Poor Boy Road (Jake Caldwell #1)

by James L. Weaver

  “You got somebody who can’t keep his mouth shut,” Shane said. “My insider says he’s feeding info to the narcotics task force Bear set up.”

  “That group’s done,” Bub said. “Cleared out last fall.”

  “You don’t know shit about shit, Bub. The task force didn’t go away. They’re just lying in the weeds, waiting to pounce.”

  “You trust your insider?” Willie asked.

  Shane pursed his lips. “More than most. I got a pretty deep hook in. Your guy is negotiating. He hasn’t given them names yet, but it’s close.”

  Willie considered his crew. Bub wouldn’t say anything to anybody. Howie and Bennett would be loyal up until the point where they got seriously squeezed by the cops and neither had shown a sign of that. There were a couple of guys who worked with them last summer, but one got locked up for stealing cars and the other moved out west somewhere. The one guy left with knowledge about anything was the one he never fully trusted.

  “Artie,” Willie said.

  Shane winked. “I knew you were smart, Willie.”

  “Shit.”

  “That’s exactly what he is right now,” Shane said. “He’s mine.”

  Bub shrugged off the demise of one of his cohorts, the fat rolls of his neck bulging out with the effort. Artie was a douche bag. If he disappeared, the machine would keep running. Willie didn’t want to think about Artie’s fate, but it wasn’t like he could do anything to stop it.

  “Fine,” Willie said. “He’s all yours. We can manage with the four of us. Gives us a bigger cut anyway.”

  Shane winked and stood. He brushed the dirt from the seat of his black slacks and pointed to Antonio, who opened the trailer door and disappeared inside. There were shouts and a rock of the trailer as someone smashed against the wall. A terrified Artie spilled out the front door and crashed to the dirt with a face full of blood. Shane bent over him and spoke in a low voice. Artie shrank back and screamed “no” over and over, scrambling away from Shane. He backed into Antonio who boxed his ears and slapped a dark bag over his head. He secured the bag in place with a couple wraps of duct tape. Antonio hauled Artie up by the arm pits and carried him to the back of the Navigator, throwing him inside like a sack of potatoes.

  “So, you start the cook tomorrow. Go get the place ready.” Shane wiped his hands with a handkerchief, then handed Willie a local map with directions to the cook house. “I’ll call you to make sure everything’s set and we’ll be ready to roll.”

  Shane and Antonio climbed into the Navigator. They rolled out of the clearing and out of sight. Bub headed to the trailer leaving Willie by himself wondering how many pieces they would cut poor Artie into.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jake turned off Poor Boy Road and up the lane to the house. He ignored the old mailbox stuffed with envelopes and fliers and rolled up the tree-canopied drive, wincing as overgrown branches scraped along the roof of his truck.

  The old homestead was a snapshot of when he left at eighteen. The brown ranch still needed paint and still gave off a “go the fuck away” vibe. Curtains drawn on the windows, porch light clinging for life by the wires, and a screen door hanging askew by the top hinge. The front door stood open, but it was dark inside. Jake parked behind a maroon Taurus, probably Janey’s, and got out.

  A late afternoon breeze rustled through the trees and across the face of the house, sucking the air from inside. A dead leaves smell of death and decay. Probably why Janey had the front door open. He climbed the cracked concrete steps to the door, stopping short of the last one. He still had time to get back into his truck and bust ass out of town before he got wrapped up with his father’s situation. But, even then, Keats’ two day deadline wasn’t going away.

  Janey emerged through the door, a freshly lit cigarette in hand, as if she read his thoughts of bolting. Coming out to lasso him inside. She looked thin, even for her, in blue jeans and a white T-shirt under a red plaid button down. A pang of guilt stabbed his gut. His baby sister looked ten years older than he did. Her face brightened. She hopped off the front porch and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his chest.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.” She stepped back, taking him in. “You look good, big brother.”

  “Thanks…” Jake said. He started to say “you too,” one of those automatic programmed responses people gave, but he didn’t want to start the reunion with a bald-faced lie so he stuck with the truth. “It’s good to see you, Janey.”

  “It’s been awhile.” She dropped the cigarette and stubbed it out with a scuffed brown shoe. Jake last spoke to her a year ago, a few awkward moments at best when the tax bill on the family property was due. They used to be close before he split and left her stuck in that shithole.

  “Still working at the sheriff’s office?”

  “Still,” she said. “A monkey could do my job, but it pays the bills.”

  “And Luther?”

  “Same. Getting fatter,” she said. “They took him off the loading dock and stuck him in the office at the lumber yard. Assistant manager. A little better pay and hours. Gives him more time to make the rounds at the bars.”

  The arduous chores of taking care of her father and bailing Nicky out of trouble locked her fate in place at too young an age. Janey ended up marrying Luther Tully, a pot-bellied lug of marginal intelligence who managed to hold a regular job at the lumber yard in town. Luther hated to bathe as much as he hated to shave. They had a couple of snot-nosed little delinquents running around town: Eli and Willis. Jake couldn’t tell his nephews apart since he’d only seen their pictures from Janey’s sporadic Christmas cards. Though Janey could’ve done better than Luther, she also could’ve done worse.

  Janey used to be pretty. Not like she would ever grace the cover of Cosmo, but she was a natural beauty. Straight, white teeth and bouncy natural, red curls that compressed and released with every stride like dozens of little springs. In the wee small hours in his Kansas City apartment when he lay in bed counting the headlights from passing cars flashing across the bedroom wall, his thoughts would drift to her. The guilt of leaving his little sister behind with Stony lay across him like a suffocating blanket he couldn’t shrug off.

  Their names ran along those lines of hard living etched in her face. Luther, Nicky, Eli, Willis, Stony, Warsaw, Jake. The curl had disappeared from her bouncing mane over the years, like the hair straightened on its own from the weight of despair, the weight of knowing she would never leave Warsaw.

  “So how is he?” Jake asked.

  Janey pondered the question. Her eyes were dark and heavy, once full of life, now full of something else. She kicked the cigarette butt into the overgrown grass.

  “Cancer is eating him alive,” she said. “We keep pumping him with drugs to deal with the pain, but he moans when he’s awake and groans when he’s asleep. Every third day or so he actually knows what the hell is going on. Ain’t any way for anyone to go.”

  “Some would say he deserves every ounce of pain he’s in.” Janey cringed as if he slapped her. Damn it. Why did he say that out loud?

  “Some would say that. I wouldn’t,” she said.

  Janey saw some of the shit he and Nicky had gone through, but didn’t experience it herself, which must have made it easier to fudge the memory and forgive. Stony didn’t necessarily like having a girl. Bitched about it all the time. But through the bitching and moaning, he treated her more humanely than his sons.

  “Where is he?”

  “In his chair in front of the TV. He seems to like having it on, like it gives him something to focus on besides the pain in his gut. I just need some help.”

  “Why don’t Gramma and Grandpa haul their ass up from Louisiana and help?” Jake asked.

  “They died years ago. I left you a message.”

  “Ahh, sorry,” he said. Asshole. “I don’t know anything about what to do.”

  “There’s a nurse who comes in the mornings, monitors his meds, changes him. Gives him a spong
e bath every few days.”

  Jake sniffed the air wafting through the front door.

  “Doesn’t smell like she’s done it in a while.”

  Janey shifted, a hint of controlled impatience. He had no idea what she’d been through the last few years, and especially the last few months. He didn’t want to know then and was pretty damn sure he didn’t want to know now.

  “He’s dying, Jake,” she said. “He’s past the point where the home nurse and I can do much more for him. Maybe he needs to go somewhere. One of those Hospice Houses? Then again, I have trouble seeing him in one of those places on his last days. Hell, I don’t know. He doesn’t have much time.”

  “How much longer?”

  “The doctors won’t say. Anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks.”

  Jake leaned his head inside, then took a step back at the powerful smell. A musty mix of looming death and antiseptic cleaner. Maybe a hint of some lilac air freshener, its sweetness only adding to the nausea factor. He stepped inside and scanned the living room, memories washing over him. The fireplace where he and Nicky used to sit playing with their action figures, battling to the death on the brick mantle. The rocking chair where Mom would sit, sipping her tea, reading the Westerns she loved so much, occasionally knitting doilies that would adorn the coffee tables of her friends. Her brown eyes flitting between what she worked on and the front door. Waiting for Stony to come home from whatever bender he was on. She might sit for days at a time. Stony disappeared like that. He’d go to town on some errand and disappear for a week.

  The old man’s tool belt, covered in dust bunnies, lay abandoned in the corner by the fireplace. Stony used to build houses, the one thing at which he excelled other than drinking—and beating his wife and kids. Jake still had a scar on his temple from the ring. His tenth birthday when he had the gall to wear Stony’s tool belt for a school project. Most fathers would actually help their kids build a bird house, maybe swell in pride at the sight of their son wearing the tools of their trade. Most fathers.

  Jake resisted the overwhelming urge to run again. He didn’t need to be here, didn’t want to be here. To hell with the old rotting bastard. That wasn’t his father in there, Jake never had one as far as he was concerned. The feeling coursed through his veins, screaming and lighting his brain on fire, the same urge that raged through him at eighteen. He might have bolted had Janey not stroked the back of his arm, anchoring him. Besides, even if he bailed on Stony, he still had to fill his obligation to Keats.

  In the far corner of the living room rested the old brown recliner, the Styrofoam stuffing peeking through the worn armrests. Dad’s chair that nobody but him could sit in. You might manage a spell in it while he was gone, but he’d know. The second he dropped his bony ass in his chair he’d sense some change in the cushion or smell something funny. His eyes would fire up and dart from family member to family member until he found the guilty party. He’d give a tight-lipped smile, and nod, a bobblehead on a tight spring. He wouldn’t do anything then, but he would remember.

  An old floor lamp cast a glow on to the yellowed skeleton in the chair. The legs and torso covered with a thick afghan blanket, howling, white timberwolves on it. One of those blankets spied in a thrift shop with wonders of why the hell anyone would buy something like that. The hands twitched on the armrests, scratching at the emerging stuffing; mere bones covered by paper-thin skin. His thick, red hair replaced with white wisps hanging limply against a sunken face. His once lively eyes cast a dull, uninterested gaze toward the television sitting in its usual place against the wall. The five o’clock news from Kansas City on the tube with no sound.

  The shock of his father in this helpless condition pulled Jake across the threshold. Janey placed her hands on either side of the doorjamb as he approached. With each deliberate step, the old man’s labored breathing grew louder, a rattling sound as the air bounced off his mucus-lined lungs. His jaw hitched open and shut, lips pulled in against toothless gums. Jake stopped at the chair and squatted, unsure what to do.

  The memory movie rolled, flashes of times long ago. Over the years he only focused on the bad times, the beatings and the verbal rants. Lashes with the belt, a tree switch, or whatever else his father could get his hands on. As he took in what remained of his father, other things surfaced. Helping Stony fix the car of a couple with a young baby who couldn’t afford to get it towed to town. Playing catch with Jake and Nicky in the back yard, showing them how to throw a curveball. Patiently helping Jake thread a worm on a hook when they went fishing at the pond, not even getting angry at Jake’s squirms as the worm drew back on itself when pierced with the hook. A high five and a rare hug when Jake shot his first deer. Another one when Jake broke the school record for touchdowns in a single season in high school.

  His father struggled to breathe and Jake’s mind drifted to the comic books he had as a kid. One of Batman’s arch enemies. A split personality. One side of the villain’s face was the dashing district attorney do-gooder Harvey Dent. The other side, the scarred and crazed villain Two Face. You could look at Harvey Dent and try to justify the things Two Face did. Stony had his share of Harvey Dent moments, but his Two Face moments greatly tipped the scales. The bad always outweighed the good. In the end, the bad was all that mattered.

  Stony’s head stirred, shaking almost imperceptibly from side to side. A few rapid blinks over the vacant eyes. They moved to his lap and slowly to Jake. Jake’s heart beat fast as those eyes pulled focus and saw him, really saw him there. His father’s thick, eyebrows furrowed together and recognition flickered. Jake was unsure if he wanted to reach out and touch his hand, or walk out and drive back home. Maybe he had a little Two Face in him as well.

  “Hey, Stony,” he said at last, hands clenched tightly together on top of his knees. What else could he say?

  Stony grunted and whatever electrical circuits fired in his brain to bring him briefly to life clicked off and the vacant gaze returned. His head rested back against the tattered recliner and the rattled breathing started up again.

  “I gotta get to work, Jake,” Janey said behind him. “There’s food in the fridge and he shouldn’t need any medication for a while. I wrote the meds down on a list on the table. I’ll swing back on my dinner break to check on you.”

  Jake focused on the howling wolves on the blanket covering his dad’s legs.

  “Call if you need anything,” Janey said.

  It wasn’t until her car started and crunched over gravel did the tears roll down Jake’s face.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The cook house was a shit-heap that passed the state of condemned two decades ago. Willie took in the sagging, rotting front porch of weather beaten wood, forming a creepy grin under a pair of broken windows. Gray paint peeled off in long strips like flayed skin. Overgrown trees and thick bushes on the side hugged the tiny ranch like the place would collapse if you cut them away.

  Bub climbed out of the truck. “What a creep hole.”

  “Yup,” Willie said. “The location’s perfect, but I got a feeling we’re gonna get dirty as hell trying to clean it out to get ready to cook.”

  “Place looks haunted.”

  “Ain’t no such things as ghosts, Bub. Shane picked the place. We might as well get busy gettin’ it ready. Be hell to pay if it isn’t.”

  Willie moved to the porch, testing the wood before putting his full weight on it. He kicked away empty beer cans and cigarette butts. Someone had been using the place as a hangout. Probably local kids doing some daytime drinking. Willie sure wouldn’t come out here at night. If Shane worried about any foot traffic, he wouldn’t have picked the site in the first place.

  Shane was dead on about the location. The house sat a quarter mile down a rutted lane off Poor Boy Road. A rusted, four-railed, green gate overgrown with foliage guarded the entrance. They drove by twice before finding it. A footpath ran along the side of the house and disappeared into the woods. Willie didn’t know where the footpath led, but
would scout it himself tomorrow.

  He touched the rusty front door knob, afraid it would crumble in his hand. The door resisted but eventually gave in with a ghostly groan. The movement kicked up a thick layer of dust that Willie let settle before he moved inside. Something squealed and scurried away in the darkness.

  “This place makes my trailer look like the Taj Mahal,” Willie said.

  “What the hell is the Taj Mahal?” Bub asked behind him. Willie rolled his eyes and stepped in.

  An old dust-covered sofa with rat-eaten cushions occupied most of the space in the tiny living room. A couple of folding chairs sat around a beat-up coffee table, littered with beer cans and an overflowing ash tray. An old console television with half a red brick protruding from the broken screen rested in the corner. A floor lamp stood in the other corner with a yellowing pile of the Benton County Enterprise at its base. Willie checked the dates on the newspaper. Two and a half years old.

  A narrow dining room with a cheap card table surrounded by four mismatched chairs lay across from the living room. An old china hutch towered behind it, empty except for a few chipped plates and a black and white picture of a rail-thin man in a ragged shirt and a fat woman in an awful diamond-patterned dress, both wearing expressions of equal misery. Willie picked up the picture, wiping the dust layer away with the side of his hand.

  “Who is it?” Bub asked from the doorway.

  “Royce Weathers,” he said. “Always wondered where the old asshole lived.”

  “Royce? He’s been dead for years.”

  “Gotta be at least five. He used to tear it up with my old man. Wonder what happened to the wife? Can’t remember her name.”

  “Mable, I think,” Bub said, the wood floors creaking under his weight as he stepped inside. “She bailed town two seconds after they threw the first shovel of dirt on his coffin. Used to see her around, but haven’t seen hide or hair of her in a couple years.”