Done Dirt Cheap

by Sarah Nicole Lemon

  “All of what?”

  She met his eyes then. His challenge. Her spine stilled to think of Wayne’s eye, fixed eternally on the darkness of the rafters. “I know what the Wardens are. I know what you do. I know the cops went after Mom when they were trying to get you. I know where you were the other night.” She leaned forward, determined. “I found his body when I went to take care of it myself.”

  He froze. His eyes widened. The control faltered. “What?” he breathed.

  “You ruined it,” she said. “No one was supposed to go to prison because of me again. I couldn’t live with that.”

  “I told you to tell me,” he whisper-yelled, stepping closer. “You were supposed to come to me.”

  “So you could do exactly what you did, and end up in prison?”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Bullshit,” she snapped, eyes narrowed. “We both know that’s bullshit.”

  He sighed again and rubbed his face. “It’s just the risk I take. The risk we all take.”

  Finally, a truthful answer. Far too late. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why would I tell you?”

  “It bled into everything, Dad. And you let it all fall on my hands and you never once helped me hold it or clean it off. You just let me stand there, with that weight all on me and no idea how to live with it. You could have told me. I would have been relieved. I needed it to understand where I was and what happened.”

  “I would never lay that burden on a child.”

  It was as if he were arguing with the paper girl. The daughter he’d drawn in the outline he’d expected her to always remain within. And he couldn’t hear that she wasn’t that. She stared at him, trying to find a way to reach him. To make him listen. “I never wanted to be protected from the world I live in. I can’t be shielded from the world I live in—not forever. What I wanted.” She shook her head, tightening her fingers on her legs. “What I needed was for you to teach me how to live in it. To show me how to see it for what it was and when to bend it to my will instead of always bending to it. You have so much power. You are so sure of your place in this world. Why wasn’t I worth teaching that to? Instead you’ve given it all to this.” She looked up at the clubhouse. Gestured to its door whose threshold she was not allowed to cross. “Brotherhood,” she spat.

  “This isn’t about—”

  “It is,” she interrupted, pointing her finger at him. “It is when you cut me off and gave it to them instead. That’s when you made me its enemy. This is my world. And you left me alone inside it.”

  Her dad didn’t respond. His face remained firm. He wasn’t listening.

  She bit her cheek, head pulsing with anger and helplessness. “They’re going to come for you,” she said.

  He shrugged. “You worry too much.”

  “I don’t worry. I know.”

  He heard the authority in her voice. The knowledge. His eyes found hers, a flash of alarm running through them. He shrugged again. “I’ve always known they would. Let them come. You’re safe now.”

  She rolled her eyes in frustration. She’d never been safe. He couldn’t protect her from the life she was already living. From the choices she’d already had to make. That was a lie he told himself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For how this turned out. For how it’s going to turn out.”

  “I don’t know what I would have done differently.” Her father’s voice seemed smaller. “I’m not sorry I tried to keep you safe.”

  She sniffed and nodded, trying not to be hurt that he didn’t understand she was talking about something so much bigger. “I’m going to finish this.” Her voice caught. “I started this. I’m going to finish it.”

  “That’s not your job,” he said. “It’s not your job to protect me. It’s my job to protect you.”

  She turned away, staring at the grass. The wind tugged her hair and she lifted her face into it as her chest cracked open and its contents poured out, and she knew she’d keep on going.

  Let the world around her keep on as it wished, it could not change what she did, and how she thought, and who she was. And with that knowledge, she could make paths anywhere her feet wanted to go. “I learned this world is mine,” she said, picking up her helmet and standing. He had not taught her.

  But she had learned.

  She left him standing by the steps.

  The Shovelhead roared underneath her hands.

  Virginia sat beside Tourmaline on a sagging and splintered picnic bench in the shade alongside the James River. Her knee bounced nervously. Her fifth cigarette in twenty minutes was half gone between her fingers. Her stomach clenched tight. The hills rose on all sides, leaves flipping and tossing as a hot wind carved its way through the mountains under a cloudless August sky.

  “You’re sure?” Tourmaline whispered. “You can still say no.”

  “Just don’t accept anything less than what we want. That’s all I’m nervous about,” Virginia lied.

  Tourmaline sighed and put her chin in her hands.

  The grass wavered shaggy and forgotten, tickling Virginia’s ankles as they waited.

  A car finally pulled into the lot and parked. A man in a suit climbed out. Virginia clamped her fingers to the bench to keep from throwing herself into the river.

  “Tourmaline. Good to see you again,” the man said, coming through the grass with a white legal pad tucked under one arm.

  Tourmaline straightened. “I’d like to deliver a package.”

  He blinked. “A package?”

  “It’s all tied up and neatly knotted. But I need to make an exchange.”

  His mouth dropped ajar and he looked between her and Virginia. “What’s in the package?”

  “Nope.”

  Virginia shifted.

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “No, you do not get to know what the package is before you accept it. That’s not how packages work.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “No. This is what we call a deal.”

  “A deal?” He straightened. “A deal. Okay. What kind of deal?”

  “It turns out, I know something about this heroin problem y’all are having.”

  “Oh, do you?” He said it smugly. “What is it you want?”

  “My mom moved to Alderson. My dad kept out of prison for trumped-up murder charges. And the state detective harassing my family needs to be finished.”

  He frowned. “I can’t do that.”

  She gritted her teeth. Don’t accept anything less. “Great. Who can?”

  “No. Okay.” He sighed in frustration. “Your mom, fine. Your dad—has he been arrested?”

  “Not yet. But they already spoke to him. It’s my mom’s ex. A junkie. With a gun that was stolen from my dad years ago.”

  He looked up, running his tongue over his teeth as he thought. “Does he have an alibi?”

  “He was with me and another club member that night.”

  “If he hasn’t been arrested, how do you know it’s going to happen?”

  Virginia leaned on the table, boards creaking under her elbows. “The detective spoke to me. Told me. He’s working with . . . ,” she trailed off and closed her mouth.

  “It’s complicated,” Tourmaline finished.

  His eyes narrowed at Virginia. “What is this package worth?”

  “More than one man,” Tourmaline said.

  He sighed. “I don’t know. Let me get back to you.”

  “No.”

  He frowned again. “No?”

  “This is it. You walk away from this, you walk away.” Tourmaline stayed firm, her face relaxed. “Your decision.”

  “Can I make a call?”

  “One call. Five minutes.”

  He rushed off.

  “I don’t know,” Tourmaline said as they watched him put his phone to his ear and talk. “I can’t tell.”

  Virginia didn’t respond, texting Jason to focus on something else while she waited. I need a ride. Whenever you have
time. “We can always kill them all. Last resort.”

  Tourmaline laughed. “Last resort.”

  “Watch out.” Virginia nodded, heart picking up.

  The agent was coming back. Black dress shoes through the tall grass. Tense expression. “All right,” he said briskly, sitting down. “Here’s the deal. We can’t stop an arrest and we can’t stop any kind of investigation, but we guarantee manslaughter, tops. If it shakes out the way you say, he’ll be home free. If he’s charged and tried, the deal is manslaughter. We’ll move your mom.”

  “And immunity,” Virginia said. “For anything.”

  The man flicked to her, eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean. I know this because of what I did in it. Drugs.”

  “All right, then.” He nodded, still staring. “Your testimony is the package, I presume?”

  Virginia held out her hand. “Virginia Campbell. Pleased to meet you.”

  She spent two hours talking into a recorder while the agent took notes. He left them both with cards and appointments to come in to sign the paperwork and start the next step. The next step in a long road of things she would need to do in order to testify against Hazard.

  Virginia didn’t start breathing again until the agent pulled away.

  “Want to get some food?” Tourmaline asked, starting toward the truck.

  “No. I’m going to stay here,” Virginia said.

  Tourmaline frowned. “Huh?”

  “Jason’s picking me up.”

  Tourmaline smiled. “See you tomorrow.” She pulled out, heading in the opposite direction from the agent.

  Virginia dragged her fingers through her hair, relieved to be alone. She lit a new cigarette and took deep breaths. Watching as the sky changed from pale blue to deep gold. Straining to hear the familiar roar on the wind. It was strange—how the world changed along with her. How hope took root and pushed up out of the cracked desert of her life.

  Jason pulled up, but she didn’t move; she was transfixed by the flow of the river at her side.

  He sat beside her and the bench groaned. His arm was snug against hers, his thigh pressed against hers.

  “Want me to kill him?” he asked—teasing.

  She smiled, still staring at the river. “I want him to know I did it. I want him to hate me in prison. I want to make Hazard suffer.”

  “Good.” He squeezed her thigh. “Let’s go get your books before the college bookstore closes.”

  She smiled deeper and tilted her chin. His eyes were bright, the hazel shimmering with the colors of the sunset. Jason’s fingers gently stroked her knee. His expression was open and unguarded and full of things he’d only begun to whisper in the dark, where they were safe beside each other.

  After another quiet moment, they left.

  It was late August, when the leaves were tired of themselves but dragging on toward September, when Tourmaline got the call. She’d asked for it, worried she’d be gone at college when it happened. They told her with only thirty minutes to spare.

  Her father was leaving today.

  Virginia helped her load the trailer, leaving the Gaithers’ lawn only half mowed. They pulled into Tourmaline’s driveway, drenched in sweat, with bits of grass sticking to their skin, to find the Wardens all collected there. “You didn’t tell Jason?” Tourmaline asked, breaking the tense silence.

  “No,” Virginia said, folding her gloves in her palms. “Did you tell Cash the police were coming to arrest your dad?”

  “No. Because then he’ll have to tell Dad. I told him everything else, though.”

  “Me too,” Virginia said softly.

  Tourmaline had to park the truck only halfway up the drive. Why, oh, why were they all here? She’d thought it would be dinnertime. Something quiet. Dignified. Not this. Never this.

  “You finished already?” her father hollered, untangling himself from the arms of the woman with the silver earrings.

  Tourmaline slammed the truck door shut and walked through the mess of bikers and girls. “What are you doing?”

  Everything paused for a half second and her father’s face tightened.

  It was one thing for her to talk like that when they were alone in the house, a totally different sort of thing to take that tone in front of his men. Not one of them would ever talk to him like that. But Tourmaline only clenched her fists, wishing she could somehow tell him to send them all away and take a minute alone. But she couldn’t.

  Tourmaline met the woman’s eyes over her father’s shoulder, silently pleading for help.

  The woman shifted. “Calvin?” she asked. As if worried.

  He ignored her. “Go inside,” he said to Tourmaline. “Did you finish all the yards?” he asked Virginia.

  “Not quite.” Virginia kept her voice even; she was answering her boss.

  “Why didn’t you finish?” he asked Tourmaline. “Never mind. Get in the house and clean up. The truck is fine where it is.” He turned, dismissing her.

  Tourmaline had to get him out of here. Somewhere private. “Can I talk to you?”

  “I’ll talk to you later. Go on.”

  Tourmaline looked around, looking for help, for someone to understand that her father was about to be arrested, though she knew none of them could.

  The woman with the silver earrings met her gaze, forehead creased. But she didn’t move.

  Virginia looked to Jason.

  Tourmaline’s stomach tightened further as her gaze swept past Cash, who was standing next to Jason and two women whose clothes left no doubt that they were there to party.

  Lifting her chin, she turned for the house.

  “I’m down to only one, but sometimes she still makes it feel like I have two women ragging in my house,” her father joked as she walked away.

  It ripped her heart into shreds, but Tourmaline bit her lip and blinked, trying to ignore the shake in her hands and the burn in her eyes. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because he didn’t know he was about to go to jail.

  Inside, she got a drink of water, trying to calm down.

  Cash walked in, slamming the door behind him. He was in full Warden swagger, no hint of a conscript left in his walk or in the way he looked at her. “You haven’t told him yet. You’re leaving for school in a few days.”

  Closing her eyes, Tourmaline took another drink. Oh dear God, why today?

  “I’m going to tell him,” he said.

  Putting down the glass, she pushed back her hair. “No. Don’t do that.”

  “I’m not going to keep going behind your dad’s back.”

  She pinched her lips tight.

  He sighed and leaned against the door frame, crossing his arms over his chest. “What’s the real problem?”

  “I mean, you just . . .” She sighed and straightened. The problem was that part of the deal was she couldn’t say anything about the damn deal. And part of the deal was she had to stand by and let it all happen. And part of the deal should have never included this moment on this day. She tried to find a real answer for Cash and all she came up with was flat truth. “You’d be the first. He’s going to beat the hell out of you.”

  A flicker of a smile crossed his face, but he gave her a hard look. “Don’t be giving me that bullshit.” He stepped closer, looking her over as if he were remembering kissing her. Wanting to kiss her again. “That’s not the real problem, is it? Between me and you.”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “Come on, now.”

  She looked away.

  “Tell me, Tour-mah-line,” he said in a deepened, joking voice.

  “It’s not your problem. It’s mine.”

  “I love you,” he said softly. “It is my problem.”

  A shudder of pleasure shot through her stomach. It never got old to hear him say it.

  “Why are you afraid?”

  She pulled back. “I’m not afraid,” she huffed.

  He laughed, clearly not believing her. “Okay.”

 
“It’s just weird.” She swallowed, wishing she had better words for him. “I just can’t go into a . . . relationship . . . thinking you’ll be different, or that you’ll change. I can’t pretend this world is something different. I can’t have expectations.” In the face of all she knew about the club and her parents.

  “Expectations?”

  “Of your loyalty.”

  “Ahh . . .” He nodded, his body somehow softening. “That’s it.”

  They were silent. She caught his eye.

  “That’s a good fear. A smart one. That’s not a problem you have to work through.”

  “I’m not a jealous person,” she said quietly. “I won’t tell you what to do or how to do it, because you’re a grown-ass man and that’s not my job. I’m not your mother and I’m not God. I’m a coldhearted daughter of the devil; and if you betray me, I’ll get my revenge and walk as light by you as you can by me. And if that scares you, you should leave now.”

  Cash shoved off the wall and walked toward her. “Oh, it scares me.” But he just dipped his head, pulling her tight to his chest and kissing her deeply. Breaking away, he met her eyes. “My dad never once messed around on my mom. He raised me with that sense of loyalty and respect for the person I’m with. And that doesn’t mean those women won’t be around. And that doesn’t mean every other guy out there thinks the same way. But I’ll never betray you. Ever.” He kissed her forehead. “And I’m telling him.”

  Shit. He wouldn’t. He’d wait. Not here, with everyone. Not today of all days.

  But he was out the door already.

  She scrambled after him.

  His back stayed straight, steps at ease as he approached her father.

  “Cash,” she said, trying not to yell, but trying to get his attention. Deal be damned, she’d tell him. What could it hurt now?

  A few of the men who heard her call him by name stopped and turned. There was a split second of absolute silence, with nothing but the breeze stirring the trees and the long, dull song of the cicadas.