by Kirby Gann
“I bet he’s cooling it at St. Jerome by now,” came Spunk’s voice, foggy as he held in his hit and passed the jay to his father, who skipped his turn.
This was certainly possible. The seminary of Saint Jerome sat far out in the northern ridge of the county, behind fields of seed corn backing all the way up to the Possler Woods. It was said to be haunted; to house the rituals of devil worshippers; to be a hideout for dangerous men on the lam from the law, family, their lives. A mad caretaker protected the place and supposedly shot trespassers on sight. Many of these stories were no more than legends created by Fleece Skaggs—except for the caretaker, a guy he had assured his younger brother was truly unhinged. Fleece sold the man reefer and crank and squatted on the top floor. They shot bottles together off the stone cemetery wall out back of the seminary grounds.
“Always been a young man I could trust, I practically raised him,” Greuel frowning at the headlight, “so I worry. Anything can happen on a country road. What if he tumbled over the shoulder and he’s lying there upside-down in the Cumberland?”
No one answered. Whoever was back there in the kitchen scraped a plate and turned up the radio, two broadcasters speaking with dramatic urgency over the roused crowd. Mister Greuel tilted his head as if listening, or straining to listen. In time he turned to the corridor and shouted: Hey now. It’s near ten already.
The crowd cheered loud enough to fuzz the small speakers and the announcer’s voice accelerated, hoarse with excitement. Boots shuffled on the kitchen tile and someone ran the tap briefly and then the radio shut off. The house stiffened in silence. The back screen door smacking shut clattered like a gunshot. Mister Greuel returned his attention to his guests, and began to talk again as outside a car engine revved to life, tires soon rolling over gravel.
Shady started work on another blunt, her glassy eyes narrowing to slits. She swayed her hips in Mister Greuel’s lap for reasons Cole could not fathom.
“Honest truth, you can’t name a place your brother might go without word to me?”
Honest truth he did not know. Spunk jumped to his feet, decided aloud they should head to the old seminary to see what turned up. His father grunted and sliced the air with his hand, said he wasn’t asking him. It was a vicious gesture that cut the length behind Shady’s back, and his son turned as though struck across the face, and rushed his own head into the corner of the fireplace mantel.
Seconds passed before he cried out. Like the pain needed time to alarm his brain. From above one eye blood gushed from a gash as if its entire reason for being was to be freed of his veins. Spunk clutched the wound with the hem of his T-shirt and slumped into the couch. His father shook his head and stared at the floor; Shady looked on with vague interest. Nobody moved to help him. It was like no one was sure what they had witnessed had actually happened. After a silence, he moaned.
All this transpired within seconds. Yet it seemed to take forever to Cole, and a pressure built within him, a gradual rise that swelled until it broke, setting him into the generous sniggers of the greatly stoned. He started to shake and laugh in I’m-so-high wiggin’ giggles, an act that moved Shady and Mister Greuel from stares of blank inverted fixity to ones of mild concern, but an act too that he could not stop. And still no one moved to ask Spunk if he was all right; nobody there expected anything less of him than his smacking his head into the most convenient sharp corner. As though Spunk had survived this long, made it to twenty-two despite the parade of self-inflicted accidents and mishaps that composed his brief lifetime, the broken fingers and toes and collarbones and splintered teeth, the burns from incompetent engine work (four-wheeler, minibike, motorcycle), the concussions from irritated horses, the mishandling of knives and saws and throwing stars, the metal grinder that caught his shirt and then the rest of his torso within it—with such veteran experience behind him it was rational to assume no mantel corner could do serious damage to that head. Cole pressed his hand over his mouth and nose to cram down the laughter, it felt like his eyes were hosing streams over his cheeks, and the laughter only punched at his chest that much harder. The hell’s got into this boy? Mister Greuel wondered aloud. Cole could not answer. All he could manage was to clamp one hand tighter over his mouth and wave away the room with the other, begging to be ignored.
“I love pot but some people it just makes stupid,” Shady said. Instantly this shut him up somehow.
Mister Greuel fiddled with his headlight. He turned it one way and then another, often staring into the beam below his chin. By now Spunk had removed his shirt entirely and held it wadded against his eyes. He mumbled the word stitches and his father mumbled back that such could be found in a kitchen drawer. Spunk brought away the shirt and looked at the blood spattered there, pressed it to his brow again. This was not a cheap article of clothing, he complained. I bought this at—he couldn’t remember. Then he yawned, resigned to the ruined fact of it.
“A lot of blood in the human face,” Shady said.
“I thought you knew everything,” Cole said to Greuel. “I thought you never let a man drive a harvest alone.”
Greuel passed his headlight over the walls and ceiling. He said there had been complications with this run, his tailer had another item of business to take care of on the way back, they’d done it before in a pinch and never had any difficulties. “But you don’t need to know my problems,” he added. Again Spunk reasoned that Fleece was fine and probably fixed up with some tail—he excused himself to Shady from beneath the bloodied shirt—and was cooling it easy in his seminary digs.
“I’d like to think if he’s in this county he would have sense enough to bring me my money or my goods or else have a damn good reason to be walking around. A man has standards to keep, a reputation to uphold.”
At this Greuel appeared to fall into pensive rumination, gazing absently as the shape of the room changed with the movement of his hand. Dark veils swung opposite the wash of light and the whole room swayed; shadows dipped forward to listen in, leapt back. By now Cole’s eyes felt swollen and gritty, and it seemed he could note each half-thought as it rose and floated away without his grasping it. Perhaps that was why he felt so naked and unprepared when Greuel stilled the light fully upon him.
Events have a way of fooling, the man said. You’re in it and you think they’re one way but turns out they were steadfastly another. There’s always what’s happening below what seems to be happening. It’s enough to drive a man batshit crazy. You have to ask questions, you have to ask why you ask the questions you ask, it just goes on and on. And every time, the questions take you where you don’t want to go. Every freaking time.
“I have no idea what you are saying to me,” admitted Cole. Greuel dismissed him from behind Shady again. He smacked his lips as though he did not like the taste in his mouth.
“You kids get out of here. Why not show some loyalty to the old man who takes such care of you? Get out to that old place and see what sign of Fleece you can rustle up before I forget him.” Another raspberry cough erupted then, along with another squeeze to Shady’s thigh that went unremarked by her and set Cole to cringing. “Get off me hon, I got pills to take. And son don’t you take any more that reefer, I’m short in the pocket as of right this now.”
Shady staggered up as Greuel struggled to rise, using the beveled edge of the table for stability. It had not been so long since Cole had seen him last but he could tell the man had much declined. Whatever illness that was at him had managed a great deal of work over the past several months.
From the hallway Mister Greuel bid farewell as though already his emissaries were a long distance off on their journey, and the bacon-fat teeth unveiled themselves again. With that simple gesture, any hope Cole had with Shady this night was effectively over. Spunk stood waiting outside the door in his bloody T-shirt, holding up a snagged dime bag he shook at Shady with glee. All three glided out and over the porch and through the littered yard, Spunk slithering, skeletal, and cackling in the lead.
; The first cop to show nods at Dwayne Hardesty and stands beside him at the feet of four kids who lie spread-eagled face-down on the muddy portico steps leading to the graffiti-strewn boards that shield the seminary entrance. The wash of the cruiser’s spot frescoes their captive forms in hard outline, three underfed and thin and the fourth a fat block squeezed into a Kentucky basketball sweatshirt that strains to withstand his heavy nervous breathing, the grommets in their jeans and an occasional earring flashing agleam in the white light; four pairs of white sneakers, expensive and rain-wet, shine stark and severe and unworldly. The caretaker always struggles to prevent himself from gloating too much over this aspect of his job.
“I count four,” the cop says low, to Hardesty’s shoulder.
“Yep, four’s where I stop at too.”
“Thought you called in five?”
“The one run off before I got these down. You might hear word later.”
“I should check emergency rooms.”
“You maybe get something out of that, yeah.”
“Wish you wouldn’t send these kids to the hospital, Mr. Hardesty. I understand your duty but these are just teenagers out here and you’re likely to brand them for life. Kind of a hard cost for a boy out looking for kicks.”
Hardesty turns from the cop and spits. The thick saliva smacks onto the pavement in a heavy gel that holds its shape until the pattering rain thins the dark phlegm and a yellow strip breaks loose, drains the wad empty. His small rangy hound scoots among the line of captives, shivering under thin brown fur soaked to a fine sheen. Her whirligig tail throws a sparkling spray in the cast of cruiser light that’s fairly pretty to see.
“Get over here, Bone.”
Howls erupt from on high and deep inside the building, yaps and snarls muddling together from one of the floors directly above. The dog raises from where she had her nose in the ear of one boy who dared not turn away and whines a squeaky whine. She puts her nose to him again, and again Hardesty commands her to come. This time she appears to almost nod in agreement—as though to admit her master is of course reasonable and right despite her urge to do differently—and she springs over the boy’s head into the next space over, the throaty whine rising again almost to a drone. She looks up at Hardesty and then back at the kids on their bellies, and then huffs an exasperated complaint. Hardesty speaks her name again, hard. She lowers her chin to her forepaws and the tail slows in waves to a shy, low, wary swing.
“I give him a brush to think about is all. He aint going to die.”
“Salt shot?”
“Gets you the bird without messing the feathers.”
“Damn that has got to burn like hell.”
“Wouldn’t know, myself. I make it a point to be on the right end of the gun.”
Hardesty chins his collarbone. He has yet to look this cop in the face, instead surveying his bounty stilled and silent on the ground, the set of each head indicating they are listening with complete and utter attention to the low voices of the two men. He has to remind himself he is performing a duty and is in his rights; usually around police Hardesty’s more nervous than they are right now. This fact irritates him no end.
“Well, wish you wouldn’t do it.”
“You want me to walk you through this building it is my job to protect and show what these kids come here to do? There is no mercy for vandals. It is 455 in the A.D. and the sack of Rome in there. I don’t like midnight work anymor’n you, my living room is warm and dry. I give them a warning shot. Sometimes a kid runs right into it.”
The officer tilts his head to greet a colleague who has parked her cruiser by the empty stone fountain in the center of the circular drive, the engine running with the high beams left on. The rain flashes tinsel threads that emerge and disappear in the same instant like the very air is woven from some magical fabric.
Hardesty does not acknowledge the second cop at all. He has nothing against equality but does not believe in women in positions of physical authority. A figure of authority should be able to display some brawn. He has seen big women but none ever big enough to intimidate him into stepping carefully, and this one here’s no bigger than a springtime weed. She asks what kind of fish is that they’ve strung across on the ground. Her voice and the bit of a mirth between the two cops snaps Bone to attention but leaves the caretaker unmoved, in no mood for hilarity that does not arise from him.
He knows they have a routine down for this kind of stop. Still he feels the same dismay once the first woman takes over proceedings and announces to the vandals’ benefit how she is going to turn around and let them get rid of anything they don’t want her to find when she pats them down. She’ll give them thirty seconds. As she turns, Hardesty’s toes flex in his boots until it pains him; the woman is staring straight at the door of his cottage. He has to remind himself that there’s no reason she will ask to go in.
The fat boy lifts his head from the pavement and holds it there. He looks to his left and the other officer makes a vaudeville show of turning his back to them, too, crossing his arms as he faces the break of dead corn. The boy rolls to one side and reaches deep into his jeans, pulls up a plastic bag that shines in the cruiser lights, and tosses the bag into the scrappy boxwoods grown askew along the seminary’s front. A silver spear of rain flashes directly above the bag’s landing and is gone.
At the sight Hardesty’s throat creates a sound that causes the first cop to ask if he’s okay. Hardesty waves him off, feels his eyes burning as the woman starts to search the first of the lot. Outrageous travesty of justice, he mutters. A trespass charge is nothing to keep a kid from coming back. He’ll look at it now like a challenge from the caretaker, a personal offense to his honor. Possession, though—a lost opportunity. The delight of the catch has already withered inside him; lately he has been wondering if he had lost his touch, having come up empty on a number of occasions while making his rounds but finding plenty of evidence that people were running riot over the place.
He recognizes the male officer, forgets his name but he knows the mustache, like two chalk lines etched into the black man’s skin. He has never understood that cop culture of groomed mustaches, why they never wear beards. It’s fishy to him; they try too hard.
The officer touches him high up on the back of his arm with gentle camaraderie, turning him slightly to one side.
“You put a good scare into them tonight, don’t you think? Boys learned a lesson they won’t forget. Especially when they hear from their buddy.”
“He’s still running and don’t even know why,” Hardesty says, the image of a boy running in total panic and spurred by the fifty points of fire in his backside leading him to amusement despite the anger growing from what he knows is coming next.
“Dwayne, listen. If I can call you Dwayne. How about you let me threaten these four here with the cold hand of the law and then we cut them loose? I would consider that a favor. A personal favor.”
Again with the sound in his throat; it’s a small strangled keening sound Hardesty is only half-aware of making. The cop’s eyes widen in concern. Hardesty looks down at the chopped pavement, at Bone who has taken to her feet again but sticks beside him, her temple pressed against his shin. He sucks at his teeth.
“Release the mongrel hordes to the forest so they can return, you’re saying. Y’know, they don’t even try to hide, they come slapping feet in the rain without a care.”
“You won’t see these kids again, I bet.”
“Don’t matter, there’s always more to come. Only me and Bone here against every teenager who don’t have nothing to do in two counties and no sense to do it somewhere else. What the church plans to do other than burn this place to the ground I can’t imagine.”
The cop exhales a series of short noiseless puffs Hardesty interprets as blithe showmanship from a man who wants to exhibit how streetwise and seen-it-all he is. He has a lean narrow face with squared cheekbones that press the tight skin, a thin strip of mustache that meets in a sharp sculpted
column leading to his nostrils. Hardesty doesn’t understand why a man would put so much effort into the upkeep a mustache like that must require. He just does not understand the desire to put that much labor into your face.
“I have no use for you,” he admits. Ever come to aid a crime victim and heard that? he wants to ask.
“Let’s do the right thing here. What do you say? Let me put fear to these kids and we’ll call the parents and send them home to their whippings and every one of us can get out of this rain. What do you say to that?”
“I say these jacklegs broke the law. I say your whole attitude disturbs me and these kids are my opportunity to set an example for vandals everywhere. My apologies if that sucks time away from your work on that fancy mustache but this is your job, aint it?”
Unperturbed, the officer broadens his smile. He strokes the mustache with the back of two fingers.
“Pressing charges isn’t going to make an example of these kids to anybody, Mister Hardesty.”
He appears to enjoy this, his accounting of the kind of wrist-slap the boys have ahead articulated with calm objectivity and near-palpable glee: worst-case scenario, they’ll be sentenced to a few hours of community service, a punishment the kids nowadays only brag about to their peers. Deferred probation, maybe; a record swept clean once the state recognizes them as adults.
Hardesty hardly listens to a bald truth he’s familiar with already, studying instead the second officer performing her search. She pulls a broken broom handle from one pocket, a set of magic markers from another. She throws each item into the bushes as though they never existed, although the caretaker knows they do and will have to be gathered by him and eventually taken to the landfill by him with all the rest of the garbage that somehow accumulates around this useless place in the middle of nowhere.