by Jake Hinkson
I didn't say shit.
"You do realize that. Good." He stood up. Tall and thin, he swept around the desk in one quick movement and perched on the corner and stared down at me. "This is a bad start for you, sweetie. Very bad. Poor Jimmy Romandetto is dead and gone to Jesus and here you are trying to bribe your new parole officer. That's a goddamn bad start to your new life on the outside. People are watching you now. Disgraced correctional officer. Adulterer—least that's the talk around town about you. And now here you are offering monetary remuneration to a public servant in exchange for favors. Your life is just a whole bunch of ugly."
"I'm sorry."
He nodded and said, "That's good, but sorry don't pay my bills."
"What does?"
"Well, since you brought up money, how much is your brother paying you to work the desk at his place?"
I told him.
"What's the matter," he asked, "you guys not close?"
"It's all he can afford to pay me."
"I reckon I can make due with twenty-five percent," Belton said.
"Extortion is a crime, you know. Ever think I might just march my ass down to the state parole board and tell them about this shakedown?"
"A former prison guard who did time for beating up a prisoner, who's been out of the joint one week, whose first PO just happened to die in her company, and who now wants to claim—with no evidence, mind you, besides her own good word—that her new PO tried to extort pennies from her … please excuse me while I shit my pants, Bennett."
I met his stare. What the fuck was there to say?
I nodded.
He smiled. "Well said. From now on, I'm your first stop on payday. Twenty-five percent. Every two weeks. Past that, I'll stay out of your way. That's good news, ain't it?"
"Sure."
"Sure it is." He stood up and walked back to his chair and sat down. "You can go where you want, do what you want, see who you want. And it's only for a few years. I'll write up nice little reports about you, about how well you're doing and how hard you're working, and at the end you'll come out rehabilitated. If you really think about, that's a hell of a deal."
"It's an incredible value," I said. "You should advertise."
He beamed at me. "Hey the jokes are back! Glad to hear it." He motioned at the door. "You can go, darlin'. I think we've reached an understanding."
I stood up, took one last look at his stupid, smiling face, and left.
* * *
I walked out of Belton's office building and an American flag mounted by the doorway slapped me in the face. No one saw it. His building was a four story cinder block in the middle of town, but no one was around. I wasn't sure that Belton had any neighbors in his building because my car was the only one in the parking lot. For that matter, I wasn't even sure Belton had a car himself.
I leaned against the tired old Escort and stared at the empty parking lot like it might have some answers.
It didn't.
I dug out my cell phone and called Nate. I told him I'd be doing things in the city the rest of the day and begged off dinner with the family.
He muttered that it was okay, but when I hung up I got the feeling that he wasn't happy.
* * *
Indian Head Estates was a large trailer park sitting just off the interstate. At the entrance to the park, I passed a five-foot wooden Indian head mounted on concrete. The road wound around a little pond and a sandy playground and split off into a grid of streets. I drove down the estates, passing row after row of mobile homes on streets with names like Redskin, Geronimo and Tomahawk, and it took me a few minutes to figure out that Indian Head Loop was the road that encircled the entire park. Once I had pieced that together, it didn't take me long to find the office/home of the manager. It was the last trailer before a long stretch of woods, and the road itself even stopped, blocked off by a heavy orange construction barricade that read: Do Not Enter. An old Arkansas Razorback flag hung limply by a door with a sign that read: Management.
There was a new black Ford F-150 in the driveway, so it looked as if Management was in. I walked up and knocked on the thin door.
I hadn't heard a television going inside, but I noticed when the sound shut off and someone grumbled and padded across the floor.
The shirtless man who opened up the door to me had skinny arms and a beer gut. Scars covered his bald head like haphazard tattoos. A deep gash split his chin as if someone had once tried to cut him a cleft with a hatchet.
"Yeah?"
"You Evan?"
He stared at me as if I'd insulted him. Then he leaned out the door and looked past me at his short driveway. Seeing only my beat up Escort beside his truck, he said, "Yeah."
"I was wondering if I could talk to you."
"About what?"
"About Alexis Kravitz."
Dumb eyes glared at me from beneath a heavy, white-slashed brow.
I smiled and nodded. "Mind if I come in and talk? Only take a minute."
He rubbed his split chin with his thumb and glanced out at the driveway again. Then he said, "Alright."
I stepped inside.
The place was dark. All the windows were covered, and covered as if there would never be a need to uncover them. The trailer smelled of smoke and booze and sweat and cheapness.
A cockeyed fat girl sat on a sofa smoking cigarettes. Maybe twenty or so, she wore cutoff jeans and a green pocket T-shirt. When I came in, she glanced at me and then turned her attention back to the television on the other side of the room.
On the screen played one of those gruesome video compilations of real-life death scenes caught on tape—the kind of underground movie that splices together footage of fatal accidents and suicides and murders. As Evan closed the door behind me, a woman onscreen was being mauled to death by a grizzly bear.
Evan told the girl, "Go on in the back while me and this one talk."
Without a word, the girl stood up and left the room. Her footsteps clomped down the thin floor of the hallway, then somewhere a door closed.
I asked, "Does she do tricks, too?"
Evan sat down in a La-Z-Boy next to the sofa. On the walls hung knives. Long ones and short ones. Dozens of them. There was something that looked like a samurai sword over the entrance to the hallway. Knives appeared to be the only form of decoration in the trailer.
Evan said, "Why you coming around asking me about Alexis?"
I sat down on the sofa where the girl had been. "You know her."
"So?"
"She's not here now is she?"
"Nope."
From a little TV-dinner tray in front of him, he picked up a hunting knife with an eight-inch blade and slid it along a sharpening steel with a black handle.
"She come back here after she got out of prison?" I asked.
"What do you know about her being in prison?"
"I was inside with her."
"Is that right?"
"That's right. Ellie Bennett. She might have mentioned me. We were in the same block. I got out and now I'm looking for her. I heard she might have come back here after she got out of Eastgate."
He sliced the knife down the steel. I noticed scars on both of his hands. His gut rose and fell against his lap as he asked, "What were you in for?"
"Assault."
He grinned. "Who'd you assault?"
"I heard Alexis was here for a while …"
"Heard wrong."
"You sure about that?"
He stopped to fix me with a scowl. When I didn't flutter my eyes or run for my life, he said, "Well, Alexis ain't much for sticking around places. Especially if she thinks she's got somewheres better to go."
"Where'd she go?"
"Her momma died. You hear about that?"
"No. When was that?"
"A month ago. Something like that. They wasn't close or nothing, but her momma was taking care of Kaylee. Lived down in Texas somewheres, so Alexis went down there to settle things and pick up the kid."
"You go with her?"
"But she came back, right?"
"Yeah, but it wasn't long before she run off again. Got involved with that preacher and skipped out."
"Preacher? What preacher?"
He nodded at the television. Onscreen a small, dead girl was being pulled out of a swimming pool, but I caught on that he meant television in general.
"A preacher on TV?" I asked.
"Yeah that dude that's running for … politics, you know …"
"Jerry Kingston? The guy running for Congress?"
"Yeah."
"What do you mean she got involved with him?"
Evan scowled at me and sliced the blade across the steel. "I don't know."
"But, involved with him how?"
He flicked his tongue across his teeth and pointed the knife at me like a finger. "It ain't too polite to come into a man's house and start demanding answers to questions. Pretty goddamn rude, as a matter of fact. You ask me a question oncet, I'll answer it if I feel like it. But you ask me twicet … and you'll upset me."
"Well shit, don't get upset, you might cut yourself again."
Evan Hastings closed his eyes. He shook his head. "See," he said slapping the knife against his palm, "problem is you don't know who you're talking to. Most men ain't got balls nowadays. And women, some women, they come to rely on that. They start believing there ain't no real men left."
"I can see you're all man." I didn't actually mean to provoke him, but I am by nature a smartass, so maybe it came out provocatively.
Evan opened his eyes and fixed them on me. Then he stood up and walked over to the door and locked it.
I stood up.
He leaned against the door.
I said, "Let's take it easy. I just came here looking for my friend. You don't know where she is, I can just be on my way."
He rubbed the flat of the blade against his bare gut and groused, "See, now you want to take it easy. A second ago you wanted to be mouthy, but now you want to take it easy. All it took was me locking the door. Just slid a little piece of metal into a little slot and now all the sudden you want to take it easy."
With my peripheral vision, I scanned my distance to the nearest knife on the wall. I could reach it without having to take a step or bend over the couch.
I felt my skin flush when he took a step toward me. I moved to the right and kept the coffee table between us. I pulled a knife off the wall.
He said, "That's my Randall 14."
"You touch me and I'll stick this Randall 14 in between those balls you love so much."
He took a step to the left to get between me and the door. "You ever been in a knife fight?"
I took a step to my left.
"Naw," he said, "you ain't never been in no knife fight. Want some advice? Want to know the secret to winning a knife fight? The secret is, don't be afraid of getting cut."
I stopped moving. His advice wasn't bad.
He took another step toward me. I tossed his Randall 14 on the sofa.
That amused him.
"We're not playing anymore?" he said.
I locked eyes with him and walked between him and the coffee table, our faces maybe two inches away from each other. "I got all I need here," I said.
I got to the door and unlocked it and opened it.
Evan Hastings smiled, supremely satisfied. So satisfied he threw me a bone. "Alexis come back from seeing her momma and decided to get some religion," he said. He picked his teeth with the point of his knife. "Leastways, that's the way she tolt it to me. I didn't say nothing. Let her go find the Holy Ghost—don't mean fuck all to me."
I turned around. "You know that she actually knows Jerry Kingston? You see them together?"
"Naw, but I know she went to meet him. The last night she was here, she said she's going out. And I was like, 'Where you going?' And she said she didn't want to say. And I was like, 'Bull and Shit.' Sleeping in my house, eating my food, shitting in my toilet, and don't want to tell me what you're doing? I was like, 'That's bullshit.' And she said, 'I'm going to see Brother Jerry.' And I said, 'Why?' and she said, ''Cause.' And I said, ''Cause why?' And she said it wasn't none of my business."
He stopped to let me ask what happened next.
I said, "Then what?"
He pointed at me with the knife. "I straightened her out. Not fucking around like just now with you, but for real. I straightened her the fuck out."
"With a knife?"
He smirked. "Nah, I'd never cut up a pretty face. I ain't that kind of man. I just slapped some sense into her."
"No."
"What?"
I felt my face flush again. Something about seeing satisfaction on a face that stupid and gross prompted me to say, "I can see you're not that kind of man."
I stepped back inside and closed the door behind me. I locked it.
Still holding his knife at his side, he suddenly looked confused. "The fuck you doing?"
"I wanted to tell you what a balless sack of shit you are."
It took him a second to process what I said. "What?"
"What I said, dipshit, was that if I wanted to insult you I'd do it to your face and you'd stand there with your knife in your hand and you wouldn't do a goddamn thing about it."
He moved toward me. "You think so?"
"Yeah, motherfucker, I do."
He stopped just in front of me. He stunk—stunk of stupidity and meanness.
I leaned into his stink until I was a couple of inches from his face again and his knife was a couple of inches from my stomach. "Because you know, Evan. You might be dumber than dog shit but you know I'm not twenty years old and ignorant and afraid. I don't love you or need money from you and I'm not even a little afraid of you. And you know that if you try some bullshit with me, you'll have a real fight on your hands."
He glared at me for a moment before his eyes brightened and he let out a boozy laugh. "Whoa, you're one crazy fucking bitch, ain't you?" He laughed some more and dabbed at the corner of his eye with a scarred knuckle. "I didn't see it right off, but you're one of them crazy bitches."
I gave him a smile. "Just had my fill of the ones like you, that's all. Don't take it personally. Just allergic to assholes."
I turned around, unlocked the door and left him standing there.
Driving away, my entire body spasmed with adrenaline.
My hands shook as I tried to grip the wheel.
The car was too quiet.
I yelled, "That's right, motherfucker!"
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next morning, a man came to see me.
I'd had breakfast with the family—sitting there staring at a piece of toast while my brother said grace and thanked God, again, for having me at the table. Then Bethany left to take Felicia to a friend's house, and Nate and I walked down to the shop.
Nate had just unlocked the front office when a Lexis pulled into the drive. A short man wearing a blue suit and a red tie got out.
Nate assumed he was a customer. "Morning."
The man walked toward me. He had dark eyes that didn't blink. "Ellie Bennett."
"Yeah."
"There's a man looking for you."
"That's a relief to hear."
Behind me Nate said, "Who wants to see her?"
Without looking at him, the man with the dark eyes said, "Fuck off, buddy."
Unsteady on his crutch, my brother hobbled toward him. "What?"
I got between them. "Whoa, Nate. Take it easy." I turned back to the man with the dark eyes. "That was rude. You're out of line talking to my brother like that." I turned back to Nate. "It's okay, Nate. Go on, inside. I need to talk to this guy." He didn't want to go in, but I shook him by the arm. "It's fine. Really. I'll explain later. Give me a minute."
Nate glared at me, then turned and walked into the office.
The man with the dark eyes grinned and looked at his watch. "How about you come see us in an hour?"
"Who are you?"
"One hour. Downtown. Morgan building."
"Do I have a choice?"
He smiled again, tickled at the question. "Of course, you do. Free country. But you'll want to see this guy who wants to meet you. Got an opportunity for you."
"What's he want to see me about?"
"I guess you'll find out. The old Morgan building downtown. Ten o'clock."
"Who do I ask for?"
He opened his car door. "Don't ask for anybody. Just show up."
* * *
I dressed up like I was going for a job interview as a funeral director. Black skirt and jacket over a white blouse. Black flats, no necklace, some small black hoops. A little make-up to cover the rough spots, and I walked down to the shop and found Nate working.
"I need to borrow the car again," I said.
Crouched low on a work stool beside an old couch, he nodded as he yanked staples out of the frame with a pair of needle-nose pliers.
I asked, "Was that nod a 'Yes, you can borrow the car'?"
He pulled out a staple and dropped it in a bucket by his feet. "Sure."
"You okay, Nate?"
"Yeah."
"You're sure?"
"Yeah."
I stared at the top of his head. He twisted out another staple and dropped it in the bucket.
I said, "I'm sorry that guy was a dick."
He raised his head. His face was blank, which was always a sign that he was mad.
"What do you want me to say?" he asked.
"Nothing, I guess."
"You want me to be silent?"
"You know that's not what I mean."
"Yeah, Ellie. I think it is what you mean. So I'm just here pulling staples out of this couch. Being silent. Not asking questions."
I'd had enough of this conversation already. I didn't want to tell him what was going on because I could think of no good that would come of it. I just wanted to leave. But I was living at his house and working at his business, and plus I loved the bastard, so I took one more swing. "I have to go. It's just a business thing. It's nothing dangerous or illegal or bad. It's just a business thing. I'm about to go get in the car and drive off. I'll be back in a couple of hours. But I don't want to just turn around and leave if there is anything you need to discuss with me."