Pickard County Atlas

by Chris Harding Thornton

  “What?” she asked.

  “Dell Junior. Some hambone-hambone shit.”

  She checked Anna. Watched for any sign of alarm. The girl looked like an old, dour, shrunken woman. Her head craned upward to try and see above the dash. She swatted, like Rick had, said, Shh, now.

  “That’s right,” Rick said and started the pickup. He whipped it into reverse. The truck heaved backward and stopped. He put it in drive. It jumped forward, and the grille knocked over the Bowmans’ trash can with a clatter. “Shit—Bowman.” He gunned it.

  She gripped the door’s armrest. She didn’t want to know, she thought, but she asked, “Where we going?”

  The blacks of his eyes flared at her. They were too big. “You know better than me. I don’t know where the hell you meet him.” The pickup hurtled toward the main road. “Heard him headed east on the highway.” He made the turn sharp enough that one side of her went weightless. “You both got to know. You both got to know a person can’t go and do what you did.” He made the turn onto the highway without looking. She held the armrest. She tensed to keep from flying toward him. He gunned it against the pavement. The back end fishtailed. “Heard him headed this way. Need to tell me where to turn.”

  If Rick didn’t know where to go, he hadn’t been the one at the Jensen place last night. So Pam knew that much. The tires rolled on the pavement with a steady static. She needed to stall. She needed to think. At the first gravel road past the trailer park, she told him to take a right. He did, muttering. Swatting. When they reached the next road, her head wasn’t any clearer. It was vacant. Empty. She picked left this time.

  He slowed enough to take the curve without rolling. The pickup fishtailed again. He hit the gas and out of nowhere, he switched off the headlights. She didn’t scream. She didn’t know what to scream. He drove, fast. So fast it felt like hurtling through space, like speeding up but also not moving at all. They were floating, disconnected.

  “There. You see that?” he said. Pam gripped the vinyl of the armrest. It was cracked. The broken, cracked plastic sliced her skin. Ahead, headlights filled the air past a hill like mist. He shouted above the wind through the cab and the roar of the engine. “You know what they’re counting on, Pam? People in that car? You know what makes things work?” He leaned forward into the wheel. His pale, sallow skin was the only thing glowing besides the distant lights. “The unspoken promise I’m not out here hauling ass with no—”

  Her arm shot across the dark, elbow grazing Anna’s forehead. The last joints of Pam’s fingertips caught and curled on the wheel.

  He smacked at her grasp and flipped the lights on. “I’m not gonna goddamn do it, Pam. I’m trying to make a point. That’s the difference between you and me. I hold up my end.”

  The haze ahead was gone. The car must’ve turned.

  She felt her legs, her arms, with the ache and tremble that come after swerving to miss an animal in the road.

  In the dim light from the speedometer, his nose flared and his lips tightened. His chin puckered. That was familiar. So was the way the sight burned at the top of her stomach. The look was what he did when he pouted. His mouth tightened and his chin screwed up in that pucker. It was a twenty-four-year-old’s version of a pout his own toddler was too old to pull.

  In the same dashboard light, she saw his jeans. Around his pocket and lap, what she’d taken for swaths of silver roof coating wasn’t silver. It was white. White dust. From the flour he’d dumped in the kitchen.

  He’d taken Anna. He’d taken their money.

  The whole thing was a goddamn tantrum. Great big babies, her mother had said. Babe was right again. Great big, helpless, fucking babies. Well, Pam was tired. Pam was too tired to be a good mama.

  Her words came as low and steady as when she’d asked Babe for the money. This time they came harder, colder. “Guess this is where I step up?” she said. “Where I talk you down?”

  He didn’t answer. He swatted again.

  “You think you can use that gun?”

  “Damn hambone-hambones,” he said.

  “What you ever shot in your life, Rick? Some BBs? At some tin cans on a stump?” For a breath, she pictured him. A kid lying in the grass outside that ramshackle little place of his mother’s, a Daisy aimed at an empty Coke bottle. She felt a squeeze in her chest. A squeeze she’d let wring her out too many times, for too long. Pam was not his goddamn mama. He was not her baby boy.

  “All right,” she said. If that was where he wanted to go, that was where she’d take him. Straight to Harley. “Make a left toward the Bowl. The Jensen place.”

  31

  IT WAS DARK WHEN HARLEY PULLED behind the home place. He’d taken the highway from the west and made a left at the blind intersection on County Road K, where the windbreak shielded the house and barn from view. Where the backyard ended, he stopped on the old Schleswig-Holstein road, the one the county newly named “15,” and stood one foot from the cruiser. He shone the spotlight down the low-maintenance ruts that ran along the rear property lines of his folks’ place and Ziske’s spread, hoping the naked white apparition would turn out to be just that, something the light bled straight through, something no bullet could graze. Some work of imagination from a half-asleep, half-blind old man.

  Not even a pair of yellow eyes flashed from the brush. The glow of his side lamp washed across the back of the home place’s barn, the grass, the steps to the door they’d always used, the root cellar that, from just the right angle, looked like a portal into something else. From here, the illusion didn’t work. From here, the clay sloped into the earth as clear as could be.

  He swept the lamp toward the windbreak. The light skimmed where the pile of splintered buckboard wagon wood should’ve been, where the pile had been stacked as long as he could remember.

  The busted-up planks were lower. As if they’d been shifted, some of them scavenged.

  Harley shut off the lamp and grabbed the flashlight from the bench seat. He scanned the grass before each step, watching for stray burrows and dens in the dirt. As he neared the windbreak, he saw half the woodpile was no longer stacked. It’d been scattered out, warped and rotted boards laid edge to edge like a shoddy raft.

  He rounded them, slow, and saw a gaping darkness. A hole. A grave, he thought first, till he stepped nearer. Its squared-off edges were lined with logs and mortared rocks. Leading down into the earth was a crude, round-rung ladder fashioned from sawed-off tree limbs.

  A cellar. Where the splintered wagon boards had been piled as long as Harley could remember, there’d been a cellar.

  Harley knelt. He should’ve called out, he knew, should’ve announced his presence. But he had no wind in him. He gripped the edge of the hole and shone his light beneath.

  He scanned the small room. On the packed dirt floor were trinkets. Part of a child’s train set, a locomotive engine forged from metal. A dusty chrome rocket. A deck of playing cards, coated in dust. A small stack of paper. It was comic books. A ball and jacks. A toy top. And toward the edge of the space, where the floor met the wall, ghostly white ropes, roots of tall grass and the windbreak’s trees, crooked downward like strands of wiry hair. They pointed to a mess of darkened burlap. Part of it lay flat against the dirt. The rest was pulled back, crumpled against the wall like a discarded shroud. A few sparse coils of black curls lay at one end. Nearby was a snatch of striped fabric, dried and decayed like a dead leaf. Harley saw it was part of a shirt—the rest of it lay neatly folded in the corner, atop a pair of dirty jeans and a child’s pair of sneakers.

  He pushed himself upward, out of the darkness, to catch a breath. He braced his palms on his thighs. The flashlight dropped to lie at his side, bleeding across the grass and rotted wood.

  Ole Braasch knew only the one floor plan, Ziske said. Harley felt the home place at his back. A hundred yards, give or take. A second cellar, just like the one at the Lucas place. Just like the one Rollie Asher had been filling with a spade that day.

  Eighteen
years ago, a pickup with a dead boy’s body in the bed turned west on the highway from the Lucas place, the place Rollie lived in, the place Ole Braasch built identical to this one, right down to the nail for the outhouse paper. And surely Rollie knew that. Ziske would’ve told him if he hadn’t seen it plainly himself. The pickup headed in the direction of the looping Wakonda, but it hadn’t stopped at the creek. It’d passed over and driven right here.

  When Harley could stand, he did. He left the pit as it was, yawning open at the night. He walked to the cruiser and slid down in the seat.

  He backed down the Schleswig-Holstein to where it met County Road K, then drove toward the front of the house, where he hoped the door would be shut like it always was. He pulled to the end of the gravel, to the blind intersection with the highway. He would’ve liked to stay there, at that blind intersection, not see or know any more about any of it, but he couldn’t.

  He made the turn and pulled into the overgrown drive. The front door was shut. No red F-250 parked in front of the barn. What was in the yard, perpendicular to the porch, was a black Econoline van that’d seen better days. The side read REDDICK MOBILE HOME REPAIR.

  Harley trained the spotlight on the windshield. No one.

  The only person Harley knew drove the van was Paul’s brother. He and Harley didn’t know each other. They’d passed on the highway from time to time, each raising an index finger in acknowledgment. Harley’s face heated. It was guilt he felt. Not for sleeping with Pam but for the ruin it’d no doubt brought.

  Harley drifted the lamp back and forth, level across the property. He killed the engine and unsnapped his holster break. He stayed put and listened. The only sounds were crickets and a lone cicada’s buzz.

  “Reddick,” he called through the open cruiser window. It felt wrong, using the name to mean anyone but Paul.

  “Jensen,” came parroted back, cutting through the night and distance from somewhere high up. Harley swore it had the same unshakable calm that always made his teeth grit. But he’d heard something like it in the voice of Dell Senior. Maybe it ran in the family.

  He tilted the beam upward. On the porch roof below the second-story window, Paul sat half reclined. He was clothed, at least. He wore the T-shirt with the sexless white angel either plummeting or rising. It reminded Harley of the flames at the Knudsen place, the embers like shooting stars headed the wrong direction. Paul didn’t flinch at the light. He was propped back on his elbows, legs stretched out, boots crossed at the ankle. He reached up, waved, sank back on both elbows again.

  Harley slipped the .38 from the holster and held it. “Where is he?”

  “Need to be more specific.”

  “Your brother.”

  “Which?”

  Harley didn’t answer.

  “If you’re worried about the live one, rest assured, you diddling his wife is low on my list of current concerns. But to answer your question, I don’t know. Somewhere with my pickup.”

  “Your gun, too?”

  “Shitting your britches, ain’t you. I didn’t tell him, Harley. About the diddling. I also doubt he’s a great shot.”

  Paul told partial truths, but he wasn’t prone to lying outright. Harley slid the .38 back in its holster and left the thumb break loose. He unthreaded a smoke. “Come on down.”

  “Feet first?”

  “Don’t care.” The lighter clanked open, rasped, but only sparked. It was out of fluid. He pulled a book of matches from the glove box.

  “Yeah, you do.” Paul smiled with his head turned partly away, coy. “Why, though—there’s the quandary. I got a theory.”

  “You got a few.”

  “Heard of projection? Where what you got inside’s all you see outside?”

  Less out of courtesy than not wanting to look at Paul’s face, Harley dropped the spotlight a hair.

  “Don’t go feeling persecuted,” Paul said. “It’s all anybody can see, probably, their own frames of reference.” Behind him, one of the windows was open. The split-apart shade was still pulled. The tears in it left sharp, dark gaps. He’d come out through their room. The room with the chifforobe and the mattress that still sagged with his parents’ weight. “Ever stop and study the way you live, Harley? No family. No friends. Awake when the rest the world’s asleep. Think about it. Your one job? Keep the proverbial peace. Make sure this person over here don’t mess with that person over there.”

  “Seems you’ve given this some thought. Think that indicates a fixation?”

  “You extricate yourself. Keep disentangled,” he said. “Come on—you know where I’m going with this. You seen enough crime scenes to know there’s more than one route to self-annihilation. All it takes is not living.”

  “Deep.”

  “Then you look at everybody else, see that same thing. Same propensity. But all you’re seeing is you. And maybe, Harley, all you really need to do is just lighten the fuck up.”

  Harley eyed the barn’s closed double doors. If there was no old Plymouth in the barn, no F-250, he might’ve had only the one Reddick to deal with.

  “I’m getting out,” Harley called up. Paul shrugged. The cruiser door opened with its loud pop, and something behind Paul, something in the room, fluttered white. It could’ve been the torn shade, though Harley hadn’t felt any wind. He left the Fury’s door open, nerves too worked to hear the pop a second time as it closed. He watched the darkness of the window. There was no more movement. He left the headlamps and spotlight on and kept the .38 within reach as he stepped from the cruiser. “What brings you here this time? Still looking for something?”

  “Nah. Found that a while ago.”

  Harley took the few strides toward the barn.

  “Speaking of finds, you hear they’re digging up rhino bones, not twenty miles from where we speak?”

  Harley ignored him. He slid open the left door. The Plymouth’s taillight and flattened fin gleamed back at him.

  “Rhino bones paints an awful big picture, you know it? Dinosaurs got offed, what, two hundred million–some years ago? Give or take? They say these rhinos died not twelve million years back. Mass extinction. Buried just deep enough a hard rain cut the bones loose. A hard rain and ten foot between us and twelve million years, Harley. This shit’s transient. Hell, take this house. Here one minute, next it won’t be.”

  “That a confession?”

  “Just fact.”

  Harley didn’t need to ask but did. “This your mom’s car?”

  “Blue Plymouth? Fifty-seven?”

  “That’d be it.”

  Paul took a heavy, dramatic breath. “Mother,” he hollered. The word raised the hairs on Harley’s neck. “You been found out.”

  Harley stayed rooted where he was. He listened. No answer came. Even the cicada quit buzzing. The rich tang of dirt and hay in the barn smelled damp despite the dry spell.

  Paul said in a loud stage whisper, “She’s got what you’d call ‘selective hearing.’”

  Harley slid the barn door shut. “You make that mess out back?”

  “Nah, that was her. I warned her it was trespassing, but she’s willful.”

  Harley didn’t know what the best-case scenario was. If Paul was some kind of Norman Bates or if Virginia was really the one. The one who’d torched the clothes in the houses, the one who’d scattered the buckboard planks.

  “Granted, I warned her the letter of the law. I didn’t tell her not to break it,” Paul said. “You want to know why, Harley?”

  “I got a feeling you’ll say either way.”

  “Paradoxically, the reason law’s there to begin with. To protect autonomy.” The cicada buzzed again. A few others chimed in. They buzzed like a chorus between verses. “Basic, human, goddamn liberty.”

  “Get the hell down,” Harley said.

  “Life, you lose one way or the other. Property? Luck of the draw. Which means all we really got is the right to roam around till we die. Or till somebody like you comes along, locks us up for our own safety or
the safety of others. Till we die.”

  Harley had that urge to grab Paul by the Adam’s apple again, shake the voice from him. “That why you dared the Ferguson girl to jump at the quarry? Concerned about her liberty? Her ability to roam around?”

  He scoffed. “Sure. Double-dog dared her, and plop.” Paul looked out past the spotlight into the dark. Whatever he saw, if anything at all, seemed to sober him. “Nah. Jeannie didn’t want to roam around anymore. All I said was she had a right not to. You want to talk about Vern Sawyer next? Vern wanted a chance to prove himself. I gave it to him, and he didn’t. But I didn’t cut his foot off, did I. The Chevelle did that.”

  “Guess you can blame the barbwire for the Wagner kid’s arm, then.”

  Paul squinted down, struck. “I get credit for that? Kid’s an asshole, but me being there was dumb luck. You want to clear up the water tower deal, long as we’re airing grievances?”

  Harley took a pair of strides toward the house. “If you’re not coming down, stay there. I’m about to let myself in.”

  “I believe you’ll wish you didn’t.”

  “That a warning?”

  “Of sorts.” Paul grimaced like he’d seen a bad fall on an icy sidewalk. “There’s some shit you can’t not see, once you’ve seen it. Don’t think I need to tell you that.”

  Harley stared up, smoke floating from the cigarette pinched between his lips. He kept his face a practiced blank. It took more practice than usual.

  “You were right that night,” Paul said. “If I wanted to die, I could’ve let go. Thought I might’ve wanted to when I climbed up. Turned out I was just in a mood.”

  “And making me do it suited your mood.”

  “That, friend, was a lofty, noble scheme. Don’t cheapen it. I thought after you pulled the trigger, found the Winchester unloaded, it’d fuck you up till you finally got it. Got that you never even had a hand in it. Just played the role of fate. Then you might let go of a whole mess of other shit that makes you a pain in the ass.” Paul looked out past the spotlight again. “You hear that?”