The Line That Held Us

by David Joy

  The rat shot to the right, but Dwayne stomped his foot and cut off its path. It bolted back into the corner, stalled, then went left, but again there was nowhere to run and the rat curled tightly as if, by pulling its body in enough, it might disappear. He was almost on the rat now, and as he neared, the animal showed its small, yellowed teeth and hissed, but Dwayne’s boot came down swiftly. He felt the tiny bones crack like matchsticks. Raising his foot, he saw the rat’s body quivering, its movements now slow and dying. Dwayne braced his hands against cold cobblestones and came down again and again until all that was left was flesh flattened and bloodied in the dust.

  Sissy sat there oblivious and rotting. Dwayne turned to his brother and an immense guilt settled in the well of his heart. Some people never have much of nothing, he thought. Some people have everything they love ripped from their hands as if God found humor in their suffering.

  The sun burned white outside and Dwayne twisted away from the darkness and walked into the world. He made his way home with tears in his eyes the same as he had when he was a boy. When he reached the yard, he stood by the wood-splitting stump and studied the buzzards in the trees, just high-shouldered shadows scattered about the limbs. Dwayne yelled at the top of his lungs, no words, only a guttural cry from someplace deep inside that was absolutely on fire, and all of those other buzzards lifted to the air so that the limbs shook and the whole tree seemed to move.

  To let a man like Calvin Hooper live after what he did was mercy, and there was no room for that in a world absent the slightest kindness. Dwayne’s was a suffering that could only be soothed by knowing he was not alone. The only answer for that kind of loneliness was for others to endure the same.

  TWENTY-THREE

  He stalked her from the edge of the field as she unloaded groceries from the car, and he didn’t move until he was sure. He’d been crouched there for a long time and his legs were tight and numb. Chickens scratched and pecked along the side of the house, one bronze and gray having spotted him a few minutes before now watching him suspiciously. When she went into the house, he rose and trotted over the open yard, the brood of hens dashing to the back of the house, his footsteps crunching dead grass.

  Slinking onto the porch, he turned with his back against the clapboards. The doorway was open to his left. Adrenaline coursed through his veins now like it had the very first time. Ten years old, tucked in a ground blind with a rifle rested across his knees, Dwayne held his breath while a small doe came through a laurel thicket behind him. Footsteps tramped through dried leaves until the doe was close enough that he could’ve touched her, but he held his breath, his heart racing in his chest, his hair standing on end, amazed at how a man, if he’s still enough, can completely disappear. It was that same feeling now, a hunter stalking prey, and he closed his eyes to listen to the slightest subtleties of sound.

  Exhaling softly through his nose, he heard footsteps coming through the house. She was humming a song, her pace quick and unsuspecting. Closer she came. Closer still. She was almost there and he opened his eyes as she came through the door. Angie Moss did not turn as he took one long stride and hooked under her chin. One arm constricted into her throat, while the other forced the back of her head into the choke, him leaning back until her feet were off the ground and she kicked violently at his shins. Fingernails tore into his arms like hot irons, but he closed his eyes and let that feeling ease over him. It was easiest to embrace pain, to inhale deeply through his nose and lose himself for a short moment in the honeysuckle smell of her hair against his face. Angie reached up in a last-ditch effort to claw at his eyes, but Dwayne lifted his gaze to the tin awning and swayed his head slowly back and forth until her hands fell and her legs went limp and she at once melted against him.

  This was not like the movies. This wasn’t some chloroform-soaked-rag Hollywood bullshit. Dwayne Brewer understood this like he understood she would come to in a matter of seconds—ten seconds, maybe twelve—so he moved quickly. With short, hurried stutter steps he lowered her to the ground then rolled her onto her stomach, pulled a set of zip cuffs from the back pocket of his jeans, and married her wrists at the base of her spine. Counting in his mind, he turned her onto her side and waited for her to wake. Ten. Eleven. Her eyes opened and widened and she rocked her head back and forth trying to make sense of her surroundings, trying to decipher what was happening.

  Dwayne watched her pupils dilate into focus, and when she saw him she tried to get up from the porch, but he straddled her chest and kept her there. Angie screamed and Dwayne slapped his hand over her lips and she bit at his fingers and thrashed her head, blond hair whipping about the dusty slats like threads of unraveled rope, the back of her skull thwacking against the boards. Some people gave up easy, and some fought like hell. Angie Moss bucked with a wildness he’d only seen in animals, but it was of little use. He knew to be patient. Her face flushed red and she huffed wet breaths from her nostrils over the back of his hand and he held her there until she slowed, her eyes filling with tears, her mascara running like watercolor, and in time she surrendered.

  When she ceded, he leaned down and pressed his clean-shaven face against her cheek. Her skin was hot against him.

  “I’m going to let you up now and you’re not going to scream,” he whispered. “You get to screaming and I’ll rip the throat out of you like a goddamned speckled trout.”

  Leaning up, he held his grip tight over her mouth until her eyes widened and she nodded that she understood. He lifted his hand and that fast she took a gulp of air and kneed hard into his kidneys, letting out a cry that ripened her face tomato red.

  “Suit yourself.” Dwayne seethed as he stood and, with a fistful of her hair, yanked her to her feet.

  Angie’s legs whirled and she tore herself away from him. A tangle of thin corn-silk hair hung from Dwayne’s fist. She made it to the edge of the porch and down the first step before her momentum got the better of her. Arms bound at her back shifted her weight forward and she slid out into the yard with the loose black skirt she wore spread over the ground like a blanket. She crashed not far from the porch and he made up that distance before she could right herself. Grabbing her by the hair again, he kept her hunched over and led her around the house to the shed out back where he’d hidden his car from the road.

  With one arm holding her, he fought to get the key in the lock with his other hand, to pop the trunk, and as it opened, he reached inside for a roll of silver duct tape. That fast, and again she was gone. She wrestled free and sprinted for the front yard, but her feet got tangled in the loose flow of her skirt and she fell at the corner of the house. Hands bound, she writhed about on a grassless scab of red clay, trying to get to her feet, but again he was on top of her, his weight pinning her flat as he whipped the tape around her face and capped her cries inside.

  Grabbing for her ankles, he ducked as her legs fired like pistons. A kick found its mark under his chin. A burst of white light flashed his eyes. As he swatted at the air trying to catch her feet, his vision returned and he managed to grab ahold of one leg then the other and finally bound her fully. Muffled screams stuttered against the tape over her mouth, her breaths loud huffs through her nose. He scooped his arm around her waist and carried her on his hip to the open trunk, tossed her inside, and glared down where her body bent over the spare tire, her skirt climbing her legs. She had beggar’s eyes, an expression washed with terror, and he carried no pity for weakness. It sickened him the way she gave up, and he slammed the lid, satisfied to no longer have to look at her. There was only the pathetic sound of her now drumming about the inside of the trunk.

  The sun descended and Dwayne looked toward the light to gauge the time. He’d figured she’d only be gone a few minutes, but it was hours he’d crouched in that field waiting, all that time making him more and more vulnerable. In the days after Calvin led him to the back pasture, Dwayne had set about to learn their schedules and knew them now down to the hour.
Calvin came home around six.

  He opened the driver’s-side door, put his knee on the seat, and reached across the cab for his pistol. He shoved the 1911 into the back of his waistline and made his way to the house. The door was open, the front room filled with the smell of cheap cinnamon candles and cigarette smoke. Through a doorway to the right, he entered the kitchen, where bags of groceries lined Formica countertops and a small square table. Her cell phone lay at the edge of a woven beige place mat and he used it to check the time. It was four forty-five, and his mind eased knowing there was plenty of time to spare.

  Dwayne rifled through the bags and spotted a tub of butter pecan ice cream and a can of sardines. He ripped the lid off the ice cream, scooped a bite along the crook of his finger, and shoveled it into his mouth. Starved to death, he worked his way through half the tub before he slowed enough to catch his breath. The fish he ate whole, and when he finished the last of the can, he licked the oil from his fingers and smoked a cigarette down to the filter before mashing it out on the linoleum under his boot.

  It was a little after five when he stood from the table and slipped Angie’s phone into his pocket. He gathered a few bags of groceries to take with him and headed out of the house through the back door, passing through a tiny screened-in porch floored with green outdoor carpet and down a few wooden steps to the backyard, where he loaded the groceries into the passenger-side floorboard. Climbing behind the wheel, he dug the 1911 from the base of his back and set the pistol on the dash. The exhaust sputtered as he backed into the yard and steered around the side of the house, passing Angie’s car with its doors swung open and down the drive where field stretched to his right. He could hear her kicking at the sidewalls of the trunk and he closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples when he reached the edge of the road.

  A pack of motorcycles roared around a curve, old men with Florida tags on tricked-out baggers chasing fall color as they barreled around switchbacks. Dwayne rolled down his window and threw a hand up as they passed. The bikes rumbled away and the sound of her grew deafening in their absence. He turned the radio on and cranked the volume as loud as it would go, the music scratching through busted speakers. Janis Joplin sang “Me and Bobby McGee,” and he hummed along to a song he knew word for word as he whipped out onto the two-lane.

  The sun continued down and the temperature fell with its light. Dwayne drove with his arm rested on the opened window, the cold air beating against the hairs of his arm. Dried blood painted his skin where Angie had clawed. He checked the rearview and when the chorus came he sang as loud as he could until all that existed was the road and the direction and the absolute truth of the words.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Calvin had spent the day clearing a tangled thicket of green briar, stickseed, and honeysuckle to make a tee box at the edge of a cliff so developers could bring potential buyers to see the view and slice golf balls into the valley. There was no cell service anywhere on the jobsite, so he’d been left to his mind all day to think about Darl and Dwayne and Angie while he worked. And as the sun sank low, he finally reached a point of certainty.

  From the top of the cedar cliffs, the mountain dropped off one side toward Tilley Creek and the old Speedwell store, off the other side toward Lake Glenville and on south to Walhalla. At this elevation, the trees were bare, every contour and curve of the landscape finding definition in light and shadow, all of the mountains’ secrets exposed by season. Spots of color broke apart the ridges only where cedars and balsams took root, tiny groves forest-green spread like patches of moss.

  Hitting the kill switch, he climbed out of the glassed-in cab of the excavator and hopped down to the ground from the muddied steel tracks. The air smelled of turned dirt, and though that was something he’d smelled every day for a long time, the smell had a new meaning. Now the scent brought thoughts of Darl and Carol Brewer, of waking up shivering in the robbed bottom of a grave that could’ve easily become his own. The sun was nearly down, its yellow light tiger-striped by shreds of dark gray cloud. He stared off into the last of the day, dumb to everything but the bullet in his pocket.

  On the way home, he stopped along the west fork of the Tuckaseigee where the Thorpe Powerhouse stood as it had since the early 1940s: an oddly tall, square building with cathedral-like windows stretching up its brick facade. A wide gravel lot spread at its side and Calvin slid in to check if she’d texted. This was the closest place to the jobsite for any sort of cell signal, but even here it was only enough for texts. He’d made a habit of stopping here each night on his way home. The phone dinged and Calvin opened his messages to a string of unanswered texts: The first said she was going grocery shopping and asked if he wanted anything, the next said she’d picked up some ice cream and was planning to make pork chops for dinner, and the last was a string of yellow-faced emojis blowing kisses and hearts. He texted back, “Headed your way. Pork chops sound great,” hit send, and tossed the phone into the passenger seat of his truck before pulling back onto the road.

  The two-lane hugged a silted stretch of river backed, sluggish and deep, behind a tall dam, then ran farther north past a trailer, a cabin, a few farms, and on through the Tuckasegee Straight. The truck was low on fuel, and when the warning light came on, Calvin realized he wouldn’t get home without stopping, so he swung into Jimmy’s Mini Mart to pump a few gallons of diesel.

  When he climbed back into the cab, his cell phone was lit with a message that read, “Call me.” He didn’t think anything of it when he dialed, figured Angie might need him to run by the store. But when he heard the sound of Dwayne Brewer’s voice, all of the feeling left his body.

  “You know, I was starting to think you wasn’t going to call.”

  That voice was unmistakable. Calvin’s hands shook and his heart beat violently. He opened his mouth to speak, but there were no words. The air snagged in his throat like he’d had the wind knocked out.

  “You hear me don’t you? Calvin?”

  He dropped the phone onto the floorboard and scrambled to pick it up. “I’m here,” he said when he got the phone back to his ear. “I’m here.”

  “And where do we go from here?”

  The question struck him. Calvin found it so strange the way Dwayne talked, always this self-righteous tone to what he said, like he was trying to teach you something. “If you lay a finger on her head I swear to God I will hunt you down and—”

  “You might want to think about how you’re talking to me.”

  “I swear to you, I’m going to—”

  “Don’t start talking stupid now,” Dwayne cut him off. “I’ve got something I need you to do for me, and the way I figure, you owe it.”

  “What?” Calvin yelled. “What do you want?”

  “I thought me and you might get together and talk about that.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No, I think it’d be best if we get together,” Dwayne said. “I never was much on talking on the phone. I prefer to look a man in his eyes when I’m talking to him.”

  “I want to talk to her.”

  “What you’re going to do is meet me up there where y’all are clearing all that land. You’re going to meet me there at ten o’clock this evening and we’re going to get all this straightened out. That’s what you’re going to do.”

  Calvin wondered how he knew about the jobsite, wondered how many days Dwayne Brewer had followed him.

  “But you start talking crazy again, you go doing something crazy, Calvin, and I think you know how this is going to end. You know good and well what I’m capable of.”

  Calvin watched vacuous and unblinking through the windshield, thinking of how he’d woken curled beside her that morning. “Angie.”

  “Ten o’clock.”

  He could hear his own breaths as static on the line.

  “Calvin, I want you to say it. I want you to tell me what you’re going to do.”

  �
��Ten o’clock,” he said. “I’ll meet you there at ten o’clock.”

  “That’s right,” Dwayne said. “You meet me there and we’ll get this squared away. We’ll get this behind us and we’ll get back to our lives.”

  “Okay,” Calvin said, and the line went dead.

  Up the road, a rail-thin coonhound crossed in front of a car. The driver slammed on brakes and blared the horn, but Calvin didn’t hear a sound. He stared through the dusty glass and the world before him appeared as flat and unmoving as a painting. It wasn’t like people said, it wasn’t that time stood still, but rather that his mind raced at such an unfathomable pace that the world turned sluggish.

  There was a ringing in Calvin’s ears and his head felt like it was floating, like his body had up and vanished and left nothing outside his mind. Questions fell like pieces of a hillside breaking away. All of it came onto him at once until his mind was entirely taken. A landslide of thought gave way with nothing to slow it. There was no bottom to stop its fall.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Dwayne wiped the cobwebs and dust from the lamp globes and filled the fonts with oil. The wicks were old and tattered, but when they were soaked with fuel they lit just fine. Low tongues of light tapped against the cobble walls and now he could see her. He watched the fire reflect in her eyes, then turned to his work.

  Stepping over Angie’s body as if she were little more than a log across his path, he unloaded the groceries he’d taken from the house onto a long pine shelf. When he’d finished, he came back and hooked his hands under her arms, hoisted her up, and propped her against the wall so that she sat with her arms at her back, her knees to her chest.

  “I’m going to take that tape off and it’s going to hurt,” Dwayne said.

  He stepped toward her and scratched at the tag end of tape and when he had it up he ripped the duct tape around her head, hair and skin coming with it as it freed. Angie winced and her eyes glassed over, but she neither screamed nor cried.