by David Joy
“You’re going to kill Michael Stillwell.”
“Kill Stillwell? What are you talking about?”
“He’s breathing down our necks. A man stares at something long enough and eventually he’ll start to see it for what it is.”
“I won’t do that.”
“Of course you will, Calvin.” Dwayne smiled with great amusement. “You were going to kill me just a minute ago for what’s at stake, and it’s the same thing on the line now. You don’t do it and I’ll put a bullet in that woman of yours like I was shooting squirrels. What happened to Darl Moody ought to tell you that I’m nothing if not a man of my word.”
“He’s a goddamn detective. This county will be crawling with law if something happens to one of theirs. And even if I did, Dwayne. Even if I did kill him, what then? You think all this is going to go away? You think there won’t be another comes in right after him?”
“For most the folks wearing that badge, it’s a paycheck. You do what you can to keep from getting filled up with bullet holes. You put in your thirty years and you retire. There’re crusaders and there’re folks punching a time clock. I’d say it’s about a fifty-fifty chance whether the next one cares like Stillwell does, and that’s a chance I’m willing to take. Besides, this’ll make that department forget all about what happened to Darl Moody, now won’t it? They’ll be so busy looking for you they won’t even see me slip out of here.”
“I won’t do it.”
“You call me when it’s done.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“No, I’m seeing things quite clearly,” Dwayne said. “I’m going to give you three days to get it done, and if it hasn’t happened by then I’m coming and taking everything you love. I’ll burn your whole goddamn world to the ground in the blink of an eye.”
Calvin was silenced.
“That’s what you took from me.”
Dwayne slipped past Calvin and stood by the back tire. He worked the lever until all six rounds were scattered about the ground, then gently placed the rifle into the bed of the truck. When he returned to the front bumper he stood there and looked hard into Calvin Hooper’s eyes.
“You know, what you’ve done to this mountain is worse than anything I’ve ever done in my life,” he said. “Any given day any man can kill somebody, but this . . . this right here.” He opened his arms and spun a circle to the cleared land surrounding them. “You’ve spit in the face of God.” Dwayne stepped closer until there were only inches between them, him having to bow his head to meet Calvin’s eyes. He raised his hand and patted Calvin on the cheek, then left his hand flat against his face so he could feel Calvin’s beard prickly against his palm. “I don’t see how you sleep at night.”
Calvin swatted Dwayne’s hand away. “You’re out of your fucking mind!”
Dwayne smiled and strolled away. “Three days,” he said without turning.
He climbed into the car and cranked the engine to life. The headlights flashed Calvin Hooper and he shaded his eyes, unwilling to face what was on him right then. Soon enough he would learn he was capable, and whether it was wickedness or love was no easy question. Deep enough down, every living thing was exactly the same. What will it took resided in every heart that beat.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Just over Moody Bridge, Calvin parked in a muddy pull-off along a freestone section of the Tuckaseigee where trout made meals of mayflies, and redhorse lined seams of current. A single-action Colt revolver that had belonged to his grandfather rested in his lap. The brass frame held a rainbow patina like oil on wet pavement, the blued barrel dark and dull. He’d only ever shot the pistol a handful of times. Never had cared much for guns aside from a few hunting rifles and a pump shotgun he kept for home protection.
Calvin opened the loading gate on the side of the revolver and shook a few tarnished shells from a ratty box of .45 long colts. He slid the cartridges into the cylinder a shell at a time, held the hammer half-cocked when he loaded the last. He remembered his grandfather shooting a pumpkin one fall, holding that revolver by his waist and fanning the hammer like a gunslinger in an old Western. He remembered how the old man laughed when the gun was empty, how shattered pieces of pumpkin littered the yard.
On the passenger seat was a framed photograph he’d taken from the house. When Calvin pulled in and saw Angie’s car sitting there in the driveway, the doors slung open, he knew that no matter the consequence he would do whatever Dwayne Brewer asked. Reaching across the cab for the picture, he flicked on the overhead light and looked at how happy they’d been. One of Angie’s friends had started a photography business and told them she’d shoot them for free if they let her use the photos for her Facebook page. They dressed up nice one Sunday and took pictures around the farm—the same sitting in a field, standing by a barn, walking down a dirt road, leaning on a fence, watermarked photos as every other couple posted on Facebook. At the time, he’d thought it was stupid, but it had made Angie happy.
In the photo, the two of them walked through the field beside his house, golden light haloing the grass and their bodies. The thing he loved about that photograph was that it carried sound. She was laughing in the picture and just looking at it he could hear her, and that made the immediate decision easy. He didn’t know what would come after, but as he watched the moonlight spark on the river’s crests, what he had to do right then was as certain as any truth he’d ever known.
Up the road, Stillwell lived in a ranch-style home that had once belonged to a man named Ronald Brinkley. Michael had bought the place when the old man died of pneumonia one winter, the way Calvin heard it, scooping the place up for damn near nothing. Calvin set the picture back on the seat, took the pistol from his lap, and opened the door to the night. He stepped out and could hear the water running on the other side of the trees, the gravel scratching beneath his boots.
You do this and it’ll all be over, he thought. He’d bury him at the jobsite where the ground was cleared and muddy. His heart raced and he stood there, body tingling, nearly out of breath. The unthinkable had suddenly become one more thing a man had to do to survive. He had everything in the world to lose, and only one way to keep it.
TWENTY-EIGHT
There wasn’t a second she didn’t feel like she was running out of breath. But as long as Angie didn’t look at the body, she could keep from getting sick. There was the smell, sure—the putrid cross between rotting meat and sewage, this strange overwhelming sweetness almost like perfume—but it was the sight of him. Knowing the source of the smell made it unbearable. She was trapped in a room with a dead man. There was no way to couple with something like that other than to push it as far from her mind as she could. Force herself not to look. Believe it’s not there.
As soon as she’d heard the bolt latch on the outside of the door, she knew she’d hear Dwayne Brewer coming when he returned. The thought of doing what she was told, trusting him that everything was going to be okay, never crossed her mind. If he was the man who killed Darl, if he was capable of something like that, then he was not someone to take at his word.
The room was dark and damp and as she made her way around the space with the lamp, she checked for anything she could use. Shelving lined all but the back wall, a freestanding set of shelves pieced together from apple crates in the center of the room. Ball jars loaded with vegetables—green beans, okra, corn and tomato succotash, pickled cucumbers and onions—sat dusty on all but the pine slab where Dwayne had set the groceries. Loose boards leaned against one corner of the room, a ripped bag of nails at the base of the wall, a bucket filled with old rags and a rusted section of chain.
Watching the flame waiver inside the lamp, an idea hit her and she took one of the jars off the shelf, popped the seal, and emptied a quart of beans onto the floor. The oil lamps were lined up on the pine shelf, their wicks extinguished to save oil. She took one of the lamps and slid the globe free. In a second, she had the burne
r out where she could empty the oil from the font into the jar. All she needed now was a torch, something she could light when she heard him at the door. A scrap section of two-by-twos rested with the boards in the corner of the room, and she wrapped its end with a piece of rag and soaked it with oil. Emptying one more lamp into the jar filled the glass to the brim. She’d keep these things together, and when she heard him, she’d light the torch. Set him on fire like a brush pile.
There was nothing to do now but wait, and that was the hardest part. The unanswerable question. The waiting. How long would she be trapped in that room? How long would the food and water last? How long had she been there already? How long before someone started looking for her, and how long after that before they found her, and what if they didn’t? What if this was where she was going to die? The questions and the unknowing boiled into panic and Angie fell against the wall and buried her face in her hands. She tried to push those questions from her mind because hope was the only thing to prevent breaking and she refused to break. Not with this child in her belly. Not as long as there was breath in her body.
It had surprised her how happy she was when that first pregnancy test she took in the Walgreens bathroom came back with that little plus sign, and when the next three came back the same, and when her doctor looked at her and said, “Yeah, you’re pregnant,” with a stoic expression because he wasn’t sure how she’d take it because not everybody took it well. Despite how scared she was, she was happy.
She hadn’t told Calvin, and wasn’t sure how he’d react. She hoped he’d be happy, but how could she be sure? How could she be certain of anything anymore? If what Dwayne Brewer said was true, everything she thought she knew lay in a heap of ashes. How could the same man who opened his doors to her so that she could go back to school be capable of covering up a killing? How could he bury a secret like that inside himself? Again, she tried desperately to push all those questions away. She was going to be a mother. She kept telling herself that—I’m going to be a mother. Saying it aloud, “I’m going to be a mother.” There was nothing else now. Nothing mattered but the child.
She was tired and it was hard to keep her eyes open, but she was scared to sleep. If she dozed off for a second, she might miss her only chance. The thing about fighting sleep, though, is that the mind has its own idea. Delirium starts to build and you tell yourself you can close your eyes for a second and so you do. You open your eyes and everything’s fine and so you close them again, this time drifting a bit further. No one means to fall asleep behind the wheel. It just happens. And that’s where Angie was headed, washing between wake and dream, and soon she was almost there.
Suddenly she was roused by a sound moving across the floor on the far side of the room. With her eyes adjusted to how the dim lamplight pulsed against the cobble walls, she saw a shadow race across the floor. A rat ran the length of the wall, hopped onto the man’s shoulder, and disappeared into a crack between the stones. For a second she wondered if she’d imagined it, if that animal was some sleep-deprived vision. But as she stared at the hole where the rat had vanished she could see the space was real. There was a dark gap cut between the stones where mortar should’ve been.
If he can get in, then I can get out.
Pushing herself up from the floor, she crossed the room and knelt to look at where the rat had burrowed into the wall. She pressed her hand flat against the stone and felt around in the hole, a space slightly bigger than a walnut, cold and wet against her fingers. Scratching with her fingernails, the mortar crumbled away into sand. She clawed at it then, raking her fingertips against the coarse concrete until her nails chipped, her skin rubbed raw and numb. When she couldn’t use her hands, she used one of the nails from across the room. She gripped the nail like a knife and dug at the mortar, relentless and steadfast. Her knuckles were bloodied but eventually she chipped an inch or more deep all the way around the stone.
She scanned the room for something to pry the rock loose from the wall. All that she found was scrap wood, a long section of two-by-six split down the middle with bent nails. Bracing the corner of the board against a cobblestone edge, she kicked down hard and split the board in half. One end was full, the other a jagged shard that she stabbed as far back into the hole as she could to try and leverage the rock free. She worked the stone from different angles, but the wall was ungiving and as she strained with all her might the wood snapped in her hands and a splinter pierced clean through the ring finger of her left hand. Blood ran to her wrist, trickled down her forearm, and dripped from her elbow. She held her wrist in disbelief and fell to the ground with her legs tucked beneath her. Her eyes filled with tears and without control she cried out in pain.
There was something that settled in the pit of her stomach right then, something that said, Quit crying and get up. Grabbing the splinter by its base, she grit her teeth and ripped it free. She could feel her pulse throbbing in her hand, the blood puddling in her open palm, but she buried the pain deep and didn’t make another sound. She wiped the blood against her skirt and turned back to the wall. You’re going to get out of here for this child, she thought, the world having taken on a singular meaning. Nothing mattered outside of what she carried.
TWENTY-NINE
Halfway up the dirt road something held Calvin Hooper like chains. He couldn’t take another step, couldn’t will himself to move, even when he told himself, It has to be this way.
For the last hour, he’d stood on Moody Bridge mesmerized by the river. Moonlight made scales of the surface so that the water looked like a black snake basking in the valley’s night. The revolver was tucked inside his coat and he tried to imagine what it would feel like to kill a man. It was one thing to end a life by accident, and not all that far a stretch to do the same in a moment of rage. Either could happen in the blink of an eye. But to do so knowingly, to roll it around in your mind and answer the questions of how you’d do it, when and where, now that was another matter altogether.
Calvin turned and looked toward the highway. Just south on 107 sat the Tuckasegee Trading Post, its red tin roof lit by a streetlamp at the corner of the narrow parking lot. Staring at something so familiar, he was struck by the ordinariness of it, how ordinary all of it had been. Five weeks ago he was no different from any other man in this county. Work, church, and family. That was it. Same as anyone else, just as plain as apple pie. But all it took was a phone call to rip the rug right out from under his whole life. One decision and now here he stood.
What was happening hadn’t fully sunk in yet. Part of it was shock. It was that suddenly-staring-at-your-house-in-smoking-ashes kind of feeling that left Calvin in a sort of stupor. But the bigger part was that he wasn’t ready to bear the blame. The devil drew the line between the selfless and the selfish so that often a man could not tell on which side he stood. Since the beginning, he’d told himself this was about Angie and how much he loved her. This was about a willingness to do whatever it took to keep her safe, to keep from losing her. There were some things worth dying for and some things worth killing for and some things that could make a man do all sorts of things he never knew he was capable of until the time came to do them. On the ride here, he’d been certain he loved her that much. But over the past few minutes he’d learned that killing a man was no easy thing.
There’d been so many nights standing by bonfires in empty pastures, empty beer cans littered at their feet, Calvin and Darl the only ones who hadn’t turned in. During drunken conversations they swore they’d do anything for the other. One might be in a row with somebody, and the other might say, “I’ll kill him,” and they’d both get fired up and then they’d laugh. The thing was, they weren’t just saying it. They meant it. They loved each other enough that they meant every word. But deep down no one ever really believes it’s going to come to that. You say it like another way of saying I love you. You don’t ever truly believe you’re going to have to lay down your life.
Calvin walked
to the other side of the bridge and gazed upriver. Off to the right he could see rolling hills in the distance, the moonlight teal against the grass. Along the road on the other side of the river, cut cornstalks stubbled a narrow strip of dirt. There was little doubt in his mind that Dwayne Brewer would do exactly what he said. Like I was shooting squirrels. That thoughtless. That easy.
“He’s going to kill her,” Calvin said under his breath. He said it again and those words spoken blew coals to flame and all of it came onto him then, a barrage of emotion—sadness and mourning and guilt and anger—and he leaned forward with his face afire and wept with an uncontrollable madness, his hands gripping the concrete parapet.
Right then, his mind was awash with memory. He thought about the first time he met Angie, how she’d laughed at him when he asked for her number, how she told him he needed to go home and take a shower, maybe think of cleaning himself up a little if he was going to come into a restaurant and hit on a waitress. She was working at O’Malley’s then and he’d thought she was one of the college girls, thought she was older than she was, no clue aside from her accent that she was local. He remembered the first time he kissed her and how she’d been wearing something on her lips, how it left his mouth tingling and cool like peppermint. He remembered how hesitant she’d been to sleep with him, how long it had taken, and how he woke up early that next morning, the sun coming up outside, and he looked at her there asleep and he knew that she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He knew that there were some things on this earth that carried the fingerprints of God on their skin like clay carries the prints of the potter. Those eyes. Those gorgeous green eyes. He could see his entire life in them. He could hear her laugh. He could feel her body spooned against him while she slept, his arm wrapped over her and tucked between her breasts. He could smell her hair as he dipped his nose into it and inhaled and closed his eyes dancing between reality and dream, one no different from the other in that moment. All of that memory came onto him as he clenched tight to the bridge and he heaved forward and emptied himself into the river below. Staring down, the water disappeared under the bridge and that movement made him feel like he was swaying, a vertigo-type dizziness rocking his knees. He panted for air, spittle hanging from his bottom lip.