When it zapped him this time, it was then—while dancing around the kitchen, cursing and shaking his hand—that Julie found him.
“Hello,” CJ said, forcing a smile that was more of a grimace.
“D-did I forget to tell you that they d-don’t use that box anymore?” Dennis asked. “There’s a new one in the closet there.” He pointed to a small utility closet near the mudroom.
“No, you didn’t mention that,” CJ said.
Julie set down the lunch bags she’d brought and crossed to CJ, taking his hand and giving it the sort of inspection that reinforced the stereotype that men have of women—that all of them had a nursing degree lurking around the next corner.
“I think you’ll make it,” she said. “But you may want to put some burn cream on that.”
“Words to live by,” CJ said.
“Lunch is a w-word to live by,” Dennis said, picking up one of the bags and leaving.
When they were alone, Julie picked up the remaining lunch bag and handed it to CJ. “Why don’t you try something a little less dangerous,” she said.
“Apparently you’ve never heard of a little thing called cholesterol.”
“Choleste-what?” she asked.
CJ laughed, taking the bag. He had to admit he was glad to see her, even if he was also confused. It would have been one thing if she was just his sister-in-law, and he could chalk this attention up to familial consideration. But there was some baggage between them, and what made it worse was that CJ couldn’t stop thinking about her.
“You don’t have to keep doing this,” he said.
“I’m not doing it because I have to,” she answered.
He removed the double cheeseburger from its wrapper and took a bite. “Okay then,” he said. “Why are you doing it?”
“Can’t a person do something nice for family?”
CJ considered that, and it bothered him that he was presented with no other option but to say, “But we’re something more than family, aren’t we?”
After a few moments Julie said, “I have no idea what we are to each other.”
It was a form of honesty for which he’d been unprepared, and he didn’t like it. Even when he’d made the decision to stay in Adelia for a while, he’d done so knowing full well that it was a temporary arrangement, that at some point his real life would come calling and he would have to return to it. Things like this—like Julie—didn’t help. Julie seemed to know that, and she relieved him of having to respond.
“Do Dennis’s hands hurt?” she asked.
When CJ answered with a furrowed brow, she said, “He didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Your friend Dennis kicked the stuffing out of Richard last night.”
“You’re kidding,” CJ said, but it was obvious she wasn’t.
“I don’t know what it was over, but Abby said he was in rough shape when he got home.”
CJ was dumbfounded. To the best of his recollection, Dennis had never lifted a finger against anyone. Not that he couldn’t; the man was as strong as oak.
“I guess it’s good for him to know what it feels like,” CJ said.
Julie made a face, showing her opinion of CJ’s cousin.
“So he didn’t say anything?” she asked.
“Not a word. I’m as surprised as you.” And touched, he didn’t add. There could have been only one reason why Richard had incurred Dennis’s wrath.
Right then, CJ heard the concussive pop of a nail gun coming from the great room, and he could only shake his head and smile.
Chapter 12
If CJ was grateful to Artie for the job, he was even more thankful for the apartment. When he’d hired CJ, Artie asked where CJ was staying, and when CJ told him about the hotel, Artie had nearly had an aneurysm. He immediately offered CJ the apartment above the store.
Over the years, he’d rented it out to any number of different people, and CJ could see the remnants of those multiple tenants amid the things that had been left behind. For one reason or another, those who had claimed residency above Kaddy’s often found it necessary to leave in a hurry, so the apartment came fully furnished with an assortment of mismatched furniture, as well as some boxes that may or may not have been opened in a very long time, and a Christmas tree that had stood in the living room, fully decorated, for at least five years.
Artie had confided to CJ that he occasionally hosted poker games up there, telling his wife he was working late, and CJ had been quick to tell him that if he felt the need to organize such an event again, he was more than happy to offer the space, provided he was dealt in.
The first thing he did after walking in today was to make use of the bathroom, and there was something to be said for being able to do so without worrying about the bathroom door. Once finished with that, he and Thoreau took the steep, narrow staircase down so the dog could make nice with a fire hydrant. CJ spent more time outside than he wanted so that Thor could get his fill of fresh air. Tomorrow he would take the dog to the park so he could expend some energy. Or he might take Thor over to Artie’s, where he could explore the hardware store owner’s twenty acres.
Finally, though, when he was able to coax the dog back into the stairwell, all CJ wanted to do was collapse in bed, even to the exclusion of dinner. He’d put in a good day’s work at Artie’s, then some solid hours at the house. Once Julie had left, CJ tried to get out of Dennis what had happened between him and Richard, but his friend had been less than forthcoming, which left CJ having to field only a general feeling of appreciation.
Of course, the thing with Julie required more specific attention. There was a time when he wouldn’t have even given the ethical concerns a thought. While he’d always thought himself a decent sort, he would have considered this situation through the filter of the all’s fair in love and war ethos. Things were different now, but that didn’t make the issue any less complicated. What it did was put things in starker relief; the fact of it was that carrying on with a married woman was wrong. But was that what they were doing? He honestly didn’t know. The church didn’t automatically equip a person with the knowledge and, more importantly, the fortitude to handle all of life’s countless moral puzzles.
At least he was certain of one thing: for the first time in a long while he felt the urge to write something. With him, it always started as a general discontentment, a need to put into words some thought floating around between his ears. That was the way all of his books started, and soon enough he’d be pounding away on the keyboard, expounding on one big question. What was interesting to him now was that he didn’t know what that big question was, only that there was something there that felt like it could work its way into a question. And that was enough for him.
For the first time since returning to Adelia, he found he had a genuine interest in beginning the project that had ostensibly been the reason he’d remained past the funeral, until the arrest warrant provided another equally compelling, more immediate reason. Graham’s visit to the hardware store had ticked him off—made him want to explore this thing that Sal had referred to, this thing that seemed to find its source in the town’s chief industry.
He had a few things planned for tomorrow, once he’d fulfilled his obligation to Artie, and one of those involved research—perhaps even a visit to the library. That thought caused a little shiver to travel up his spine. The last time he’d been in the library, he’d been kicked out for smoking. Ms. Arlene had banned him for life, and CJ had taken the ban seriously. For the rest of his junior year, and then the entirety of his senior year, he hadn’t set foot in the library. In fact, once he got to Vanderbilt, one of the first things he did was to go to the library, just because he could.
He was reasonably confident that Ms. Arlene wouldn’t be there anymore. She’d been ancient when CJ was a boy, and she’d gotten meaner over the years. So she was either dead, or she was a hundred-year-old tinderbox of antipathy.
It was this thought that carried him to sleep.
When CJ walked into Maggie’s the next morning he was greeted with an unusual sight, and that was Dennis visible through the window, spatula in hand.
“What are you doing back there?” CJ called to him.
“I was c-conscripted,” Dennis lamented.
“He’s paying for all the free food he’s scrounged from me over the years,” Maggie corrected. “Mike is sick, so Stuttering Sam is your cook du jour.”
CJ looked through the window to see if Dennis was going to take offense at the name, but either he hadn’t heard or he’d chosen to take out his irritation on the food preparation process.
“Let’s hope you cook better than you . . . well, better than you do anything,” CJ said.
“What’ll you have, sugar?” Maggie asked.
“The usual,” CJ said, and the moment the words left his mouth he marveled at the sound of them. He’d been in town long enough to have a usual. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
Maggie hung his ticket on the wire, and Dennis took it, aiming a mischievous grin at his friend. While CJ waited for his food, he pulled a small notepad from his coat pocket and then found a pen hiding amid a jumble of receipts and gum wrappers in the other pocket. He sat there for a while, alone with his thoughts, and then began to jot some of those thoughts down. It felt good to be doing that; it meant he was serious about actually plying his trade—his real one, not the one that had him stocking shelves and suffering electrical burns.
“What are you doing?” Maggie had come up to him, not hiding the fact that she was straining to read what he’d written.
“I’m just making a few notes to myself,” he said. He let it go at that. He had few hard and fast rules about writing, but one of them was that it was bad luck to talk about a project before one had fleshed most of it out on the page—even the small nonfiction piece he was working on.
“So now you’ll be writing about Adelia, from Adelia,” Maggie said. Seeing that he was about to argue that, she waved him off. “I know, I know. Your novels aren’t autobiographical.”
She picked up the coffeepot and stalked off, muttering and leaving CJ to marvel how he had angered a woman without saying a word. Then again he’d worked that magic on Janet more than once, so he supposed it was a talent.
As he started to put pen to paper, Maggie slid a plate of food in front of him, and before she could walk off again he said, “Maggie, have you heard about anything strange going on with the prisons?”
As soon as the question went out he could hear how strange it sounded—how open-ended. And if he had any doubt about that, all he needed was the look on Maggie’s face to confirm it.
“What’s on your mind?” she asked after a moment’s thought.
CJ picked up his fork and shrugged. “I’m not sure. Last time I talked to Gramps, he mentioned something about it.” He chuckled. “Of course, he was also convinced his toaster was out to get him, so who knows?”
Maggie shared his laugh and then leaned forward on the counter.
“Honey, if you want strange, you don’t have to look any further than right here,” she said.
CJ suspected that was true. With a smile he speared a sausage and took a bite. When he looked up, Dennis was watching him through the serving window, and he was smiling too.
There was always something that felt odd to CJ about going to a library, and it had everything to do with the fact that most people had their introductions to the library when they were children, and then they went through a period where going to the library was the furthest thing from their minds. Once they finally, as adults, returned to it—perhaps with their own children—there was the feeling of stepping into a place where they no longer fit. For those who attended college, where a good library would serve as their best study partner, this process was circumvented. But that didn’t eliminate the oddness they felt when stepping back into a place where, at one time, they couldn’t see over the counter.
The smell was the first thing that struck CJ, taking him back to his childhood in the same way getting out of the car at the house on Lyndale did his first day in Adelia. Still, that was the only thing similar. The library had undergone a renovation at some point, and it looked modern now, with an extra wing to accommodate new rows of books, another wing set aside for children, with chairs and couches punctuating the décor. They’d obviously gotten a grant of some kind and had made good use of it.
CJ wasn’t sure why he was here, except that it was to do some research on the county prison system. This morning at Maggie’s had convinced him that he was more likely to find something useful here with all of the archived newspapers and microfiche. He could probably use the Internet to look up most of what he needed, of course, but libraries did something to him; they stoked his creativity.
He quickly found a table and set to work, locating a thick book about New York prisons, as well as an Adelia Herald from 1998 that talked about the first prison built and the hiring blitz that had filled more than a hundred positions.
He had spent maybe an hour researching when a voice that was etched in his memory pulled him away from the book he was reading.
“Charles Jefferson Baxter, what on earth are you doing here?”
The small jump he did in his seat was purely a reflex, and he belatedly hoped she wouldn’t take offense to it, but it was definitely warranted. Ms. Arlene had always had a gnomelike appearance, but after the passage of so many years she looked like one of those garden gnomes that had suffered under the elements for a very long time. In all other respects save one, though, she looked exactly the same, which gave CJ the impression that he was a boy again, lighting up in the library bathroom. The difference today, however, was that she was smiling, and that was such an odd image it made him wonder if he’d ever seen her smile before.
“Hello, Ms. Arlene,” he said, trying to keep astonishment regarding her continued existence to himself.
“My goodness,” she said. “A famous writer, right here in my library.”
“If you remember,” CJ said, immediately realizing that her decades-long prohibition was no longer in effect, “you kicked me out of here when I was in high school and told me never to come back.”
Ms. Arlene touched her hand to her chest and tsked.
“I did, didn’t I?” She giggled, and the sound was much too similar to a schoolgirl’s for CJ’s liking. “Smoking, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She laughed again, and her eyes took on a conspiratorial twinkle. “I was a two-pack-a-day smoker myself back then,” she confided. “Virginia Slims.”
CJ laughed, then offered a tidbit of his own. “You know, that was the first cigarette I ever had. When you caught me, it turned me off of smoking for years.”
“Then I performed a public service,” she said.
When she finally left his table, after proudly directing him to the local author section, which was comprised solely of his books, he dove back into his research, focusing primarily on the Adelia Herald. It was little more than a small-town rag, but it had an authority lent by the number of years it had been in circulation. With its first edition published in 1834, it held the distinction of being one of the oldest dailies in the Northeast. But that did nothing to make up for the fact that most of the news was pure provincial stuff. The initial article on the prisons was pretty good, though, and CJ was able to glean a fair amount of information about the social and political climate that had paved the way for their coming.
If he’d heard correctly, Richard worked as a prison guard—a career choice that suited him. He’d hate to be a prisoner on his cellblock. He wondered if the injuries Dennis had inflicted on him were of the visible variety and what, if anything, the prisoners would say when they saw them.
He decided not to travel too far down that path. Richard was a man deserving of everything that was bad in this world, and sooner or later people ended up getting what they deserved.
He worked for another hour before returning t
he book and the newspaper to their places, stopping by the desk to say goodbye to Ms. Arlene, and then heading off to meet Dennis at the house.
Dennis wasn’t around when CJ arrived, so he started where they’d left off the night before, which involved more electrical work. When his cell phone rang he was more than ready for a break, even if it meant listening to Janet berate him some more, and since she hadn’t resumed calling him, she probably had more than her usual share of angst stored up. But it wasn’t Janet. He didn’t recognize the number, except to see that it was a local call.
“Hello?”
“H-hey, CJ.”
“Hey back. Where are you?”
Dennis had to say it twice before CJ got it.
“What are you doing in jail?”
“Your c-cousin filed an assault ch-charge.”
CJ could scarcely find his voice to reply, but he managed.
“Have they set bail?” he finally asked, understanding that his anger wasn’t going to help his friend.
“Yeah, and I was hoping you c-could call my p-parents and let them know,” Dennis said. CJ heard someone on Dennis’s side say something, but he couldn’t make it out, and Dennis responded with what must have been a hand over the mouthpiece. Then he was back. “I have to go.”
“What’s your parents’ number?”
Dennis gave it and then hung up, leaving CJ standing in the middle of someone else’s kitchen, nursing a level of anger he hadn’t felt in recent memory. And since he was making a habit out of making bad decisions, he decided to add another one to the list.
It took him a while to find Richard’s house—a nice, maybe three-thousand-square-foot place in a new subdivision. He parked at the curb, and as he walked to the door he saw movement by the front curtain. The door opened on the first knock.
“You must be Abby,” CJ said.
Even though his cousin’s wife greeted him with a smile, it was appropriate to call her a timid creature. CJ noticed that she was trying to keep the right side of her face obscured by the partially open door, but he’d seen enough to know that Richard had hit her hard—and that he was left-handed.
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