Dark River Road

by Virginia Brown

  “Here are the keys,” Nancy said, “and since it’s empty, you can move in any time. If you have your own furniture and would like anything moved out, just inform the caretaker, and Herky will see to it.”

  “Herky Welch?”

  Nancy nodded. “You remember him?”

  “We were in the same grade in school.”

  “He works for Ridgeway Realty now. Actually, more for Cinda. Odd jobs. Maintenance. Security. Whatever she needs done. Two separate checks, please, one for the first month’s rent, and one for the security deposit. If all is in order when you leave, the security deposit will be returned to you.” She hesitated then said, “I assume you don’t plan on staying longer than the six months.”

  It was one of those remarks he didn’t intend to answer, and he wrote out the two checks and took the keys. “Thanks. You’ve been a big help.”

  Nancy looked at him and her mouth went flat. “You shouldn’t have come back.”

  “Why not?”

  That seemed to take her back. He didn’t know what she’d expected him to say, but she didn’t have a ready answer, that was obvious. She looked away, then finally mumbled, “It’s just going to stir things up again.”

  “That’s what I keep hearing.”

  But he wasn’t at all sure what she really meant, if it was going to stir things up with old man Quinton or with Cinda. He certainly meant to shake up the old man, but didn’t know what to do about Cinda. Not that it mattered. She was leaving town for a couple of months anyway. It was probably better that way.

  He didn’t have much to move in. Some clothes, a computer, his books and papers. He’d kept personal belongings to a minimum. Less to move. It left him free. Possessions tended to bind a person too much. Mikey said he did it because the less he had, the less he had to care about, but Mikey always liked talking shit. Doctor Mike said he should go into psychology, but Chantry had said his calling was probably more along the lines of tarot card reader at a carnival. It’d suit him better. Mikey loved making predictions.

  His first night spent in the carriage house felt oddly welcoming. It wasn’t big, but it had a really good feel to it, private and comfortable. The kitchen was efficient and modern, the bathroom had one of those water jet tubs and a separate shower, and the bedroom had a huge bed that looked antique and sturdy. It was spare without being stark, a few things lying around to give it a homey feel without being cluttered. He liked it. It reminded him of Cinda in a way, a no-frills, classy look.

  Some kind of green fern gushed from a brass planter set into the fireplace, but other than a bit of water for it now and then, the place was almost maintenance-free. He doubted he’d need Herky for anything other than to show him the laundry room.

  Big, slow, shuffling along in a rambling gait, Herkimer Welch had always been behind other kids in school. He wasn’t quite what used to be called retarded, just traveled at his own speed, a happy, pleasant kind of guy in no particular hurry to be anywhere or go anywhere. Content just to exist.

  “Hey, Chantry,” Herky said amiably when he saw him come outside on the patio. He had a water hose in one hand and a big smile on his face. “How you been?”

  Just like he’d seen him the week before, no big questions, no curiosity. Chantry nodded.

  “Been fine, Herky. You doing okay?”

  “If I was any better, I’d be too good to stand it.” That was the standard Herky response to the casual greeting of How you doing? Chantry nodded.

  “Need any help watering?”

  “Naw, I like doin’ it. As long as I ain’t botherin’ you.”

  “You’re not. Maybe later you can show me where the laundry room is.”

  “Sure. Miss Cinda told me you’d be needin’ to know. I told her I’d take care of you.” He squinted at him a minute. “Looks like you take care of yourself pretty good though.”

  “I do all right.”

  Herky nodded. “Yep. I stay around the corner. Just ask anybody an’ they’ll show you.”

  He wandered off, hose spraying water on potted plants and flower beds, whistling like he hadn’t a care in the world. Probably didn’t. Chantry wondered how he’d managed it.

  At night when the shadows grew dark it was easy to spot lights gleaming in the big house. Cinda must not have left for her vacation yet. He thought about her up there, wondered about her even when he tried not to. Maybe it was a good thing she was leaving. If she stayed . . . if she stayed there, it’d be too tempting. He’d want to see her, talk to her. He had to be crazy to be this close to her anyway.

  But it was certain to get a reaction from old man Quinton.

  That came the day Cinda left Cane Creek for her vacation. Italy, he’d heard, but not from her. He hadn’t seen her again since the day she’d shown him the carriage house, not even at a distance. It was just as well. He’d probably say something stupid again.

  When he got home from the clinic that afternoon, he got a beer out of the fridge and went out onto the patio where it was shaded and relatively cool. Someone was mowing a lawn nearby. He heard the mower sputter, the whining yowl of a weed eater. He stretched out in an Adirondack recliner and closed his eyes. He’d been up and gone early, riding with Doc to a few of the farms in the area, making calls, checking livestock and family pets. It was different, the mobile work out in the field, and most of the time he liked it better than clinic work. He liked working with just the animals best.

  Maybe he slept a little, lulled to sleep by the drone of lawn equipment, but woke quickly at the sound of a drawling voice.

  “So you really are back.”

  Chris Quinton leaned up against a post covered in some kind of vine, looking at him, his hands stuck deep in his pockets. The years had softened the gaunt look to his face, given him more definition, and his blond hair was a little darker but the eyes were the same: gray, piercing, guarded.

  “Yeah.” Chantry just looked at him, waiting.

  “Cinda said you were. I never thought you were so stupid as to come back here. But, hell, guess I was wrong.”

  “Guess you were.”

  Chris smiled slightly. “Well, I warned you.”

  “I remember.”

  “And you came back anyway? I bet I know why.”

  “I bet you do, too.”

  “And it doesn’t have as much to do with Cinda as it does my grandfather. Right?”

  Chantry didn’t answer. He shouldn’t have to. Chris knew the answer to that. It was just a rhetorical question anyway because he shook his head, gave Chantry a wry smile.

  “He’s been waiting for you. He always said you’d come back, that you wouldn’t be able to stay away. I’m glad I never bet him on it. I’d have lost my ass.”

  It wasn’t really pleasant to hear that Bert Quinton knew him well enough to know he would come back even when he’d spent years convinced he wouldn’t, but it didn’t really matter. It probably even made things easier. Chantry shrugged.

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “Had to see for myself. It’s all over town that you’re back, that your first night here you were with Cathy and Cinda.”

  Chantry stood up, saw Chris eye him with the old appraising look in his eyes. “I guess you came to tell me to stay away from Cinda again.”

  “No need to. By the time she gets back from Italy, you’ll be gone from here. She always stays away a month or two.”

  There was no point in arguing, so he just let that lie. After a moment, Chris shrugged. “It won’t work, Chantry. You can’t go back. Can’t correct old mistakes. I should know. I’ve tried.”

  “I’m not you.”

  “Jesus, do you think you can change the past?”

  “No. But I can find out the truth about it.”

  Chris shook his head. “Man, you don’t know what you’re doing. Some truths should be left alone. It gets dangerous when you start poking at things that are supposed to stay dead.”

  “Is that another warning?”

  “Take it
any way you want. Just keep it in mind.” Chris turned to walk away, then paused and looked back at him. “I hope to hell you know what you’re doing, because you aren’t the only one liable to get hurt.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “so I heard.”

  CHAPTER 30

  That night someone slashed the tires on his car. It was a definite message. He didn’t figure it was Chris; it just wasn’t his style. It fell more in line with old man Quinton’s tactics.

  “Hell, son,” Doc said when he called him to say he’d be in late, “you’ve got somebody worried or pissed.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Called the cops yet?”

  “No.” His experience with Cane Creek’s police force wasn’t that positive. If the rest of the town had a long memory, he could be sure the police memory would be even more acute.

  “Might oughta,” Doc said. “Insurance will require a police report anyway.”

  He thought about that. It wasn’t like he had the money or patience to keep buying tires. Apparently, just letting the air out wasn’t going to be enough for whoever had targeted his car.

  “All right,” he said, “guess I’ll make a report.”

  Herky showed up while he was waiting on the police, looked sadly at the four flat tires and shook his head. “Maybe you should park in the garage while Miss Cinda’s gone. She won’t mind. And no one can get to your car again.”

  “That’s not in my lease.”

  “Miss Cinda said I was to make sure you had whatever you needed while she’s gone. And I reckon you need to keep your car safe.”

  “You’re a wise man, Herky.”

  He grinned. “Yeah. Just some folks don’t know that.”

  “There’s a lot some folks don’t know.”

  Herky’s grin got wider, splitting his broad face like a flash of light. Pale eyes scrunched up and almost disappeared in his fleshy features, like a dried apple doll. He chuckled. “Yeah, you’re smarter than most, Chantry. Always have been. You know things but don’t say ’em. I reckon me and you are a lot alike in some ways.”

  “I reckon we are, Herky.” Both outcasts, though he didn’t say that out loud. His was by choice, but he didn’t think Herky had ever been given a choice. In some ways, maybe Herky was more like Mikey, seeing things most people didn’t see, another level of humanity that was rarely visible to the undiscerning eye. It was there for those who looked for it, but people were usually willing to take things at surface value. It was easier. Less invasive. Less disturbing.

  One of the police officers who came to take the report remembered Chantry quite well. It had been a long time ago, but not so long he’d have forgotten the boy who’d head-butted him.

  “Heard you’s back,” he drawled, eyes narrowed at Chantry as if trying to figure out why. “Reckon there’ll be trouble on your tail as usual.”

  “Not if I can help it.” Chantry leaned up against his car, crossed his arms over his chest and stared back. After a minute, the officer looked down at the ruined tires and shook his head.

  “So who did this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hear anything unusual last night?” Officer Walker scribbled something on his pad for a couple of minutes. “This morning?”

  “Nothing. But the car’s in the alley away from the bedroom.”

  “Yeah. Well, ain’t much the police can do about this but make a report. Vandals, most likely. Or maybe somebody don’t like you.”

  Chantry took the report copy he handed him. “That narrows it down.”

  “I bet.” Still slit-eyed, Walker tapped his clipboard against his leg as if wanting to say something else, then just shrugged. “Don’t make trouble for yourself. Or anyone else. If you do, folks ’round here ain’t likely to want you stayin’.”

  “How would that would be any different?” Chantry straightened, pushed away from the car. “I didn’t come back to make trouble.” It wasn’t quite a lie. He’d come back for answers, and that’d probably be what made trouble. For someone, anyway.

  “Yeah, we’ll be watchin’ you,” Walker said after a minute. “Captain Gordon said to be sure you knew that.”

  “I thought Gordon would be police chief by now.”

  “He’s in the runnin’. But I’ll tell him you’re interested in how he’s doin’.”

  He could imagine how that conversation would run. Chantry didn’t say anything else, and in a minute, Walker got in his car and left. Unless things had changed a lot since he’d gone, old man Quinton usually had a big hand in appointing the police chief. He couldn’t expect any help from that quarter, even if Gordon had forgotten him.

  By the time the insurance company sent an auto service to get him back on the road, it was mid-afternoon and Doc had clients lined up in the waiting room. Dogs, cats, birds, and two ferrets were clutched by anxious pet owners, each eying the other apprehensively. A zoo.

  It took the rest of the day to get through them all, and by the time the doors closed on the last patient, Chantry had a much greater admiration for Doc’s patience.

  “I don’t know how you keep your mouth shut,” he said, wiping down the stainless steel table with disinfectant and paper towels, eying Doc. “You know that guy’s fighting his dogs.”

  “Yeah, he probably is. But I can’t prove it. And even if I could, not sure it’d do any good to say anything. No one around here will stop it, and at least the dog’s getting some help.”

  “Maybe. Had my way, I’d close him down.”

  “So would I. All I can do is treat the dog for now. If we ever get anyone in office that’ll do anything about it, we can at least make it hard for them to profit in Quinton County. Can’t change the nature of some people though. Men like that one’ll always be around.”

  It was depressing. Chantry thought about it while he got the clinic animals settled for the night, checked IV drips and gave meds. Mindy Rowan set a helper to cleaning cages and feeding, and he gave her a lift home when they left for the day.

  “Don’t guess you know too much about that last guy who came in with his dog, do you,” he said when he parked in front of the Rowan trailer. It looked much the same as it always had, except a wooden deck had been built onto the front and an addition on the other side, but it still squatted atop cinder blocks on a bare patch of dirt, with a catalpa tree to shade it from the harsh summer sun. A line of cottonwood trees bordered a small, sluggish ditch behind, and the air held bits of white fluff like lint drifting on a breeze. Mindy paused with her hand on the door handle.

  “Billy Mac Stark, you mean? Yeah, I know him a little. Why?”

  “He’s fighting his dogs.”

  “You don’t want to get into that, Doctor. Folks get serious about it. Some of them ain’t real nice, either.”

  “What a surprise.”

  She gave him a considering look, then shrugged as she opened the door. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll tell Mama you said hey.”

  He nodded. Eleanor Rowan probably still worked nights at the twenty-four hour diner that had catered to truck drivers as long as he could remember. A hard life. He should go in and talk to her, but it just dredged up the kind of memories he’d rather not face right now.

  From Sugarditch, he headed for Highway 1. Six Oaks wasn’t that far, not nearly as far as he remembered it being. Maybe Cane Creek had gotten smaller or his memory flawed, but he was there before he realized it, pulling into the long curving driveway still flanked by a three-rail white fence along the front and sides, still looking like a state park instead of a private residence. All Quinton money and influence.

  He braked at the end of the drive and just looked at the house set back in the trees. There were only five old oaks now. One was obviously young, probably replacing an original lost to storm or disease. He thought of the times he’d been here, working on the grounds, or with Mama up in Quinton’s office. And then the time with Chris after Tansy left Cane Creek. It was still etched sharply in his memory—his shock, the depth of the secre
ts kept by the Quintons, the lengths they’d go to in order to protect themselves. Chris had known he wouldn’t tell because it’d only hurt Dempsey and Tansy. Bound to silence by loyalty. What a bitch.

  After a moment, he pulled up to the house and parked in the circle drive. The woman who came to the door didn’t remember or recognize him, and he didn’t know her. She simply said that Mr. Quinton was unavailable.

  “Tell him Chantry Callahan is here.”

  “Really, sir, he’s not expected back for another hour.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  When she opened her mouth to refuse, something in his face must have changed her mind because she only nodded. “Very well. There’s a small bench—”

  “I know where it is.”

  Déjà vu all over again, he thought, and went down the hallway to the bench outside the office door. It even had the same beige and cream stripes as when Mikey had sat here playing with a toy bear so long ago. The same wallpaper covered the walls above the chair rail. He didn’t want to sit so he stood up, arms crossed over his chest, shoulders leaned back against the wall. He still wore his jeans and tee shirt, but had left his scrub jacket in the car.

  In a few minutes, footsteps sounded on the staircase that curved down from the second floor, and a woman he recognized as Chris Quinton’s mother drifted down the steps, seeming to almost float above them like a ghost. As always she wore a white nightgown. She paused when she reached the bottom and saw him, and he hoped she’d move on and not speak. She didn’t.

  “I know you,” she said in the same whispery voice he remembered, low and almost monotone. “You’re that boy who used to beat up my son.”

  He didn’t reply to that, just nodded. She smiled and moved closer on a wave of flowery perfume mixed with the distinct scent of gin. When she was only a foot away, she stopped at last and he glanced toward the stairs and the entrance hall, hoping for rescue. She touched him lightly on the arm.