Before Familiar Woods

by Ian Pisarcik

  Several pickups sat in the pea-gravel lot in front of the motel. A wooden sign with MOTORCYCLES ONLY spray-painted on both sides was propped up on the grass in front of the bar. Della pulled into a wide spot between two pickups and cut the engine.

  “You thought about what you’re going to say?” Della asked.

  “What I’m going to say?”

  “To the men inside.”

  “I’m going to ask whichever of them look capable of stringing together a sentence if they’ve seen my husband. It don’t require a lot of thought.”

  Ruth got out of the truck and studied the Whistler. There was a time that her and Elam would come to the bar every Friday night. She’d never liked it much. There were too many drunks and too many fights. But there were also cold winter days, sitting at a table in the corner with Elam drinking beer and listening to whatever bad songs people played on the jukebox, when it could be almost comforting.

  The door to the Whistler swung open as Ruth and Della approached, and blue light poured out onto the pea gravel. A big man with a full goatee stumbled out and unzipped his pants not two feet from the door and started pissing on the grass. Ruth recognized the man as Jay Brewer’s son Mitch, though she hadn’t seen him since he was a teenager volunteering in Mathew’s T-ball league.

  “Don’t worry, ladies, I got a permit for this thing.” Mitch moved his hips and watched the steaming line of piss paint a small circle on the grass.

  “You sure you need a permit for a toy gun?” Ruth asked.

  Mitch looked up and studied Ruth, and his face broke into a smile. “Holy shit—Ruth Fenn.” Mitch tipped his head back and started laughing. He shook the last of the piss from his limp penis and stuffed it back in his pants and pulled up his fly. “In the goddamn flesh,” he said. “I ain’t seen you in a while.” He wiped his palms on his jeans and stuck out his right hand.

  “That’s okay,” Ruth said.

  Mitch put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “Hell, Ruth, I was hearing maybe you built an underground bunker up there—locked yourself in for the duration.”

  “I did. But I guess I missed the Whistler too much.”

  Mitch laughed again. He looked over at Della and back to Ruth. “Some of the boys are in there,” he said. “Jack Canfield and Harry Timblin—and Royce Peters. You remember Royce.”

  “I remember.”

  “We’re celebrating,” Mitch said.

  “That so?”

  “Yup. Rickie got herself pregnant.” Mitch threw up his hands. “I’m going to be a father.”

  Ruth studied the scar that ran across Mitch’s jaw. She remembered hearing about the accident. A couple of years ago he had been driving alone on Route 9 when a truck axle snapped and pirouetted through his windshield. He was lucky he wasn’t dead.

  “You don’t get yourself pregnant, Mitch.”

  “I guess not. I guess I had something to do with it.”

  “Well, good. That’s a big thing to have happen.”

  Mitch nodded and smiled like he knew it was. Like he knew it was the biggest thing that would ever happen to him—bigger than anything that he deserved to have happen.

  “Is Cecil Higgins in there?” Ruth asked.

  “He’s in there, I think. I seen him about an hour ago, anyway.” Mitch took a cigarette from his coat pocket.

  “What about Elam—when’s the last time you seen him?”

  “Elam?”

  “That’s right.”

  Mitch snorted and wiped his nose with his hand. “A couple days ago, I guess.”

  “What about last night?”

  Mitch shook his head. “I was over at Rickie’s. Putting together a crib for the baby. Damn thing took me near all night.”

  “It gets harder.”

  Mitch nodded and lit his cigarette. He still looked like a boy to Ruth, though his hair was thinning and his shoulders had grown coiled the way they seemed to do on all the loggers.

  Mitch had never shown particular interest in Mathew as a player, which made him just about like every other person in North Falls. But he’d been kind and patient with Ruth’s boy. He had come to the funeral, too. Him and his mother. He was the only person from the league that did. Ruth hadn’t forgotten that.

  The rain started to come down harder. “Congratulations,” she said again. “On the child.”

  “Grayson—David—Brewer. You remember that name. He’s gonna be famous someday.”

  Ruth nodded. She knew Mitch believed it, too. Knew he believed he already knew everything there was to know about his boy.

  * * *

  NOT A WHOLE lot happened when she entered the Whistler. It might have gotten a little quieter, but for the most part people seemed to continue doing whatever it was they had been doing before she arrived. A wagon wheel fitted with Christmas lights hung over the bar. A small wooden stage was set up at the far end, and three people held cans of beer and danced by themselves to the loose chords of a beat-up guitar played by a man wearing a floppy-brimmed camouflage hat. Ruth took off her glasses and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief, and then she put her glasses back on. She scanned the bar looking for people she recognized. Just about all the men wore ball caps and shirts that said FLEMING LOGGING or else NORTH FALLS VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT. A woman Ruth’s age with tattoos running up her arms sat on a bar stool knitting something pink. Another man sat at a table in the corner of the bar with his head tilted back against an exposed beam and his eyes closed.

  Ruth spotted Cecil Higgins sitting at a small table in the back with Eddie Ransom, and she left Della at the entrance and walked over peanut shells and spilled drinks to the table. Cecil saw her and stood and grabbed his tattered green snow hat like he was going to take it off, but in the end he just held his hand there on top of the thick wool.

  “Ruth,” he said.

  Cecil had worked AAA roadside assistance with Elam out at George Milken’s shop for close to twenty years before turning exclusively to plowing and driving trucks for HP Hood. The two continued to hunt together, and every now and then Cecil came by the house afterward for beers. He was always good company, but Ruth hadn’t seen much of him lately.

  “You don’t have to stand, Cecil—I ain’t the president.”

  “I wouldn’t stand for that piece of shit.” Cecil leaned forward and gave Ruth a hug. Then he stood back and studied her. He was a big barrel-chested man, and he wore a flannel shirt and open brown vest. His beard was thick and uneven, like it had been cut with a bucksaw. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.

  Eddie Ransom was looking at her too now.

  “I’m looking for Elam.”

  Cecil looped his thumbs around his brown leather belt. “I haven’t seen him—figured maybe he’d be in later.”

  “What about yesterday?”

  “I seen him yesterday—both Eddie and I did.”

  Eddie nodded. He was a thin man with a gray ponytail. He wore a twine necklace with a shark’s tooth hanging from it like a little boy might wear.

  “You see him leave?”

  Cecil squinted his eyes like he was trying to picture what he might have seen. “I don’t think so—I mean, we might’ve left before him. I don’t remember. What’s going on?”

  “He didn’t show up at the house last night.”

  Cecil looked directly at her. “Hell, Ruth.”

  “Horace didn’t come home neither—that’s why Della’s here.” Ruth turned to the entrance, but Della was no longer there.

  “You two came here together?”

  “Happy as a couple of toads in lightning.”

  Cecil scratched his beard. “They were talking,” he said. “Elam and Horace. Sitting just over there at that table by the bar.”

  “You know what they were talking about? What the hell they might be doing together?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe they were patching things up.”

  Ruth studied the table by the bar. A young girl and a man were sitting there now.
The man put his hand on the girl’s cheek, and she pushed it away but laughed at the same time.

  “He seem drunk to you?”

  “Elam? No. He hasn’t had nothing to drink for a few weeks now.”

  “Not even last night?”

  Cecil shook his head. “I’d have noticed if he was drinking again.”

  Eddie nodded in agreement.

  “Were they arguing?”

  “Not that I saw. Like I said, I thought maybe they were patching things up. I tried to give ’em their space. I saw Jack Barlow go over there, though.”

  “Jack?”

  “I know him and Elam don’t like each other much. I suppose he was wondering what Elam and Horace were doing together. It wouldn’t be like Jack to give nobody space.”

  Ruth looked around the bar. “Is he here tonight?”

  “Not tonight. But you can catch him at the AA meeting on Tuesday.”

  “AA meeting?”

  “Twelve o’clock—at the church. He don’t miss ’em. I see that orange piece-of-shit truck parked outside every time I go to lunch.”

  “What the hell is he doing in the Whistler if he’s going to AA?”

  “Hell, Ruth, half the guys in here go to that shit. Mostly ’cause their wives make ’em.”

  A redheaded woman stood from the bar and walked to the bathroom. She caught Ruth’s eye because she was young and pretty and there wasn’t anybody else like that in the Whistler. Not even close.

  “Who’s that?”

  Cecil turned as the woman slipped behind the bathroom door.

  “That’s the new girl Henry’s got working for him. From Underhill—calls herself Rain.”

  “Rain?”

  “Like from the sky.”

  “Well, why not,” Ruth said. “Why the hell not.”

  “She moved into Jim Dalfino’s old place last week. Henry gave her a job just like that.”

  “I’ll bet he did.”

  “Said he could use the extra hand.”

  “I know right where he could use it, too.”

  Cecil laughed and pulled off his snow hat and ran his hand through his curly hair.

  “Listen,” Ruth said. “You don’t know where Elam could be? He didn’t tell you nothing?”

  “Hell, Ruth, I’d tell you if he did. You know that.”

  Ruth nodded. She looked around the bar. “Horace’s truck is still outside. Elam’s is missing—but Horace’s has been here since last night.”

  “You think maybe Horace’s wouldn’t start, then? Maybe Elam gave him a ride somewhere?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m thinking we ought to open it up.”

  “I can help you with that.”

  The redheaded girl came back from the bathroom, and Ruth watched her walk slowly up to the bar and put her elbows down on the countertop. She leaned over, and Ruth could see where her underwear came up past her jeans. Some of the guys started talking to her and laughing and pointing at something underneath the bar counter.

  Mitch had moved to a small table in the corner. He was sitting there by himself with a beer in his hand grinning largely while the rest of the guys flirted with the redheaded girl.

  “Mitch Brewer is having a kid,” Cecil said.

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “He ain’t but a kid himself.”

  “He’s older than that.”

  “I suppose. Maybe he is. But I still remember him as a kid.”

  “I know it.”

  “He was a big ol’ boy even then. I remember him loping around after balls. Elam used to joke that if he ever had to haul ass, it would take him two trips.” Cecil smiled a little to himself and then pounded his beer and set it on the table. “Let’s get that truck open.”

  The three of them pushed through the crowd. All of those people standing around laughing on a Sunday night like they didn’t have a single care in the world, even though Ruth knew they did—most of them plenty more than just the one.

  * * *

  THE RAIN HAD turned to flurries. A man wearing a jacket with a mouton collar sat on a guardrail that hugged the road, holding a beer, looking toward the other buildings on Main Street in the far distance and singing quietly to himself. Ruth could see some of the yellow-lit houses on the other side of the road behind small yards, some that were well kept and others that had grown tall with weeds behind their chain-link fences.

  Cecil’s truck was a red Ford F350. He kept it parked on the patch of grass at the far end of the lot near the wooden motorcycle-parking sign. Ruth followed him past a couple of men who stood outside smoking cigarettes and leaning against the side of the Whistler.

  “I suppose you called Gordon,” Cecil said. “Not that Elam would be out in this shit.”

  “I called him. He hasn’t seen ’em.”

  Cecil removed a trenching shovel from the bed of his truck. He opened the cab and pulled a stained rag and a long bar from behind the seat.

  The wind blew, and Ruth took a deep breath. The cold winter air smelled fresh to her, even in the parking lot of the Whistler. She studied the crowded lot and tried to picture her husband there. Tried to imagine what he was talking to Horace about. Closed her eyes and tried to hear it. The wind blew again and turned the rain sideways.

  “That’s it there.” Cecil pointed to the small single-cab powder-blue pickup, parked at the opposite end of the lot, across from the motel rooms, close to a telephone pole with weeds grown up around it. “You want Della out here for this?”

  Ruth shook her head. “Ain’t no need.”

  Cecil tried the handle of Horace’s pickup, and when the door didn’t open, he walked around to the other side and tried the passenger door. “Thought maybe we’d get lucky.” He set the shovel and the long bar on top of the cab and put his boot on the front tire and moved his weight up and down a little, as though seeing whether the truck could hold him, and then he pulled himself into the bed and crawled up on top of the cab. “You hear about that truck that broke down in New Mexico? Lady pulled it off the highway and popped the hood and found a seven-foot python curled up on top of the engine block.”

  “Still alive?”

  “According to the guy on the seven o’clock news, it was.” Cecil rotated his legs so they hung down on each side of the side mirror. He laid the rag down over the door and then rested the shovel on the rag and used it to pry the door open. Eddie was standing off to the side having a smoke.

  “You look like you done this before,” Ruth said.

  “I haven’t always been the model citizen you see here before you.”

  The light in one of the motel rooms turned on and wavered.

  “I was a Boy Scout—it’s true,” Cecil said. “But only for two weeks before I got caught diddling the Scout leader’s wife.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Whose wife was that?”

  “Perd Talham’s. Her name was Lucy.”

  “Lucy Talham? Hell, Cecil, I think maybe you could’ve done better.”

  “I was thirteen years old. She could’ve been a notch in the side of a sycamore tree.”

  The light in the motel room wavered again, and a moment later the door opened and a man in a thick winter coat came out holding a lawn chair. He set the lawn chair in the gravel underneath the overhang and sat down and lit a cigarette.

  “Who’s that?” Ruth asked.

  Cecil looked over at the man and then back to the truck. “You know who that is.”

  “I never seen him before.”

  “They’re all the same.” Cecil slipped the long bar in between the door and the frame and started moving it around.

  Ruth could tell the man in the lawn chair was watching them even from across the lot. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could tell which way his head was tilted by the burnt-orange light of his cigarette.

  “Got it,” Cecil said. He pulled the long bar up through the space he had created with the shovel and climbed down from
the truck. “Didn’t even leave a scratch—not that it would’ve made a difference.”

  The man in the lawn chair stretched his legs out onto the pea gravel and rested the heel of one boot on the toe of the other as though he were poolside in some resort in the dead of summer. The light behind him wavered again.

  “Someone else is in there,” Ruth said.

  Cecil looked back at the motel room. “Probably.”

  Ruth started toward the room.

  “Ruth—they don’t have nothing to do with this.”

  Ruth continued across the pea gravel. She smelled cigarette smoke and truck fuel.

  “Goddammit, Ruth.”

  The plastic blinds were drawn closed in the room. The welcome mat outside the door was torn in places and covered with cigarette butts.

  “Something I can help you with?” the man in the chair asked as Ruth drew close.

  “I want to know if you seen two men here yesterday.”

  The man took a drag from his cigarette. Held it for a moment in front of his face between his red muttonchops.

  “One of them is short with a bald head. Walks with a limp. The other is skinny and tall. Wears a Browning cap.”

  “I don’t know nobody like that.”

  Ruth knocked on the door.

  “Ain’t nobody in there seen a thing,” the man said.

  Ruth knocked again. A boy that didn’t look older than a teenager opened the door. He wore a flat-brim hat and a gray hooded sweat shirt and basketball shorts. He looked Ruth up and down but didn’t seem like he was going to say anything.

  “I’m looking for my husband.”

  The boy looked at the man in the lawn chair and then back toward the motel room. A black man was lying on the bed holding a remote and flipping through channels.

  “Kennon—you married to some old woman?”

  “Nope,” the man said. He continued to stare at the television.

  “I’m looking for a man named Elam and a man named Horace.”

  “Those are some fucked-up names.”