They drove over to Shepard Dixon’s law offices and entered around back. They were the last two members of the commission to show up. Everybody else was sitting around a long mahogany table drinking glasses of water or cups of coffee. Dixon stood up and greeted them, shook their hands.
“I am relieved to see you both. This has weighed on me all day,” Dixon told them in that odd syntactical refinement that seemed at direct odds with his otherwise hard-nosed demeanor. Kyle wondered if this mix of appearance and behavior was a self-conscious style developed to keep his legal opponents off balance. It had certainly served the man well in his political battles.
They all took their places at the table and Dixon asked the rest of the commissioners to please remember that all comments at this unofficial meeting were not being recorded nor would any formal minutes be kept. Once they had assented, he turned the floor over to Jack Hogan, the recently appointed chairman of the county commission.
“First, I want to thank everyone for making time on such short notice. I know we all have plenty of things going on in our own personal work days that makes that more than a simple matter of routine. Additionally, I’d like to thank Commissioner Dixon for the gracious use of his space here . . .”
Gerald popped up from his chair.
“Jesus, Jack! The man just told you there wasn’t a recording. Let’s be honest for once, step clear over all these platitudes, okay? I screwed up. I get it. I screwed up royally and I need to pay the price. I recognize that. I’ll tender my resignation at the next meeting. There’ll be a special election. You all need to figure who it is you want to run. There’s always old Bud Cannon over next to Hampton. He might be up to it.”
“Bud Cannon talks like he’s got marbles in his mouth,” Seth Buchanan, who owned the highway movie drive-on interjected. “His chances of being elected if opposed are about as good as my wife’s house cat. Hell, maybe Pickle would fare better.”
A few men laughed.
“I’m afraid if Gerald quits, the election won’t be unopposed,” Kyle quietly said. “I’m afraid we’d be looking at this problem head on.”
“You mean Gavin Noon?” Dixon asked.
“I do. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but that’s exactly what I think. And I’m afraid of what that means, about how that changes the complexion of things. How does that affect the place we live when we allow a man like him to make a claim on the public office? How do we reconcile that to the country we’ve all grown up in? I talked to the sheriff about this. He told me something that maybe shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. He told me that there’s not a hell of a lot of difference between the kind of community Noon wants and what a lot of people out here in Carter County would agree with. That’s not the way I like to think about my home, but maybe it’s not entirely untrue either. You don’t see a lot of black families itching to move out here, do you? A scattering but that’s all. Rebel flags no further than a quarter of a mile apart even though just about every family up here was pro-Union during the Civil War. But history doesn’t have a damn thing to do with it anymore. Doesn’t matter if your great-great-grandpa ambushed any butternut home guard he could, what matters is that even if your life has run down the backside of a toilet, at least you’re a white man by God, and you’re going to let the world know it.
“What happens then when a man like Noon can run for a position of government? It makes all of those racist jokes and hatred legitimate. It makes the whole ugly violent mess of who we are something to ignore and it makes it acceptable to do anything we please because we are just protecting what makes up our genetic code.
“And that’s why you can’t resign, Gerald. That’s why we can’t afford to let you.”
They sat for some time before Jack Hogan tapped his knuckles on the table in lieu of his gavel.
“We need to decide something,” Hogan said. “And I believe it would be best if we proceeded in agreement. Does anyone have anything else to contribute?”
“I do, Mister Chairman,” Dixon spoke in his mellifluous voice. “I believe Commissioner Pettus has arrived at the most important juncture of this concern. This is not so much a matter of the law or politics as it is a sense of moral obligation. Gerald, I’ve known you a very long time and I disagree with just about every position you’ve ever taken, but I recognize your commitment to the people of the county, your desire to serve them to the best of your ability. I, for one, will not see that undone by a cadre of Nazi revisionists, because make no mistake, that’s exactly what they are, regardless of what nomenclature they might adopt. I think every man in this room would agree to the same.”
A subdued nodding of heads circled the table.
Jack Hogan then cleared his throat.
“Well, Commissioner Pickens, you’ve heard the opinion of the board. Will you reconsider your decision to resign?”
Gerald, who had remained standing throughout the duration of the discussion, slowly lowered himself into his chair, sat there with his hands folded like a man ready to be sentenced.
“I will do my best in continuing to serve at the pleasure of my peers,” he said. “If they judge that to be the best course of action.”
“We do.”
“Mister Chairman, I would like to add one thing,” Dixon interposed. “This is something best dealt with in the open. I believe we need to hold a special public session in order to state our position regarding this issue. Put the fire out before it gets going, so to speak.”
“What do you think, Gerald? You ready to claim a bit of the spotlight?”
“Hell, I ain’t afraid of a bit of spirited debate. Makes democracy strong, don’t it?”
“All right. Let’s work out the details over email in the next couple of days. I think it’s about time I shuffled on to the home front. Let’s consider this meeting adjourned.”
GERALD WAS silent for much of the ride back to Kyle’s place. Just the jostle of the truck chassis and the long green slideshow of passing scenery. Kyle had offered to stop off and grab something quick to eat but Gerald had said that he wasn’t hungry.
Kyle was beginning to see something in Gerald he had not expected—weariness. In the time they had served on the board together, he had been irritated by but admiring of the old man’s zeal, his ability to follow an argument of procedure or regulation. Though many of the other commissioners considered Gerald a professional contrarian, Kyle had recognized his eye for detail wasn’t a simple matter of fastidiousness but an ethical concern. Not to stick to precision and nuance was to fail as a gatekeeper of the law and what it sought to protect. But something in him had begun to change, something that seemed to have shaken him at a basic level. Perhaps it was age, though he suspected it was more than that. Perhaps he was just ready to remove himself from the obligation of a public life and enjoy the time he had left, to have some quiet moments in the sun.
Orlynne met them out front as they drove up, said she’d finished the work that needed to be done for the day. It was clear that she wanted to be alone with Gerald. Once the old man had gone out and gotten in her Jeep, Kyle pulled her aside, asked her to make sure he didn’t go back to his cabin for a while, not until things were better sorted out. He told her that he could drive out and check on his animals in the meantime to make it easier on everybody.
“We’ve already took care of it, honey. We’ve got Molly and Malone tied up by my camper. I’ve always wanted a couple of breathing lawnmowers down there anyhow. I’m about tired of pulling weeds all day as it is. You’ll know where to find both of us if you need us.”
He said that he did and stood there on the porch, watching them go off the mountain.
14
DELILAH KNEW THAT SHE WAS BEING FOLLOWED. SHE’D KNOWN IT since she’d first begun slipping down past the tree line in the heat of the day and following the long piney shadows as far as the banks of the Doe River. At first she’d been unsure who it might have been, and at any rate, it was hardly the first time she’d had a man want to see he
r without her clothes on. But it didn’t take long to figure out.
She took a different path down to the water each time she went. It was the secrecy she wanted as much as the shade. And there was that added risk of becoming lost, the chance of becoming swallowed by the wilderness that attracted her. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she never found her way back to that old place anyhow. She never had a shortage of men who would take care of her, and all most of them ever really expected was little more than a few minutes of sweat and a couch of flesh to throw themselves on like a whale stranding on a shore. Just another transaction. One that didn’t need to be fair because why should she ever find herself at a deficit? But she knew Jonathan was still following her. Since the night of the moon up on the ridge she knew he wouldn’t be able to turn her loose. She had seen to it.
Harrison was a different breed of man though. She sensed it the first time he’d sent one of his letters. There was something skewed in him, something that was able to knock her off balance. Maybe it was just the mystery of a grown man who knew what he thought of things, who knew how to go after them. There were few men where she grew up who seemed to have any ambition other than the next government paycheck or prescription bottle. But Harrison wanted more for himself and the idea of attaching to that conviction thrilled her, made her feel capable beyond measure. Harrison was strong in ways she’d only begun to understand.
That was what caused the trouble with Cole, of course, him being as runty as he was and trying to pretend to something he couldn’t keep. Always under the shadow of their daddy who had died too early, his heart just going like something that had been set on a timer. Then Cole had taken it into his head that he was the one who was meant to take care of her and their momma. That long string of men hadn’t thought too much of that, nor much of Cole either. Though they did pay plenty of attention to her, the kind that made her momma turn jealous and hateful.
Still, when Cole had turned up dead it touched something off in her. She’d gone up to the penitentiary to visit him and they’d sit and talk. She was his only visitor, he’d told her, and she’d been glad to have that between them, a feeling of two people who had come through something and survived and who were maybe making a future worth looking forward to. Then that had been snapped. A telephone call from her momma blubbering, telling her Cole had been stabbed to death in the prison workshop. Because Momma suddenly cared about what happened to her children now that there was a chance to cry and to get to carry on. Now that is was a good way to have people feel sorry for her. She even went and got saved, started going to church and asking for prayer requests. She’d tried to get Delilah to go along too, but Delilah had told her the only thing she had in common with the Bible was the name she was given and she imagined she was likely headed to the same hell as her namesake.
She took her top off and her bra, a ratty black Kmart thing that looked like it was made from a T-shirt. She didn’t need it much anyway. Her body was good. That was the one thing she’d gotten from her mother that was worth a damn. She slipped her shorts down and considered doing the same with her panties, hang it all there on one of the tree branches like a flag, but she decided that would be too much. Make him ask her to, even if the asking was with his eyes more than his mouth.
The water was cold but she could bear it. The current had some life, and that made the chill a complication that invited her in. She’d always liked to swim in the woods. Gave her a chance to forget what she wanted to. She pushed off from a rocky bar until she was in a good deep pool where her toes would barely brush the bottom when she tread water. Around her the slick flashing shadows of startled trout. Above her the scattershot cries of jaybirds.
“I know you’re out there,” she called up toward the bank. “I’ve known it for a little while. Why don’t you come out so I can see your face and not hide up there like a thirteen-year-old boy.”
Jonathan came in little halts, stood there at the river edge holding a small plastic bottle of liquor in one hand. He squatted down and watched the play of the water, wouldn’t look her in the eye.
“Why you acting shy?” she asked
“I ain’t acting like nothing.” he said.
“You afraid of the water?”
“I don’t guess I am.”
“Why ain’t you swimming then?”
“I forgot my bathing suit.”
“You don’t need a bathing suit in the woods. Come on, I’ll even close my eyes.”
She screwed up her face, made a big show of scrunching her eyelids. She heard the whisper of jeans being shed from his body and then him coming into the water with a sharp intake of breath as the cold hit him in his middle.
“Is it safe to look?”
“I never said you couldn’t look, did I?”
When she opened her eyes she could see that he was up to his chest in a feathering of water, the bottle at his lips.
“You gonna share some of that? I figure you owe me for not going and telling on you.”
“Telling on me for what?”
“You know for what.”
She swam a few strokes toward him until her feet had purchase on a flat of sand. She stood and reached her hand out, her breasts pinkened by the cold water. She took the bottle and turned it up until the sweetened liquor rolled down her throat and then was gone. She filled the bottle with water and let it sink and settle to the bottom. She saw him take in the fullness of her.
“Why are you acting this way all of the sudden?” he asked.
“What way?”
“Since that time up on the ridge you’ve acted like I barely was alive.”
She tilted her head, like she was appraising something of dubious worth.
“Why are you men always such goddamn fools?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t. You and every other dirt-digging sonofabitch in this country doesn’t know what a woman wants or thinks. You’ve got to have everything spelled out for you like it was chalked on the board by a Sunday school teacher. Don’t you think women ever get tired of that, of having to wait on you to figure the world out?”
“Seems pretty clear to me that you’ve decided you belong to somebody.”
Real anger flashed in her eyes.
“I don’t belong to a goddamn soul,” she said, baring her teeth. A moment later, she remembered to ease up, to let him think she’d forgotten his words. “Besides, who said one is ever enough or enough all the time? A woman has her own mind, her own way of sifting out what matters to her. Come here a minute.”
He pushed himself through the barrier of water, came to where a placid patch of sun on the quieted current showed the pale flickering shapes of their bodies beneath the surface. She took him by the wrist and placed his hand against the base of her throat, closed her hand over his fingers until his grasp was a tightened crown against her jumping pulse.
“Can you feel that?” she asked.
He nodded and tightened his grip.
“That’s what you’re doing to me right now. Making me live quicker. Making me want something I don’t get as much as I need. Whose business is it but mine and yours?”
“Nobody’s,” he said.
She kissed him, wrapped the stringy wet tails of his hair in her fingers, tasted the shared liquor and musk of his mouth with the deeper scents of mud and moss and old deadwood in the woods around them. She had him then and she knew she would go on having him as long as she needed.
15
GAVIN HAD BEEN SLEEPING POORLY. HE BLAMED IT ON THE SUMMER heat and the dry air. So many weeks without rain and the country was baked down to its thinnest parts. Some of the men would go up to the lake in the afternoons to cool off on the beaches and banks and drink cans of beer, but that had never held much appeal for him. Though he was glad to have these young men with their energy and belief in what he was doing, he never felt truly joined to them. He preferred the occupation of a hermit, took his contentment from important momen
ts of solitude.
No hour was more meaningful and lonesome than the middle of the night. He knew many engaged their greatest fears and anxieties when waking at some insomniac hour, but it was never that way with him. Time froze when he awoke and could not go back to bed. Everything aligned and took on firmer substance. It wouldn’t be really truthful to say that he suffered sleeplessness as much as endured it as one endures a temporary ailment before rising to greater strength.
He realized that he had taken a preoccupation to bed with him earlier in the evening. Though he’d not consciously registered it at the time, he carried it into his dreams and wrestled with it there in dissolving and occluded images. The stories he’d read on the message boards, the soft blue glow of the computer screen like some pale lamp on his mind.
There had been a change in the Batman fan fictions he was reading and he couldn’t understand what about that change gripped him so intensely. What was strange about it was how much he disliked the direction the new tales had taken. He had been upset that the vigilante, The Emasculator, had been written off casually, being dispatched with little more than a few indifferent descriptions of a quick and clinical death when Bruce Wayne had trampled him under the hooves of his horse on a deserted road and crushed the former slave’s spine. There were no final words between the foes, no satisfying collision that typified their mutual hate. Instead, it was if the writer had simply lost interest in their relationship and couldn’t be bothered with the trappings of suspense. It made Gavin angry to have become so invested in the outcome and then to be emotionally cheated.
But that anger then became confounded when the next story featured a different kind of villain for Batman to face. Her name was The Dreamkeeper and her powers were far more insidious that anything The Emasculator had ever been able to wield. She was a former slave who one day appeared at Wayne’s war-scarred mansion and offered her services. He had taken her on as a matter of philanthropy without thinking much of it until she had begun appearing to him in a starkly different form during violent nightmares. Though the woman was meager of flesh and bone, in the dream world she was immense and commanding. More animal than woman, and more avenging spirit than either. She towered above Wayne, becoming a titan that struck a primitive and impotent fear in him, so that even when he woke and walked the length of his plantation during the day, he shrunk from the sight of the small shuffling woman. He began to doubt himself and withdrew from his commitment to the Virginians he had sworn to protect, a mere shadow of his former heroism.
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