River, Sing Out

by James Wade

  “That’s why not,” Frank said.

  30

  All night it rained. They walked the road for a short while and then took shelter, such as it was, in a grove of cedar elm. When the rain gave out at long last, the river was brown and marbled and heavy in its running, the reach of the water expanding further into the woods and wetlands around it.

  The boy led them off the road and onto a trail that would cut the distance to the highway. They hiked up into the hills and the forest dripping around them and the humidity a part of them and the boy’s glasses fogged and slipping down his nose. They walked one behind the other, each taking a turn at the lead, as if they were tethered together in some solemn march, the girl clinging to the backpack as if it were the last relic of a forgotten world.

  “You’re still mad?” the boy asked.

  “I don’t know, did you still lie to me?”

  “I’m sorry, River.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter now. We’ll get to a phone and then figure it out from there.”

  “Figure what out?”

  “What I’m going to do with you.”

  The boy stopped walking. The girl turned around, and they stood staring at one another under a canopy of hardwood.

  “I ran away for you.”

  “No, no, no. Don’t put that shit on me. Your old man likes to drink and play whack-a-Jonah, that’s got nothing to do with me. You can call CPS or something. Or call an aunt in Shreveport.”

  “I don’t have an aunt in Shreveport.”

  “Jesus Christ, I know. I just mean, call someone to let you live with them.”

  “I want to live with you.”

  “You’re killing me, kid.”

  “You owe me.”

  “Yes, I did owe you. And that’s why I didn’t drown you for stealing my backpack. But now we’re even.”

  “You know what, you are an asshole.”

  “Ouch, tough talk from a thief.”

  “I didn’t steal it. I hid it. I was protecting you.”

  “You were lying to me. You let me stumble through the woods every day looking for something you had the whole time. You don’t get to choose what’s best for me. You think you’re being different, treating me nice, being my protector or some shit. But that’s the same as all the rest. Besides, you already told me the real truth. You just wanted to keep me around because you’re a lonely, pathetic kid.”

  The boy put his head down and moved past her. She followed.

  They walked in silence.

  It took just over four hours to hit the highway, and another forty minutes before the boy and the girl came to the gravel lot outside of the bar.

  “Hey, Jonah. I’m sorry. I know you did a lot for me. I shouldn’t have said those things.”

  “But you believe them.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You do. Because they’re true.”

  “Jonah—”

  “Just leave me alone.”

  “Fine.”

  They walked into the bar and stood and took in their surroundings as if they were, the two of them, itinerants from a world lost to mud and sand, vagrants with no further direction upon their wayward souls. The barman frowned.

  “You ain’t old enough to be in here,” he said, not unkind, to the girl. “And if you are, he damn sure ain’t.”

  “I been in here before. I’m a friend of Cade’s. Y’all still got a payphone on the deck out back?”

  “It’s back there. I got no idea if it works.”

  “It works,” the girl assured him. “Give me some quarters.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said I’m a friend of Cade’s. Now give me some goddamn quarters.”

  “Fussy little thing,” the man said, but nonetheless produced a stack of quarters and slid it across the bar.

  “Stay here,” she said to the boy.

  He nodded.

  The boy had never before seen the inside of a bar and decided then that he felt oddly comforted by its lifelessness—the desperation of the neon signs and the veneer of stale smoke long bonded with the air. There were several round tables offset from the far end of the bar itself, spotlit by rectangled fixtures each with a different beer’s branding. Two pool tables stood back center on a slightly slanted wood platform. The middle of the space was open for dancing and a small stage was pushed back on the wall opposite the bar. Four people, two to a table, sat in the back, and a single bar stool was occupied by a middle-aged man in a flannel shirt with a mesh-back cap and a graying beard.

  “That your sister?” the man asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Christ, it ain’t your momma is it?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Well, alright then.”

  The boy lingered near the front door.

  “You want something to drink?” the man asked.

  “Leave him alone, Carl, he ain’t even supposed to be in here,” the barman said.

  “We can’t set him up with a Coke or something? Hell, look at the boy. Say, son, you been wrestling gators or something?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, how come you to be in such a state?”

  “Texas?”

  “I mean the disheveled look about you. My god, you’re dirty as a politician.”

  “We been in the woods.”

  “For some time, by the looks of it,” the man said. “For the love of Christ, Jerry, get the boy a Coke.”

  The boy climbed atop a stool next to the man.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Jonah.”

  “Jonah, I’m Carl. That sour sumbitch behind the bar is Jerry. Don’t let his prickly demeanor fool you, he’s as sweet a man as ever there was.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, tell me then, how is it you come to be living in the woods?”

  “I don’t live in the woods. I live in a trailer with my dad, Dwayne Hargrove. I just been helping my friend.”

  “And she lives in the woods?”

  The boy pursed his lips.

  “I don’t know where she lives.”

  The two men exchanged unsettled looks.

  “Dwayne Hargrove?” Carl asked. “That’s your daddy?”

  “Yessir.”

  “You know him?” the barman said.

  “I do,” Carl said. “Spent some time offshore with him, maybe ten or fifteen years ago. Degenerate gambler these days, I hear. No offense, kid.”

  “So what’s the story with the girl?” Jerry asked. “Why are you helping her? What are you up to?”

  “I don’t think I should say.”

  “I don’t believe he wants to talk to us, Carl,” Jerry said, then turned back to the boy. “Kid, we know who she is, and we know who’s looking for her. However it is that you come into this, you ought to see your way out of it.”

  “Did your old man get you into this mess?” Carl asked.

  “No,” the boy answered, and the men waited for more but it never came.

  “Well, okay then,” Carl said and turned back to Jerry. “The quiet, understated type.”

  “You could take a lesson or two from him.”

  The two men took a shot of whiskey, and the girl returned with a dejected look.

  “Did you call?” the boy whispered.

  She nodded.

  “And?”

  “They don’t want it.”

  “What now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Truck tires tore at the gravel outside. A rumbling exhaust. The girl’s eyes widened.

  “He’s here.”

  31

  Cade had been stewing for the better part of the morning, and John Curtis knew it. The big man sat in the den of the cabi
n tying a hoop fishing net, threading nylon back and forth on itself and burning the ends and tightening the throat and webbing of what would become an underwater trap.

  “You ought not let yourself get so worked up, big fella,” John Curtis told him.

  Cade stared up at him with dead eyes.

  “Been damn near a week,” he said. “I thought you said you were taking care of it.”

  “I am,” John Curtis said, crossing his arms. “Listen, I know you want your girl back. I know she’s gone and embarrassed you. But sitting here yanking on these knots ain’t helping nothing. Why don’t you do me a favor and make a run out to the Dark Horse. Jerry owes a couple grand.”

  “You asking me or telling me?”

  “What do you think?”

  Cade grunted and stood from his chair.

  “Don’t look so sour,” John Curtis said, clapping him on the back. “You get back, and I’ll have a hit measured up for you. Help you relax.”

  Cade slid his bowie knife in its sheath and pulled the sheath along his belt until it was at his back, then covered it with his shirt tail.

  “And, Cade,” John Curtis said as the big man walked out the door, “don’t ever question me again. If I say I’m handling something, it’s handled.”

  Cade stopped, clenched his jaw, then closed the door.

  Two men stood from their table at the back of the room and walked toward the bar. The girl with purple hair rushed past them and out the back door.

  “What I wouldn’t do,” one of the men said, turning to watch.

  “Too skinny.”

  “Shit.”

  “I like me a big girl.”

  “Plenty of ’em. Speaking of big,” the man said as Cade walked in the front door, “you ever see an old boy bigger than Dakota Cade?”

  “Can we get two Rolling Rocks and two shots of Old Grandad, Jerry,” the second man asked, then turned back to his buddy. “I sure hadn’t. I seen some big’uns, but he’s about as large as they come.”

  “Like a goddamned tree.”

  “Yessir, tough as bark too, I reckon.”

  “Killed a man for accidentally drinking out of his beer.”

  The men took their shots.

  “Horse shit.”

  “I swear. Happened out at Tommy’s Place.”

  “That ain’t true.”

  “Go on, ask him.”

  “You’d like that, huh? That big sumbitch would knock me into next week.”

  “You could tell me how the weather is on Tuesday. I’m thinking about goin’ fishing.”

  “Aw, shit, he’s coming over here.”

  “Cade. How are you?”

  The big man nodded and said nothing.

  “Bud,” he told the bartender.

  The man closest to Cade tried to think of something clever to say but couldn’t. Instead he said the only thing that came to mind.

  “Heard a banker got stabbed to death in Neches.”

  The man’s drinking companion looked away. Cade turned toward the man.

  “So?”

  “Nothing, I just . . . did you hear about it?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, okay. It was in the paper.”

  “Don’t read the paper.”

  Cade leaned in close.

  “Paper’s just a bunch of folks talking about things they don’t really know about,” he said. “Things they’re lucky they don’t know about. You’re not like that though, are you?”

  “No. Nossir. Not me. I realize what all there is that I don’t know about. It’s a lot. Hell, I’m basically a goddamned moron.”

  The big man moved down the bar.

  “Jerry,” he said.

  “Cade.”

  “You owe.”

  “What?”

  “John Curtis says you’re behind two grand.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to say, other than he’s mistaken.”

  “That what you want me to tell him?”

  “I don’t care what you tell him. He’s already stole half my profits this year.”

  “Stole?”

  “Raising the rent when nothing justifies it. Adding more money to what I owe, calling it renovation taxes. Look around, big boy, anything in this shithole look renovated to you?”

  “You wanna watch that mouth.”

  All conversation had stopped.

  “Peckerwoods,” Cade announced to the room. “Put down those peckerwood drinks and exit the establishment. Your tabs are covered.”

  No one moved. Frozen at the onset by the fear of the moment, the threat of what was to come. Then all acted at once, clamoring for the door.

  Only the barkeep and a man on a stool remained.

  “I’d get up,” Carl said, placing his hands over his ears, “but the arthritis in my back says it won’t listen to whatever private matter may be discussed.”

  “You see a girl come in here?” Cade asked the barkeep.

  “Well, Cade, girls come in here all the time. Maybe you could be a little more specific.”

  “I’ve done decided to take it easy on you. Don’t make me change my mind.”

  “What’d she look like?”

  “Skinny. Purple hair. You remember her?”

  Jerry shook his head.

  The big man nodded.

  “Alright, then.”

  He turned to leave, then stopped. There was a boy sitting alone at a table near the door. He hadn’t seen him earlier. He seemed to manifest from dirt and bone and unkempt hair.

  “What’s a kid doing in here?”

  Carl spoke up.

  “That’s Dwayne Hargrove’s boy. I’m just looking after him for a spell. You know ole Dwayne, can’t stay away from the damn Indian casino. He’ll give them enough to buy back their land and then some.”

  Cade bent down and put his face in front of the boy’s. His breath smelled of tobacco and beer.

  “You see that girl I was asking about?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “You speak?” Cade asked.

  “Yessir.”

  “Good. Then maybe you’ll tell me why you’re wearing her necklace.”

  The big man jerked the black cord around the boy’s neck and the boy flew forward onto the floor and the necklace snapped off.

  The barman hollered something that no one heard.

  The boy scrambled up. He clenched his fist and gritted his teeth and threw a flailing right cross full of awkwardness and bone. The man moved to the side and the boy went sprawling again but was quickly back to his feet and lunging at the man. This time Cade caught the boy’s wrist and turned it.

  The boy screamed. Him on the floor, holding his arm and crying, and the big man standing over him, a conqueror, a warrior, a god.

  “I’ll tell you,” Carl said. “Just stop. I’ll tell you where the girl is.”

  Cade kicked the boy hard in the ribs and the boy whimpered then curled into a ball and sobbed.

  “That one was for you, Carl,” Cade said. “For your first lie. It better be your last.”

  “I’ll tell you where the girl is. I swear.”

  The boy tried to protest but the words were muffled with pain and tears.

  “Let’s hear it,” the big man said.

  “She’s out back, probably hiding. She made your truck when you pulled in. Ran out the back door.”

  Cade strode through the bar with only a handful of steps. He swung the backdoor open and stood, filling its entire frame.

  “She might have made for the creek,” Carl called from the bar.

  Cade shut the door and the light vanished and the room was dark again.

  “I’m taking the boy,” he said.

  “You can’t,” Carl said. “I’m responsible for him.�
��

  “Another lie.”

  “He’s just a kid.”

  “And I’m taking him.”

  The big man bent down to collect the moaning boy. He stiffened at the shotgun blast, then stood and turned back toward the bar.

  Jerry pumped the scatter gun and leveled it.

  “Walk away, Cade.”

  “Or what?”

  “I’d say you been around guns a time or two. Enough to know what. I’d even bet you can tell when somebody’s ready to pull the trigger just by looking in their eyes. Well, go on and look into mine. Tell me what you see.”

  The big man nodded, a grin spreading across his face.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” he asked.

  “I know what it means, and I don’t care. You tell John Curtis I’m done with all this shit. If you want to kill me, that’s fine, but you’ll have to cover a lot of ground to do it. I’m leaving here and I don’t aim on coming back in this lifetime.”

  Cade laughed.

  “There’s not a place you can go where I won’t find you.”

  “We’ll see. Now go on and get in your truck. Go on.”

  Cade looked down at the boy.

  “I’ll be seeing you real soon.”

  Jerry kept the shotgun against his shoulder until the sound of the truck had faded down the highway.

  “So much for retiring,” he said.

  “What the hell did you just do?” Carl asked.

  “I’m not sure. But I think it’s best if you found another bartender to annoy.”

  The girl came through the back door and ran straight to the front door and looked out after the truck. There was nothing to see.

  “He’ll kill you. He’ll come back here and kill you.”

  “I know he will,” Jerry sighed.

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “I’m gonna leave. John Curtis has been robbing me blind for years, but I’ve managed to put a little away here and there. I was getting tired of this place, anyway.”

  “You just—I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Well. For starters, if you do find yourself face-to-face with that big sumbitch, tell him I’m headed to El Paso.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Not El Paso.”

  32

  They watched the rain, the two of them, and they could see it coming down upon the road and veiling the landscape in a haze, and moving closer and growing louder as if it was the culmination of some long set in motion plan, bringing with it a future both yet determined and as certain as the dawn. The falling curtain enveloped the light of the world around them and they did not flee but rather stood their ground and were at once awash in the downpour and whatever fate was held therein.