“A Datsun? Randy asked about—” She stopped, as if searching for a thought buried too deep. She rubbed her face with her hands, the first hint of fear peeking through. “The truck’s still there?”
“Jason has it.”
“Who the hell is Jason? Who all is out there?” She jabbed her fingers in the direction of the woods. “I mean…Dale, you, this Jason person…this Tommy Jones just lands here. Why was he here? Why was he so close to the house? Was he Dale’s friend? Was he trying to hurt—”
“You should call the police,” Bradley said. The words popped out. Suddenly, these were the only words that seemed like the right ones. “Call the police.”
Silence. The house was so quiet Bradley could hear the grind of Onie’s rocking chair on the front porch concrete.
“Who is Jason?” Birdie asked again, all defeat and exhaustion. But she couldn’t seem to stop looking at the bruise on Bradley’s forearm.
“I know I owe you all of that,” he said, “but I’m not going to rat him out too. Just do what you need to do. But don’t go in the woods anymore.” His voice started to break. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…just don’t go in the woods. Call the police.”
“I’m not calling anybody.” Birdie tapped Bradley’s bruise very lightly with one finger, an odd little tap that wriggled hotly through him. “Don’t go back there,” she said. “Don’t.”
He watched her hand now resting on his arm, but he couldn’t speak.
“I don’t know what kind of money he’s promised you. You know I can’t near match any of that,” Birdie said. “All I’ve got is land.” Her voice was soft and even. “Dale’s dangerous though. Mayhill thinks he’s a murderer. And you’re right there with him. Everybody around him ends up dead.”
Bradley nodded, and they didn’t talk anymore. He considered not returning to the garden, he did. Of course, it was all he could think about. But what then? Where would he go? Looking over his shoulder his entire life? They sat in silence, both in Van’s shirts, the grate of Onie’s chair soothing them like little children. They both knew he would be going back into the woods. For that moment, though, with Birdie’s fingers resting on his arm and Bradley smelling of Van and raspberry soap, they pretended that he wouldn’t. They pretended that there was another option for Bradley Polk, that he didn’t know too much already, that he wasn’t already in too deep. Delusion was a lonely game, he knew. But for that moment, he wanted no one else but Birdie’s company in it.
Birdie got up from the table and leaned against the counter. She looked ten years older, a woman now—somehow transformed with the cool boldness of Onie and the wild-eyed rebellion of Van.
“I’m not calling anybody,” she said, and crossed her arms. “But tell me exactly where I shouldn’t go. And tell me exactly when I shouldn’t be there.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“You smell like a whore.”
When Bradley got back to the camp, Jason was alone with a militia of empty beer cans strewn around his chair. His words were slurred, and he slumped to one side, despite it being ten in the morning. Seeing drunk people during the day had always unnerved Bradley, like seeing Halloween pumpkins in November.
Bradley said nothing and breathed in the scent of his clothes for the hundredth time since walking away from Birdie’s. The fragrance was starting to fade from his nose, which saddened him, but the shirt was still soft and not stuck to his skin the way his Sublime t-shirt had become a familiar membrane. For the first time in a long time, he felt calm and clear. Unflappable. A man! He just had to get through today. The truck to pick up the plants was coming this evening.
“I’ve been thinking about last night, what you said.” Jason lifted his head, an unsteady bobbling motion, a melon impaled on rebar.
“What, are you my girlfriend now?” Bradley said.
“I’m serious, man.”
Bradley shuffled through the beer cans. “You gotta clean this up before Dale—”
“I’ve been thinking about the grave.” Jason had caught Bradley’s nasty disease, naiveté turned to debilitating overthought. He’d been up all night with it like a fever. “We’re in serious shit. Dale might have killed somebody, man.”
Bradley looked in the tent for a trash bag. “You ain’t working in a daycare.”
“But I was thinking this too…been up a while thinking about all this. Maybe Dale didn’t kill nobody. I know, I mean, this may sound crazy, but what if he found somebody dead in the woods? What if he just buried somebody?”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Bradley turned and looked for Dale over his shoulder. He handed Jason a bag, then started surveying the site for the minutia of their previous few months—wrappers, cigarette butts, chicken bones. They would be gone tomorrow. Tomorrow.
“He finds a body, and he buries it,” Jason said. He wadded up the bag and threw it under the chair.
“Why would he just bury a body?”
“Gotta keep the heat off us,” Jason said.
Bradley grabbed the garbage bag and slapped it on Jason’s chest.
“It was on 48 Hours!” Jason said. “Mexican cartels! They gonna do a big deal…they want the police off their asses…so what they do? They throw a body on the rival cartel’s turf. Police go running toward the dead body, taking the heat off them…rivals all get in trouble. It’s win-win.”
“Unless you’re the dead guy.”
Jason kicked at a can on the ground. “Jesus, when’s the last time you watched TV? TV’s how I know things. Mark my words…” he slurred. “Rival cartel.”
“This is not a cartel!”
“Somebody dumps a body here. Dale hides it before nobody can see it.” He slapped his leg. “Make sense. Dog shits in your yard, you clean it up. Even if it ain’t your dog.”
It was crazy, but Bradley couldn’t help but think of the dead hogs Dale made him get rid of just because he didn’t want them drawing attention. He thought of Dale hovering around the woods, away from the garden, the day after the dead man appeared. Was it possible?
Bradley poured a cup of water out of the cooler and handed it to Jason. “It’s gonna be hot today. You gonna get sick.”
“Dale can do whatever he wants.” Jason took a half-hearted sip of the water. “Shit, you give me fifty thousand dollars, I ain’t never gonna say a word about nothin’…I’ll forget your name entirely. For seventy-five thousand, I’ll forget you and everybody you ever know. I don’t know nobody. For a hunnard…” Jason continued to name his price and things he’d forget in impressively accurate twenty-five-thousand-dollar increments, until he passed out with his head tilted back and mouth open. The water cup fell from his hands onto the ground, while Bradley set to work alone cutting the last several dozen plants and counted the minutes until the deal was to be done. Some of the plants were almost six feet tall, their stalks an inch or so thick. Some of them required wood saws if the branch cutters got stuck and couldn’t be twisted free. His blisters from yesterday were still raw and threatened to break open. Bradley sweated through Van’s tight flannel shirt, but he didn’t mind because the smell of raspberries floated around him like a cloud all over again.
***
“Why’s that truck still around?”
Bradley hadn’t heard Dale coming up behind them. Dale stormed over to Jason and stood over him, still passed out drunk in the camp chair an hour later. “Get up,” he yelled, and yanked Jason by the shirt. Jason’s eyes got wide; he was confused and wobbly. He stumbled forward and ripped away from Dale.
“That truck! Why’s it still here?”
“I drove it,” Jason said.
“I said to get it away from here.”
“I didn’t have a ride. I’ve been keeping it off the main roads.”
“Get it away from here! Get Bradley to drive you! I know you ain’t that stupid.” Dale looked at all the cans, and the whites of his eyes flashed. “Why you hammered in the day, boy?”
<
br /> “I ain’t nothin…” Jason tried to walk off but stumbled a bit.
Dale kicked the pile of cans at Jason, a blue one flying up and hitting him in the leg. “You are lit! Tonight, Jason, tonight. Look at all we gotta do. No time for this!” Dale looked sick and ghostly, paler than normal.
Jason grabbed some cutters and ignored Dale entirely.
“You know what? Get outta here!” Dale ripped the cutters from Jason’s hands. “You can’t be here like this. We can’t do crazy. Get that truck away from here! Now!”
Bradley imagined Jason speeding drunk down the highway in a truck with no plates. Nothing to stop to him from telling a patrolman everything.
“When you want me back?” Jason said.
“I don’t! I don’t want you back! You ain’t gonna be here tonight, boy. Just gonna be Bradley helping load. Fewer the better anyway.” Jason looked like he’d been punched in the face, but Dale kept talking. “You’re gonna get paid, so what you care? Get outta here.”
Jason shook his head, as if waking up all of a sudden. He pointed at Dale. “You ain’t gonna pay me. You lie. You’re a liar.”
Don’t, Jason.
“I’m paying you, boy,” Dale said. “But you need to go right now. Can’t have this shit.”
“I saw what you did back there, Dale,” Jason said.
Don’t say it. Please don’t. Bradley braced. Don’t taunt him.
“Leave now,” Dale said. He turned and walked toward the plants.
Jason paused—and for a moment, Bradley thought he was going to leave—but then, Jason turned slowly and charged at Dale, knocking him hard to the ground. Dale scrambled from underneath him and hurled himself on top of Jason, then straddled him. He pinned him beneath his legs, fists to his face. Jason tried to fight but couldn’t swing his arms.
You’re so much stronger than him, Jason. What are you doing? Fight him! Fight!
Dale threw blow after blow, wrecking ball fists on long, thin arms. Jason floundered underneath him, choking. He was starting to go limp, starting to go silent, the drunkenness overtaking him like a drowning man. He wasn’t fighting back. But Dale didn’t stop.
“Dale!” Bradley leaped and grabbed the back of Dale’s shirt with two hands, yanking him off of Jason. Dale stumbled back into the dirt and wiped his face. Bradley knelt over Jason. He was barely moving. “Jason…” Bradley wriggled Jason’s chin back and forth. “Jason!”
Dale mumbled something and tried to sit up, but then collapsed back onto the ground.
Jason popped up like a stunned animal. He shook his head, eyes disoriented and wild. His face was badly bloodied, his already-swollen nose starting to swell even more. A streak of red on his hairline turned his blond hair brassy. He turned and spit a mouthful of blood, then pulled up onto his knees and vomited. Bradley jumped back, suddenly protective of his clothes. Jason scrambled to his feet and pushed past Dale, who grabbed at him again, but Jason ripped free.
“Get out of here!” Dale called.
Then Jason screamed the thing that Bradley had been thinking for the past two days, a full-throated roar perfected only by certain young men. “We didn’t sign up for this shit! This ain’t what you said! This ain’t what you said, Dale!”
In a few minutes, they heard the sound of wheels spinning off into the woods, and Bradley realized then that they were all probably going to prison if they survived the night. But when he looked at Dale, he was just unwrapping a Moon Pie, pale and sweaty, shaking his head, saying to nobody in particular, “Boy gettin’ paid. Boy gettin’ paid.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
To talk to Gabby was to be born again. To talk to Gabby was to have the Baptist preacher dump Mayhill in a plastic kiddy pool and proclaim his sins forgiven! To talk to Gabby was to understand how all these people got hot and bothered about Jesus and his whole sin-forgiveness racket. A man goes around feeling terrible about something, his whole life drowning in gas station beer and contrition, and with a touch of Jesus’s proverbial cloak (or in Gabby’s case, a vision-inducing polo shirt) ye are born anew! Me? Yes, ye! Weights lifted, chains cast off and whatnot. Randy Mayhill felt light. He felt clear. His pants were comfortably snug, flexible in the knee but supportive in the crotch. He felt downright religious, eyes alight, and saw the possibility in the world for the first time in years. Grace was real! Justice was real! (And just when he was beginning to doubt Its existence!) With a new faith in himself, Randy Mayhill knew the only logical next step.
Dale had to die.
Now, this may seem extreme, because everything about Randy Mayhill seemed extreme, but he had always had the suspicion that Dale had to die, the way he secretly knew that billboard lawyers and dog molesters had to die. It wasn’t that their existences had been mistakes from the beginning or that they should never have shot screaming into the world to begin with. It was that a wrong turn had been made along the way, and the road back was impassable, washed out by floods, blocked by fallen trees, an army of hogs waiting to devour.
This was not a matter of revenge. Sure, Dale had killed Van and Tommy Jones (for reasons he could only guess) and he had taken advantage of Birdie’s land—and Bradley, for that matter—but, no, it was not revenge. Revenge was for scorned ex-wives and small-town football teams. This was of greater consequence. This was karma. Wasn’t it karma? A Hindu principle, if he recalled correctly—a lovely law of cause and effect that Randy Mayhill espoused every moment of his life even if he was not Indian. The Christians had it too. Eye for an eye and whatnot.
Mayhill knew how it would play out. Dale would sell all of the weed to some drug kingpin who leached off the rural folk like everyone else in the country; he would take the money, maybe giving Bradley whatever money he promised, maybe not, and then he would split town and leave his little trailer (and dog too, probably!) abandoned like all the other abandoned houses in the country. Nobody would miss him. Nobody would care. No justice would be done. Flash forward six months later, and Mayhill’s and Birdie’s lives would not have changed, and Dale—all teeth and neck tendons—would be parasailing in the Mayan Riviera.
Mayhill could call the law, and he considered this option—he considered it seriously, he did. He considered it in earnest for almost five minutes. Had Randy Mayhill not devoted his entire life to the criminal justice system? Had he not graduated from Sam Houston State with a master’s—a master's!—in criminology and written a thesis entitled Reform: A Modern Folly? He had indeed (A+ for research, a troubled look from the professor) but then he thought of New Sheriff. Him rolling up in the squad truck, attached to an oxygen tank like a hobo on the Hindenburg, breathing in Mayhill’s victory even if he could not form a singular breath on his own. It made his knee ache.
Mayhill was pretty sure he knew where the garden plot was, but he would have to confront Dale, and how might this go? Dale was paranoid and likely to shoot back—a dead Tommy Jones on a fence, case in point—and Mayhill was honest enough with himself that his size had become a problem. There would be no skulking, no sneaking, no spry surprise attacks at six foot five. Even with crouched posture, Mayhill clocked in at six foot three. There were no linebacker ninjas.
Or he could wait at Dale’s trailer. Confront him head on, remind him of his crime—"Hey! This is for Van!" Kapow!—shoot him then and there. But Dale was probably quick, much quicker than him. He considered just standing at a distance and ambushing him in the night when he slinked out to his truck, but the idea of a surprise attack also seemed sneaky and cowardly—something Dale would do. Is that what Dale had done to Van? Snuck up on him in the woods? He couldn’t imagine Dale doing anything so labor intensive.
An entire CBS mini-series of scenarios played out in his head, assassination attempts from the simplest (sniper drive-by) to the most complex (Rube Goldberg machines, infinite knives) and Mayhill twitched as he thought about it.
He chose a gun from the safe closest to the bed, and he placed a target on a large live oak twice as
wide as him. Then realizing his mistake, he removed the target and placed it on a young post oak, skinny and gaunt like Dale, and spent the entire morning at target practice.
He would go tonight. Each time he pulled the trigger, he thought of Van and that his entire life had prepared him for what he was about to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
On Saturday evening around sundown, Mayhill drove up to Birdie and Onie’s. Onie was working in her garden, and mosquitos swarmed in a cloud around her. Onie saw him and wiped the dirt off of her hands, then held up a zucchini the size of a child’s leg.
“Can you believe it?” She cheered as if they had been in the middle of a conversation, him right beside her the entire time. She waved the zucchini back and forth like a club. He realized this was the first time he had seen her away from the television since Van died. Maybe she was having a good day.
The two of them walked inside, and though nobody was there, the TV blared a new evening episode of Wheel of Fortune. Onie plopped the zucchini on the counter and paused to watch the final puzzle as if it were breaking news.
“Let’s see it!” A human and slightly-staticky Pat Sajak wound his finger in the air and pitched it to the three blanked-out words on the puzzle board. “Go. Hog. Wild.” And in an instant, an elfin-looking woman in a purple dress was twenty thousand dollars richer. The television audience went crazy, and Onie smiled.
“Very appropriate,” Mayhill said. “I guess Birdie is out. I was hoping to talk with her.”
I was hoping to beg her forgiveness.
“We don’t need anything,” Onie said. The words sounded harsh despite her smile.
“That’s what I hear,” Mayhill said. “Where’s Birdie?” Her truck was still at the house, the door to her room open.
“She said she’d be back tonight.”
“Tonight? But she didn’t drive.” He looked out the window at her truck and tried to swallow his concern. “Did someone pick her up?”
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