“Will you stop. Please, just fucking stop. We have to go, we have to go, I am so fucking tired of hearing you say that. All the hard work I do, all the effort and energy I put into this. And all you ever say is, We’ve got to go. You never wanted it bad enough, did you? You talk and talk but look at you. You never really wanted to live off the land.”
“What does this have to do with living off the land? I don’t even know what you’re talking about. We have to go. Please. Can we just go?”
“I guess you’d be happy if I worked at a carwash. I could really write my own ticket then, huh?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play dumb.”
“Please, Calendula, please, I’m begging you. Can we just go?”
“No. We’re not going, okay? Fuck, I’ve got to think. Goddamn it.”
His head felt ready to crack, he could feel his mind pushing at the confines of his skull.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” he said under his breath, feeling the panic begin to morph into anger, like a giant force of nature, water or fire or wind, grown gargantuan and out of control: a tsunami or inferno. He lashed out, turned, and began kicking the wall, the paneling bursting into dust and shattered chunks. He pummeled the cheap fake wood with his fists, howling, ripping the wall to shreds.
In one last burst of frenzy and frustration he brought his face careening towards the wall, head-butting it with all his might. But instead of sinking into the cheap paneling like he expected, his skull crashed into a two-by-six stud with enough force to make the house shudder. Then he fell straight backwards, not even aware of the sickening thump the back of his head made when it hit floor.
6
When Diesel pulled his F350 into the parking lot of the Last Chance Market, Katie was nowhere to be found. The usual old timers were shuffling around: Banjo in his overalls, Billy in his ubiquitous cowboy hat. He gave them a wave as he parked and got out of the truck. She wasn’t in the store. He made his way past the gas pumps and around back, the rain coming down in a drizzle now. He found her by the payphone. She was slumped on the ground, clutching her knees, weeping quietly, her bulging round belly sticking up prominently like she was ready to burst. Her hair hung limp across her face.
“Katie? What’s going on?”
She looked up at him and he saw that her left eye was swollen shut and colored an ugly shade of yellow, purple and black. Her lip was fat and cracked.
“It’s not his fault,” she said.
“Jesus Christ.” He quickly hobbled over to her, helping her up and wrapping his big arm around her tiny shoulders. “Did DJ do this to you?”
She nodded her head—her face a mess of snot and tears and hair—then sank into his embrace, the bulge from her pregnant belly pressing against him, the smell of her rain-wet hair filling his nostrils.
“Shh, shh, it’s okay. Pops will take care of you. Pops will take care of everything.”
He slowly walked her to his pickup, holding her up and steadying her as her shoulders shook, ignoring the stares from the old timers.
“Everything all right, Diesel?” Billy called out, pushing the brim of his Stetson up.
“Ain’t nothing to fret over,” Diesel said. “Family squabble. We’ll sort it out.” He opened the passenger door and eased the crying girl up into the truck.
Sliding behind the wheel, he slipped the key into the ignition. Katie, curled up on the seat, hid her face in her hands as the engine started with a roar.
“I’ll take you home to my place. You can rest up there. Get yourself together. I’ll go have a talk with DJ.”
“Please don’t hurt him,” she said. “It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t.”
“Don’t worry, Katie. No one’s going to get hurt.”
7
Rebecca stared at Calendula. He lay on his back. He wasn’t moving.
She whispered, “Calendula?”
He’d scared her. Scared her bad. For a moment she considered running up to him, scooping the car keys from his pocket, and leaving him there. Take Megan away from this horrible place and just let Coyote find him. But no, she had to help him, get him to the hospital, he could have a concussion, a fractured skull. She set Megan down in the doorway and inched closer to him.
“Calendula, can you hear me? I think you’re really hurt. We gotta get you to the hospital. Calendula?”
Again, the thought of the car keys came into her mind. Even if he did come out of it she would have to drive him to the hospital. She was going to need those keys. She slipped her fingers into his front pocket, felt the keys.
Calendula hand shot up and grasped her wrist. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, Calendula, thank God.”
“Are you trying to take my car keys?”
“No. I mean, yes, because I have to take you to the hospital.”
“The hospital?”
“Yeah. You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.” He released her wrist and stood up quickly, swaying slightly when he got to his feet. He put a hand to the wall to steady himself. “Just fine.”
She could see the burgeoning contusion on his forehead, a nasty purple ball with a fine trickle of blood leaking out from the center of it and running down either side of his nose.
“You’re not,” she said. “You’re really not.”
“Sweetie, I’m fine.” He turned to her and smiled, face bloodied, eyes glimmering crazily, and she felt fear—sharp and unmistakable—erupt inside her. She could literally see the madness etched in his face.
She took a step away from him. “No, Calendula, you’re fucked up. Just look at you.”
“I suppose you’re an expert, huh? Well, take a look at yourself. Crazy-haired-psycho bitch. Drunk, rolling around in the mud, throwing up on the floor.”
Rebecca could hear Megan whimpering behind her, beginning to break out into a full meltdown. “Don’t, Calendula. Please, let’s just get out of here.”
“We’ll leave when I say we can leave. I have to go talk to someone.”
“Listen to yourself. Do you even know what you’re saying?” Rebecca was crying now too, stammering. “You’re scaring us. Please. Please.”
“Stop it. You’re being unreasonable. And you’re upsetting Megan.”
“Calendula, please.”
“I have to go and talk to Spider. He’ll know what to do. Just take care of Megan till I get back.”
“Spider? You have to talk to Spider?”
He brushed by her, out the bedroom door and into the hall. She followed behind him, into the kitchen. “What’s going on, Calendula?” But he was gone, out the smashed-in door, slipping off the porch and disappearing into the darkness and rain.
8
“You’re going to have to excuse the mess,” Diesel said, opening the door to the cabin and gently guiding Katie in. “I’ve gotten awful sloppy since Amber left. Been kinda depressed.” He led her over to the sofa and sat her down. “You need anything? You want some water?”
She nodded her head.
“Okay, I’ll get it for you. Here’s the remote, you watch you some TV.”
He disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a glass of water.
“Here you go,” he said handing her the glass. “Purest spring water you can get, straight off the mountain.”
She sipped at it. Sniffled. Put the glass down on the end table and stared down at her feet.
“You feeling any better?”
“Yeah,” she said, and looked up at him, half her face a swollen mes
s. “Thank you, Pops. Thank you so much.”
“Now, you ain’t gotta thank me. Like I’ve been telling you, we’re family now. Look at all the toys and clothes I’ve been a gathering up for the little one. We’re going to have ourselves a right old family. Okay?”
She looked down again and nodded her head. He thought he saw a hint of a smile there.
“Okay, then. You stay put here. Make yourself at home. There’s grub in the kitchen. I’ll go talk to that boy of mine and we’ll get this all straightened out.”
He gently placed his big hand on her head and awkwardly tried to stroke her hair. Yes, he definitely thought he could see the beginnings of a smile on her face. He hoped so, at least.
“Be back, in a jiffy.”
9
The humming in Calendula’s head had become nearly deafening, a brilliant white light made of sound that filled his skull.
Wiping blood from his eyes, he made his way through the ancient detritus of the dead—motorcycle parts and broken toys—the stagnant puddles reeking of rot and decay, and walked up to the last cabin on the trail. He pushed the door open and stepped tentatively inside.
“Spider?”
A voice from the shadows in the far corner: “I suppose you want to know who did it?”
Calendula nodded, his mouth suddenly very dry, a queasy sick feeling stirring in the pit of his belly.
The ghost stepped forward, greasy orange-and-black Harley bandanna wrapped tight around his skull, long gray beard, bloated eyes glowing in rotten sockets. Calendula could smell him, smoke and grease and a putrid decay.
“Who the fuck do you think did it?” Spider spat. “Who knew you were gone? Who’s the cheap motherfucker that always looks for an excuse not to pay you?”
Doubt flooded Calendula’s mind like a dark ink. No, no. And yet maybe it was true. Why would he lie? What could he possibly have to gain by lying to him?
“I can guarantee you one thing. When that fucker pulls up here, denying everything, he’s going to have a duffel bag full of cash in the back of his ride. Money he made on your blood, sweat and tears. It’s not a pretty picture, hoss. You just gotta decide what you’re going to do about it. Do you get what I’m saying, son?”
Calendula nodded, throat constricting. He thumbed the wart on his finger and listened as Spider ranted on and on, trembling with some inner force, pulsating. He seemed to grow and inflate, stretching his boundaries like a balloon, his mouth opening and closing, within it a great chasm of darkness that seemed to swallow everything: the room, the back shack, the land, the earth itself slipping into that blackness between his lips.
Calendula’s eye began to twitch like the legs of a sleeping dog.
“I told you not to trust him. To keep your eyes open. But you didn’t listen. Did you, kid?”
He just continued expanding, bigger and bigger till he filled the room and his shoulders touched the sides of the cabin, spitting and cursing and yelling until Calendula felt certain he would explode.
But then Calendula blinked and Spider was just an old bearded man again, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table, shuffling a deck of cards, the waxy, yellow rectangles flipping through his gnarled fingers, knuckles swollen and red. He dealt out a hand of solitaire, then kicked his chair back so that it leaned against the wall and he stretched out his legs, crossed his battered engineer boots at the ankles. He motioned with his sallow, hush-puppy eyes to the window.
“Ever notice how you can see right up the road from that big-old window there? That’s why I used to sit back here in my day. Put your back up against the wall like this, and from that window you can see clear up the mountainside. Can see anyone coming down from the hills, and always have the drop on ’em. By the time they get here you’re ready. Take a look up there now. What d’ya see?”
Calendula peered out the window. Through the lichen-covered branches he spotted the path twisting up to the chef house, and beyond that the road slinking off into the fog enshrouded hills, the arrow-head-like points of tall firs poking up through the mist. Then something caught his eye near the top of the mountain, a quick flash of light. He squinted and saw it again. Yes, two tiny beams of light snaking downward. Headlights.
Spider said, “See ’em?”
“Yes.”
“Who you suppose that is?
“It’s him, isn’t it?”
“Sure as shit is. Now, if I was you, I’d go meet him halfway. Ask him a few questions pertinent to this here situation.”
Calendula nodded. The hole in his head itched terribly and he abandoned his wart to finger the wound absently. He turned from the window and headed to the door, pausing to look at the bearded ghost kicked back on his chair, disinterestedly laying down and turning over cards on the dirty table.
“Thank you, Spider.”
“Don’t need to thank me, hoss. I ain’t done shit for ya. ’Cept be observant. Something you shoulda been doing for your own damn self.”
Calendula nodded and stepped outside. The buzzing in his head had dissipated to a low murmur and he felt calm. Very calm. An old shovel was leaning up against the wall of the shack. He picked it up and looked at it. The dirty handle was streaked in black and gray mold and the bucket was rusted up, flaking off chunks of orange metal. But it felt solid and strong. He hefted its weight in his hands, gripping it tight. A sturdy shovel, it’d probably seen a lot of use out here. Dug a lot of holes.
10
Diesel’s truck rattled up over the ridge and through the thick, wet fog that was spilling out over the road from the forest. He pulled up to the small flat where DJ’s trailer sat perched on a few cinderblocks in a tangled nest of whitethorn and poison oak. Rolling up next to DJ’s truck, he whistled a low soft breath through his teeth. Tapped the wheel with his big fingers.
Part of him just wanted to pummel the boy. Anyone who could beat a pregnant woman like that deserved a stomping. But he knew from experience that wouldn’t help anything. He reminded himself that he, too, had fucked up in the past, remembering that night DJ’s mother had left him.
He’d been so drunk and high on pills that the whole incident was like some foggy dream. He’d been fighting blind, swinging at the demons in his mind. When he came to, his wife was on the ground beneath him, bloodied and quivering, and he looked up to see DJ staring at him from the doorway of his bedroom with that strange, uncomprehending look on his little face. He was instantly speechless with regret and remorse but the room was spinning and he couldn’t catch his breath, couldn’t breathe, and he had to lie down, pushing past the kid and staggering to his bed.
When he woke in the morning he was alone. His family was gone.
He couldn’t let that happen again. He forced himself to remember DJ as an infant in his arms, all those broken promises.
He could hear rap music blaring from inside as he hobbled up the wooden steps to the door of the trailer, rapped on it with his huge fist.
“DJ? You in there, son? Open up, boy. We gotta talk.”
Nothing. Just the pounding of the bass and the growl of anger from the guy singing, if you could call it that. The kid probably couldn’t even hear him out here with the music cranked so loud.
He tried the knob. It twisted in his hand and he swung the door open. The reek of freshly harvested weed hit him like an openhanded slap. There were string lines crisscrossing the small trailer, filled with the stuff, and garbage bags strewn around the room overflowing with herb. DJ was in the back corner, hanging branches on lines. He had his baseball hat on all sideways in that way that Diesel hated, his pants pulled low, boxers hanging out.
He looked up, mouth agape, jaw lowering and closing in surprise. He looked like a
fucking clown. An idiot clown.
“What the fuck? Where’d you get all this?”
“Oh, hey, Pops. I, uh, you know, a friend needed some help. Told him I’d dry his herb for him.”
“A friend, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Diesel wrapped his hand around a cola, squeezed it, brought it to his face and sniffed it. “A friend who harvested weeks too early?”
“Yeah. Way it goes.”
“Who’s this fucking friend of yours?” Diesel asked, looking around, noticing the pile of speed on the table beside the glass pipes.
“Actually, it’s none of your fucking business.” DJ puffed his chest up, squared his shoulders. “Why are you here?”
“I’m here because you beat your damn pregnant girlfriend half to death and left her in the fucking rain. Now, I said, where’d you get all this goddamn reefer, boy?”
DJ stared silently back at him, eyes squinted.
“You rip off those kids down at the chef house? You did, didn’t you? Answer me.”
DJ spoke in a low hiss, spitting out the words. “If I ripped them hippies off, it was ’cause they had it coming.”
“Had it coming?”
“Yeah.”
“Had it coming how?”
“Coming here, where they don’t belong. Not to mention, Coyote owes us.”
“Owes me. Me. Don’t you get that? And if he don’t have his herb he ain’t going to be able to pay me. That’s why you’re giving it back.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I said you’re giving it back.”
“The hell I will.”
“The hell you won’t, boy. You best do as I say or so fucking help me I am gonna give you an ass-kicking like you never had.”
Diesel took a threatening step towards him and DJ stepped back. “I’m warning you. I’ll fucking kill you if you don’t get the hell out of here.”
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