by Marsha Moyer
Then we went back to Dove's. Geneva and Bailey and Lily came by after services at their own church, and the kids hunted for Easter eggs in the backyard, and we all sat down together at the dining room table for roast lamb and new potatoes and lemon pound cake.
It was midafternoon before Jude and I finally got home. Ash's truck wasn't in the yard when we pulled in, and I was glad. I knew I was supposed to feel all pure and righteous because Christ was risen, but the past couple of days had worn on me, and all I was wondering was how I could get Jude to entertain himself for an hour or two so I could lie down and take a nap.
I was hanging up my dress when I heard Jude hollering from the back porch. "Mama! Come look! The Easter Bunny's been here!"
I walked through the kitchen in my slip, anticipation and dread making my head pound. Even so, I had the breath knocked out of me by what I found: a travel trailer sitting in my backyard.
A shiver moved up my spine. I remembered a story I'd heard in town the week before, about a botched drug bust over in Morris County. The deputies and the feds had been staking out the operation for months, a couple of brothers known to cook up a particularly potent form of methamphetamine out of an old trailer deep in the woods on the Cade County line. But after hundreds of hours of surveillance and paperwork, when the law finally showed up to take the brothers down, not only were they gone but the trailer was, too, literally overnight, nothing left but a clearing and a set of tire tracks. Every neighbor within ten miles was questioned, but nobody'd seen a thing, or would admit to it, anyway. For all intents and purposes, that trailer had vanished into thin air.
Jude unlatched the screen door and ran down the back steps and into the yard, still wearing his church pants and his clip-on tie.
"Stay away from there, Jude!" I called.
"But I want to see!"
"Don't touch anything! We don't know whose it is or how it got there!"
I went into the hall and picked up the cordless phone.
"Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?"
It was an excellent question, one I should probably have thought about how to answer before I'd dialed.
"Hi, Luther," I said. "It's Lucy Hatch. Farrell," I added.
"Oh, hey, Lucy. How's it going?"
"Pretty good. And you?"
"Oh, you know—can't complain."
"I saw your mama in church this morning. She sang the solo."
"Yeah, she's been practicing for weeks. How'd she do? She was worried about hitting the high notes."
"No, she did fine. It was real inspiring."
"Good, good, that's good." A silence fell. "You called nine-one-one to talk about my mama?"
"No. I—well, I don't know how to describe this, exactly."
Luther's voice dropped into a professional register. "Everything you say here is strictly confidential." . "There's a trailer in my yard."
"A traitor?"
"Trailer. A travel trailer. Like—you know. Those two brothers over in Morris County were staying in."
"You mean the meth trailer? The one that disappeared?"
"Well, I don't know that it's the exact same one. But I—"
"How'd it get there?"
"I'm not sure," I said, although I was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion. "I just got home from church and found it."
"Is there anybody in it? Did you look inside?"
"Well, no, Luther—that's why I called you."
"Hey, Marjo!" Luther called out. "Guess what? The meth trailer done showed up in Lucy Hatch's yard!"
I heard a flurry of conversation on the other end, and then the sheriff came on the line, her voice gruff and businesslike: "Lucy? Marjo Malone here."
I was beginning to regret my haste in calling the law. "Hey, Marjo. I'm sorry I bothered y'all. This is probably a bunch of fuss about nothing."
"Well, look—is there a trailer in your yard or isn't there?"
"Yes. Yes, there is."
"And it's not yours?"
"I think I'd know whether I owned a trailer or not."
"Can you describe it for me?"
"Hang on." I carried the phone to the back door, covered the mouthpiece with my hand. "Jude! What did I tell you? Get away from there!" I went out onto the step and squinted. "I don't know," I said to Marjo. "It looks like a travel trailer. I guess eighteen, maybe twenty feet long? It's kind of off-white. Or maybe it's just dirty. I don't know what else to tell you." What kind of distinguishing marks were we talking about, anyway—moles, scars, maybe a Japanese dragon tattoo?
"Have you gone inside?"
"I have not and will not. Look, I have a feeling I know who's—"
"Dewey and me'll be there in fifteen minutes. Just leave things the way you found 'em—we might need to preserve evidence."
"Evidence?" I said.
But she was already handing the phone back to Luther. I heard her tell him, "This I gotta see."
IVlARjo malone had been sheriff in Cade County for three years, ever since her predecessor, Bill Dudley, retired. The gossips at the DQ and the cafe were of two minds as to how she got elected: either ability and experience outpaced eccentricity with voters, or her opponent for the position, longtime deputy Dewey Wentzel, really was that universally and deeply reviled.
To be fair, Marjo wasn't a true eccentric, not in the time-honored, Deep East Texas tradition. What she was was pushing fifty, tall and square-shouldered with a white skunk-stripe in her dark hair, given to wearing bright red lipstick and earrings shaped like little silver pistols dangling from her pierced ears. Marjo had never married, which would in itself have made her suspect, even without her bone-rattling voice and hard stare and Marshal Dillon swagger. But she was the daughter and granddaughter of Texas Rangers; it was her granddaddy's Colt revolver swinging in a leather holster off her hip that, when push came to shove, carried more weight with the citizens of Cade County than the rumors that she'd been seen sipping beers in a roadhouse with a good-looking female gym teacher from Mount Pleasant. In three years Marjo had done more than Bill Dudley had in ten to clean up the drug labs in and around Cade County. She loved to go on the TV news and talk about throwing the book at drug dealers, to peer into the camera with her flinty eyes and talk about locking them up and throwing away the key. She'd done it, too, personally sending at least a dozen small-time dealers to county lockup and one or two on down to Huntsville. There was nothing better to whet Marjo's whistle on an otherwise quiet Easter afternoon than the prospect of a good bust. As I watched her climb out from behind the wheel and stand adjusting her holster in my side yard, I was torn with relief that she'd showed up and would take control, and feeling like I'd better have something here that would make the trip worth her while.
"It's back here," I said, leading Marjo around the side of the house while Dewey stayed out front to radio for backup. "There," I said, pointing, like she couldn't see perfectly well with her own eyes what was in the middle of my yard.
"Huh," she said, her hand still riding lightly on her holster. "It's a trailer, all right."
The back door of the house opened and Jude came pounding down the steps in his shorts and bare feet. "Look what the Easter Bunny brought me, Sheriff Marjo!" he called.
He started to dart past me, but I reached out and grabbed his arm and pulled him to me as Marjo approached the trailer.
"Is that it?" I called. "Is it the meth trailer?"
She held up her hand and with the other rapped on the metal door. It was a reach, even for a tall woman. Somebody, however, had taken the time to lay a couple of cinder blocks as makeshift steps, and she climbed those and knocked again, then reached for the knob and turned it. The door swung open easily.
"Huh," she said again, and spoke into her two-way radio. Then she leaned inside, sticking her head and shoulders over the doorjamb. "Hey!" she called. "Hello? Anybody home?"
Dewey came scuttling around the side of the house on his stubby little legs, puffing and drawing his gun. "I got you covered, Marjo!" he yel
led. You could tell he'd been waiting his whole twenty years in law enforcement to do that. She disappeared inside the trailer. Dewey crept forward, his gun trained in front of him but wobbling so bad that if something had jumped out from the doorway, he'd have fired right into the cinder blocks.
Then Marjo reappeared, holstering her gun. "Put that away," she said to Dewey. "The place's empty. Where's your flashlight? My dang battery's dead."
He handed his over and they went inside together, following the wavering beam of light. Marjo came out finally, scowling and shaking her head.
"It ain't the one we're lookin' for," she said.
"How do you know?"
"Serial number," she said, and showed me a little notebook she carried in her pocket. "But I knew soon as I walked in we wasn't talldn' about no meth trailer. This one's old, but it don't stink. Meth stinks, you know—it ain't somethin' you can cover up with a can of Lysol. Plus the folks that cook it ain't usually too big on housekeeping." She stuck the notebook back into her pocket. "The bad news is, whose is it and how'd it get here?"
A white Chevy pickup turned the corner of the house and pulled into the yard in a plume of red dust.
"Actually," I said to Marjo as Ash alighted from the truck with a spring in his step, sipping from a can of Pepsi, "I've got a pretty good idea."
"Daddy!" Jude shouted. "The Easter Bunny came, just like you said!"
"You like what he brought you, buddy?" Ash said. "I told you it'd be a surprise."
"I can't believe you," I said. "You moved a trailer in here, in my backyard, without even asking me?"
"Well, now, Lucy," Ash said mildly, "I didn't see much point in asking you, seeing's how you'd have just pitched a fit and told me no."
"I am telling you no! You need to get it out, right now!"
"Hold up a sec, folks," Marjo said. "Somebody want to clue me in here?"
"This is Marjo Malone," I said to Ash. "The new sheriff."
"Ash Farrell," he said, sticking out his hand. "Pleased to meet you."
"I know who you are," she said. "We got a file downtown on you this thick." She held up her thumb and forefinger.
"Down—? Oh, right. Speak of the devil. It's Deputy Dawg."
Dewey emerged from the trailer, his hand on his gun belt. "Hey, Farrell," he said. "I heard you was back. I took a call on a stolen truck last night, matches the description of the one you're driving. You got proof of ownership?"
"Look, y'all want to stop the pissing contest and cut to the chase here? You know something about this trailer?" Marjo said.
"Yeah, I know something about it," Ash said. "It's mine. I bought it."
"You bought it where?" I said. "From who?"
"Ed Ruscheka's place, out on 1841. Paid four thousand cash for it. See? Here's the bill of sale." Ash produced a slip of paper from his jeans pocket and handed it to Marjo, who skimmed it and handed it to me.
"Well, I don't care if you did buy it fair and square," I said. "You can't just haul it out here and set it up in my yard without asking me. He can't, can he?" I asked Marjo.
"Depends. Who owns the property?"
"I do," Ash said.
"We both do," I corrected. "Texas is a community property state. That means what's half his is half mine. Right?" I looked to Marjo to confirm this.
"Well, yeah, but it works both ways. What's half yours is half his. So he's pretty much got just as much right to put a trailer on the property as you would, if you'd thought of it first."
"I wouldn't have thought of it first! I don't want it there! It's ugly and it—well, you can't just set up a trailer without electricity and water and all. What were you planning on doing about that?"
Ash looked smug. "Matter of fact, there used to be a trailer right here, in this very spot. I lived in it for a year and a half while I was building the house. There's already wires for the electric, and I can run a pipe out to your septic. It'll take me a day, maybe two, to get everything hooked up, and I'll be good to go."
"I don't believe it," I said. "There's got to be a zoning law, something."
Marjo shook her head. "You could go over to the county tomorrow and look up the plot records, but I'm doubting it. A spread this size, what, five, six acres? Rural, mostly wooded— outside the city limits? Gonna be pretty tough to put restrictions on it."
"You mean I could put whatever I wanted out here and it would be okay? I could build a meth lab or a whorehouse, and there'd be nothing you could do about it?"
"Drug labs and whorehouses is against the law," Marjo said. "But if you wanted to open, say, a tool-and-die shop, or an antiques barn, we'd have no say in the matter. Same goes for your living arrangements. You could build a whole dang trailer park out here, invite all your friends and relations. Long as what you're doing ain't hazardous or illegal, or it ain't disturbing the peace, it's your business."
"Don't give him any ideas," I said. I stared angrily at Ash, who gazed benignly back.
"You're the one said I couldn't sleep in the house," he said. "I'm just playing by your rules."
The sheriff gave a gut-deep sigh, a sigh that said she knew where this was headed and what's more, she'd heard it all before. "Y'all want to do me a favor? Wrangle this out on your own. I'm gonna head on back to town and get me some supper."
"What about the paperwork on that truck?" Dewey Wentzel said, but Marjo motioned at him with her head, and he gave Ash one last, fuming look and followed her off around the house.
Ash scooped up Jude in his arms. "Looks like it's just you and me, buddy," he said. "Everybody else is pissed off."
I turned and went into the house, letting the screen door slap shut behind me, took a can of Coke out of the icebox and popped the tab, then stood for a second at the kitchen window, holding the can against my forehead. My favorite view, of the woods beyond the house, was gone, replaced by a hulking metal box on wheels. Lord only knew what the inside was like; I pictured peeling linoleum, flimsy paneling, faulty wiring, raw sewage floating in the yard. Worst of all, I pictured Ash coming and going, living his life by his own rules not fifty feet from my back door, and not a thing on earth I could do about it.
Well, there was one thing. I marched down the hall to the linen closet and rummaged around until I found an old baby blanket of Jude's, then took a hammer and some tacks from the kitchen drawer and nailed it over the window.
I climbed down from the chair, eyeing the makeshift curtain with its absurdly cheery pastel colors and border of little marching ducks. It wasn't much of a screen, and the satisfaction of pounding in the nails was already wearing off by the time I heard Jude come in the back door and start tossing things around in his bedroom.
"Jude!" I called, but he didn't answer me. I put the hammer back in the drawer and walked to the door of my son's room. He was on the floor stuffing things willy-nilly into his backpack. I watched plastic dinosaurs go in, a couple of Hot Wheels racing cars, his Spider-Man pajamas. "What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm going to live in the trailer with Daddy!"
"You are not."
"Yes, I am. I can sleep in his room. He said so!"
"Jude, listen to me. Daddy doesn't— Well, first of all, there's no lights or water in the trailer. That means no way to cook supper, or take a bath or wash dishes…" I saw I needed to take another tack. "No TV to watch cartoons on. And how will you see to play or read your books?"
"We'll have fire," Jude said. "Like in olden times!"
"You can't build a fire in a trailer," I said. "I bet there's no air-conditioning, either. Did you think of that? Summer'U be here before you know it."
"Air-conditioning's for sissies," Jude said. He sounded so much like my brothers, I would have laughed if I hadn't been so mad.
I left him there, happily packing for his adventure, and went out the back door and across the yard to the trailer. The door was wide open. I stuck my head in, but couldn't see much. Even with all the windows open, it was dark and stuffy in there.
"Ash?" I ca
lled.
"Back here."
I made my way down a short hall to the bedroom. The place had a musty, ghostlike feel, something I couldn't put my finger on, like bits and pieces of all the lives that had played out between these walls had been left behind, covering everything with a sheer glaze of hopelessness. There wasn't a lick of furniture, nothing but a bedroll and a red plastic milk crate inverted to serve as a table.
"Welcome to my humble abode." Ash had emptied the contents of his duffel bag on the floor and was sorting things into piles: clothes, toiletries, a gold frame with a picture of me holding Jude as a toddler, both of us smiling in the Tennessee sun.
"You know, I bet I can get somebody out here to certify you," I said. "If this doesn't qualify as insanity, I don't know what would."
"Go on ahead. Maybe you'll have better luck than you did getting me arrested."
"Don't think I've given up," I said. "I plan to be at the courthouse when they open, first thing in the morning."
"You heard what the sheriff said. Show me a legal document that says I can't do what I want on my property, I'll get off." He shook the wrinkles out of a shirt and dropped it on a stack. "Of course, if you'd just let me in the house in the first place, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
I stuck my head into the tiny bathroom: toilet, lavatory, a showerhead, and a drain in the middle of the floor. "Ash, what are you doing?"
"Looking for that red flannel shirt of mine," he said. "I could've sworn I had it when I left Nashville."
"That's not what I'm talking about."
"Oh." He smiled. "You're talking about my intent."
"Don't bullshit me. It's bad enough, you just dropping in out of the blue after eight whole months without any kind of rational excuse. But this"—I waved my arm around the room— "this is taking it to a whole new level."