Soil

  Jay fell asleep to the mourning of doves in the grass and slept solidly most of the night. He woke first, in the steely hue of an undeclared dawn, to the sound of footsteps around the campfire. He opened his eyes and lay still, trying to rationalize the noise. Maybe a bird hopping in the grass, a squirrel, at worst a fox. But the steps moved with heft and slinking certainty, and he knew it was someone who’d stumbled upon them and lacked the sense to leave. His heart tripped into a quick rhythm, and he reached into his pack for the pistol. He collected himself, then sat up with calm assurance, unzipped the flap, and slipped out to confront the visitor.

  The buzzard stood over the pile of fish bones. They acknowledged each other gravely. Jay couldn’t shoot it now. The noise would terrify Jacob. He stepped toward the bird, but it didn’t flinch. He took another step, then another, and only then did the buzzard hop back a foot. They played this game, one step forward, one step back, until they’d moved away from the camp. Finally the bird stopped, and Jay stamped to chase it off.

  It hissed.

  “Fuck you,” he hissed back.

  The bird shuddered and gagged and hacked up a wretched-smelling gray clod that splattered against Jay’s bare feet. He rubbed his toes in the grass and drew his arm over his face to cover the devastating smell. The buzzard seemed to cackle at him, its mouth propped open in a gruesome taunt. He’d never hated an animal this much. He lunged for it, and the bird hopped backward, flapping its wings to take flight, but it was too slow. Jay had it in his grip and wrestled it to the ground, surprised to find the filthy thing in his grasp. It jerked and moaned. Jay bashed its head repeatedly with the butt of the pistol, punched it flat until the bird flopped over limp in the grass.

  He might have kept on killing it had he not been afraid of waking Jacob. He looked back and could just make out the inanimate mound inside the tent. He knelt down and studied the bird. The beak was cracked, and its eyes were missing, bashed inside its skull, which leaked red and creamy white. The mushy head didn’t look much different than it had alive, a disgusting fleshy red wad. He pulled it by its tail feathers over a ridge and hurled it into some brush. One more living witness gone.

  34

  Shoals had a sixth sense for when wives were home alone. No husbands, no children, no encumbrances. It was as if he were mystically attuned to the quiet longing that pulsed from their eager dwellings.

  He felt it as he made the park loop near Sandy’s house late Friday afternoon. He kept a block out of sight to remain inconspicuous. If there was a drawback to the Boss, and he would never admit to such a thing, it was that it made a lousy undercover car. There would be no hanging out in the parking lot behind the baseball field watching for shadows in the window. Not today, not ever again. And certainly there would be no peeping, even though he detected, through the small opaque square at the back of the house, the softest dancing orange light that generally heralded a candlelit bubble bath. No, if he was going to see her in all of her bare glory, it would be earned.

  Surely he had earned it. His performance in the basement had to have piqued her interest. She’d been shy, waiting for the hanging bulb to go out before dropping her pj’s below her knees, letting him explore, but only down there, with his hands and face. He was anxious to show her what other, larger-­bore apparatus he had in his tool kit. He had bided his time, been a patient gentleman, had fucked up and done penance. Now it was time to prove that he was a good and trustworthy man. No more prowling around, no more hitting every little kitten that raised her tail for him. He’d found the right one, and she was worth playing by the rules.

  As for her husband, it was obvious that Sandy was done with him. After all, who did she call when she needed a man to rush over in the night?

  He found the courage to pull right up in front of the apartment. He walked to the front door with a confident swagger, rang the bell, knocked on the door. He waited. Her Maxima was there, she had to be home. He regretted not swinging by his mother’s house and plucking a bouquet of flowers, something rare and exotic, aphrodisiacal.

  He sat on the front stoop and considered what he might say. How would he explain this visit? He’d always just happened by or had a delivery to make or been invited to exterminate some leathery rapscallion. He could be sexy forward, tell her he’d come to finish the basement job. Or perhaps it was time to come clean, to let her know how he really felt about her. She made him feel like becoming a new man.

  He waited five minutes or so before Sandy opened the door, her robe pulled tight. He was shocked by her appearance. What had happened to the knockout MILF he used to know? She looked like a battered housewife with her puffy eyes and wrecked hair.

  “Hey, girl,” Shoals said, standing up and brushing off his jeans. “Wow, you cut all your hair off.”

  She said nothing, just stared at him through the storm door.

  “I knocked and didn’t get an answer. Figured you were taking a bath or something so I thought I’d wait here.”

  “Were you peeping in the window, is that how you decided I was in the bath?”

  Shoals hung his head.

  “Did you get a good look? Did you videotape me? Are you going to post it online?”

  “I guess you heard the ugly rumors about me,” Shoals said. “You can’t imagine what I’ve been going through this week.”

  “What you’ve been going through?” She was astounded, her mouth agape. “What about Rochelle? You threatened to post a video of that innocent woman—naked!—online. She has children! She’s done nothing to you!”

  Oh, she did something, he wanted to say. She did something every day when she dressed that way and shook her ass just so. He didn’t lay a hand on her, just met her halfway. Why put it out there if she wasn’t trying to lure?

  “And do you have a tape of me too?” She looked around for eavesdroppers. “In the basement?”

  “No!” he said. “It was so dark I barely saw anything myself.”

  “So you would have, then, if the conditions had been suitable?”

  “No, Sandy! I’m not that kinda guy.”

  “You’re no kind of guy, you’re a child! Worse than that, because a child doesn’t know any better. You are an emotionally stunted bully. What happened to you? Did something happen when you were fifteen that kept you from developing like a normally mature human being?”

  “Come on, now . . .”

  “It’s like you’re stuck in high school with your ridiculous car and haircut and clothes.” She was really having a time tearing into him like this. Her face twisted into painful contortions with every aspersion. “Your whole persona is an embarrassment. I wonder if you have one genuine bone in your body.”

  His eyebrows raised and he inhaled to respond but thought wiser and swallowed his remark. There was nothing to say. He was indefensible.

  “What a letch! The way you treat women is abhorrent, it’s criminal! All to convince yourself that you’re not a loser, but it’s an illusion! You are a loser, Danny, you’re a sad cliché. You are the saddest thing I know. There is no way in hell I would spend another moment alone with you. In fact, if you don’t leave right now, I’m calling the police.”

  The door slammed. He looked around to make sure there were no observers, and then he slunk back to the Boss, climbed in, and howled away. It wasn’t far to the country. He wanted to get as far away as possible.

  Weeks and weeks of careful work had blown up in his face. It was doubtful there was anything left to salvage. He thought of a wise old maxim—there’s a thin line between love and hate. And then he thought how he’d like to drink an entire bottle of whiskey, so he whipped the car around in a treacherous about-face and proceeded back to a little country bar hugging the city outskirts, an anonymous place to get shitfaced.

  At the bar he demanded a tall glass of Dickel and sloshed it down. The room was too small, the women a little too bovine with their inbred bea
us. The back porch was noisy with boisterous floozies and knuckleheads out for an early happy hour.

  “Why don’t you wrap that bottle up and let me take it to go,” Shoals told the bartender.

  “That aint strictly legal, friend,” he replied, to which Shoals threw his badge down on the bar.

  Two minutes later he was back in the Boss, rocketing ninety and sucking back a hot swig, managing the curves with one hand. The flesh-colored horizon vied for his attention, split in half by a mound of purple clouds. The sun was tucked underneath, and he just wanted to make it home in time to watch the lake swallow it up.

  He lived out by the reservoir, a little A-frame cabin with a loft bedroom and a screened-in back deck. It was the most perfect place in the world to him, out on the far edge of the county, a place where he could hide out and where company felt they could be entertained discreetly.

  He made it home as the sun was bidding the day farewell. He had half a bottle and plenty of heartache to unload. As he stopped to unlock the front door, he noticed a freshly pounded fist hole through the screen door. His neighbor, a flagrantly queer teenager, was sneaking a smoke out in the bushes and stuck his face through the hedge.

  “Hey, Danny,” he called.

  “What is it, Kelvin?” Shoals asked, perturbed.

  “There was a cop here looking for you earlier.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Lieutenant Spitzer?”

  “Spiller?”

  “That’s it!”

  “Shit.”

  Shoals went inside and locked the door. Suzie-Q was all smiles, tail wagging and legs galloping. At least someone was happy to see him. He turned the lights on and checked the messages. His mother had called, sounding foggy and distant. They’d been playing phone tag for a day or so. He didn’t bother making a drink, just took it down in sober gulps from the bottle. It bothered him that Spiller had been here. The guy must be a real maniac.

  He went out back to sit on the porch and watch the sun. He had a perfect view of the horizon and liked to prop his feet up on the coffee table, watch the sun fall between his legs like a starburst blonde. But it was gone already, somebody else’s tonight.

  He went into the yard for a whiz and watched the lavender sky glaze down over the treetops. “Screw this!” he said and took his bottle and got in the car and sped back to town.

  He walked into the city police office and yelled, “I’m here to see Dun Spiller! I understand he’s looking for me! Well, here I am—it’s Danny fucking Shoals!”

  Baby George appeared from one of the offices and came over to intercept Shoals. “Dude, what are you doing?” he said, clasping his old friend by the shoulder. “You been drinking a bit, buddy?”

  “Naw,” said Shoals.

  “Whatever’s going on between y’all is a personal matter. Don’t bring that shit up in here, please.”

  “What’s a matter with you, Baby?” cried Shoals. He was getting slurry. “You on Dun’s side now, I guess. City boy solid, is that it?”

  “Take it easy, bro,” said George. “You want some coffee?”

  “Hell no, I just want to talk to Dun. He’s griping my ass, leaving messages all over creation. I’d like to fix this one way or another.”

  “Well, I’d watch my step if I were you,” said George. “He’s a big ole boy.”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “I’m saying if I was you, I’d get myself sober before I tangled with him.”

  Shoals stopped and looked around. Heads were peering out of offices, cops pretending to be on phones watching it unfold. What a disgrace. He would never work the city force. They were all a bunch of pencil pushers and citation writers. There was nothing he could say they didn’t already hate themselves for, so he turned to stagger back out to his car when George called out, “Danny.”

  Shoals turned back and George stepped to him, leaned in close like he was giving advice. He looked around to make sure none of the others were listening. He whispered. “Are they real?”

  “Shit yeah they’re real!” Shoals cried. “And you can tell the rest of the boys she’s wild down below. Looked like she was riding a mink!”

  He regretted giving that last bit away. Not one among them deserved to know it. He was just trying to hurt Dun. He felt like he needed to hurt Rochelle, and Sandy too. He wanted to hurt his mother and Uncle Bud, anyone who ever doubted him. He wanted to show Big Jack he had a swinging prick on him too, that he could do anything he damn well dared.

  He shot off into the night like a loose bottle rocket, content to crash wherever his powder ran out.

  35

  Jay felt carved out and hollow all of Sunday, anxious for her to show. Would she be alone? Well, of course, he knew that. And then what would he say to her? Was there a simple answer for all of this or would he have to fight to get it out of her?

  The only sure way to know whether or not she was with the deputy would be to look her in the eyes, to study every gesture. Even without trust, they knew each other too well. You’re with someone long enough and you graft into one another. Sometimes you have to run in horror when you see the other side of yourself.

  Sunday hadn’t been as easy with Jacob, whether he was simply tired or still sore over the knife. He’d spent a good portion of the day whining about the empty BB gun, pleading for more ammunition. He just wouldn’t let it go. Later he cried when he discovered his mom hadn’t packed his handheld video game. He wanted desperately to play it, and when Jay asked him the point of the game, he reverted from a bright and curious boy to a mumbling automaton who couldn’t even convey the details, just kept saying, “You’re this little thing and you move things around and get things.”

  So this was what it meant to live in town, Jay decided. The blessed artifice, the instant cure for want. Everyone was digging themselves deeper, surrendering the key to their being. No one saw the need to redress these things. No one saw how terribly it would all end. How could he send Jacob back there? What kind of father would he be?

  He was wondering this alone when he heard tires on gravel. His heart took cover. He crouched at the window and traced her slow, nervous ascent from the road. He moved to the kitchen window and watched her sitting in the car, waiting for her boys. She finally got out and looked around. He made her wait, let her realize that this was no longer her home. He did this even as it pained him to see her this way.

  Before she could knock, he popped into view, startling her a little. She’d cut all her hair off. She looked bloated and drained of life. Something was happening to her too, he realized, and he was seized by a kind of empathy that was still borne from deep love.

  Jay opened the door and slipped out in socks as Chipper darted ahead of him. He closed the door carefully behind him.

  “You scared me,” she said with a bit of a smile.

  He smiled back. “Hey.”

  “Wow, you’re looking a lot better,” she said.

  Clean-shaven, tight hair, and bronze skin, a bit of food filling in his sunken features. “Thanks.” He wished he could say the same about her, even just to be nice. Nevertheless, she had a rosy wounded aura about her, and he wanted to grab her up and carry her inside, tend to her and take from her and never let her leave. If it had just been the two of them living here, would they still be together?

  “How was the weekend?” she asked.

  “It was perfect. We did a few chores, we camped and fished. We played with Chipper.”

  Chipper was standing before her, his neck craned up with a goofy smile and his whole back end wagging.

  “It was just what we both needed, I think. I’m glad you made the offer.”

  They stood facing, each sizing up the other. They could have come together and embraced and cured everything in that moment but for the oppressive doubt crowding between them.

  “How’s your dad?” he as
ked.

  “He’s still in a coma. Stable but . . .”

  “God, I hated to hear it. But I know he’ll come out. Right?”

  “I don’t know, Jay. I think. Maybe.”

  He let the coarse silence linger between them, gave her room to confess. He tried to penetrate her thoughts, to convey his knowledge of her disloyalty through the air like a clairvoyant.

  “So where is he?” she finally asked.

  “Who?”

  She gave him a queer stare. There was an innocent confusion there, possibly fear or even a well-played conceit. She was unwilling to confirm anything. “Jacob. Who do you think?”

  “He’s in there.”

  “Well, is he ready? We probably need to get back and start preparing for the week.”

  “He’s just taking a nap.”

  She checked her watch. “It’s kind of late to be napping. I don’t want him to be up all night.”

  “Sandy,” said Jay. “I think he needs to stay here with me awhile longer.”

  “No.” She said it as if she’d heard something mildly outrageous. “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s good for him to be with his father.”

  “Yeah, but he has school. How will you get him to and from?”

  “I can teach him all he needs.”

  “No, Jay. That’s ridiculous.”

  “Why? What will they teach him in town that I can’t teach him well enough or better out here, Sandy? Say? Teach him how to be a stoolie?”

  “A what?”

  “Rat out his old man?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You think I don’t know about this deputy?”

  She paused too long, snared in some baited half-truth.

  “What are you telling him about me?” Jay asked.

  “Who? Jacob?”

  “No, the deputy. He’s been out here. He keeps coming out to harass me. Did you know that? Did you put him up to it?”