The More They Disappear

by Jesse Donaldson

  “We can speculate all we want but that don’t change the reality.”

  “And you didn’t see this … this figure leave?”

  “Nope, but I heard a thunderous sort of growl come out those woods about ten minutes later. There’s some bad shit in there, man. I’ve lived here twenty years. I know.”

  Mattie piped up again. “Maybe it was a car.”

  “I know what a car sounds like, girl.”

  “Maybe it was like a diesel truck or a muscle car or something. Hell, it could’ve been Henry. His engine sounds like thunder.”

  Harlan asked Jones if he could think of anything else, but the old man claimed that’s all he knew. Harlan thanked him and promised to send out an arson investigator, though it was too late to do much good. At the very least they’d be able to confirm that the electrical box had been stripped.

  “Does that mean you’ll clean this mess up?” Jones asked.

  “You’ve got to take that up with the property owner.”

  Jones snorted and ground his cane against the earth. “Then I don’t give a shit what happens. The manager don’t take my calls.”

  “Looks like you got to hire yourself a snake hunter,” Mattie said.

  “A dollar a snake,” Jones said.

  “Five.”

  “Two.”

  Mattie winked at Harlan and put out her hand for Jones to shake. “It’s a deal,” she said.

  * * *

  Mark forced himself back to sleep. He could hear Mary Jane watching television in the common room, but whenever she cracked the door, he closed his eyes. Around noon, she shook him awake and asked for cash to buy breakfast. Mark muttered to check his coat pocket and rolled deeper into the blankets, but as soon as the front door closed, he jumped out of bed. He needed to put what had happened at Chance’s behind him and started by stuffing his soiled clothes in a garbage bag. Then he cleaned the apartment and took stock. He had the Oxy he’d been smart enough to hide from Chance, though considering the way things had gone, the smartest play might be to flush the pills and be done with them. Not that that would work. Mary Jane would return and ask when they were leaving. At some point his father would call. None of Mark’s problems would magically go away.

  When he came clean to Mary Jane, she’d lose it. She might even leave for Canada alone. Mark couldn’t blame her. He’d fucked up—plain and simple. Part of him actually hoped she’d leave. The apartment was becoming too small for the both of them. Mark wanted his privacy back. He didn’t like hearing her flush the toilet or the way she chatted nonstop about nothing or how she left the television on even when she wasn’t watching. He was no longer so confident in their plan. Canada was so far away and they’d be so dependent on each other.

  He’d been stupid to drive out to Highsplint, but he’d be smarter now—no sob story, no drama—just business. He’d start by selling Oxy at the party Mary Jane mentioned. Even though dealing near campus was dangerous, it was good money—a couple of drinks and everyone wanted a pill. It would also keep Mary Jane off his back for at least one more day. Afterward he’d make a trip to Marathon and sell whatever Oxy he had left. After that they’d have a decent wad of cash and options.

  Mary Jane returned with doughnuts and coffee and proclaimed that the sleepyhead had risen from the dead. She tried to hand Mark a long john but he waved her off. He hated doughnuts and was surprised she didn’t know this about him. Mary Jane shrugged, but he could tell her feelings were hurt, which only annoyed him more.

  She broke off a piece and chewed. “I tried to stay up, but you came home so late. How’d it go?”

  “Fine.”

  “What do you mean ‘fine’?”

  Mark knew she wouldn’t let the matter drop, so he sandwiched a lie within a truth. “He wasn’t in a buying mood, so I’m going to sell tonight at that party.”

  “I thought you said it was dumb to sell to strangers.”

  “We need the cash, right?”

  “Why don’t we sell one of our cars?”

  “Mine’s leased in my dad’s name, but if you have the title for yours, we can sell it.”

  “I guess technically it’s my dad’s.”

  Mark grabbed a coffee and took a sip. It was unsweetened and bitter. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll have a good time tonight. Celebrate. Like you said.”

  “We’re supposed to be celebrating the cash you brought home.”

  “No. We were going to celebrate leaving Kentucky and we still are. Tomorrow we’ll head north, stop by Marathon so I can unload the last of the Oxy, and then keep on driving until we reach the border.”

  “I don’t want to go back there.”

  “You have to be flexible, MJ.” Mark opened the top to his coffee and poured in three sugars.

  “I have to be flexible because you can’t do anything right.”

  Mark frowned. He opened a Ziploc of Oxy and held out a pill. “Here,” he said. “It’ll take off the edge.”

  “I don’t want to take the edge off,” she said. “And I don’t want a fucking pill right now.”

  “Suit yourself.” Mark dropped the Oxy in his coffee. “If you don’t want to go to Marathon, I can go alone.”

  “That’s not the point.” Mary Jane finished her doughnut and rubbed her hands on her jeans.

  Mark could make out a small oil stain from her fingers. He moved to rub her back and shoulders. “Let’s not fight about it. Let’s get stoned and watch a movie. Do something to take our minds off it.”

  Mary Jane shrugged out of his grasp and grabbed her coat. “I need to take a walk,” she said. “Clear my head.”

  The door slammed and Mark said good riddance, but he found himself glancing at the clock on the microwave every few minutes, counting the time since she’d left. Suddenly, he was terrified of being left behind to fend for himself.

  * * *

  Lewis shifted on the couch to stave off the worst muscle strains. A couple of hours after their fight he’d heard Sophie come out of the girls’ room and tiptoe to their bedroom. An hour later he tried the doorknob and it turned, the open lock Sophie’s tacit invitation for him to apologize. Lewis watched her sleep, could just make out the mask over her eyes. Her lips were pursed and on her bedside table perched a bottle of sleeping pills. Lewis considered joining her but he doubted Sophie would just turn into him at night and reconcile. It wasn’t that easy this time.

  He started to feel like a Peeping Tom and shut the door, passed by the girls’ room and thought better of checking on them. He made a sandwich in the kitchen and prepared for his hangover with Gatorade and aspirin, then returned to the couch where he belonged. He could’ve slept in the guest bedroom but this wasn’t that sort of fight, the sort where you pretend it never happened. He wanted to be on the couch when Sophie woke up, wanted her to see that he’d suffered, too. It was all performance.

  In the morning Sophie left with the girls. As she passed by with her rolling suitcase, she called him a bastard. Lewis figured they were headed to her father’s house and that Trip would be around sooner or later to talk. It had happened like this once or twice before. The empty house made it clear how wrong he’d been. Ginny and Stella deserved better. Lewis should have confronted Trip, not Sophie. He’d taken the coward’s way out.

  His campaign for sheriff was over—that much was certain. A few phone calls from Trip and his support would vanish. He still had the name, but Trip had the influence. Lewis would find himself back at Riverside Security, his days spent talking trash with John Tyler, his nights spent longing for something more. He picked up the scattered pages of his father’s will and threw them in the trash, then took a beer to the front steps and read the newspaper. There was something wonderful about a beer first thing in the morning. If it was going to shit, let it go to shit. Speed it up. He drained one and went back for another, started to feel more human as hangover faded to buzz. Around noon he drove to the gas station for another six-pack.

  “Going fishing?” the atte
ndant asked.

  “Nope,” Lewis responded. “Just getting drunk.”

  “Well, have a day of it, man,” the attendant said and laughed.

  When Lewis returned to the house, Trip’s Mercedes was blocking the drive. Lewis gave his father-in-law’s patented two-honk hello and stepped out holding a beer like a peace offering. Trip shook his head. He hadn’t taken a sip in years. “It’s a bit early for me,” he said.

  Lewis twisted the top off and turned the bottle up.

  “Sophie came by.”

  Lewis nodded.

  “I didn’t think I’d find you here getting drunk. I hoped maybe you’d be trying to fix things.”

  “Like how you fixed things for my dad?”

  Trip was standing in the dappled light of a maple tree, his face obscured by shadow. “If you mean the money I gave him to pay his debts, then yes, how I fixed things. Or if you mean the money I gave him to pay his electricity bill, then yes, I’m guilty there, too.” Trip kicked at the fallen leaves of the maple. “But I’m not here to talk about your dad. I’m here to talk about you.”

  “I don’t care what you have to say.”

  “You need to get your head out of your ass, son, and grow the fuck up. I’m not going to stand by and watch you mess up my daughter’s life just because you found out your daddy wasn’t father of the year. Besides, how much better could you have done?” Lewis wanted to answer the question but he couldn’t. Trip seized his shoulders as if this were the moment their argument would turn into a heart-to-heart. Lewis barely recognized him. “I’m giving you the chance to be better,” Trip said. “I’m giving you the chance to right your father’s wrongs.”

  “You act like I should be grateful.”

  “I would be.”

  Lewis pushed Trip’s hands away. “I’m not.”

  “The only thing keeping me from collecting what I’m owed is the fact we’re family. For better or worse. So you’re going to keep campaigning and win the election because it’s good for the family. And you’ll do as I say because that’s good for the family, too.”

  “And what then? We pretend like none of this happened? We forget about how my father left my mother with nothing? How you helped him lose it all?”

  “How do you want people in this town to remember your dad? Do you want your mother to pick up the paper and read every sordid detail? Because there’s more.” Trip ran a hand through his parted hair and it dropped right back into place. “And if that happens, you’ll never become sheriff. And I can’t have Sophie married to a loser.”

  “Sophie can make her own decisions.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Lewis. You’ve always been wrong about that.” Trip knocked the beer from his hand and it clanged to the ground. “You’re weak. That was your father’s problem. When life got tough, he picked up a bottle. When things weren’t good at home, he left. When he lost money gambling, he asked me to cover him.” Trip scowled at the memory of it, picked up the beer and threw it against a tree, but the bottle bounced away harmlessly and came to rest under a bed of leaves. “Your father was weak but you don’t have to follow in his footsteps.”

  “Fuck you,” Lewis said and threw a haymaker that crashed against Trip’s skull and sent him crumpling to the ground. Trip started spitting blood from his mouth, but as Lewis looked down, he felt nothing. He picked up the remains of his six-pack and drove away. The house no longer seemed his to call home.

  * * *

  Other than Holly, Harlan could trust two people to keep his investigation under wraps, which is why he found himself parked in front of Lyda and Jackson Finley’s red brick Victorian once more. So long as he kept the affair quiet, he could ask them as many questions as he wanted. He’d learned this was how things worked in Marathon—no honest answers without a favor in return.

  Lyda came to the door wearing cotton pajamas even though it was the middle of the day, her hair frizzy and undone. “Mr. Dupee, you’ve caught me unaware,” she said, her voice brittle from sleep. “Are you returning the rifles?”

  “I’m not,” Harlan said. “But the crime lab has cleared them.”

  “That’s good. I thought it was silly when you confiscated them in the first place.”

  “Do you mind if I come in?”

  “Just forget how dreadful I look.” She led him to the kitchen and sat at a table littered with old newspapers. “Jackson never throws anything away,” she explained, stacking the papers to make room.

  On an envelope beside the newspapers was the dashed-off note from her daughter. Harlan saw why its carelessness had irked Lyda in the first place. He tapped the envelope. “How’s she doing, by the way?”

  “Mary Jane? Haven’t heard a word.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “Worrying hasn’t gotten me far with my daughter, so I’ve decided to let her be. Technically she’s an adult, even if she doesn’t act like one.” Lyda balled the envelope in her fist as if it were trash and dropped it back on the table.

  Harlan changed the subject. “I wanted to ask you about Wesley Craycraft and Trip Gaines.”

  “What about them?”

  “Did Lew ever talk about them?”

  “He was friendly with Wes, but it’s like I said before, we didn’t talk much about our lives.”

  “And Trip?”

  “I don’t think Trip was Lew’s favorite, though to be fair, Lew didn’t care for any of his family beyond his granddaughters. He said Mabel was a bore, Lewis was spineless, and Lewis’s wife, Sophie, was a pain in the ass. That almost made me laugh, Lew talking as if he were parent of the year.” Lyda looked down at the newspapers and sighed. On top she’d placed the edition from the day of Lew’s funeral. A steely-eyed portrait of Lew as a young man stared back at them. Harlan couldn’t help thinking she’d stacked them that way on purpose.

  “Jackson told me you and Lew had a relationship in the past, maybe even before that photo of Lew looking thin was taken. How come you lied?”

  “I don’t recall the details of our conversation. I was still in shock from the funeral.”

  “Had the affair been going on all that time? Twenty years?”

  Lyda flipped the paper over. “I really cared for him. That’s what Jackson will never understand. I loved Lew. He was married with a kid when we met but I wasn’t. Jackson and I were dating, the way kids do. I wanted Lew to leave Mabel but then I … well, it wasn’t going to happen. Let’s just say that. I married Jackson instead. I guess it would be accurate to say Lew and I have been on and off ever since. More off than on, though.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “Sad might be a better description.”

  “What made Lew stay with Mabel?”

  “I think he loved her in his way. And there was Lewis, too.”

  “And what made you marry Jackson?”

  She hesitated. “He asked.”

  Harlan figured Lyda had reaped what she’d sowed, but he couldn’t help feeling a little sad watching her try and hold it together. “Back to Trip,” he said. “He was paying off Lew’s gambling debts. If they didn’t get along, why would he do that?”

  Lyda shrugged. “That’s news to me but not exactly a surprise. I imagine a lot of people loaned Lew money. I can’t tell you how much he ‘borrowed’ from me over the years. I once sold an antique lamp gathering dust in our basement to help him out.”

  “So you knew about his gambling?”

  “What are you going to do? I tried to help.” She rubbed her eyes, slipped an elastic band from her wrist, and tied her hair into a ponytail. “I guess I failed.”

  Harlan preferred the disheveled Lyda Finley sitting across from him to the actress he’d met the day of Lew’s funeral. He believed her when she said she loved Lew but the rest was hazy at best. “Failure,” he said and stood up. “At least we have that in common.”

  She tried on a smile. “So you talked to Jackson?”

  “Did he mention it?”

  “No. But he’s been
colder than usual.”

  “I had to,” Harlan said. “You understand that, right? It’s my job.”

  She nodded. “If you’re interested in Trip, you should talk to Jackson again. Trip was bothering him a while back. I don’t know the details but Jackson complained about it once or twice.”

  “Point me in the right direction?”

  “His office. Just climb the stairs to the top floor.”

  Harlan found Jackson listening to opera and staring out a small square window that looked onto the street when he walked in. “I thought I saw an official-looking car down there,” Jackson said.

  “Sorry to intrude. But I had a couple more questions.”

  “Do we really need to keep digging up these memories, Sheriff?”

  “This isn’t about that. Its about Trip Gaines.”

  Jackson laughed. “What do you want with that asshole?”

  “I heard he’d been in contact with you. Why?”

  “He wants me to sell him a piece of property.” Jackson took a gold pen from his pocket and started clicking it with his thumb.

  “What property?”

  “I am the proud owner of a trailer park. The Spanish Manor.”

  “No shit,” Harlan said. “I live next door.”

  “My father inherited that tract and all the acreage east to Mason County. After the mill burned down, he planned on building a house out there, but he never got around to it. Or he ran out of money. It was his idea to become a slumlord. I have a property manager who collects rents and handles the tenants.”

  “There was a fire out there the night Lew died.”

  “I know. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. I try not to get involved.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you care for the place. Why not sell?”

  “The land. It’s the nicest track of riverfront property in northern Kentucky. You’ve been there.”

  “It’s pretty, all right.”

  “The Spanish Manor is just the tip. All those woods that stretch east. They’re pristine.”

  “What’s Trip want with them?”

  Jackson made his way to his desk and had a seat. “Says he wants to build a house. Retire and start farming.”