by David Joy
Rogers stopped his story there and smoked on the cigarette until there was nothing left but filter. Even then he stared out of the window and said nothing. His body was stiffening, though, and there seemed to be this anger that built up in him, an anger that didn’t need any words to say it was there. Then he turned and looked way back into me.
“Not knowing who did that to my brother was something that ate at me for years. It was why I picked up this gun and badge, Jacob. I thought I was going to make shit right. Then one day it all just kind of settled, and I was all right with it. In a lot of ways I guess I came to terms with what’d happened, you know? Hell, it’s going on twenty-five years now. I ain’t young anymore. Eventually all of that pain and anger just sort of fades away, and all we’re left with is growing old and forgetting.” Rogers was still looking in my direction, but his eyes weren’t set on me. He looked on to someplace else, someplace beyond, and a few silent moments passed before he spoke. “I hadn’t really thought about it in a long time till you said that the other night. I hadn’t thought about it in years till I walked into that bedroom back there and seen that Bible lying on the table.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about that goddamn Bible! I’m talking about the fact that the same kind of Bible, same black Bible, same size, same gold on the edges, same everything that was back there in your mama’s room, there was one shoved down in the pocket of my brother’s britches just like it. That’s what I’m talking about, Jacob. That’s what the fuck I’m talking about.”
The intensity that lit him afire frightened the hell out of me, and I was certain that any minute he was going to take out all of that rage on the closest thing to him. But he didn’t.
“So, what does it mean?”
“What it means is that I’m finally going to have my time. I’m finally going to have my chance to get even with the son of a bitch that did that to my brother. That’s what it means, Jacob.” Rogers seemed to calm down with that thought and his eyes pulled back out of that far-off place and settled onto the pack of Lucky Strikes he’d given me.
I shook two cigarettes from the pack and held one out to him. He took it and when I had mine lit I offered the fire to his. “Why are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you because I know how that shit would eat at you. You might not think it would, but I know different.” Rogers looked up toward the ceiling and blew a long line of smoke that hit the wood and spread like milk. “Whether you love your daddy or not, if somebody was to kill him and you never did know who, that shit would eat at you. That shit would eat you up like worms until there wasn’t nothing left of you that you ever knew. It would eat you till you couldn’t even recognize yourself in the mirror. It ain’t the knowing that does that to a man, Jacob. It’s the not knowing.”
Rogers and I sat there until every bit of misty morning haze had risen into the blue and left behind nothing but an early July heat wave. Though there was a darkness he carried with him just like every man I’d ever known, I respected him. There was kindness in him that shone past all of that hate, a place inside of him still fit for loving, and I trusted Rogers more than anyone else in my life, more than anyone else I’d ever known other than Maggie. He’d shared his darkness with me, so I shared part of mine. I didn’t tell him about Robbie Douglas or the Cabe brothers, but I told him how I’d stood over Daddy that night and tried with everything I had to set the world right. I told him about the right smart amount of money Daddy owed me, and how I needed it to get away and start my own life, leave this place and this world behind. I told him where Daddy kept it.
Then Rogers talked. He told me that he was going to do it on Friday, when Daddy got deep into the bottle and that liquor turned him sideways. He told me how the law would handle it, how those bulls would turn the house upside down and seize everything as evidence, everything, including the money in Daddy’s bedroom safe. Rogers told me how there wouldn’t be but a small window of time where a man might get in there to take what needed taking before the bulls came. And the last thing he told me, the very last thing he said to me before he walked out of the house and left me sitting there on Mama’s couch, was only a single word. That word hit me not because of what he said, but because of how he said it and because of what it guaranteed. He knew he’d never see me again, so he told me good-bye.
31.
The Indian sat tall and strong on the back of the spotted horse, a fearless kind of pride resonating from how he sat, his back arched, chest out. There wasn’t a thing in the world that scared that Indian. He just sat there at the edge of the ravine and stared far off to where the sun shined brightly. There wasn’t the slightest impression of uncertainty. Come hell or high water, that Indian would get to those plains.
I reckon it was the certainty and fearlessness that kept me watching him most times. I sat on the couch and gazed at the picture for hours and hours trying my damnedest to figure how he’d brave the gap. It wasn’t here or there that had ever been scary. It was the middle ground, that long desolate space between, that scared the hell out of me. That type of jump from where the Indian sat took faith, and that was something I’d never had. Faith made a man vulnerable and weak. Faith led to letdown and pain and regret and all of that shit that broke a man past saving. There was safety in not believing, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to give that up just yet.
Maggie was different, though. There’d always been something in her that seemed to say she and life had an understanding, some sort of deal between them that guaranteed it’d pan out. Even when we were children, back when cold mountain water froze our wobbly legs numb and our biggest worry in the world was whether or not the spring lizards would squirm through our fingers before the other had a chance to look, she’d had her eyes fixed on that far-off place. She was almost there now.
Evening brought little relief from summer heat, and I drove faster than usual to keep the wind whooshing through the cab of my pickup. I didn’t tell her I was coming, but I needed to see her. Phone calls and text messages wouldn’t suffice for what I had to ask. Tonight Rogers would do what needed done, and in that morning sun would come my time to jump. So I drove.
Breedlove Road cut through hillsides lined with Fraser fir that speckled yellow pasture with dark green cones. Turkeys had always loved wandering through those trees. A rafter of thirty or forty birds strutted between the rows as I passed, three or four gobblers sporting beards that drug the ground as they bobbed. The Dillards owned most of those fields, and they kept the plots trimmed neat even in summer. Last winter, money kept folks from wanting any tree over eight foot, so the Dillards had to cut the older trees short, burned those stumps in a pile as big around as a small house. The dark scar left behind still held in the field by the road, just a big black circle where nothing new had grown.
Pavement dropped into gravel just before a sharp switchback, and Maggie’s house rested on the brim of a steep slope that cut off high to the left. I didn’t really care if her parents were home, but as I pulled up her drive it was a relief to see that they weren’t, an even bigger relief to see Maggie’s bedroom window was lit. I sat in the truck and watched her body cut shadows against the curtains. I couldn’t tell her what was about to happen. She’d never understand. No one would question why my father had been murdered, and if it all went smoothly, I’d ride out the investigation, bury his body in rocky ground, and walk away with it all. But if it turned sour, the way most things in my life had a tendency of turning, I’d tear off on the lam with the money in the safe and never look back. Either way, Maggie would determine where I wound up. Either way, I needed to know if she wanted me with her.
She answered the door in white shorts and a thin gray sweatshirt that had the neck cut wide so that it hung off of one shoulder, and though she hadn’t been expecting me, my standing there on her doorstep brought a smile to her face. “Talk about catching a girl off guard. Jesus, Jacob. I look horrible.�
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“That’s not true.” There no longer seemed to be a filter to hold back things I typically wouldn’t say. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s sweet, but I don’t have any makeup on.” She stepped across the threshold and took my hand, led me into the front room of her parents’ home without questioning why I’d come.
“I didn’t mean to just show up like this, but I have to ask you something.”
“What is it?”
“Can we go in your room first?”
“Yeah, of course we can, but what is it, Jacob?” Maggie led me down a hallway lined with family pictures, late-evening sun through a tall bay window lighting the hallway through the open door to her mother’s office. Maggie’s room was the last door on the right. It was the only room in the house with the lights on, the light almost blinding in a house filled with evening shadows. There was music playing, some newfangled poppy shit that passes for country now, some bullshit song I could never name. She turned the volume down on her stereo until it was silent, and we sat beside each other on the edge of her bed. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Walls that had always been covered with brightly colored posters and paintings, with pictures of family and friends with smiles stretching their faces, were almost bare now. She’d packed most everything except for her clothes, all of it sealed in boxes stacked in the corner by her window. I had to take it all in before any words came to me. That emptiness—the plain white walls, the vacant dresser top, everything—seemed to affirm this was not home anymore.
“When I took you up on the Parkway, you said something, and what you said has been bothering the hell out of me.”
“What was it?”
“You said that I could go with you. You said that if I wanted to, I could follow you down to Wilmington and start a life with you, maybe be a mechanic or something.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, what if I wanted to do that? I mean, what if I was willing to just pack up and go? I need to know if you really meant it. I need to know if you meant what you said.”
Maggie scooted closer to me until there was no space left between us. She rested her hands on top of mine and looked back deep inside of me. “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”
“Then that’s what I want to do, Maggie.”
“Are you sure?”
“I haven’t ever been sure of anything in my life, but I’m sure of this.”
“This is a big decision, Jacob. This is a really huge decision.”
“I know it is, and I want to go.”
Maggie’s face scrunched. She looked like she might cry.
“What is it?”
She just shook her head.
“No, what is it? Do you not want me to—”
She slapped her hands against mine, stopped me mid-sentence. Maggie kept nodding her head, and a smile came across her face as tears fell from the corners of her eyes. It wasn’t sadness in her anymore. Her face was flushed. She was happy.
I wrapped my arms around her and held her tightly, her head finding that safe and solid place against my chest again.
“I was scared of leaving, Jacob. I was scared of going there by myself.”
“And you’re not scared anymore?”
“No.”
We fell back onto her bed, lay flat beside each other, and told each other, “I love you.” One of my arms was folded under her head, her cheek resting against my bicep. The other arm was wrapped around her, my forearm running across her chest, my fingers tracing that soft place at the base of her neck. We fit together perfectly. Everything about it was perfect, and perfect was something that in all my life I’d never known. That feeling, that type of perfection, is what waited across the plains. Far off where the Indian stared, the sun sank down on forever. It was the promise of forever that would lead a man to jump.
32.
The Walkers snapped and snarled as I tiptoed just out of reach of their leads. Kayla, Daddy’s prized bitch, was the meanest of them all and she stretched her collar till there was no more give when I approached. She’d always been staked closest to the house, and on that morning, I managed all thirty-four two-steps and fourteen ball changes without a hitch, but that cunt of a dog caught me in the chassé. She leapt and managed to get a nip at the loose part of my jeans and I stumbled back a bit, tripped over my feet, and collapsed into the dust at the bottom of the front steps. The collar yanked hard into her throat and she hacked, but never let off trying to get close. I crawled to my feet and kicked dirt in her eyes, and that mean-ass dog howled wildly. I hoped she’d starve with Daddy gone.
His jeep and the rickety Cavalier that Josephine drove were parked out front. The front door was cracked, but there was no sound inside. I opened the screen door, eased into the living room, and stopped just by the couch. Nothing stirred. The hounds bayed in the yard, but inside was silent, a deafening kind of silence about that place. In eighteen years under his roof, I’d never felt the house so still.
Nothing looked out of place. The television remote, a Merle Haggard album, and an open pack of Winstons lay on the coffee table equidistant and squared off to one another just the way Daddy left things. He’d always been methodical about having things just right. When I was stoned I used to shift it all just a tad when he wasn’t looking just so I could laugh when he came back and fixed it all perfect. He never could stand to have his world even a hair off-kilter, so he kept it all under his thumb.
Dishes and glasses were stacked in one side of the sink, and the other side was filled with clouded water. The few soap bubbles that were left clung to the outer rim. A piece of cube steak rested in congealed brown gravy in the cast iron on the stove, and a pot filled with mashed potatoes that had dried yellow sat on the back burner. I opened the freezer and took a carton of Winstons from the shelf inside the door. Only two packs were gone and I took the next in line, hammered the pack against my hand, shook a smoke free, and lit my first of the morning. Those Winstons tasted a lot better than Lucky Strikes, even more so than Bugler. Winstons had always been our brand.
I was headed to my bedroom to scan it one last time and make sure I hadn’t left anything behind, when I damn near tripped over her. Josephine was sprawled facedown in the hallway, a nasty gash beaten into the back of her head. Her blond hair was matted red and dried stiff where the blood had poured, the puddle still thick and wet where her face lay. Her head was cocked to the side, and if it hadn’t been for all that blood, she might’ve been mistaken for passed out from a distance. The slice across her throat told a different tale, though. Only the places the blade had started and stopped were visible from where I stood, but it was that cut that’d finished her. One arm was tucked under her and the other stretched as far as it could reach. She was naked except for panties, a lacy lime-green stretch of fabric cutting through the crack of her ass. Her legs were turned pigeon-toed, bare feet pointed inward.
Seeing her body made me feel as if I moved inside of a dream. The whole house held that thick, fuzzy kind of illusory blur. My movements were slow and I swam in that thickness, all action molasses-like and sluggish as an ant sinking into syrup. But even in that slothful haze, I understood that this was not make-believe. It was real. She was dead. Spilt all over the floor. There was no sense wading in it. I needed to move. Never mind what was left in my room. Rogers said he’d call the bulls come noon, and I wanted to be long gone by then. Four hours was no time. The safe. The money. Daddy kept it in his room and that’s where I went.
It was there in Daddy’s bedroom where I saw the most grisly scene my eyes ever saw. Blood ran from ceiling to floor on all four walls. Some of the blood had settled like a fine mist breathed onto walls, but in other places it curved in long lines, ran like rivers before it dripped down and dried. There were brushstrokes. Long brushstrokes that painted thick swaths. Short ones tapering like
feathers. There were handprints smeared in places like some kindergartner had been pressing red turkeys onto paper for a Thanksgiving arts and crafts project, only these weren’t little kids’ handprints, these were grown man’s handprints, Daddy’s handprints pressed there and there and there. White sheets were stained red, but no child had been born. It was a different kind of blood that had settled onto this place. It wasn’t the blood of anything new, but the blood of something old dying. And then I saw him. Only a part of him first. Just a foot angled out from behind the corner of the bed. I could feel my heart pounding all through my body and for a while I couldn’t find the courage to move. The sight of his foot held some kind of voodoo that turned me gargoyle. I was stone, all stone, with unblinking stone eyes.
I didn’t so much walk as drag myself toward him, boots scraping against the hardwood as they slid. Only the gray sweatpants he wore made him recognizable. He lay flat on his back, his hands clenched into fists and resting at his sides. From his waistline up his stomach, through his chest and into his neck were enough stab wounds to put down a whole passel of hogs. Wide gashes angled and gnarled every which way. Stabs thick and deep darkened almost black. Skin folded back like petals. Places left unscathed were bright red. Dark tattoos shone through like drawings on a wall that needed another coat or two of paint to cover. One of the punctures had caught him right beneath the jaw, slid down his neck till the blade caught bone. But it was his face that turned me.
His face was smashed pulp. One eye drooped from its socket. His mouth was torn at the corner. Bottom lip drooping like rolled clay. My mind pieced together all of that mashed meat, and I could see my daddy lying there, the daddy who had never been much of a daddy at all but the only one I’d ever known. There had been times when I was young when he was perfect, those times we spent in cold mountain streams chasing speckled trout with red wrigglers and wax worms, those times when he genuinely smiled. There’d even been a few times when I was older when there was a glimpse of humanity in him, a reason he’d paid to have the reverend pray over my mother’s ashes. He was a horrible man and no one knew that more than me, but he was my father nonetheless. The way that puzzle pieced together wrung me like a dishrag, and I threw up all over his gray sweatpants. All that came was a thick yellow soup that stung the back of my throat and tasted like bile. I bent and twisted until all of that stomach acid was out of me and there was nothing left but dry heaves, huffing for breath each time my belly unclenched. I fell onto the bed and leaned over him. Tears fell onto his chest and pooled, wetted places where blood had dried in the hours since.