The Coyotes of Carthage

by Steven Wright

  “We’re here if you need to talk.” She takes a small step back, keeps her firm grip around his fingers. “Really, call anytime. Even in the middle of the night.”

  She runs her palms over the top of his head, makes the pained expression that he’s come to loathe. This mix of concern and resignation, the face of the big sister he never had, bursting to say, I wish I knew how to help you. He doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve this look. He knows that she means no harm, but damn, he’s tired of her pity.

  “Did you want to take leftovers with you? I can fix a plate.” She stalks him to the Jeep. “There’s chicken dumplings. Turkey lasagna.”

  “See you in the morning.”

  “What about laundry? You’ve worn that shirt a couple times, and it looks like it could use a run in the wash. Bring a load of clothes with you.”

  “I’ll come around ten.”

  “Don’t forget to text when you get home.” She watches him slide behind the wheel, holding open his door, and as she starts to close it, remembers. “The three-minute devotional. The one with the blue clouds on the cover. I can get you another one if need be. Three minutes, Dre. Three minutes. That’s all the Lord asks.”

  * * *

  Andre, behind the wheel, misjudges a turn and smashes into a mailbox. This mailbox is the third he’s hit tonight, but luckily this one is his. The radio’s on full blast, and Andre’s belting lyrics, drumming the dash, bobbing his head to this mad, infectious beat. He hasn’t heard this song in years, not since juvie, that summer when all the delinquents embraced the jazzy hip-hop hit.

  He reaches for his flask, which, to his surprise, is empty. He doesn’t remember draining the last drop, and he worries he has no more booze inside the house. For a moment, he considers driving to a crosstown liquor store, but he’s exhausted and sweaty and has to piss. Which reminds him to step out of the Jeep, leave the engine running, and relieve himself right there on his own front yard.

  A burp. A fart. He feels much better. He starts to wander toward the house, then remembers the engine’s still running, which causes him to wander back to the Jeep, where he once again checks his flask, which, to his surprise, is empty. Maybe he should go buy a bottle at the crosstown liquor store.

  In the driver’s seat, he stares at the Victorian gothic, which is silhouetted by the full moon and looks like a haunted house in a black-and-white horror film. God, he hates living alone in this big empty house. Hates not ending his day with Cassie. Hates not having a friend like Brendan. Part of him wants to sleep inside the Jeep, which he accidentally did last night, and part of him wants to put the Jeep in gear and see how far he can travel before dawn. But the time has come to go inside. He cuts the engine, resolves to move quickly, like jumping into freezing water, one, two, three, and he’s off, closing the Jeep door, sprinting, a race premised on the notion that if he moves fast enough, then he’ll outrun the inevitable drunken vertigo. Across the yard, up the porch steps, through the front door; he falls once, twice, three times along the way, but otherwise makes pretty good time in this drunkard’s obstacle course.

  He pushes forward hard, harder, up the stairs and into Brendan’s room. There, he sits on the corner of the kid’s unmade bed, waits for the dizziness to pass. The television, which he never turns off, is deafeningly loud, plays a DVD of a decades-old soccer match. He doesn’t watch the match—if he bothered to pay attention, he’d probably find the video grating—but these days, he’s at war with silence. If he had neighbors, they would surely complain about the noise. But he would explain that he needs these sounds to fill this big empty house and to keep him from losing his mind, that he can’t stand the air of loneliness and futility and judgment that the silence brings.

  He turns up the volume, kneels beside Brendan’s bed, fingers brushing past Chalene’s three-minute devotional. Blue clouds. Green pasture. The most tranquil fucking scene anyone’s ever seen. He pauses to let the next round of dizziness pass, resting his face against the kid’s mattress, which smells minty, not a scent that he associates with the kid but a comfort nonetheless. The dizziness passes; he wedges his palm between mattress and box spring, removes a baggie of iridescent gummies. He consumes a strict ration of one, carefully puts the baggie back into its hiding spot, as though the kid might return and notice that someone has raided his stash.

  In an hour, the gummy will kick in, then he’ll find rest. Not the best rest, but the best possible rest that he can achieve these days. His insomnia has become rebellious, and booze alone no longer brings relief, which isn’t a surprise—wasn’t it inevitable that his body would develop an immunity?—but he never imagined that this immunity would develop this early in his life. Sometimes, this cocktail gives him wild dreams. Last night, he dreamed about Mrs. Fitz. A nightmare, really, in which she shamed him, told him to his face that she planned to abandon him. Dre. You’re not worth the trouble. He still doesn’t know whether the kid told the truth or whether he was trying to hurt him. In moments alone, Andre tries his best not to think about Mrs. Fitz—it hurts too much. Even without the betrayal, he simply misses his mentor. But he finds that thinking about her is like standing in quicksand. It’s a futile effort that causes him to expend all his strength, sinking deeper and deeper into a dark, terrible place, and, in the end, what will it get him other than a slow death?

  A bolt of lightning, a peal of thunder. Is that a train whistle in the distance? Now he’s curious, opens the window to step outside, his grip tight around a stone gargoyle ravaged by time. This flat square of roof perhaps was once a balcony with a vast daytime view that extended all the way down to the old train station. These days, he spends a lot of time out here, thinking, listening to passing trains, worried about the days and weeks to come. He’s middle-aged, wifeless, childless, friendless, with a fifty-fifty chance that soon he’ll be unemployed.

  In juvie, he had such grand plans for his life. By this age, he thought he’d have become someone special, a man of consequence and importance. Back then, he’d spend hours lying atop his bunk, imagining a life in which he was rich and famous and, above all else, content. Happiness, even in those days, seemed far too ambitious, but content, yes, that he could do. And yes, he concedes that this vision was mere fantasy, and like every fantasy of every seventeen-year-old boy, it was impractical, and yet, for some reason, it’s also a fantasy that he continues to hold dear, the standard by which he judges his own existence. He acknowledges that any rational man would’ve forgotten this foolish vision, but here he is, alone and drunk on a flat square of roof, certain that that young boy, that younger traumatized and imprisoned version of himself, would surely feel ashamed of what his life has become.

  His phone vibrates. Chalene texting tonight’s Bible verse. He taps a button, means to hit delete, but instead commands his phone to speak the text aloud. For his anger endures but for a moment; in his favor is life: weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning. He hurls his cell toward a train that whistles in the dark, and the phone’s soft blue glow sails across the night sky.

  Chapter Twenty

  The next morning, he ransacks the house searching for his phone. He’s checked everywhere: the bottom of the stairs, Brendan’s bedroom, the crevices of each seat in the Jeep. He’s tried the online phone tracker, but the battery, he’s told, is dead, and the tracker is unable to pinpoint an exact location. Why can’t he catch a break? He’s on his laptop, trying the phone tracker for the fourth time—because, why not, maybe this time it will work—when he receives an e-mail from Victoria Boshears. I’ve tried to call, but I can’t reach you. Please come see us. We must talk. As soon as possible. It’s urgent. He thinks the e-mail a fortunate coincidence, because he needs to speak with the Boshears.

  When he arrives at the Boshearses’ estate, slightly before noon, the horizon is bleak and raw, with distant lightning bolts that break the somber sky. The Boshearses’ housekeeper, the old black woman, now wearing a lemon tracksuit, opens the front door barely wide enough
to see him. Her face is sour, her stance hostile, her presence as cold and as unwelcoming as the day. She doesn’t invite him inside. She makes him wait in the portico, in the misty cold.

  “Now, you listen.” The old woman throws open the door, wags her finger in Andre’s face. “I don’t want you causin’ no trouble between them. I been working for this family near my whole life, and I ain’t never seen them argue like this.” She pokes him between his ribs. “You hear me, boy? I’m serious. You will not cause no more trouble.”

  He thinks to snap back: Mind your own fucking business. Thinks to mock her use of the double negative. So, wait, you want me to cause trouble? Thinks perhaps he should pull rank, to say that grown-ups must have a grown-up discussion, a discussion that you couldn’t possibly begin to understand. But he decides against admonishment. Not because any response could make matters worse, potentially jeopardizing his relationship with the Boshears, the couple from whom he now seeks a favor, but because, in truth, he has a grudging respect for the old woman. She must be seventy, maybe seventy-five, and he imagines that those years could not have come easily. She survived Jim Crow, a life, at best, spent as a second-class citizen. And because he respects survivors, old black men and old black women who soldier on through unjust times, and because he will not add to the long list of indignities she must have endured, he answers with deference and respect. “Yes, ma’am.”

  In the sunroom, Duke Boshears, in his blue boxers and bathrobe, enjoys brunch. He’s eaten most of his meal, plate littered with tomato seeds and the skeletal remains of a whole trout, the scaled skin heaped in a pile like dirty laundry on a dorm-room floor.

  “Andre, my friend,” Duke says. “Please have a seat. Can we get you something? Marie, do we have any biscuits left? Marie makes the best biscuits. Get Mr. Ross here some of your biscuits and chokeberry jam.”

  The old woman leaves, but not before sending Andre one last disapproving stare: You best mind your manners. Andre takes a seat at the glass table beside the remains of a lighter breakfast: eggshells, a crust of toast, a near-empty wineglass.

  “Where’s your friend? The Scottish fellow.” Duke claps Andre’s shoulder, gives a comforting squeeze. “I hope he’s enjoying our country.”

  “Brendan? He’s fine. He’s—”

  “That’s wonderful. Yes. Wonderful. And let me say, I think you’re doing a wonderful job. Really quality work. I stopped by the fair booth the other day. Amazing. I don’t know how much you’re spending, but you’re doing a fine job.”

  Andre doubts he’s here for praise.

  “But I gotta warn you—just between us boys—before she comes down.” Duke scans the doorway, ensures the coast is clear. “The mistress of the house is upset.”

  Upset? Andre wants to ask. Upset with you or with me?

  “I’d play it cool if I were you. Of course you’ll play it cool. Victoria says she’s never met anyone quite as smooth as you.” Duke gives a second squeeze. “But you know women. They hear a little bad news, and they get hysterical.”

  “What bad news?”

  “Vicki, God love her, I love her. Sometimes she needs to vent.”

  “Did something specific happen?”

  “I’ve tried to explain it all to her, and, like I said, you’re doing a fabulous job, but . . . She likes you. She trusts you. She’ll accept any explanation you give. But keep in mind, she doesn’t share our animal instinct. Men like you and me, political warriors, lions, we’re different. I tell her that women shouldn’t go into politics for this reason. That men—” Heels clacking against the floor interrupt his thought. Duke winks at Andre, yells, “You sure you wouldn’t like some juice? My wife makes it fresh every morning. Nobody makes orange juice as good as my Vicki. Oh, Vicki, honey. Sweetie. Didn’t see you there. Look who’s here.”

  She crosses to the table, sits with caution and poise, doesn’t look either man in the eye. Instead, she clears her throat, fidgets in her seat, rubs one hand with the other, only to raise her gaze after a deep, prolonged sigh. She’s been crying, that much is clear, and Andre’s surprised that he feels sorry for her.

  “Mr. Ross,” she finally says. “I trust you’re well.”

  He sees the strain the kindness costs her, worries about what’s to come.

  “I had lunch with Paula yesterday,” Victoria says. “She’s very brave, if you ask me. Enduring the constant criticism. Criticism she doesn’t deserve. All that is being done to get her fired and she—”

  “Oh, honey. Be fair. No one’s trying to get Paula fired. Paula’s overreacting like she always does,” Duke says. “The initiatives only reduce her pay. Makes her salary fall in line with the community she serves.”

  Fall in line with the community she serves. The line is straight from Andre’s imagination. A line that Chalene and Tyler recite on the campaign trail. A line that Andre focus-grouped, that played well with his key demo, but a line that he never imagined would be embraced by wealthier voters. Andre wonders whether Duke truly believes the populist message, because clearly his wife does not.

  “At lunch, Paula was in tears,” Victoria says. “She doesn’t understand why people need to be this cruel. She doesn’t understand what she’s done wrong.”

  “People have the right to speak their mind,” Duke says. “If she can’t take the heat, she needs to find a job in a kitchen.”

  “It’s unfair,” Victoria says. “I read the paper. I read what they say online. People don’t care if they hurt her feelings. People don’t care that she does her job well. They care about scandal. They care about spectacle.”

  Andre wonders to which spectacle she refers. Three weeks ago, the last day on which homeowners could pay their property taxes, some jackass paid his nearly three-hundred-dollar assessment in pennies. Literally, one five-gallon jug, which must have weighed as much as an obese man, set atop Paula’s desk. Jackass must’ve collected pennies for weeks, must have visited several banks. The payment took Paula and her deputy all day to count, with the two working through their lunch and late into the night. The local newspaper published a pic; the jackass posted his own photos online. The damn move was a hit, praised as an act of civil disobedience. One letter to the editor compared the stunt to the courage of Gandhi. Now everyone in town pays fees, taxes, and assessments in pennies.

  But pennies are only the beginning.

  Two weeks ago, a different jackass, probably a bored teen, hacked her work e-mail, published six years’ worth of messages from the county server. In truth, the hack produced nothing spectacular; each e-mail was already subject to open-record laws. To read them, all one had to do was ask. Andre forwarded the e-mails, tens of thousands in all, to interns back in DC, who read each one, and who, at the end of their assignment, left impressed with Paula Carrothers, who, they reported, is good at her job. She’s kind and compassionate and efficient and thoughtful, they said. She uses her discretion to forgive fees imposed upon the poor, volunteers her time with local charities, and calls in favors to help teen mothers in toxic homes. This praise, of course, did not enter the public discourse. Instead, the local newspaper published a front-page editorial condemning her carelessness and indifference to cybersecurity.

  There’s more.

  Six days ago. A midnight lakeside rally that the campaign neither imagined, organized, nor endorsed. Dozens of men, the second-chancers who vowed to never again beat their wives, burned Paula in effigy. The men doused a scarecrow that wore Paula’s patented tortoiseshell glasses, and set her aflame. Posted the whole thing online. The men standing beside their wives and daughters, cheering, chanting, Burn the bitch, burn. Not the most original or rhythmic of chants, but the footage was spectacular. Alive with color and passion. A masterpiece with literal fireworks at the end.

  He knows more stories—didn’t some fool follow Paula around with a camera?—but Andre strains to remember the exact details. He can’t possibly be expected to keep track.

  “She receives calls at her home,” Victoria says. “A
nd e-mails from anonymous accounts. From cowards.”

  “They’re only trying to rattle her. No one’s gonna harm Paula,” Duke says. “Just a bunch of good ol’ boys blowing off steam.”

  “They send explicit messages. Pornography. Violent pornography.” Victoria shudders. “I’ve seen it. They are disgusting. Perverted pictures from perverted men. Pictures of abused and debased women. Some of them just girls, little girls bound and beaten and tortured. Some of those photos have got to be illegal. And do you know what these messages say?”

  Andre does know. The campaign is copied on most. And, yes, he agrees. Some of those photos probably are illegal. He doesn’t condone the messages, and, yes, some senders are certainly mentally ill. And worse than mentally ill, people who live out of county and, as such, are ineligible to vote. But what is he to do? These messages come from private citizens, and Andre isn’t in the business of admonishing folks who have given him their support.

  The old woman brings a tray: basket of buttered biscuits, uncorked wine, pulpy purple jam in a pink jar. She fills Victoria’s wineglass, runs the back of her hand against Victoria’s flushed cheek, a caress as gentle as a mother comforting her ill child.

  “Please say something,” Victoria says, to which Duke replies, “Paula’s problem is—”

  “Not you,” she says. “Mr. Ross. I’d very much like to hear your thoughts.”

  He thinks she’s now made it difficult to request a favor, which is the only reason he’s here. In fact, the favor feels impolite to ask, because he needs Victoria Boshears to publicly endorse the campaign. The post-council-meeting bump has nearly evaporated. The campaign no longer enjoys a comfortable lead. Yes, the latest polls show the campaign ahead, and, yes, he’s surprised by the size of the rallies, but the lead barely beats the margin of error.