Mayhill wasn’t sure what she was talking about and shook his head. “Look, the dog was thirsty…it’s a thousand degrees outside…hogs’ll get a dog in a second. What about animal cruelty? I’d like to file a complaint. Animal endangerment!”
“Dog’s in decent enough shape,” Gabby said. “Just a little thirsty is all. I don’t like it any more than you, but you do have incredibly high standards. Is it even a teeny-weeny bit possible that Ms. Johnson just wasn’t taking care of her dog the way you would take care of your dog?”
“I want a veterinarian!” Mayhill cried. “Call a vet right now to confirm that this dog was just a ‘little thirsty.’”
“You know we won’t do that.”
“The dog was passed out! The dog was dying!”
New Sheriff emerged from the office, a fresh green tank rolling behind him. He stood over Mayhill. “Ms. Johnson is willing to forget the entire thing.”
“Oh, how generous of Ms. Johnson!”
“She is willing to sell you the dog for a nominal fee.”
“A fee!”
“Yes, a fee, and she will not make a formal complaint.”
“Highway robbery!” Mayhill slammed his hand on Gabby’s desk. “She abuses a dog, and now she wants me to pay for it?”
“Poor Randy! Still living under the illusion that life is fair!” Gabby had a flair for the dramatic too. She leaned across the desk, and whispered, “Drop the justice, Randy. Sometimes you just have to pay the money.”
Mayhill turned back to the sheriff. “How much does she want?”
“Three hundred.”
“Dollars? What is this, a royal dog? Did I kidnap the queen’s dog?”
Gabby looked at him with an impossible patience.
Mayhill shook his head. He needed to get back to work. “Who do I make the check out to?” he said. He reached into his back pocket.
“She prefers cash,” New Sheriff said, the oxygen hissing at him like a cat.
***
“So what’s this all about? The Tommy Jones stuff?” Gabby was getting off work, and Mayhill walked her to her car, three hundred dollars lighter, as the sun was going down.
“I think something bad might have happened to him.” Mayhill was exhausted and tired of lying, and the words just popped out. Gabby had a way of doing that to him.
She held a brown leather purse the size of a small cow against her chest. Her eyes narrowed. “Then you need to make a report.”
“I’m not going to make a report. I will never make a report.”
She sighed, and he could smell orange gum on her breath. “Do you know him? Do you know Tommy Jones?”
“No, I don’t know him.”
“Then why do you care?”
“I care about my fellow man,” he said.
She laughed, and this pleased him very much. Gabby leaned against her old car. “He’s a hard one to care about. Beat the you-know-what out of his wife. She’s pretty much brain dead,” she sighed. “But lots of prayers behind her. Hoping for a miracle. They sold t-shirts.”
“What’s a t-shirt gonna do? Who sold t-shirts?”
“They…they…”
“Who is they?”
“You know…the churches and 4-H and stuff. Civically-minded organizations. They. Prayers for Star.”
“Her name was Star?”
She grimaced at him, smelling his judgment. “Yes, her name was Star, but it don’t matter.”
“What kind of name is Star?”
“What kind of name is Randall? I don’t know. It’s nature! It’s natural.” She swung her purse around, arms gesticulating wildly. “What kind of name is Rose? What kind of name is Heather?”
“Or Mountain or Polecat.”
“Anyway, Staaaaaaar…” She glared at him. “They had fish fries and such. A fundraiser for her medical bills. It was a real tragic story. It is a real tragic story. All over the news. Girl had nobody. Just a vegetable in a nursing home in Longview now.”
Mayhill had always stumbled over the word “vegetable” in such a context. He wondered how that word had become the euphemism of choice for someone in poor Star’s condition. He wondered if Onie would become a vegetable. Then he wondered what would become of him if he were a vegetable. Like Star, he had nobody. At the very least he wouldn’t know he had turned into a plant.
“So Tommy Jones murdered her,” he said.
“Yes, well, no, she’s alive.” She made air quotes with her fingers. “They couldn’t prove it. A few domestic abuse charges before she got real hurt. That’s why the felony, but nobody could prove he hurt her that last time. But people know. We know.”
“Then he became a hog trapper?”
“Rumor has it, Tommy Jones was a hitman in Houston!”
“Come on now.”
“I’m serious! A hitman! Heard two deputies talking about it. Can you imagine?” Gabby squealed, delighted by the scandal. “I dunno anything about what he’s doing now. Guy likes to kill, I guess.” She eyed him suspicious-like. “You really hadn’t heard about all this? Was a big story for a while about a year ago.”
He had stopped reading the East Texas Telegraph. And all papers. He shook his head, feeling like an incompetent child all of a sudden, and pulled his truck keys from his pocket. “It was good seeing you, Gabby.”
“Where you going now?”
“Home,” he said. “Why?”
“Wanna drive?” Gabby Grayson said. A tiny bubble of orange gum formed on her lips. “'Cause I feel like riding.”
*Pop.*
***
The moon was a waning crescent, a sliver short of going black entirely, and hung in the sky like a hook. Gabby and Randy exhausted the back roads, and rode mostly in silence, except for a radio station out of Houston that they had both listened to regularly since high school. The radio spewed out sad excuses for country music, which, as far as Mayhill could tell, was just rock and roll sung by Gomer Pyle. The slow, romantic songs made him uncomfortable, not knowing at all what was happening in his world when Gabby Grayson inexplicably wanted to go driving with him, a petty dog thief. He tried not to think about it, the erotic underpinnings of the current situation, though Randy Mayhill was never a man to speak of things erotic or underpinnings of any kind.
Gabby rolled the window down, and her hair blew in the wind like a glorious victory banner until she said she wanted to stop and look at the stars. There was a pasture out by a small pond on the county line. He liked the spot because the trees didn’t obscure the sky completely, so he headed that way. Mayhill felt uncomfortable about their destination at first, the entire ordeal seeming too close to the idea of parking, that had he been a different sort of man he might try to make out with her. He had dreamed of such a thing since he was at least thirteen, staring at Gabby’s new bra through her impossibly thin white t-shirt at the back of math class, but he had never been a Gatsby, never been a Rhett. He would not know how to make a move if she expected it. Sure, there had been women here and there. A girlfriend in college, wingman nights out with Van, but what was Gabby Grayson thinking wanting to drive with him? This wasn’t meant to be romantic, was it? No!
—Was it?
—Release the bull, Randy!
—Shut up, Van!
They were forty-something, not seventeen.
The pasture was covered in hogs, and as he turned off the dirt road into the grass, the field of hogs split down the middle, his pickup inching forward into the crowd. The windows still down, he could hear them shuffle and squeal and move away from them, the headlights from the truck catching their eyes in flickers of red glitter.
When Mayhill saw the hogs thick like this, he thought of Van. Van would have adored the hogs because Van adored disorder and chaos, and chaos calmed Van in the way that a clothes dryer calmed a colicky baby, a harshness that soothed. Van would have loved the way that people railed against them. The epic nature of it all. Man against beast! Captain Ahab
versus Moby Dick, Santiago versus the marlin, and whatnot.
Gabby said nothing, head still out the window, delighted by the night, free like a child. He thought he heard her snort at them.
He edged up close to the pond and cut the engine. The hogs were not afraid of them but grazed at a distance now. He got out of the truck and left the low-hum of the radio on. He lowered the tailgate and sat upon it, the truck rocking under his weight. Gabby came around to the back of the truck, leaned back against the tailgate, arms anchored, and hopped backward onto the tailgate. She sat on the end away from him.
They both looked into the field in front of them, their eyes adjusting to the dark and roving landscape of hogs. They moved like a low gray fog around them. Bliss.
“Why’d you leave, Randy?” Gabby asked into the dark.
“Leave where?”
“Oh, I dunno,” she said. “Society?”
“I do believe you recall what happened,” he said. “You know better than anybody.”
“I do,” she said. Her voice trailed off as if she were trying her hardest not to keep going. “But it’s another thing altogether to become a hermit. You don’t wear it well.”
He laughed. “I don’t wear much well these days.”
“You lost your wife, I suppose.”
“My wife?” His stomach flipped.
“Van was your wife. You’re a widower.”
Mayhill wasn’t sure what to say to that. Gabby said weird things all the time, like most women he knew. Like Onie.
“Then I was a lousy husband.”
“I prayed for you. I prayed for you every day. Still do.”
“Prayers for Randy. Where do I buy the shirt?”
“Randy…”
“I appreciate it, I do.” But he obviously didn’t because Randy Mayhill preferred action at all times. His eyes had adjusted again, and a new layer of stars emerged and doubled the light in the sky. “Been a while since I looked at the stars.”
“Why were you a lousy husband?”
He felt uncomfortable with the wording. “Oh, hell. I dunno. It was a weird thing for you to say, so I said something weird back.” He pointed to the only constellation he knew. “Orion’s belt.” Even stars understood the importance of a good belt.
“You weren’t lousy to Van. Why would you say such a thing?” Then Gabby gasped almost inaudibly. “Do you think that you somehow…?” Her voice softened, and he could feel her looking at him.
Mayhill didn’t say anything.
“Randy?” she asked carefully. “Do you think it’s your fault? For Van, I mean?”
He felt a slight clenching of the throat, an attempt to breathe through the shrinking straw of his esophagus. He looked away from her. “You don’t know everything.”
“I never thought I did, but you talk like a guilty man.”
The music from the cab of the truck had stopped, and the low, obnoxious chatter of advertisements cackled from the radio. Her tenderness embarrassed him.
She looked into the black beside him. “I’m gonna tell you something, Randy.” She took a deep breath. “I swore I’d go to my grave with this.”
Mayhill suddenly felt uneasy, that his sad-sack routine had inspired her to break some personal code. She was the only other person he knew with convictions as strong as his.
“I don’t know what you’re about to say, but don’t say it. I’m guessing you’re trying to make me feel better about—”
“They didn’t just find Van’s operation or whatever,” she said. “They didn’t stumble across all those plants, whatever they told you, whatever the newspaper said. It wasn’t like that.”
“Please don’t. I got it. It wasn’t my fault. I never actually thought it was all my fault,” Randy said. It was a lie and a big one. “But a man has regrets…like right now…I regret everything about this conversation.”
Stop talking, Randy! Let her speak!
“No, you have more than regret. I can see it. A man doesn’t disappear for two years because of embarrassment. You’re a hermit, Randy. You have full blown shame, Randy Mayhill. You think you caused Van’s death.”
“I do not think I caused Van’s death.”
“You do too think you caused Van’s death, and that’s too much for one man to shoulder.”
“Oh God, Gabby.” He felt so embarrassed he considered jumping back in the truck, driving straight into the pond. “I’m fine. Sure, I don’t like how it played out in town, the newspapers and such. Sure, a man has regrets. I coulda done more—”
“And it’s all clear now.” Her face had a look of astonishment, and it was apparent she wasn’t listening to Randy anymore. “I’ve been sitting on this thing, and I didn’t know what it meant or why God gave it to me to know.”
“Stop.” Randy raised his voice. “Don’t do this. You can’t unsay whatever you’re about to say. It’s a slippery slope, letting go of your ethics.”
She shook her head as to brush off what he said and screwed her courage. “It’s important. I know that now. If you have a chance to absolve a man, you do it, Randy. You know that. That was the whole point of Jesus.”
He slipped off the tailgate and walked away from the truck, and stared down the hogs. “I don’t need absolving,” he said. “And I think Jesus would find I make a hostile work environment.”
“Somebody called it in, Randy. Somebody reported Van.”
He turned and smirked. Oh, the relief! “I know that, Gabby. The hog hunter. I know. I met him myself. You were there. Big cross. Smelled like mud.”
“No! It was not the hunter!” She shook her head furiously. “Randy, listen! This has nothing to do with you!”
“Then I don’t need to know, do I?”
“There was another tip! Anonymous! An anonymous tip!”
“Anonymous?”
“Went above your head,” Gabby said. “Called the game warden directly.”
“Okay, it wasn’t my fault. Thank you for saying so.” He tried to sound sincere but knew he was failing. “Thank you, Gabby. That was a kind thing to say. I feel a bona fide sense of relief right now.”
“Don’t patronize me!”
“I am not!” And he wasn’t. He was trying to take it all in but he couldn’t wrap his head around why any of this was designed to make him feel better. He felt a sense of relief that it hadn’t just been him, but who was to say that his stunt hadn’t attracted the attention of yet another person? What did Gabby’s revelation prove? Van was an idiot, and Mayhill was one too, albeit to a lesser degree than he previously thought. He paced slowly in front of the tailgate. “I appreciate you…what you’re trying to do, but you’re a smart woman. Don’t matter how it happened. He got caught. At the end of the day, he got caught. You know it doesn’t change a thing.”
“It does though.” Her voice was small again, and she looked down at her hands.
“How? How on earth would that change anything? Van’s dead. I lost my job—”
“Because it was Dale,” she blurted. “It was Dale who called in the second time. Dale was the anonymous tip.”
He waited a moment before responding. He wanted to be sure he heard right. “Dale?” The world seemed to move in slow motion then, his breathing labored, the crickets as loud as car horns.
“Yes.” Gabby looked like she was about to cry.
“How do you know?”
“I read the report a few months after it happened, what the game warden wrote. All of it in Van’s file. I am so ashamed. It wasn’t my place. But it was just so tragic…Van…you. I don’t know what I was doing. I just needed something to explain it all.” She rubbed her hands through her hair, and then cupped her eyes. “The caller knew the coordinates, Randy. Coordinates.”
“That don’t mean anything!” Mayhill threw his arms in the air. “Hell, that mud man could have known coordinates.”
“Jimmy wrote down his name.”
“What?”
&nb
sp; “Jimmy wrote his initials once. DM. In the file. Just a little slip, but he did. It was right there in his notes. Jimmy knew who he was talking to. Wasn’t just a rumor.”
“Dale Mackey…” Mayhill whispered.
She nodded.
Mayhill stared at the pond, the white trail that the sliver of moon cast across the water. “But that’s how they found it,” Mayhill said. “The poison killed all those fish. That’s what Jimmy Cason said happened. I did that, Gabby.” He stood in front of her now. “I did the poison. I was trying to poison Van’s crops. I was covering it up for Van. I did what they said. I knew and didn’t do anything.”
“I know! We all know!” Gabby slapped her leg. “Nobody’s questioning that you tried to cover it up! But it wasn’t the dead fish! The game warden found the fish after Dale called in. That’s when they found the poison. Not because of the poison. Just easier to say that the poison tipped them off. Protects their anonymous tipster. Gets you out of the picture. Convenient.”
“After the call…” Mayhill’s voice trailed off. He leaned against the tailgate, exhausted. “That’s how they knew I knew. I always wondered how the timing worked…” They sat in silence for a moment. “Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“If anyone could understand devotion to her job, I’d imagine it’s you.”
“But to know something and not say it. To not do anything at all. Justice was not served!”
“I believe in the system,” Gabby said. “And if the system fails, Dale will stand before God one day.”
“Before God? And if there is no God?”
“He’ll have to live with it until he dies!”
“Or that asshole’s bucked the system twice!”
Gabby sat quietly and did not respond, and so Mayhill had to sit with his angry words, his meanness. She was all grace; with her, he had to be a better man.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her for the second time that day.
But Gabby, all decency and goodwill, was already over it. “Why would Dale have called himself in? That’s what I never understood,” she said. “It makes no sense.”
Mayhill shook his head, eyes wide, and rubbed his hand over his mouth, still confounded. “Dale was paranoid. Van probably told him I knew, so he thought it was a matter of time before police were after them. Had to be it. If Dale calls the game warden himself, maybe he could beat police to the punch…I dunno…make sure he wasn’t around…pin it all on Van.”
Ain't Nobody Nobody Page 15