Dark Debts

by Karen Hall

  Ray was in his early fifties, short and round with dark features and several visible tattoos. Where he had ever come up with the money to open a coffee shop was a mystery, as he was no businessman whatsoever. Half the regulars had running tabs that they never paid, and whenever someone approached the cash register holding a bill, Ray seemed pleasantly surprised. Randa was convinced he was in the witness protection program. But he was friendly to her, and extremely fond of Cam.

  Cam was nowhere to be found, and his car wasn’t in the lot. Ray was sitting on a stool at the counter, poring over a racing form.

  “Ray?”

  “Hey, Randa! Where the hell have you been?”

  “I’ve been around.”

  “You ain’t been around here.”

  “No.” The last thing on earth she wanted to do was explain it to Ray. “I’m looking for Cam. Have you seen him?”

  “Not since breakfast.”

  “Breakfast?”

  “Noon. His breakfast. So does this mean he finally unloaded that spook?”

  Ray called any woman with dark hair and heavy makeup a spook. Randa had tried before to explain the racial undertones, but Ray wasn’t interested.

  “I have no idea. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

  “Yeah, I know. I always ask him about you.”

  He must love that.

  She wondered what Cam had said. She moved away? She got hit by a train? Or had he told Ray the truth? Had the two of them had a good laugh and a moment of male bonding at her expense?

  She ordered a cup of coffee and stepped away to use her cell phone. She’d never taken Cam off her speed dial. The call rang twice before it was picked up by an answering machine and she heard Cam’s voice telling her to leave a message.

  “Cam? It’s Randa. I’m at Ray’s and you’re not. Are you there?” She gave it a moment, but he didn’t pick up. “I guess you’re on your way. I’m giving it ten minutes and then I’m leaving.” Yeah, talk tough. You’ll sit here until Hell freezes over.

  She hung up and went back to the dining room. She could see a cup of coffee sitting at “their” table, where Ray had put it. There was also a Coke for Cam, and a chocolate chip roll. Ray had never been an ally in her effort to get Cam to eat better. Still, it was a thoughtful gesture.

  She sat down and tried to collect herself. She wanted to be as stoic as possible by the time Cam arrived. Over the past year she had dreaded the inevitability of coming face-to-face with him, because she had no idea how to act. Part of her still felt the same way about him as she’d always felt, and another part wanted him to die slowly and painfully at the hands of skilled torturers. She tried to will herself to stay calm. She would listen to what he had to say and react to that, and only that.

  What was this about? And how did it involve her? No matter what trouble Cam was in, he had throngs of friends he could have called. People who lived closer, people who stayed up later, people he hadn’t spent the last year trying to pretend he’d never met. Not to mention Lady Macbeth. Where was her lying ass?

  Half an hour and two cups of coffee later, Randa was sick of waiting. Cam could have walked here three times since she’d left the message. It was obnoxious enough to have called her here in the first place. Now he was taking his time getting here, leaving her to cool her heels among the night crawlers?

  As soon as Ray’s back was turned, she put some money on the table and left to drive up the hill to Cam’s place.

  She remembered the drive well. It was only then that she had started to wonder if Cam really was in some kind of trouble. Up to that point, she’d been telling herself not to panic. Given Cam’s flair for hyperbole, he could make misplacing a credit card sound like a matter of life and death. But he had sounded different. She’d told herself that he’d felt awkward because of the nasty way they’d parted. Hell, he should feel awkward. If he was suddenly willing to call her, knowing it would mean having to face her fury . . . something might really be wrong.

  But what?

  She’d just begun to hypothesize when she’d turned onto Cam’s street, into a sea of flashing lights.

  TWO

  Barton, Georgia, 1996

  Jack reached over and turned off the alarm clock the second it started to buzz. He’d awakened at four a.m. with a sense of foreboding so strong it felt like someone was sitting on his chest. He was used to vague, intangible fear. He’d lived with it his entire adult life. Fear left over from when there was a reason for it, the way an amputee still feels pain from a missing limb. But this was different. It was as if he’d been jarred awake by a loud noise, but he couldn’t remember hearing anything.

  And then he’d had the most ridiculous urge to call Cam. Where the hell had that come from? He hadn’t seen or talked to Cam in almost a decade. He rarely thought of his brother, and when he did, he still felt an anger bordering on rage. Why would he think of calling Cam? What did he think he’d say? “Hey, asshole, it’s the Ghost of Christmas Past. How’s your cushy life?”

  As soon as he’d sent those thoughts packing, his mind began to bombard him with memories of things completely forgotten about. Vignettes from his childhood, random and meaningless. Like fishing trips with his mother’s twin brother, Uncle Ryland, the only member of the extended family who had ever acknowledged their existence. Ryland had adored the boys, and they’d adored him, even if he was a certified loon. It was Uncle Ryland who had taken them to the Rotary Club–sponsored Huck Finn Day at Lake Allatoona, the one summer they’d managed to attend that much-heralded event. It was one of his few pleasant childhood memories. Their mother had dressed the four of them in matching overalls and different-colored plaid shirts, borrowed from Ryland’s kids (cousins they’d never met), and they had passed themselves off as a normal family. Tallen caught the biggest fish of the day and got his picture in the paper. Probably the only time in his life Tallen had his picture in the paper without breaking a law. There was something about Tallen and fish. Ryland used to say that all that boy had to do was call them.

  Their father had been unimpressed. Said fish liked Tallen because they had so much in common—their main thought in life was how to keep from being caught. He also said Tallen wasn’t any better at it than the fish were. He always seemed to have even more contempt for Tallen than for the rest of them, which was saying something. Jack’s theory was that it was because Tallen so obviously worshiped Will. Will Landry was not comfortable with anyone’s affection, and made it a point to punish those who bestowed it.

  It suddenly dawned on Jack why he was thinking about them. He’d had that dream again. It had been worse than usual, in some way he couldn’t remember. It would come back to him, though. The bad stuff always did.

  The phone rang. It had to be Rick, the guy who owned the temp company through which Jack usually worked. Rick was the only person who had this number; the only reason Jack owned a phone (let alone an answering machine) was to find out whatever he needed to know about his next job. The machine picked up. He cringed at the sound of his own voice, as always, and waited for Rick’s.

  “Yeah . . . Jack . . . This guy called here looking for you . . . I told him I’d check with you and call him back. He sounded kinda . . . official . . .”

  Jack picked up the receiver.

  “I don’t care if he sounded like the president, Rick! How many times do we have to have this conversation?”

  “Well, he said it was important.”

  “What do you think he’s going to say? ‘This is an asshole reporter’?”

  “I just thought . . . I mean, do reporters still call you?”

  Jack sighed. No use explaining to Rick why that wasn’t the point. “This year is the tenth anniversary,” he said with forced patience. “Reporters love crap like that.”

  “Oh. God. Sorry. I didn’t think of that.”

  “Well, start thinking. And don’t give anyone my phone number. Anyone. Ever. No exceptions.”

  Rick apologized again and hung up.

>   Jack wrenched himself out of bed. The day was off to a lovely start.

  He headed for the bathroom, hoping there was a bottle of aspirin in the medicine cabinet. He should keep a record, he supposed. Did he always wake up with a headache after the dream? If the headaches got any worse, he’d have to go back to the pain clinic in Atlanta, and they’d ask him about things like that.

  There were two aspirin left in the bottle. He swallowed them without water. He closed the cabinet and glanced at his face in the mirror. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all. Felt like it, too. At least he didn’t have to be anywhere early. The job he’d been working had finished yesterday, and he didn’t start a new one until Monday. He might pick up something for today if he went and stood in front of the Western Auto with all the other day-labor candidates. He didn’t have to worry about getting there early. The black and Hispanic guys might sit out there for hours, but the minute a white guy showed up—even him—half the town would remember odd jobs that couldn’t wait. Blond hair was all the résumé he needed.

  He really didn’t care whether he worked today or not. It had been a good month, and it wasn’t like he needed to save for anything. Maybe he’d go down to the coffee shop. Maybe a decent breakfast and half a pot of black coffee would be enough of a bribe for his headache. Besides, the thought of being around other people was not as repulsive to him this morning as it usually was.

  Half an hour later he was dressed and headed down Route 36, hands in his pockets, his work boots crunching the loose gravel on the side of the road. The early-morning sky was a dull gray, and the fine mist that was falling felt good on his face. If it turned into a steady rain, he’d have a guilt-free excuse for not working.

  “Men in the Rain.” A poem Ethan had written when they were in school. Something about walking along beneath John Deere hats . . . dirt disturbed . . . a final destination . . . Their mother had taped it to the door of the refrigerator. (Lucy had always gone out of her way to encourage their artistic pursuits. Anything to keep them inside, out of trouble.) He remembered the title because the rest of them had given Ethan a hard time about it, had made all sorts of insinuations about Ethan’s sexual preferences. (Tallen, home during one of his brief bouts with freedom, had said, “Go steal a car, Ethan. You’d love reform school.”) What a joke. There had never been a shred of real doubt about any of them, as far as that went. Even Cam was a raging heterosexual.

  Why the hell couldn’t he get his mind off his family today? Most of the time he didn’t think about them at all. He stuck militantly to the safe subjects: what should he eat, what should he read, where was he working tomorrow? Lately, more and more of the other stuff was slipping through the cracks. Was he getting careless? Or was it somehow safer now? He couldn’t figure why it would be.

  The dream was coming more often, too. He used to have it about three times a year. He’d already had it twice this month. He couldn’t remember when it had started. Was it after Ethan died? Or his father? Or Tallen? Hard to remember; he got the funerals mixed up. Not something he felt great about, but it was the truth.

  Whenever it had started, he’d been having the dream for years. Some things about it varied, others remained doggedly consistent. It was always dark. He was always walking down some lonesome stretch of two-lane. Desolate. The sky more purple than black. Angry mountains in the distance. The whole scene always looked like one of those gloomy landscapes Tallen used to paint. Jack would walk along, not knowing where he was headed or why, and suddenly he’d come upon some colossal, gruesome accident. There were always red lights flashing everywhere. Sometimes he would see dozens of cars piled on top of each other, smashed and twisted, shards of glass and metal covering the ground like confetti. Other times, there would be no cars. Just the bodies. Bodies lying everywhere. Horrible-looking bodies—bloody, with limbs broken or missing, some of them decapitated. And no one seemed to be helping them. He’d walk through the carnage, recognizing people from his past—old friends, teachers, distant relatives. At the end of the line, he’d always find them—Ethan, Tallen, his father, and later, his mother. All badly mangled, reaching out for him, calling him, as if he could do something. He’d stare at them, and more than fear or horror or anything like that, the strongest feeling he’d have was always his wonder that he wasn’t with them. Cam was never with them, either, but that made sense. Cam had never been with them.

  Even after it had become familiar, the dream would cling to him for days, like a filmy coat of something old and sour. He was sure the dream was symbolic as hell, and that it recurred because he didn’t know what it meant. Sooner or later, his subconscious would get the message that he didn’t give a crap what it meant and would leave him the hell alone.

  The coffee shop was not terribly crowded. He sat at the counter, where he was least likely to draw attention to himself.

  “I knew you were gonna be here today.” Sherry, the new waitress, was already pouring him a cup of coffee. She was an energetic redhead in her midtwenties. Pretty, in a JCPenney sort of way, but she talked too damned much.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m psychic.” She fished her guest-check pad out of her apron pocket. “Let’s see if I can guess. Two eggs, scrambled, bacon, wheat toast.”

  “Over easy, sausage, Sunbeam. Don’t hang out your shingle just yet.”

  “You did that to be ornery.”

  “And a side of grits.”

  “I knew that.”

  She left to take the order to the kitchen. Jack watched her go, almost smiling to himself. She had only been working there for a couple of months. He guessed she was new in town. It was the only possible explanation for the fact that she flirted with him. He responded mechanically. On those rare occasions when someone tried to engage him in conversation, his basic rule was to go along with it. Easier to stay invisible if he just went with the flow.

  Jack poured cream into his coffee and watched as it turned a smooth caramel color. From an unseen radio Reba McEntire was wailing about whatever man had done her wrong this week, over which floated the usual country small talk: “Whatch’all know good? How’s your mama ’n’ ’em?” From somewhere else he could hear his mother’s voice. “Jackson Landry, please write the word ‘once’ and show me where there’s a t at the end of it. There aren’t many things in life that I can control, but I will not have my boys talking like a bunch of ignorant country hicks.”

  Sherry returned from the kitchen and went down the counter collecting saltshakers. She came back with a handful and stood in front of Jack to refill them.

  “So is it gonna rain?”

  “You’re the psychic, you tell me.”

  “Smart-ass.” She smiled as she said it. A plump, dark-haired waitress brushed by Sherry and nudged her with an elbow.

  “I gotta talk to you.” The woman disappeared into the kitchen without waiting for an answer.

  “That’s Darlene. She usually works the dinner shift.”

  Jack nodded, although he didn’t know why she felt the need to explain it to him.

  “She probably broke up with her boyfriend for the fifth time this week. Sonny Reynolds, you know him?”

  Jack shook his head no, which he would have done even if he had known the guy.

  “He’s a prison guard over in Jackson.” She leaned down and lowered her voice. “It must not take brains; he ain’t got the sense God gave a june bug.”

  Jack stared into his coffee cup, lest his eyes yield any clue that he didn’t need to be told about prison guards. Sherry prattled on.

  “I know she’s no beauty queen or nothin’, but she could sure do better than that ignoramus.”

  The door to the kitchen opened and Darlene stuck her head out.

  “Sherry.” She gave Sherry a look that meant business and disappeared again. Sherry looked at Jack and rolled her eyes. She screwed the top on a saltshaker and, with an exasperated sigh, headed into the kitchen.

  Jack took the opportunity to survey the bre
akfast crowd. The usual eclectic mix. Lawyers. Farmers. A couple of housewives and their kids. The janitors from the courthouse. He knew most of them by name—the lawyers and the janitors. He’d gone to school with them. The coffee shop divided into the same cliques the high school had. He’d felt so alienated from them all back then. He hadn’t known anything.

  He then spied his least favorite coffee shop regular—the priest from the postage stamp–size Catholic church at the north end of town—seated a couple of stools away. As usual, “Father” was dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt over a thermal undershirt, sleeves rolled just right, like he thought he was a lumberjack. The guy never wore his collar, and Jack wouldn’t have known who he was except that it was impossible to move to Barton without being the buzz of the coffee shop for a few days. The previous priest had died three or four months ago—of a heart attack, a stroke, liver cancer, or AIDS, depending on which rumor one chose to believe. Father Casual had made his appearance a few weeks later. Jack had heard he’d transferred from New York City and figured he must have screwed up royally to have been exiled to rural Georgia.

  Jack rarely had the emotional energy to hate someone on sight, but he’d made an exception for Father. It was partly the clothes. It was also the John Lennon glasses and too much hair for a guy who looked to be in his late forties. And it had to do with Jack’s aversion to religion in general, although the Protestant ministers didn’t inspire the loathing in him that this guy did.

  It might have something to do with the way the guy always stared at him. Once he had tried to strike up a conversation, but Jack had warded it off with “Look, I don’t know whether you’re trying to save me or seduce me, but the answer is no either way.”

  The door to the kitchen opened and Sherry returned, no longer smiling. She put the plate of food down in front of him.

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked. The perkiness was gone from her voice.