If the Creek Don’t Rise

by Leah Weiss

  Crows eat anything.

  I stop again, and the head in the tarp bumps my legs.

  I hiss, “Goddamn it! You don’t hear that?”

  “I hear it, Roy, but it’s just a rotten limb come loose, or some kind of animal. Nobody’s fool enough to come after us.”

  Billy don’t sound sure this time.

  We gotta get the deed done today, but I’m nervous and got reason to be. It’s high stakes and my ass on the line.

  We keep climbing.

  • • •

  In my mind, I still see Darlene’s bedroom muddled with hooch and rumpled sheets and plastic beads at the window. Them see-through scarves on lampshades. It always smelled like after-sex, and the perfume of them chunky candles Darlene liked to burn to set the mood, when I don’t need nothing to take me over the top but her tight little body glistening slippery.

  She made me howl like a wild coyote in the night is what she done.

  At the start a month back, Darlene said, “You a man of few words, Mister Roy Tupkin, my super-stud, sweet-sugar-daddy man,” and nibbled on my ear, breathed heat at my neck, turned me up when I was already on high.

  I don’t talk back cause I usually don’t, so in the middle of our time together, she said, “How can I know what you think and what you need if you don’t say?”

  Darlene dipped her chin and puckered her pink painted lips, and all I could do was grin and think, I’ve been hungry for special all of my life, and now I got some.

  Till yesterday.

  When she wore another man’s smell.

  • • •

  “Can you move it along, Roy?”

  Billy tries to push me faster but only pisses me off.

  “You wanna take all day?” he whines.

  I turn round sharp and give him the Don’t cross the line, pissant look, then I go slow for spite cause things in me don’t fire right yet. Just cause he come along don’t mean he runs the show.

  I switch hands and flex my fingers cause they’re numb—then hear it again!

  Shit! Shit! Shit!

  I look back and freeze. Whoever’s trailing is close. Out of sight, round the bend.

  I reach for my pistol I always got in the waist of my jeans—but crap! It ain’t there! Is it in the truck? At home? Did it fall out at Darlene’s?

  Today won’t a good day.

  I put down my end real quiet. Billy puts his down quiet, too. We put our boots on the low side so she don’t slide and get away from us before it’s time. Billy pulls his pistol from his back waistband. I pick up two handfuls of rocks and feel stupid without my gun.

  I’m wound as tight as a banjo string waiting to be plucked. I got one arm back, and it quivers, ready to hurl the rocks—when a boar comes round the curve!

  A frigging boar!

  I never been so happy to see a wild hog in my whole life. I throw the rocks anyway cause my arm wants to, and they hit him on the head. Billy shoots him right between the eyes and kills that old hog with gray in his muzzle, and he drops.

  “Why you go and shoot him?” I ask.

  “What you mean? It’s just a old hog…”

  “Yeah, but we could have scared him off. Now it’s a old hog kilt on the trail we on carrying Darlene’s dead body. You think bout that?”

  “No.”

  “That’s your problem. You don’t think, Billy. You got shit for brains.”

  Billy shocks me when he fires back, “You do, too, Roy—cause why else are we carting this girl’s body this far cept for your lousy temper. Who’s got shit for brains today? Huh? Huh?”

  Billy’s got a point.

  What’s done is done. When we come back this way, we’ll drag the hog off the trail. At least it’s downhill work.

  I say, “Let’s get this over.”

  • • •

  I let my guard down with Darlene is what I done, but I don’t beat up on myself. She walked right into my heart cause I don’t stop her. I played the kind of fool I don’t respect. But truth is, she’s the only woman who ever nailed my loose heart in one place.

  It sounds queer to say now after what happened to her and all, but for a while she made lightning bolts shoot outta my feet when I laid down in that red room, up the stairs, at that place I paid for. That kind of feeling happens once in a man’s life—maybe—and it won’t happen again.

  One time Billy said Darlene reminded him of my younger mama I hardly remember. I beat the crap outta Billy, and he fessed up to the lie. Said he was just being spiteful. My mama never made lightning bolts shoot outta nobody’s feet. And it’s for damn sure she never nailed a man’s heart in one place. Every week the name changed, but they was pretty much the same, them smelly men with beer guts hanging over dicks, stained teeth, and a dime in their pockets.

  They pay me no mind at first when I crawled in the corner outta the way, hungry, sucking on a sugar-water tit. Then, a few years later, they’d mess with me for the fun of it, and call me little man, and rub their hands on my hair buzzed short cause of lice. When I took up too much space and made em call me by name, they beat on me all the way to the back room of that trailer where the door don’t lock.

  I was smarter than they figured and more spiteful than they guessed. A dead rat under the car hood. A baby rattler in the glove box. A steel trap on the trail they had to walk. I grew up fast with those men going in and outta my mama at ten dollars a pop.

  Then I turned tall and got muscle to match my meanness. I bruised ribs and bashed skulls and broke noses. While I beat up on the men, Mama beat up on me, wailing, “Now how am I gonna buy groceries and pay rent if they don’t come round, Roy! You ruint everything.”

  Mamas and mean men shouldn’t mess with growing boys.

  • • •

  Last time I saw Mama was going on two years back. One morning I woke up with a hangover and a itch in the back of my mind that was tied to her. It was strange cause I never think bout Mama cept if Billy be fool enough to say her name out loud and set me in a mood.

  No reason for the itch I could think of. No news from that part of the county, but the damn punk itch stayed the next day and turned into a lazy sickness that took the spunk outta me, all in the name of Mama—damn her sorry soul. Maybe it was a warning that the last tie to her might finally be broke. Maybe I needed to drive to that part of the county I stay away from to see nothing got a holt on me no more.

  I went back to a place I swore I’d never go again, to lay eyes on a woman I hated more than anybody.

  That day, a bank of storm clouds collected dark on the ridge behind her trailer when I come up on it. The wind collected twigs and dead leaves and trash, and whipped em into little twisters that lifted up for a few seconds, then let loose. The place looked empty. A corner of the cinder-block foundation was sunk in the mud, and the metal front door held on by one hinge and banged in the gusts of wind. The smell of rot met me by the beat-up mailbox.

  I crossed the dirt yard, and dust blew in my eyes and made em tear up. I wiped em with the back a my hand, but no amount of strong breeze chased the rank away. I almost turned round right then and there cause of what I’d find inside, but death turns me curious. I seen my share.

  Mama was on the floor in the narrow hallway, half naked. Black and purple showed through stretched skin bloated like the bullfrogs I gig at Peddler Pond when I get a hankering for frog legs. I guess she died three or four days ago, bout the time the thought of her started pestering me and won’t leave.

  From the look of her, she got beat up one time too much. Her bleached hair with dark roots got bloodied and stuck to her skull on one side. More dried blood on the carpet spread out as big as a platter.

  With her sass gone and death being a bitch, the only thing that looked like Mama was the rhinestone earrings she wore cause they looked almost real. She liked to say one of her boyfriends giv
e em to her, but she stole em from the pharmacy rack and forgot I was there when she done it. She liked sparklers on the Fourth of July that blazed up and made her eyes get big before they sputtered out. Mama liked cheap, sparkly stuff.

  One look round her place that day told me everything that could be took, was. The clock which don’t keep time but always hung on the wall by the sink was broke in pieces beside her head. The faucet from the kitchen sink was gone, and it don’t make sense why somebody’d take a rusty faucet, but they did.

  In the tin ashtray full of cigarette butts smoked down to the last, I saw my toy fire truck with the wheels off and red paint dotted with cigarette burns. I got that little truck when I was five. It was the only Christmas present I remember, and Mama likely stole that, too.

  I blew off the ashes and slipped it in my pocket, then walked back to the truck to fetch the gas can. I stepped over the body and started in the bedroom. I poured gasoline on the stained mattress and on the pile of clothes in the corner, on the sofa with the broke leg, and doused more gas on the rug and bloated body and stack of dog-eared magazines by the toilet.

  Then, I stepped outside, lit a cigarette, took a long, deep drag, and held in the smoke till my lungs ached. Then I held it a second more before I exhaled slow. I flicked the cigarette through the open door. It only took a minute for the flames to grow wild and turn hungry.

  I stepped away from the heat and listened to the hiss and creak and shuffle of cheap turned to ash. The fire sent cinders into the air like the sparklers Mama woulda liked at her leaving.

  • • •

  That memory of Mama brought back the thought when Billy and me was teenagers and we fished at the riverbank. The summer heat was so sluggish and heavy that day the fish stayed deep in the cool and won’t bite.

  Cause we was bored, we played a game we made up called The Biggest. What’s the biggest hungry you ever been? The biggest surprise, shit, pissed off, happy, or tired you been. We took turns asking and saying, and some of it was funny, a little bit was true, and a lot of it won’t.

  Now, it won’t no surprise when Billy said the biggest scared for him was them sneaky, bastard revenuers who hide out in shadows and wait like the boogeyman to pounce on delivery boys. Billy was green to the moonshine business back then at thirteen and as likely to pee his pants as he was to do the job. He won’t much good those early years cept as a bottle washer or woodchopper, as he was on the sickly side. Nobody woulda hired him if I won’t part of the deal cause I was the muscle and the brains. Billy’s nobody without me.

  What did surprise me that night on the riverbank was the ass-whopper of a lie Billy told that still sits hard in my gut. He said the biggest happy day he remembered was when he was three, and his mama won’t drunk, and no man woke up in the trailer and beat on him. He said his mama called out for him cause she don’t see him, then found him crawled up under a mountain holly back of the trailer, snagged, and can’t get out.

  He said she got down on her knees in the dirt and pulled him out by his britches, careful not to hurt him. She talked tender and got cuts on her arms when she pulled him out from under them holly stickers. Then she picked him up by his hands and sang, “Where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy,” and swung him round and round in the yard, and held tight to his little boy arms and made him smile and laugh. She don’t let him go. Said he felt like he was flying away from all the bad stuff.

  I stood up fast back then and said over and over that long-ago evening, “No, no, no.” I was pissed at his lie bout him being happy with his mama. I said, “You made that up cause you want it to be true but it’s a lie. A goddamn lie, cause nobody cares bout a little piece a shit like you. Nobody.”

  On the riverbank, Billy held his bamboo fishing pole and looked away quick so I don’t see him turn sissy and cry. But he lied. He had to lie, cause no mama ever looked out for boys like him and me, and took us by the hands, and swung us round and round, singing our name, making us smile.

  Billy don’t deserve a made-up memory like that.

  What’s funny now is why I remember it like I do.

  • • •

  I hear more dead branches fall or rocks tumble, but I don’t jump so bad like I done before. Billy keeps needling into my daydreaming like he’s got somewhere to be when I know there’s nothing in his life cept me and my doings.

  “Roy, want me to take the front? We gonna make this a all-day job?”

  I don’t answer, just climb, and he goes quiet on me again.

  In life, Darlene don’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. In death, she turned heavy after two miles. Or, maybe for me, a couple a nights without sleep, and a killing in between, turned me tired.

  The sulfur smell grows stronger and stings my eyes and burns my throat. It’s real steep now, and Billy and me got to watch out cause one wrong step could break a leg or snuff out a life. That’s what we count on to keep folks away. Darlene’s final resting place won’t pretty, but she won’t pretty no more neither.

  • • •

  From the first, Darlene fit me snug. My hands circled her waist. My fingers touched and made me wonder how there was room in there for her vital organs. I’d listen to her heart beat steady under her sugar tit. Her lungs would rise and lift me with her breath. I’d sink my face in her soft hair when I needed a place to hide. I called her my treasure—not out loud, cause I don’t wanna sound dumb.

  I loved when she put her skull on the flat of my belly. Hair the color of a raven’s wing spread out. She warmed my loins with her heat. Traced the dark of my nipple with her finger and stirred the hairs on my chest, going down, down, down. I wanted Darlene touching me. Her touch made the hurt go away.

  Petey Pryor owns the Midnight Club and don’t loan Darlene out after I claimed her for my own. He gets moonshine from me so he knows to play it smart. I stopped going inside the club when I tagged her. Couldn’t stand the smells and sweat pressing on her space. Knew it was her job to get the customers dancing and thirsty and bothered. I got my kicks knowing she excited them hungry bastards, then all they got was frustrated with a hard-on. She was eye candy. She was mine. Till she won’t.

  Billy rattles on in that whiny voice I can’t stand. “…gotta control your temper. We can’t keep doing this kinda stuff. The law’s already looking…”

  I don’t listen. I think on that day when I knew Darlene won’t different from other lying whores. I tried to keep the light in that girl’s eyes. Give her every dollar I got hold of. Give her everything she wanted. I give more, she took more, and then she stopped giving altogether. A smell filled up that red room that won’t mine. Darlene’s skin turned oily.

  Darlene got what she had coming.

  • • •

  Billy and me are deep in the holler now. With my free hand, I grab hold of saplings and rocks. Jesus, I’m weak, and wonder if I’m sick for real. The sweat stink on me is as bad as the rotten-egg smell.

  “Roy, you hear me? Let’s stop for a bit.”

  I stop cause I’m tired, not cause Billy said to. I wedge our burden between rocks so it don’t get away. I light up a cigarette and take a deep drag. Billy’s hat sets too low to read his face.

  My troubles started back with that baby growing inside Sadie Blue when all I wanted was to mess with Billy and the boys. Told em I could get Sadie if I wanted her. They don’t believe me so I proved em wrong. Billy was sick sweet on that girl, moon-eyed, tongue-tied. I edged in for the hell of it. She played hard to get, made me take her on, and that part was fun.

  Truth is, Billy don’t deserve a sweet piece like Sadie. The wimp never said a word when I nailed her. Not a word when she got pregnant. Then I messed up bad having her one more time, feeling a tiny kick, and doing something stupid. I did like showing that wedding license to Billy, Pooter, and Earl. They bout shit a brick. All of em was in love with Sadie for a spell.

  It won’t all bad at the sta
rt. I don’t tell the boys at the start Sadie Blue’s pure, like you don’t see in this world. She said, “Roy, you gonna be a good daddy to our baby. You gonna take care of us?”

  I don’t say.

  There was a patch of time when I think bout a little boy looking like me, looking up to me, and following after me. I smile for no good reason. Then I know I’d ruin it. What the hell do I know bout good daddies or walking straight lines?

  When Sadie gave her sweetness to what’s growing inside her and let me be myself again, I do what I do. I beat her. I tomcat with Darlene. Then I beat on Sadie again cause I can. She lost my baby. For the hell of it, I sent a bunch of hard-assed moonshine men after that stupid Jerome Biddle fella to teach him a lesson. Now this thing with Darlene gone flat.

  I need to turn my bad luck around.

  I finish my cigarette and stand. Billy whines, “Ain’t this a good enough place? What dang fool’s gonna come this far to look for trouble?”

  I don’t answer. I stand and pick up the package, and Billy does, too. I gotta be real picky with this one. Everybody knows Darlene and me been together these weeks, so when she don’t come back, they gonna study on me.

  • • •

  Truth is, the law’s been gunning for me for a long time. I gotta be careful not to call attention to myself. Don’t fight less I got to. Don’t speed cept on back roads. Billy does most of the moonshine deliveries now. Without Darlene’s body, the law’s gonna have a hard time getting me for murder. That’s what hey bus corpses means—you gotta have a body to prove somebody’s dead. Without one, the law gets to scratch its ass in puzzlement and gotta let me walk.

  Sheriff Loyal Sykes, stuffed like a sausage in that gray uniform of his, with his spit-polished shoes and slick shaved face, wants me to slip up bad. When he sees me drive down the road and pass his cop car, he chews extra hard on the end of his toothpick and works his jaw. He slides down his black sunglasses on his long nose and stares at me. Swivels his buzzed head like a owl and watches me mosey on by, him frustrated.

  We got a chicken game going on for years, him and me. I aim never to drop my guard and lose. I’m too restless a soul to live behind bars.