Dark River Road

by Virginia Brown

  “Will he ever be able to walk right again?” Mikey asked one cold, wet afternoon when they stood outside while Shadow paid homage to tree trunks and posts. The dog limped, leg held up off the ground at an odd angle.

  “I don’t know.” Chantry watched as Shadow moved clumsily over the bare yard that had turned to mud. He wondered sometimes if he’d done the right thing, taking him from what he was used to at Dale Ledbetter’s to bring him back here. No grass, no two thousand acres, just dirt and tension that often settled in like a familiar visitor. But it wouldn’t be forever, he reminded himself. Shadow coming back had sparked determination that this time he’d make it all work out. Mikey said he had his shark back, and maybe he was right.

  “I can’t walk right either,” Mikey said after a minute, gazing at the dog. “Me and Shadow are a lot alike. We both had to find a new road to walk.”

  Rain fell softly, hissing against the tin roof of the garage. Chantry didn’t say anything, just stood there with his hands stuck in his pockets and thinking about dogs and roads. Then Mikey nudged him and pointed.

  “Look, Chantry. A rainbow.”

  Off to the west where the sun set over the Mississippi River, gray clouds had thinned and splinters of light shot through to form a rainbow. It hung suspended in the sky, white and blue and rose colored, and he thought of Tansy.

  “Yeah, I see it,” he said, and hoped that wherever Tansy was, she saw it too.

  It was one of those raw springs when storms swept through one after the other, tornadoes spinning across flat farmland with ruthless efficiency, tearing up trees and buildings with the same indifference nature had for all human pretensions. Power lines toppled, cars ended up in ditches, house trailers peeled open like tin cans to litter the fields.

  Tornadoes made Mama nervous. She hated them. She always paced the floor and stood ready to snatch Mikey up and crawl under the house when the sky got that funny color and the wind blew really hard.

  Not Chantry. He found something energizing about a storm. It made him want to go out and stand in the middle of one of the freshly-plowed fields and defy God and nature, dare the elements to do their worst. Used to, he wouldn’t care if he won or lost. Now he thought maybe he did. Sometimes he wasn’t sure that was such a good thing. When he’d had nothing to lose, losing didn’t matter.

  It was right after dark one April night when a vicious storm barreled through Cane Creek like one of the county bulldozers, taking down trees and power lines. The lights went out, and one of the windows got busted out by a flying board. Mama and Mikey huddled in the bathroom in the old clawfoot tub, but she couldn’t get Chantry to come in with them. He waited it out in the hallway with Shadow, pillows stacked around the dog like fat marshmallows just in case. When it got quiet again and he could hear something besides Mama’s frightened praying and Mikey’s disgruntled protests at being squeezed into the bathtub, he heard rain coming through what had to be a hole in the roof. Sure enough, there was a big hole in the kitchen ceiling.

  Chantry took a candle to Mama, the light wavering over his face. “Took part of the roof. It won’t be hard to fix, but we’ll have to wait until daylight. I’ll put plastic over it for tonight.”

  Mama’s hand shook as she took the candle from him. “Go down to the Tap Room for Rainey. Tell him he needs to come home and help you get up there and spread plastic so we don’t have a worse mess in the morning.”

  His lip curled. “Rainey’ll be useless by now. He’s been there since lunchtime.”

  “Chantry, I won’t have you up on that roof by yourself. Just go get him, please. I’ll put some buckets on the floor in the meantime.”

  It wasn’t something he’d want to do at any time, walk into the Tap Room looking for Rainey. While it wasn’t a place like the Hideaway, the men there were mostly like Rainey, drunks or worse, with nothing better to do and no place better to be. The only time the Tap Room closed was Christmas Day. It stayed open the rest of the time, twenty-four hours a day. Liquor and beer might not get served after two in the morning, but a man could buy a Coke for five dollars that came with a free splash of Jack Daniel’s if he wanted. No laws got broken, and men that had run out of something to drink got drunker. It worked out pretty well for the county cops, too, since any man fool enough to drive with a snoot full got pulled over and taken to jail to pay a hefty fine. The cops liked to wait on the main roads to ambush the oblivious. It was like shooting wooden ducks.

  The rain had made it cool, so he put a jacket on over his gray Ole Miss sweatshirt and walked down Liberty Road to the blacktop. Lights were on across the railroad tracks a ways, but most of the Sugarditch lights were out. It looked eerie, just blackness stretching, tiny pinpricks of wavery light from candles visible in a few windows.

  When he reached the Tap Room, the parking lot out front was crowded with cars and trucks as usual. A little storm wouldn’t faze business. His boots were already wet from trudging across the tracks and through puddles so he went the back way to save time, cutting between cars parked on the muddy lot behind the bar. It was dark back there, only the lights up front keeping it from being pitch black.

  He’d gotten almost to the pavement when he was suddenly jerked backward. It caught him by surprise, and before he could react he slammed against the side of a two-ton truck so hard it knocked the wind out of him. A lighter flared briefly. He got a brief glimpse of several men with knotted up fists, then saw one of them stick something hard like a couple of white rocks into a plastic bag before shoving it in his pocket, and knew at once what he’d walked into. A drug deal. Someone had the back of his jacket, and then someone else grabbed his arms. A fist plowed into his belly. He couldn’t move, pinned back against the truck, struggling for breath. Voices, slurred and laughing, the stench of whiskey breath, the smell of mud and rain, the blur of flashing lights from a beer sign out front, all blended into one streak.

  Pain wracked him from a blow to the face. He tasted blood. They knocked him to his knees, and it wasn’t until he got shoved backward so that he went sprawling on the ground in the mud that he got his first look at them. He should have known right off.

  “Hey you little shit, how you like that?” Rafe kicked him before he could avoid it, the toe of his boot catching him in the stomach so hard he rolled over and threw up. Rafe laughed. On his hands and knees, head down, he tried to breathe through a red haze of pain and vomit. One of the other guys asked Rafe if he knew him, and he heard him say, “Yeah, I know th’ li’l piss-ant.”

  A hand grabbed the back of his jacket and hauled him to his feet after a minute. Beau. He pushed him back against the truck, and grabbed a fistful of his sweatshirt to hold him up when his legs buckled.

  “Stand up, candy ass. What you doin’ sneakin’ around back here? Just how much did you see anyway, huh?”

  Chantry sucked in a deep breath and his ribs spasmed in protest. He groaned. He’d had no time to brace himself, no defenses up, and it was all he could do to stay on his feet even with his sweatshirt still held in Beau’s fist. Dimly, as if from far away, he heard a burst of music as a door opened, then shut. He tried to think, tried to clear his head but everything was all mixed up with the effort to breathe and the sharp ache in his belly. He managed another breath that helped some.

  One of the other guys said, “So whadd’ya think? He gonna make trouble?”

  “I dunno, man. Maybe. Can’t never tell with him.” Beau leaned into him, using his weight as leverage to hold Chantry against the truck. He smelled like beer and cigarettes. “He don’t say a whole lot most of the time.”

  “Maybe you can convince him he don’t need to change that.”

  Beau laughed. “Yeah. Might can. Come on, little brother. We’re gonna have us a family meetin’. Just like we used to.”

  Jesus. If he didn’t do something right here and now, he was liable to get the shit beat out of him even more than he already had. As Beau stepped back to open the truck door, Chantry bent suddenly from the waist, making a retc
hing sound that made Beau jump back to keep from getting splattered. In the same forward motion, he drilled his shoulder into Beau and drove him backward into the other guy so hard they both went flying. He didn’t stop but kept going, shoving past them and running like hell. He heard them behind him, angry shouts, the pounding of feet, but didn’t look back. The Tap Room might be closer, but he wouldn’t find much help in there, not with Rainey inside. He knew better than to even try.

  He took off toward the railroad tracks. Sugarditch was dark, and he knew it like the back of his own hand. If he had a chance of getting away, it’d be there.

  It hurt to run, but stopping wasn’t an option. If they caught him, it’d be bad. He’d been this way so many times before he’d always said he could walk it blind, but it looked unfamiliar tonight, in the dark without the signal lights up on poles shining down on gravel and creosote ties and metal rails. They weren’t far behind, but they were out of shape, puffing and cussing so loud he figured he’d make it if he just kept going. He stumbled a couple of times, caught his balance and kept going. Over the tracks and down into a ditch, then up the other side to come out on the blacktop road. Inky darkness lay just on the other side, like a blanket he could pull over him to hide.

  Then a car veered in front of him, coming out of nowhere with no lights on to block his path, and he swerved before it could hit him, staggering sideways a few feet. Doors flew open, lights popped on in the interior, and two men burst out, shouting at him.

  “Stop! Police.”

  It took a moment for it to sink in, flight so deeply ingrained that his forward motion just kept him moving by sheer reflex, and one of the cops tackled him, taking him down on the side of the road in the mud. They both skidded a little bit, then the cop grabbed his arms and hauled him to his feet.

  He swung Chantry toward the police car, bent him over the hood and told him to spread his legs while his partner patted him down, and Chantry looked back across the railroad tracks toward the Tap Room. They’d never believe he hadn’t run to tell the cops. He’d never be able to go anywhere without looking over his shoulder again. He had a choice to make.

  “What you runnin’ from, boy?” the cop asked.

  Sucking in a deep breath, he glanced over his shoulder while the other cop emptied his pockets, then he said, “Drug dealers.”

  That was all it took. There’s not much police like better than getting drug dealers off the street, unless maybe it’s proving you’re one of them. Since the storm had brought out the state highway patrol as well as local police to make sure the good citizens of Cane Creek were safe from criminal activity that might be lurking in the dark, within minutes they’d rounded up drugs and dealers from behind the Tap Room. And they caught Beau and Rafe still running back to their trucks after chasing Chantry halfway to Sugarditch. They had enough drugs and drug money on them to send them down to Parchman for a long time once a judge and jury got done with them, and that suited Chantry just fine. With the state police involved, Quinton wouldn’t dare go to their rescue.

  Sergeant Gordon seemed a bit disappointed that he couldn’t prove Chantry had anything to do with the drugs, but Mama backed up his story that he’d been sent after Rainey. The sergeant studied him quietly for a minute then shook his head.

  “Boy, every time I see you, you look like you’ve been pushed headfirst through a meat grinder. You need to change your ways before you end up at Parchman or worse.”

  Chantry figured that was pretty much true. Mama and Mrs. Rowan took him over to the Quinton County Hospital to get stitches in a cut over his eye, then they took him home. Utility workers had the lights back on. The kitchen had a layer of rainwater in it, but what she couldn’t sweep out the back door, Mama had managed to catch in buckets.

  “Rainey’s gonna be mad,” Chantry said when he’d helped her sop up rainwater off the top of the table. “And not at Beau or Rafe.”

  “You only told the truth,” Mama said. “If Beau and Rafe put themselves in a position to be arrested for drugs, that is not your fault.”

  “Rainey won’t see it that way.”

  He was right.

  Rainey got home before Chantry had a chance to change out of his muddy, bloody clothes, and when he came in the door his eyes narrowed at Chantry in that way he’d always recognized as trouble. Instantly wary, he tensed, and saw Mama draw herself up like she was bracing for battle.

  “Go clean up, Chantry,” she said at once, “and put your muddy things in the hamper for me to wash later. Rainey, before you say one word, I wish to speak with you.”

  “Fuck that. I ain’t got nothin’ more to say to you right now, but I got a helluva lot to say to that little bastard.”

  Mama made a hissing sound between her teeth, and Chantry thought of a snake about to strike, she looked so mad. “Don’t you ever call him that again. Do you understand me, Rainey Lassiter? I will not have it.”

  “You won’t have it? Shit. Shoulda been me that wouldn’t have it, wouldn’t have you or that shittin’ brat. All these damn years—”

  “Chantry, take Mikey and go to your room and shut the door,” Mama said, cutting him off with a look when he started to refuse. “Now.”

  Mikey hung in the doorway, teetering on his braces, looking grim. “Papa, you shouldn’t talk to my mama like that. It’s not right.”

  Rainey shot him a look that could have curdled milk. “My own kid’s turned against me. It ain’t right what you done, Carrie. It just ain’t right. And it ain’t right what he done.”

  “If you’re referring to Chantry, the courts will decide whether he did the right thing by reporting what he saw to the police. Your sons are the only ones responsible for their actions. If they are innocent, they will go free. Chantry—go to your room now.”

  “Come on, sport,” Chantry said, and bent to scoop Mikey up to take him to their room. It looked like it was building up to a long night.

  Mikey was trembling when Chantry set him down on the edge of their double bed, his face all knotted up like he was about to cry. But the look he shot toward the closed bedroom door was angry. “Papa’s always going to be like this. He won’t never change. My Sunday School teacher says God can change men’s hearts, but I reckon God’s given up on Papa.”

  Chantry didn’t know what to say to that. He’d had a little trouble lately himself reconciling things about God. Just when he’d gotten to where he was sure God was only something someone had made up to force people to behave by scaring them with stories of fire, brimstone, and eternal torment, he’d gotten Shadow back. Maybe not the way he wanted or had once hoped for, but he was back, curled up in a corner on top of his bed with his ears perked up and listening to the loud voices in the kitchen.

  Mama sounded like she was trying to be quiet, and kept telling Rainey to lower his voice, but he wasn’t having any of it.

  “Hell, no,” he heard Rainey shout. “This time it’s gone too far, by God. My boys are in jail because of that little shit.”

  “Your boys are in jail because they had a kilo of cocaine in their possession,” Mama shot back, quick as anything and sounding so fierce it surprised him. Lately, she’d been stronger than he’d seen her in a long time, like she’d made up her mind about something and had set out to do it come hell or high water. Maybe Rainey had noticed it, too, because he didn’t say anything for a minute.

  Then he said in a tone that Chantry could barely hear, “Just why’d you marry me, Carrie? I know why I married you. Hell, we all know that. You was like some dream to me, so pretty and classy, almost like one of them movie stars. It made being stuck in this backwater town almost worth it when I saw you that first time, standin’ there with my boys at that school meetin’. You was somethin’. Still are, but now I don’t know what. Maybe I never knew, but I’ll tell you this, I do know you ain’t never cared about me. You just tolerated me, even when we first got married.”

  Mama’s voice sounded soft and sad, so that Chantry had to creep over to the door and put his e
ar close to hear. “I did us both a disservice, Rainey, and I’m sorry for that. At the time, it just seemed the right thing to do.”

  Silence fell, and Chantry glanced over at the bed and Mikey. He’d curled up on his side and had one arm flung over Shadow, who’d gotten up on the bed like he did when he thought no one would catch him. Chantry didn’t say anything. A bond of some kind had formed between Mikey and Shadow.

  He went over and unbuckled Mikey’s braces and slipped them off his legs, rubbing them to ease the chafing, then he pulled the covers over him. “Go to sleep,” he said quietly, and Mikey let out a little sigh.

  “Don’t make Shadow get down.”

  “I won’t.”

  “He keeps the wolf away from the window at night.”

  “What wolf?”

  “The one that comes when it’s dark,” Mikey said drowsily. “I hear it out there sometimes. Shadow won’t let it come in.”

  He didn’t know what Mikey was talking about, and glanced at the window. Maybe he just saw shadows the black walnut tree made against the house in the moonlight. But if it made Mikey feel better to have Shadow close, it suited him just fine, too.

  “Shadow can stay,” he said, but Mikey didn’t answer and it looked like he’d fallen asleep already. Chantry crossed the room and turned out the light, then eased open the bedroom door.

  They were still talking, only finally Rainey had lowered his voice, too, so that he had to hold his breath to hear what they were saying.

  “ . . .so just what was it, Carrie,” Rainey asked in a voice tight with some kind of emotion he’d never heard from him, “just what did ole man Quinton have on you to make you marry me? Hell, I know it had to be something. He uses people like that. Sittin’ up there in that big ole house like some kind of damn toad, waitin’ for careless flies. I see him for it now, though. Didn’t then. I shoulda done what I started to do when Charlotte died and gone back to Missouri with my boys. I never did belong down here, don’t know why I stayed ‘cept she got knocked up with Beau and it was hard to find good jobs then. Quinton gave me what I needed, liked havin’ me around to run all those construction jobs. Said I was one of the best he’d ever seen at it. Always knows what to say, don’t he? Just where to stick the knife in and twist it, too. How’d he stick you?”