite grasp. The train trestle appeared, and I ran toward it, as if it were salvation, but like so many of the things that we expect to save us, I knew it was really the thing that would kill me. I kept running toward it anyway.
And then the train was coming at me so fast and hard that I had no choice but to jump. As I fell, I saw Mary in the water below, waiting to catch me.
* * *
When I got moving again, I drove to the hardware store in Riley and bought an exacto knife and some superglue. Back out at the Accord, I took the clipboard, turned it over, and went to work scraping the yellow sticker with the skull and axe handles off the back. It was an arduous task that required extreme patience. I needed to peel off the thin top layer of the sticker while keeping it intact. After thirty minutes, carefully chipping away at it with the exacto knife, I had it off with only a minor tear.
I went to the front of the car and found a clean spot on the Accord’s windshield on the passenger’s side. I squeezed out a tiny amount of superglue and then pressed the thin sticker onto it. I held it in place for nearly five minutes without moving. When I let go, the sticker seemed firmly in place, though the real test would be when I drove.
I waited for another hour, as the sun set, before cranking up the Accord and heading for Summer Mountain and Frank Bentley’s house.
* * *
I wasn’t too familiar with Summer Mountain. Other than the trip I’d made the night before with Ronnie, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever been here before. I’d certainly never been inside Sommerville Chase before. Hell, nothing like that even existed when I’d been a kid, but things were definitely changing.
When I’d come up in these mountains over thirty years ago, the racism and misogyny had had as much to do with ignorance and poor education as it had with pure hatred. Sure, it was still vile, and men like my father who perpetuated it and capitalized on it were beyond reprehensible. Yet, what seemed to be happening now with Jeb Walsh—and all the people who put these yellow Skull Keep stickers on their vehicles—felt meaner, more despicable somehow, as if it were an extension—or maybe a better word was a symptom—of the corrosion of goodwill and basic decency that seemed to be pervading so many
parts of our country.
Of course, there were some who would always follow a persuasive leader, but I couldn’t help but draw a distinction between folks who didn’t have the worldly experience and education to know better and those that did. The latter seemed unspeakably vile to me, and try as I might to focus on what was ahead of me, my mind kept turning back to the skull they’d found in the woods near the cornfield and the idea that somehow, behind it all, Jeb Walsh was responsible.
I was forced to finally abandon my obsessive thoughts about what the deputy had found in the woods, and Walsh’s guilt, when I finally reached the town square in the heart of Sommerville Chase. I slowed down, taking in the newly built area, which, in short, was everything that Ghost Creek Mountain, where I’d grown up, was not.
As nice as downtown Riley had become, this little area put it to shame. Everything was new and shiny, but somehow also retro and classic, as if it were a hidden pearl that had been on this mountain forever but had only just been discovered. There was an ice cream shop called Sweet Dreams, where young parents with strollers stood in line behind retirees holding hands. Across the street from Sweet Dreams was a steakhouse called Steak Masters, and next to that was the Sommerville Mountain Brew House.
The road veered sharply to the right around a spectacular fountain that launched plumes of glowing water into the night sky. There were at least fifteen people gathered around the fountain, mostly teenagers, talking and watching the water as it exploded up and out, only to come back down in thick, colorless globs that splattered on the pavement and sometimes on the bystanders (much to their delight). Once around the fountain, the road began to rise again. At the top of this rise, there was a library and post office, both closed. According to the GPS on my phone, I was three miles from Frank Bentley’s place.
It was full dark, save the three-quarters moon, when the car in front of me pulled up to the gates of Sommerville. I rolled the Accord’s window down to hear what the guy driving said to the guard who controlled the gate, but the wind was blowing too hard to catch anything.
The guard flipped through some pages on a clipboard and nodded at the driver. I eased up next, and the guard greeted me with a nod. He was somewhere north of fifty and wore a mustache over his downturned lips.
“Hello,” I said. “Heading up to Frank Bentley’s place.” As I said it, I pointed at the sticker on Susan’s windshield.
He squinted out at the Accord, which was in good shape and well-cared for, but despite that, was still a major step down from the kind of vehicle that would normally come through these gates.
“It’s my daughter’s,” I said, and immediately regretted it when he gave me a funny look. Over-explaining was a surefire way to draw unwanted attention. I needed to get my game face on and quick.
“Your name?” he said.
“Bob Jenkins. I doubt it’s on your list. Frank told me the sticker should be enough.”
He scanned the list anyway, wetting his thumb before flipping each page. I waited, the night air growing heavy, my heart beginning to pound against my chest.
“Yeah, I don’t see it on here.”
“Well, I didn’t think you would,” I said, keeping my voice lazy, nonchalant.
“You say you got some sticker or something?” He leaned over, craning his neck at my windshield.
“Yeah, hell. I didn’t know this was going to be such a pain in the ass.”
“Just hold on. It’s only my third night. Let me call my supervisor. I ain’t never seen a place with so many damned exceptions in my life. I’m sure it’s good enough to get you through. Hell, they might as well just open these damned gates with all the exceptions they make. This damned list ain’t worth a flip.” He tossed it down inside the guardhouse and picked up the phone. I watched him make the call. He talked for a minute, shaking his head and then hung up the phone. He seemed angry. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.
He stepped out of the guardhouse with a flashlight and walked around to the other side of the Accord and shined the light at the sticker.
He flipped the light off and came back to the window. “Go on. But my boss said you need to go ahead and get Mr. Bentley to put you on the list. We ain’t supposed to let nobody in based on the sticker no more, he said. I told him you didn’t look like trouble, though, and he figured if you were going to Bentley’s, it would make sense you weren’t on the list because he’s always forgetting to put folks on and then raising hell when we don’t let them in.”
I tipped my hat at him. “Sounds just like Frank. Have a good one, my friend.”
He raised the gate, and I eased the Honda through into the most spectacularly obscene neighborhood I’d ever laid eyes on.
* * *
The entire area was well lit with street lamps, and many of the residents were taking advantage, strolling along the sidewalks, lounging on porches, around stone fire pits, and in some cases just standing in the well-manicured lawns, drinking cans of beer. I couldn’t help but notice that all the people I saw looked like they belonged. Which was to say, they were white, attractive, and somehow oozed a sense of money and privilege like I had rarely encountered.
Against all odds, the houses grew larger and larger as the elevation rose. By the time I reached another fountain—this one less colorful than the previous one—and stayed right, as the GPS instructed, the houses were so large, I began to wonder if perhaps they were apartment homes made to look like houses, but I knew better. There could be no apartments in an area like this.
I parked a few houses down from the one that the GPS told me was Bentley’s. Now came the hard part. Waiting, hoping he’d leave the house. Short of that, waiting until I had the nerve to knock on the door.
I let the window down, and the breeze came in. The summer felt like it was officially gone, replaced at long last by what I knew would be an all-too-brief fall. In the South, especially the mountains, fall was the very best time of the year, but like all the best things, it lasted only a short time, crowded out on one side by a stifling summer and on the other by the cold, dry winter.
I watched the house and saw a man through one of the large windows. He was holding a remote and pointing it at a gigantic television. He didn’t look like he planned on going anywhere tonight.
Fuck it.
I climbed out of the Accord, leaving it unlocked and taking a moment to make sure my 9mm was tucked safely into the back of my jeans, before walking up to his house and knocking on the door.
A couple of minutes later, there was a beep and a voice came out of a speaker above me.
“Yes?”
“I’m here from the neighborhood association. I need to talk to you about a complaint.”
“Say that again?”
“Complaint. Two of your neighbors have filed them against you. I’m here to deliver the official citation.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” the voice said.
“No, sir.”
“Chrissake. What’s the complaint about?”
“It’s all on the citation, Mr. Bentley.”
“Fuck. Hold on.”
I couldn’t believe it had been so easy. I’d actually had a backup plan, which included mentioning the sticker if he didn’t buy the complaint angle.
The door swung open, and a small man stood before me. He was barefoot and wore a pair of gold gym shorts and a tank top. He looked like he worked out, but he was small compared to me, and I was pretty sure if it came to a fight, I’d be all right.
“Well,” he said, “where is it?”
I reached for the gun. “Right here.”
He stepped back, his hands in the air.
“Is anyone else home?” I asked.
“I live by myself. What is this about? How did you get through the gates?”
“I told the guy I was coming to whip your ass and he let me right in.” I stepped inside and closed the door.
“Who are you?”
“Think of me as your preacher. You a religious man?”
“No—”
“Well, it’s time you find the Lord, Frank. The first thing a new Christian has to do is confess his sins. So that’s what I want you to do. Right now.”
“Is this about the election, the thing with the underage girls? Because that was dropped in court. It’s old news. I can’t be—”
“This isn’t about that.”
“Oh … okay.” He seemed relieved in the way only a guilty man could. I decided not to cut him any breaks.
“It’s about your film collection.”
He shook his head. “I don’t—”
I rushed him, slamming the tip of my 9mm against his forehead. He stiffened, growing perfectly still, even as a line of drool ran down the side of his face.
“Don’t fucking lie to me, okay?”
He nodded.
“Because I already know everything I need to know about your sins. Remember, I’m your preacher. You live in these mountains and you didn’t know preachers knew everything?”
“I didn’t know,” he said, gasping the words.
“Well, now you do. So, tell me about your film collection. The snuff films.”
“Oh, shit. Okay. Is that what this is about? Jesus, yeah, I’ve watched a few. Look, I’m not a bad guy. I’m just interested in the extremes of human behavior. The way—”
“Shut up. I need to know where you get them.”
“What?”
“Where do you purchase them, asshole?”
“Oh, okay. I understand. There’s a place over in The Fingers where—”
“The Fingers? Which mountain?”
“Uh, I think it’s Ring. Yeah, Ring Mountain. It’s a little pawnshop in a trailer. Dude sells them there.”
“Okay, I think I know the place. Now, think really hard about this next question, okay, Frankie?”
“Sure. I’ll answer it. Whatever, man. I got nothing to hide.”
“Do you know of anyone around here who films them?”
“Films what?”