by Marsha Moyer
"I'll let you know if I hear anything," she said as she ducked into her station wagon. "You stay strong, hear?"
I gave her a dopey little power salute, fist in the air, as she backed out of the yard and drove away. After the dust settled, a heaviness began to descend into my eyes, my shoulders. I wanted to go inside and lie down and sleep for five minutes, or five years. But Ash was out there somewhere, needing somebody to get his back, maybe more than he ever had. I picked up my keys and headed back out the door.
Isaac and his wife and kids weren't home—probably off visiting their family for Sunday dinner—so I left a note stuck inside the screen door describing what had happened and asking him to let me know if he heard anything.
It was weeks since I'd been out to the house site, the wooden skeleton transformed into a near-finished dwelling boasting a facade of log and river stone, a red metal roof like an exclamation against the white-hot sky. I parked the Blazer and got out, picking my way carefully through the staking for the deck onto the porch, and pushed open the front door, gazing up into the rafters of what Ash had called the great room, the stone chimney soaring overhead. I wandered through the unfinished kitchen with its tile floors and marble counters. Some of the interior log walls had been left bare, and others had been dry-walled, ready for paint or paper.
I scaled the staircase. The second story was as hot as blazes, but the vista of the pond through the bedroom windows was as green and peaceful as Ash had said it would be. I turned slowly, remembering the feeling I'd had the first time I stood in this room under the open sky as Ash described the family he foresaw living under this roof, the woman I'd envisioned sleeping here, her head on the pillow. I hadn't been able then, for any number of reasons, to let myself see her clear. Now I stood motionless at the window, watching myself sleep, my eyelids flickering with unexplained scraps of nonsense and grace. I saw myself shaking Ash's shoulder, waking him, making him laugh at how the fifteenth-century Roman Catholic church had managed to invade this Southern Baptist girl's dreams, ancient Grecian sibyls by way of the Italian Renaissance arriving to foretell the future, or just, like Lily, to complain about the dessert menu.
But first I had to find him.
Hardy had left the handyman's cottage a wreck: dirty dishes stacked in the sink, fast-food wrappers and newspapers everywhere. The place smelled of dirty socks. The recording equipment, the stereo, his guitars, even the Toyota, all were gone.
On my way across the parking lot at County General, I ran into Audrey coming out. "What are you doing here?" we cried in unison.
"Where were you last night?" I asked. "You missed everything."
"I know. I came here as soon as I heard. But it's too late."
"What do you mean, too late?" For an awful moment I thought she meant Hardy had died.
"I mean he's gone. He checked himself out, the little shitheel."
"Hardy's gone? But I thought Ash broke his jaw!"
"They wired him up and shot him full of Demerol, and some guy with a ponytail drove him out of here at six this morning. I was just about to run by his place and see if I could find him."
"Don't bother. He's not there." I reached out and took hold of her arm. "I'm sorry, honey. But I think Hardy's hit the road."
"Oh, man," she sighed. "What a relief."
"A relief?.1 thought you were madly in love!"
"Oh, that. I guess I got a little swept away, huh, by all that Nashville talk? But, see, I was getting dressed to go to the Round-Up last night, and out of nowhere Joe dropped by, and my mama let him in, and he just started begging me so hard to talk to him. So we went outside and sat on the tailgate and it was just such a pretty night, all purply and full of stars and Kenny Chesney on the radio—you know, the one that goes, 'I can't see how you'd ever be anything but mine'? The whole thing was like a big old flashing neon sign. And, well, the next thing you know…" In all the time I'd known her, I don't think I'd ever seen Audrey blush.
"So, you and Joe are back together?"
"When I heard about last night, I just felt so bad. I mean, poor Hardy, first getting the shit lacked out of him, and then getting stood up on top of it. I decided I better be a big girl and come to the hospital and tell him myself what happened. But he's checked himself out! And now you're saying he's, like, gonel" I pictured Rick Musgrove at the wheel of the Corolla, probably halfway back to Nashville by now, while Hardy dozed on painkillers in the backseat, surrounded by everything he owned that mattered in the world. "So, did Ash turn up yet?" Audrey asked. "I figured he'd come dragging home around sunup with his tail between his legs."
"No, he didn't. In fact, I've been out looking all day."
"Well, we'll just have to organize a search party. Maybe make up some flyers and post them around town."
"I'm pretty sure everybody knows what Ash looks like. Anyway, he's got plenty of reasons to stay away. The sheriff's got a list as long as my arm of stuff they're ready to charge him with."
"So you think he's hiding someplace? Or that he ran away?"
"I don't know. I've checked every place I can think of. But—I can't explain it. Just a feeling I have. I don't believe he's gone."
We walked toward our cars. "Hang in there," she said to me, giving me a hug. "Tomorrow morning we'll put our heads together, figure something out."
As Sunday night leaked into Monday, Monday dragging into Tuesday, my friends and family closed ranks like the defenders of the Alamo, circling around me with their rifles aimed at the encroaching enemy, who, unlike at the Alamo, never came. For the first time in my life, I was impervious to the judgment of Mooney, Texas, its gossip and innuendo. Peggy and Audrey and Geneva and Dove and my brothers kept it at bay, so that even though I worked at Faye's all day and visited the bank and the post office and the Food King, not one person said "boo" to me, or anything other than, "Hey there, Lucy. How you doin', girl?"
"Fine," I answered back, pasting on my best smile. "Real good." My face hurt after a while from keeping a stiff upper lip.
Meanwhile, Lily kept Jude going, shoring him up in ways I simply wasn't capable of. They had only a few weeks left before the start of first grade, and damned if Lily wasn't going to make sure the two of them wrung out every drop. Geneva and I took them to Wal-Mart for new clothes and lunch boxes. Bailey played hooky one day from work and carried them to a water park in Little Rock, where Lily managed to bite open her lower lip on the waterslide, requiring a trip to the emergency room for stitches, which she displayed proudly to anybody who would look. We gathered with Kit's brood at Dove's in the evenings for big, noisy, messy family suppers, sloppy joes or hot dogs cooked on the grill, the grown-ups sitting under the live oaks while the kids ran around in their swimsuits, chasing each other through the sprinkler. It was the beginning of the end of a hot, dry summer, the halfway point of our hardest season. Dark arrived a minute or two earlier every night, the sun gradually angling lower in the twilit sky. Fall was coming, we told each other; relief was on the way.
On Wednesday, the fourth morning after Ash disappeared, I was alone in the shop when Marjo Malone entered in her buff-colored uniform, her hat in her hand. I'd been arranging a birthday bouquet, but I laid down my shears when I saw her, my fingers curling around the edge of the countertop.
"It ain't bad news," she called out. "Sorry if I scared you."
She walked up to the counter and set her hat on it, her lips as glossy as a maraschino cherry, the tiny silver pistols dangling from her pierced ears. "I come to let you know that I had a long talk with Dub Crookshank. He says that if Ash is willin' to make restitution, he'll reconsider pressin' charges."
"Restitution?"
"It means payin' for what he done. With dollars, not jail time."
I cleared my throat. "How many dollars are we talking, exactly?"
"Well, Dub don't want to call the insurance guys, drag them into it. He don't like to operate that way. He figures to do the work himself, him and his boys. So, with the damage to the outside of the
building and the bar, replacing the glass and all the liquor and such—well, he says a ballpark number might be eight to ten."
"Eight to ten?" Eight to ten what? Porsche convertibles? Sacrificial virgins?
"Eight to ten thousand dollars."
"My Lord. It's that bad?"
"Yes, ma'am, I reckon it is. To say nothin' of the cost to Dub in man-hours, lost business, and so forth."
"So, what am I supposed to— What would you like me to do about it?"
"I just thought you'd want to know. So that you can tell Ash he ain't lookin' at no time. Or not much, anyhow. There's still the hit-and-run to deal with, the fella whose vehicle he banged up. I'm not sure he'll be as inclined to lenience as Dub, even though the thing weren't much more'n paint and balin' wire holdin' it together."
"But I haven't talked to Ash since that night. I haven't seen him."
"But if you do. It's just that this might make it easier for him to bring hisself in. From wherever it is he's got to."
Late that afternoon, I left Audrey in charge and walked across the courthouse square to First National. The teller, Judy Oliver, didn't bat an eye when I said I wanted to transfer $10,000 from my savings account into checking. I walked back to Faye's and sent Audrey home. I made a quick call to Dove, telling her I'd be late to pick up Jude, then I locked the shop, climbed into my Blazer, and headed for the Round-Up.
It was early yet; the parking lot was nearly empty, and the sign wasn't lit. I parked next to the spot where Ash had hit the wall, where the weathered cedar planking had split and caved inward, exposing framework and pink insulation underneath, and passed through the entrance into the dusky coolness of the hall. Dub and the blond, crew cut bartender were behind the bar. They didn't see me come in at first, and I stood for a moment taking in the room I knew so well, transformed now in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on. It wasn't just the ruined wall covered by a tarp, or that the mirror over the bar was gone. It was, I realized finally, the silence. I didn't think I'd ever been there when music wasn't blaring over the sound system, either live or from Dub's prized jukebox. I could hear the men talking quietly, a woman's voice coming from the office. My footsteps seemed to echo through the vast, empty room as I made my way toward the bar. Dub had been polishing glasses with a rag, but he set them both on the countertop as he watched me come. I couldn't read what was in his face. I reminded myself he didn't owe me a thing, not even the courtesy of hearing me out.
"I'm here about your money," I said.
Dub turned to the young man. "Run out back and haul them kegs in from the cooler," he said. The boy nodded and disappeared.
"The sheriff says you're looking at somewhere between eight and ten thousand," I said as I rummaged in my purse and brought out my checkbook. The check was already written out; all I had to do was tear it loose and lay it on the bar, turning it so Dub could read the numbers. "If it turns out to be less than this, you can pay me back the difference. Or not. It doesn't much matter to me one way or the other."
Dub leaned close to scan the check. "Now hang on just a minute," he said.
"It's good, if that's what you're worried about," I said. "You can call the bank."
"Naw, it ain't that. It's… I don't know how to say it, exactly. This here's none of your business. This is between Ash and me."
"I'm trying to help him, Dub. Right now this is all I can do."
"But it ain't about the money, sweetheart. Don't you see? It's about him settin' things right with me."
He turned and looked over his shoulder, to the faded rectangle on the wall where the big mirror had hung. The liquor bottles lined up in front of it were brand-new, full to the brim, the seals unbroken. "Hell, I can replace glass and booze, fix up my wall. What I want is Ash to own up to what he done. I been knowin' him since he come sniffin' around when he was too young to buy hisself a beer, totin' a little ol' Sears guitar. He played here for twenty-some-odd years before Nashville come callin', and all that time we treated each other like family. Candy and me had him out to the house for supper, for Christmas with our younguns. I loaned him money when he didn't have a pot to piss in. He always squared things with me, paid me back when he found work or by doin' odd jobs for me. We watched him come up, and we was as proud as punch when he got the call to go to Nashville. We always knowed he had it in him.
"What I need is for him to march back in here and tell me, how come him to make such a mess a things? Not just my bar, but all of it. Where I come from, you don't get handed no chance like he did on a silver platter and then piss it away, end up screwin' over everbody ever helped you out along the way. It don't set right with me. That's what I need from Ash—to look me in the eye and tell me how he could end up doin' this to hisself, and to you and your boy, and to this town, when all we ever done was treat him like one of ours." He placed the tips of his fingers against the edge of the check and inched it back across the bar toward me. "No offense, Lucy, but your money's no good to me."
"But it's Ash's money, too," I said. "From selling our house in Tennessee."
"Then how come it's your name on the check? How come you to be the one that signed it? No, ma'am, I won't have it. This is something he needs to deal with like a man."
"But I don't know where he is, Dub. I haven't seen him since—since that night. I don't know if he's ever coming back." I pushed the check toward him again. "Couldn't you just take this, just in case? It would be a weight off my mind."
"But it ain't your weight to carry, sweetheart."
"Don't be a fool, Dub." Candy had come out of the office and stood at her husband's side, a tidy little woman with what might have been the tallest beehive in Cade County. " 'Course it's her weight. Ain't you learned nothin' bein' married to me for forty-two years?" She slid the check out from under my fingers and tucked it in the pocket of her smock top. "I'll put this in the safe for the time bein'," she said. "Earnest money, we'll call it. When Ash turns up, you send him on in so him and Dub can hash things out, and we'll tear up your check. Deal?"
I opened my mouth to thank her, but the words dammed up in my throat. "Don't you say a word, honey," she said. "These men, they think they know it all. You ask me, that's why God made Eve, to show Adam what's what."
I nodded and thanked her and backed toward the door, Candy smiling quietly with her hand over her pocket and Dub staring at his wife with a look that seemed to ask, Will wonders never cease?
chapter twenty-four
When I got back to Dove's, she was the only one there, drinking iced tea in the kitchen. Bailey and Geneva had taken the kids to a movie down in Marshall, she said.
"How you holdin' up?" she asked as she stood up to pour me some tea.
"All right."
"Well, you could of fooled me."
I pulled in a slow, raggedy breath and then burst into tears. I laid my head on the tabletop and let it all come, everything I'd kept bottled up in me the past four days. Dove pulled her chair over next to me and rubbed me between the shoulder blades, just like she'd done when I was six and too scared of my mama's sadness to sleep. Dove was never one to tell you not to cry. It didn't bother her if it lasted for five minutes or five days. Her mode was to sit by and let it play itself out, and to be on hand afterwards with plenty of sweet tea and washrags steeped in lavender water and stored in the icebox.
"Better?" she asked as I raised my head and reached for the box of tissues she'd placed in the middle of the oilcloth.
"You know, I think I'd almost rather the whole town decided to tar and feather me on the courthouse square," I said. "Everybody's being so nice, it's about to kill me." I blew my nose into a tissue.
"Some gal named Heather come by earlier," Dove said. "Just wanted to know how you was gettin' along. Said Punch sent his regards."
My eyes filled again. "See? See what I mean?"
"You look like you ain't slept in a week," Dove said. "Whyn't you let me fix you some supper and then you spend the night here? Bailey and Geneva can keep the kids.
"
"I feel like I need to be home," I said. "Just in case—"
"Honey, I don't mean to bust your bubble, but Ash knows where to find you. You 'member what I used to tell you, 'bout settin' with your hand out where them in need can see you, let-tin' 'em know you're there when they're ready? In the meantime, you eat, and I'll go run you a tub."
She put a plate of cold fried chicken and potato salad and coleslaw in front of me. I picked at it, listening to the roar of the water in the bathroom, my aunt getting towels out of the cupboard, adding bubbles to the tub. Sometimes all it takes is someone to hand our troubles off to for a little while, to carry part of the load while we're getting back strength enough to pick them up again.
"I laid you out a gown in the guest room," she said, returning to the kitchen. "No, leave them dishes. I'm just gonna run over to your mama's a minute and carry her some a this chicken. I'll be back directly. You get your bath and go on to bed. Don't wait on me."
I let my clothes fall in a heap on the bathroom tiles as I listened to Dove moving around in the kitchen, then the back door open and shut. I'd hardly spent a moment by myself since Sunday, had kept myself surrounded with people and noise and activity. Being alone meant I had to think, and thinking led to feelings that were likely as not to run away with me.
I switched on the little transistor radio on the edge of the tub as I lowered myself by inches into the steaming water. The Dixie Chicks were singing, This ain't nothing but a heartbreak town, a tune I'd always taken for granted was about Nashville. But Heartbreak Town, I understood now, wasn't a place on the map, but one you carried inside. I'd thought I could come back to Mooney and pick up where I'd left off, but the truth was, I took Ash with me everywhere, and Mooney wasn't the same place for me that it used to be, with or without him. I had run as fast as I could, trying to stay one step ahead of Ash, but my heart was no safer than it ever was, nothing more than a crude outline of a heart with a jagged tear down the middle, stuck through with crooked cartoon arrows. Love was like God, or the FBI; no matter where you went, if you dyed your hair or changed your name, it would find you out.