Emmanuel was pleased to see him. He had counted on that. They had talked about him coming up for another supply of weed, but that wasn’t supposed to be until the weekend.
“I do always appreciate your surprises, Jay. You’re quite accomplished at them. Come inside so I can appreciate it more thoroughly.”
Harrison helped him with his bags. He had just come from the art supply store and was carrying some canvases and some new paint. They placed them on the counter of the breakfast bar before Emmanuel went into the kitchen and poured them each a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade. It was good to be there like this with him in the cool of the shaded house with something cold to drink in his hand.
He lifted his glass toward the bags of art supplies.
“You about to commence a new masterpiece?”
Emmanuel smiled, tipped his head forward.
“Well, I did have a project in mind. A bit of a departure for me, though. I was considering a self-portrait.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. I wanted to get an early start on it.”
“Don’t let me get in the way. As long as you don’t mind me visiting.”
“You know I don’t mind that. Sit over there, though. You’re blocking my light,” he said, smiling as he motioned toward the open curtain.
Harrison moved along as directed, watched as Emmanuel prepared his impromptu studio. The light was coming in from the front window and it warmed everything in its subtle blush. Emmanuel stretched the canvas then placed it on the easel, readied his paints. The problem was the mirror. It was sturdy on its stand but the surface area was small and he had to be exact in its angle of adjustment to make sure he would see enough of himself to begin.
From where he sat, Harrison had only an oblique glance at the canvas, but even so he was surprised at how quickly Emmanuel worked. The color came from his brush as though it took its source from some hidden reserve. All poise, loop, and tempered fire. There seemed to be no connection at all between what was being accomplished on the canvas and with the face of the artist. How strange that was. But perhaps it wasn’t. He didn’t know what it was to want to create something like that, though he admired Emmanuel for wanting to do so. It seemed important and ambitious in a way that felt beyond him. He respected this difference, suspected it might have been what kept him interested in Emmanuel across all these years. It had been so hard to admit these things to themselves when they were friends in high school. So much had been held back, but seeing him now as he worked, Harrison knew that he needed to know as much about him as he could. He was starving for these details that belonged to the man he loved.
Emmanuel made a face, painted a large black X across the surface of the mirror. Harrison couldn’t check his laughter.
“What, that bad?”
“It’s not working,” Emmanuel said, cleaned his brush. “It’s not the same when you’re sitting there.”
“You’ve been able to paint while I’ve watched before.”
“That’s because I was painting something else. Here I am trying to paint myself and it doesn’t work. I’m different when you’re here.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No, it’s not bad. It makes things more complicated, though. More difficult to grasp. That’s okay. It’s a start. That’s all that’s important right now.”
Emmanuel put everything away and sat next to him. They remained like that for a while, merely impressed against one another until the awareness grew into something more impulsive. Harrison leaned in to kiss him. Emmanuel’s skin tasted clean and dry and warm. When Harrison was kissed in turn his insides hollowed until it felt like he could gather all of their lives together inside the frail and abandoned house of his body.
They found their way to the bed in a delirium. It was a slow and pleasant diffusion, each touch somehow discovering what was familiar but new. Harrison gripped Emmanuel by the bicep and pressed him to the mattress. They were both already hard. Harrison smelled everything he could as he flattened his hands along Emmanuel’s side to keep him pinned in place as he slid down lower and put Emmanuel’s cock in his mouth. As he moved his head over him he could feel Emmanuel’s fingers rub his scalp. The pressure and warmth against his head was its own kind of benediction.
THEY SLEPT and fucked and talked about how they could make a life together through the course of the day. They didn’t leave the bed. Neither bothered with their phones to see what time it was. They had the shifting angles of sunlight for that. Eventually, though, they became hungry and decided on the spur of nostalgia to order from the Chinese dive they had frequented at teenagers.
“You know, I just realized something,” Harrison said as he finished punching their order on the website.
“And what’s that?”
“I guess I’ve never thought of it this way, but we were kind of high school sweethearts, weren’t we?”
Emmanuel laughed a full-throated laugh. He slipped from the bed and dressed in his kimono.
“Are you just now coming around to this piece of wisdom, dear one?”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Only a little. Do me a favor, will you? While we’ve got a little bit of time to wait for the food I’m going to try to get some painting done. Stay in here though so you don’t ruin my concentration.”
“You want me to stare at the walls?”
“Anything but staring at me. Take a nap. You’ve been putting in a full day’s work after all.”
“We’ve been sleeping all day,” Harrison said and winced as Emmanuel went out to the living room, but even as he spoke he could feel the pleasant burden of a nap closing down on the top of his head.
When he woke he was aware that more time had passed than he intended. The light had softened to the late afternoon. He sat up to rid himself of the grogginess, remained sitting there stupidly for a minute listening to Emmanuel work in the next room. Once his head cleared he dressed and went out to chide Emmanuel for letting him oversleep.
“Oh, it hasn’t been that long. I’m working well anyhow. Why don’t you run up there and bring the food back. I’d like to squeeze out another few good minutes if I could.”
“All right. I just hope it isn’t cold.”
“We’ve got an oven in there, don’t we? Now go on, shuffle.”
Harrison went out and climbed into the Taurus. He’d forgotten to let down the working window and the car had sat closed up in the sun throughout the day. The seat was hot enough to sting his ass through his jeans. As soon as they got clear of town they would unload the damn thing. They could use Emmanuel’s vehicle for a while but they’d need to discard that relatively soon as well. There could be nothing left that tied them back to their old lives. There was too much to risk. Gavin might not be terribly intimidating to look at, but Harrison had no doubt he would have a long memory for those who stole from him. The best way to catch a bullet in the brain was by underestimating the commitment of those you’d crossed. Even when they were gone he’d keep a close eye on what might be coming after them. He owed that to Emmanuel. Maybe he owed that to himself too.
The Wok’N’Roll was empty save for the preteen girl behind the counter. She glanced up from her phone and asked for the name of the order and went back to the kitchen to grab it. Harrison heard her speaking to a man in some language he didn’t recognize, relatively certain it wasn’t Chinese. Their voices were quick and, it seemed, contradictory, as if words were things capable of immediate physical violence. When she came back her hands were empty.
“He said he forgot to put the order in even though I put it in the computer. If you can wait a few minutes he’ll have it ready for you.”
“Yeah, okay.”
She turned and fired a salvo of clipped syllables at the kitchen. A muttering in return. Then in a few moments the pan began to sputter as contents were tossed in. The girl went back to her phone.
Harrison pulled a chair from one of the front tables and watched Magnolia Avenue t
hrough the glass front. It weighed on him if he sat here and thought about what this place meant. It was maybe a little better now than it had once been when he was a teenager and he and Emmanuel would walk here just to have a reason to escape the scrutiny of their separate home lives. A little better but not much. All day they would sit in school, both of them bussed all the way out to Carter High School a good fifteen minutes from where they lived in the east edge of the city. All hicks and hayrakes out that way, Emmanuel used to joke, but there was much truth to it. There were only a few black kids that got districted out that way, which would have made it hard enough for Emmanuel to get along, but once he opened his mouth everyone knew that was only the beginning of what made him different. Harrison had befriended him quickly, tried to protect him from the worst of what the other kids were capable of. He had the advantage of his complexion, at least.
Magnolia, though, that was where they really went to school, where they really began to learn about what life meant to do to you if you weren’t careful. They saw the whores, the drugs. The way poverty could get down inside someone like an infection. The way it never let loose.
“Hey, your order is ready.”
He passed cash across the counter, took the receipt. The warm bag in his hands felt good. He concentrated on that as he stepped back out into the world.
When he pulled back up to the house he sensed something was wrong. Enough time had passed that the sun had set and everything was slowed by that mood of early evening half-light. At first he wasn’t sure what it was—a pressure change in the air, maybe, or some other slight maladjustment. Then he saw that the door had been left ajar, and despite the incoming darkness, none of the interior house lights burned.
He took his handgun from the glove box and carried it loose along his leg until he cleared the threshold. The living room was silent, the only shapes the slumped lines of old and empty furniture. He called Emmanuel’s name but there was no answer. With the pistol raised, he moved down the hall to the kitchen, scanned the area and called back to the bedroom. There was a soft and strained moan. Harrison went toward the sound, his hands beginning to shake. The bedroom door had been left open and he saw Emmanuel splayed out on the floor, his head twisted toward him with eyes that rolled with pain. His mouth had shaped to say something but when he tried to speak there were no words, only a spillway of dark blood. Harrison reached for him, but in that moment his eyes were shuttered from behind by a bag snatched over his head and drawn tight. A moment later something smashed into the back of his skull, freeing him of every possible concern.
31
KYLE TOOK LAURA, GERALD, AND ORLYNNE TO BREAKFAST IN TOWN before they were to go on and cast their votes at the elementary school. They chatted while Gerald looked over the map Kyle had drawn up the night before that showed the pickup points for those who might need a ride to get into town and vote. He penciled in a few additions himself, relying on his memory of those old-timers who had been reliable Democrats going back for decades.
“Are you even sure these people are still above ground?” Kyle asked.
“Of course I’m not sure. But God knows they’ll check the right box if they are.”
Kyle lifted the paper, eyed it skeptically before he set it aside when his sausage and eggs came.
“Have you talked to Frank this morning?” Orylnne asked Kyle. “I was worried he might have a case of the nerves.”
“Yeah, I gave him a buzz and asked him if he needed anything. He said he was going with his wife to vote and then head back to the house. I told them we’d stop over there a little before supper and wait things out with them.”
She nodded, lifted her hand to get the waitress to bring another round of coffee.
“Hey, I’ve been thinking something,” Gerald said.
“I thought I saw the lights dim,” Orlynne put in and slyly winked.
Gerald’s lips rounded into an amazed O.
“You all see the way this woman talks to me?”
“Aww, hush. It’s good for you. Go ahead, Old Man.”
“Old Man? Lord, the insults never cease. Anyhow, before I was unwittingly attacked I was about to propose something, though now I’m beginning to have my doubts . . .”
Orlynne petted his hand like something tied up that needed to be soothed into compliance. “No, go on ahead. You know it’s just my way of fussing after you.”
He eyed her for a theatrical few seconds before pressing on.
“Well, I was thinking we ought to split our attention. Kyle, you and Laura can stick to the north end of the county while Orlynne and me tackle everything south of town. That’s mainly your old district out that way anyhow. I know we said that we’d have better luck if we turned up on the doorsteps all together, but I just don’t know. That storm that’s supposed to come in might make more folks hesitant to drive out than we first thought. It’s a lot of damn ground to cover.”
Kyle turned his head, looped an arm around Laura.
“What do you think, girl? You think you’re safe with me all by yourself?”
“I imagine I can handle it. Let’s get on and finish eating though so we can get our votes cast and on to work.”
“There’s a woman with common sense,” Orlynne said, scooped her eggs. “Maybe you all might think of running her next.”
KYLE AND Laura drove back along Gabriel’s Cove to where several modular homes had been put up in the last decade. They ignored the houses decorated with swing sets, or those that had bicycles leaned up against the newly built decks. Young families would have been able to get to their voting stations without assistance. On further back, though, the gravel road thinned out until it was only sunbaked earth, and as they rode a cloud of dust rolled out behind them. Each few hundred yards was a step further back in time. From prefab to brick ranches to bungalows to cabins. As if the closer to the head of the cove you got, the closer you came to some ancestral habitation that had more in common with legend than fact.
Their first stop where someone was home was at a clapboard house painted yellow but going to a soft green hue of grime beneath the shade of a black walnut. There was an old Cutlass parked out front but one tire was flat and it appeared not to have moved for the better part of several weeks. Kyle had almost passed the place by, given it up as deserted, but Laura had urged him to knock on the door. When he heard the sounds of someone moving inside he mimed an expression of shock before they got there and started turning a series of deadbolts.
The door came open and softly rebounded against the stop. An old woman in a pale purple sweat suit stood watching him.
“What you selling?”
Kyle said, “Not a thing in the world, ma’am.”
“Bullshit. Last week a man came out here asking if he could clean my carpet. I said, hell, why not? Then when he was finished he pulled out a clipboard and started writing me a bill. I said, what the hell are you doing and he says to me, I’m making out a receipt. And I says a receipt for you being a good Christian, and he didn’t know what to make of that at all.”
Kyle waited, expected her to continue, though she seemed to have lost her interest or concern with the subject.
“Well, ma’am, we’re not selling anything. We were just driving through here looking for people who might need a ride so that they can vote in today’s special election.”
“The special election, you say?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What’s so special about the special election?”
“Well, ma’am. I used to serve on the county commission, but I had to give the post up, so they’re looking to elect someone who can take over and do what’s best for the county.”
“Oh, I heard about that! You’re that one that’s diddling the married librarian.”
She cracked a mischievous grin, leaned in closer.
“Is that her out there?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s my sweetheart, Laura.”
Her laughter was nothing short of a cackle.
“Let me get my tennis shoes on. I can’t pass up the chance to ride into town with such as you two horny toads.”
In half an hour they’d collected another two residents willing to accept a ride to vote. An elderly widower named Castleberry and his middle-aged son. As soon as they were in the back of the truck cab, the sweat suit lady let them know the infamous company they were keeping.
“This is as good as my soaps,” she said between titters. “I swear it is.”
Neither of the Castleberrys had anything to contribute along those lines.
There were a few of Gavin Noon’s men standing just outside the polls wearing HERITAGE NOT HATE T-shirts. They were handing out printed brochures but they didn’t approach when they saw Kyle walking the taxied voters in. Once all three of the cove people had been escorted in, he went back to the truck to wait for them with Laura.
“Any trouble?” she asked.
He shook his head, rolled his window all the way down to catch as much of a breeze as they could.
“Just some Nazi goons standing out there pretending to be concerned citizens.”
“I’ve been wanting to tell you something for a little while.”
“Tell it then.”
“I just want you to know how I much I admire you for doing this, for sticking to what’s right when it would have been easy to let Frank and Gerald do everything.”
He took her hand, held it for a long time without feeling the need to say anything.
She smiled, lifted his hand to her mouth and held it there for a while.
“You know,” she said after a while. “I think sometimes I love you more than you do me.”
He tried to tell her that she had no right to say something like that but she told him to be quiet, to hear her out.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “It’s okay. I like that I love you more. It gives me something that I’ve never had before. I’ve lived my whole life in a small town, married to the man I was supposed to marry. I never stepped out of line, never strayed from what was supposed to be the path to a good American life. But I spent years hating myself because I never felt that it amounted to anything. I felt suffocated by it. Each day I’d work and then drive home and fix supper and it was all like I was looking down at this living woman doll carrying out a set of instructions without any idea of what it was supposed to mean. There were times I felt there was some invisible part of me that was attached to a rail and it carried me back and forth every day and there was never any way I could swerve.”
How Fire Runs Page 22