by Chris Offutt
She cuffed him, helped him to his feet, led him to her car, and went back for Shana.
“Help me understand something,” Linda said. “You said it was Jackie’s turn to drive when your brother ran into the ditch.”
Shana nodded encouragment.
“I don’t see how the wreck happened,” Linda said.
“Jackie wouldn’t wake up.”
“Uh-huh. What’d y’all do?”
“Roger pulled on this road and slowed down but I couldn’t get Jackie awake. Roger, he reached back over the seat to shake him. The car, it run off the road.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t remember. You got here.”
“Okay,” Linda said. “I’m going to have to handcuff you and you can sit with Roger in my car. Put your hands out.”
Shana complied and Linda pulled her up. She weighed less than ninety pounds. Linda opened the rear door and helped Shana into the back of the SUV.
“What about Jackie?” Shana said. “He coming, too?”
Linda closed the door without answering. She searched the car again to ensure she hadn’t missed anything before the State Police arrived. A tattered highway atlas. Three empty packs of cigarettes, a lighter, a packet of ketchup, four stale French fries, and a corpse.
Unwilling to wait with her prisoners, she went to the downed tree they’d leaned against and sat on it. She felt sadder than she had in a long time. Shana would sober up in jail and learn her boyfriend was dead. A court-mandated rehab program would be hard-pressed to help her recover from such a loss.
Linda adjusted her position to face the trees. It was possible to turn her back on one small part of the world at a time. The powerful drum of a beak against dead bark carried through the woods and she scanned the overstory for a pileated woodpecker. It flew a series of arcing loops and landed in the boughs of an ash tree. Below it grew crinklefoot ferns. A row of Queen Anne’s lace swayed in the ditch. As a girl she’d turned them red and blue with food coloring in cups of water. The stems absorbed the water and transferred the dye to the lacey white flower-heads. She wondered if kids still did that, if Shana ever had.
Chapter Eighteen
Halfway to town Mick parked beneath a sycamore and retrieved his cell phone from the glove box. A text from his sister said:
Rest stop. FBI. Done.
Thirty minutes later he drove up the dirt road to Mrs. Kissick’s house. She sat on the porch wearing an apron over a blouse and blue jeans, smoking a cigarette. One cuff was rolled up and she used it as a receptacle in which to flick her ash. Mick parked and her expression clamped down as if a lever had been thrown.
“You can go to hell in a gourd,” she said.
“I probably will,” he said. “Came to give you a message for your boy.”
She withdrew a Colt .22 from a patch pocket on the apron. Mick hadn’t seen that model in a long time. Known as a hooker’s gun, it had a two-inch barrel and no hammer to snag the fabric.
“Tell your son,” Mick said, “not to use the rest stop on the interstate for exchanges. The FBI is watching it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ma’am, we’re past lying to each other. I’m trying to help you.”
“Why would you do that?” she said.
“You helped me last night.”
“That don’t make us friendly.”
“No, but it makes us even.”
He slowly executed a three-point turn and drove up the road, watching her in the rearview mirror. She stood, tucked the gun away, and stretched her foot over the edge of the porch. Leaning on the handrail, she bent down and uncuffed her pants to empty the ashes. The soft gray haze drifted on a breeze.
Mick headed for the county courthouse. Rocksalt was a town of 7,500 that had begun in the 1800s as a transportation point serving the extraction industries of timber, clay, and natural gas. Now it had two main employers—Rocksalt State College on the east end of town and St. Claire Medical Center on the west. As each grew, the downtown area shrank, replaced by a multitude of parking lots.
The original Main Street stopped abruptly at a metal guardrail and Mick pulled over to get his bearings. A new road had been constructed on the south side. It was called Wilkinson Boulevard, named for a governor who ran a Ponzi scheme that landed him in court where he invoked the Fifth Amendment one hundred forty times. Now he had a road named for him—a bypass to a town already passed by for a century.
Mick called his sister.
“What?” she said.
“I need two topo maps. One recent, one fifty years old or so.”
“The damn land doesn’t change.”
“The roads do,” he said. “You have them or not?”
“At the office.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
“I’m in transit right now,” she said. “Courthouse, then the jail.”
“Thought you let Tanner go?”
“There’s a young girl I’m trying to help. Shana Crawford. Her boyfriend OD’d.”
“I know the family but not her.”
“Can’t talk right now,” she said. “I’ll have Johnny Boy bring the maps outside.”
“Tell him I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah,” he said. “What’s this new bypass for?”
“Lord knows,” she said. “There never was anything to do in Rocksalt, now there’s more things not to do.”
She ended the call. He drove to the sheriff’s office and parked at the far end of the lot, nose out for a quick departure. Town lay in the widest spot between hills that rose like walls on either side. Mick was texting his sister to hurry Johnny Boy along when someone pecked on the side window. He dropped the phone and moved his hand near his pistol. A skinny young stranger stood in the lot wearing a cheap sports coat with a necktie and gun belt. He resembled a fledgling salesman at a car lot with a history of being robbed. Mick peered over the top of the open window.
“Roll it down,” the man said.
“Can’t,” Mick said. “It’s stuck. Got a pair of vise-grips in here for a handle.”
“I’m Special Agent Wilson,” the man said. “FBI.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“And you are?”
“Right now,” Mick said, “I’m minding my own business.”
“You’re parked at the sheriff station. That makes it my business.”
“Now I could be wrong,” Mick said, “but I’m pretty sure the FBI investigates federal felonies. This is state property. And sitting in a truck is not a felony.”
“I need your identification, sir.”
“I believe you need cause for that,” Mick said. “Kentucky does not have a Stop and Identify statute. Unless you think I committed a crime. Is that your idea? That I did a felony and came straight to the sheriff’s office.”
Wilson blinked rapidly. The tint of his face was gradually darkening. Mick could sense his frustration and wondered how things would transpire. The agent didn’t seem like a man who’d drag Mick out of the car and frog-march him into custody.
“Do you have business here?” Wilson said.
“Yes, I do.”
Wilson was clearly waiting for Mick to continue. Mick waited. No need to make it easy on the man who’d locked up Tanner Curtis, but messing with the agent bored him already. The front door of the office opened and Johnny Boy ambled across the lot with a bundle of maps.
“Hey, Mick,” he said. “How’s your mule bite?”
“Hurts a little, but not infected.”
“See you met our FBI man,” Johnny Boy said. “He was in the army, same as you.”
“Where’d you serve?” Mick said.
“DC mostly,” Wilson said. “You?”
“Oh the usual—Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria.”
Johnny Boy smirked and passed the maps through the window.
“Linda said to give you these.”
Mick nodded his gratit
ude then looked at Wilson.
“Always good to meet a fellow veteran,” Mick said.
He left the lot, heading to the courthouse, which had been converted into a community center for the arts. He got directions to the new courthouse west of town. Inside, he requested property deeds and was escorted to the documents room. The records began in 1880 and he worked his way forward, seeking transactions that involved the family names furnished by Mr. Tucker.
He started with Caudill, the most common name in the county, which sent him to a twenty-year-old computer in order to access births. There were so many Caudills that it took him five hours to find Boyd then track his parents back through time to the family’s first property purchase in 1939. The older topographical map allowed him to roughly locate the land and a road. The more recent map informed him that the county had never annexed the road. It functioned as a three-mile driveway and no longer appeared on maps or GPS.
Hungry, he drove through town and back, seeing only fast-food franchises. Jimbo’s was long gone and the Dixie Grill, too. Pat’s Poolroom had sold the best cheeseburgers but it was shut down. Metal chairs and a table stood in front of the old movie theater and he noticed a neon sign depicting a cup of coffee with a rising curl of steam. Inside he ordered soup and a sandwich, remembering Saturday matinees there as a kid. The contractor had done a good job renovating what was essentially a gigantic room with a sloped floor and no windows. Two other businesses shared the space—a yarn shop and a bookstore, the first one in the county. He purchased a jar of homemade blackberry jelly.
He returned to the courthouse and went through the same process with Branham, simpler due to the scarcity of the name. He found a Gibson property not far from Mr. Tucker’s place. He’d start there tomorrow. He was stiff from sitting and poring over documents, squinting to read the handwritten deeds and birth certificates.
He fought off the impulse to get drunk in the woods and went to his own house for the third time in two weeks. The driveway was a cracked slab of cement lined by forsythia and a black vinyl downspout extension that had been run over at least twice. The familiar street held the same neighbors, their cars parked in the same spots. His house was the same, too, at least on the outside.
Chapter Nineteen
Many women experienced pregnancy as a joyful state with colors appearing brighter and smells more intense. Peggy’s mouth tasted funny, she couldn’t sleep well and she was exhausted all day. She felt guilty for hurting her husband. A few nights back she’d seen his truck parked across the street under the willow and had frantically tidied the house and changed clothes. She made tea and spent several minutes choosing where to sit. The couch so he’d join her? Or would he know she’d picked that spot on purpose? Mick could instantly read situations. Better to take her standard chair facing the TV with her phone at hand.
When he drove away after two hours, she’d been disappointed then angry, emotions she quickly applied to herself. She wanted to blame him for being less than generous, but could only blame herself. She loved Mick. She was the source of his suffering.
Earlier she’d worked in the garden, battling the squash bugs attacking her cucumbers. The walking onion was walking farther and farther. Her bean shoots had spread to the chicken wire fence and a few climbed the sunflower stalks. She’d greeted a corn snake relaxing on the compost heap, docile in general except against enemy rodents, qualities that reminded her of Mick. He’d have made it a pet.
They’d known each other since high school and gotten married young. Despite a higher percentage of infidelity among military couples, the subject was never talked about on Unit Family Days or in Spouse Resilience classes. The women talked about it privately in their cramped army housing. Peggy had always felt sorry for them, regardless of who cheated on whom, and thought it would never happen with her. Now she judged herself more severely due to her previous condemnation of other women. She’d become the kind of person she despised—disloyal, a betrayer, Judas.
Stop, she told herself, focus on something better. But there was no escape from her mind or the changes wrought in her body. She couldn’t drink to cope with her sorrow and she couldn’t turn to Mick. All her best memories were tied up with him. They’d once vacationed on the Amalfi coast of Italy where the salty Mediterranean Sea buoyed their bodies. They drank wine in the afternoons and ate late suppers of fish and pasta. The mountains rose dramatically behind the hotel. They took a bus to Ravello, a three-mile ride of dangerously twisting roads. The traffic seemed choreographed—cars barely missing each other, motorcycles passing through tiny spaces, pedestrians boldly crossing anywhere. Italian drivers were either the best in the world, or the worst. When she told Mick, he’d said people thought that wherever they lived, but in Italy it was really truly true. The phrase “really truly true” became part of their private lexicon.
Now Peggy was scared. Scared for herself, her marriage, and for the baby. She feared a bleak future—unemployed and pregnant with no man in the picture, a cliché of daytime TV talk shows. She made a supper of frozen salmon from the IGA, sweet potatoes, and yogurt. Protein was supposed to be good and she could at least control her diet. If nothing else, the baby would be healthy.
She heard the old truck in the driveway and went to the door, listening to him scuff his boots on the porch. She opened the door. He stood with a forlorn expression, clear eyes, and tense jaw. She backed into the room to avoid turning away from him and sending the wrong message. He offered a pint jar of jelly with a handmade label.
“Brought you this,” he said. “One of them Ronzo family farms, I don’t know which bunch is into berries.”
“Odie and them,” she said. “Thanks.”
She carried the jar to the kitchen and tarried by the sink. She felt fragile but needed to be strong for both their sakes. She returned to the living room where he stood in the center, slowly turning, reacclimating to home—the couch, their two easy chairs, a cobbler’s bench turned into a coffee table, photos on the walls from their travels in Europe. He sat in his chair and she took the couch.
“I’m glad you came,” she said.
“Do you want out of the marriage?”
“No.”
“Did you do it to make me leave?”
“No, nothing like that.”
He nodded and she waited. Mick’s directness was his best quality as well as his worst, lacking tact or diplomacy, a family trait. They’d long ago agreed that he’d never apply his interrogation skills to her. She hoped his promise still held but had no illusion that it would since she’d violated his trust.
“How are you feeling?” he said.
“Tired a lot. You?”
“Not bad,” he said. “Linda’s got me running around.”
After a brief silence they both said the other’s name simultaneously then stopped talking. She pulled a cushion beneath her arm.
“Go ahead,” she said. “You first.”
“I want to know everything.”
“It was a guy at work. He’d been giving me the eye for months, the usual up-and-down looks and little comments. You know what I mean. I always ignored it. He was flirty. It was like middle-school bullshit. Harmless. A dumb way to pass the boring time. I liked the attention. It made me feel younger.”
He nodded, focusing his vision on the wall behind Peggy in the hopes that his lack of eye contact would encourage her to continue.
“Don’t work me,” she said. “You can look at me.”
“Okay,” he said, staring at her straight on. “How’d it happen?”
“One day Lowe’s closed for inventory and me and him were counting paint. Every bucket, every color. We started talking. No more flirting, just talking. He played in a band and was always broke. He was married and regretted it. His wife gained a bunch of weight and she didn’t think she looked good. They hadn’t had sex in a year. He kissed me and I said no. I pushed him away, Mick. I did. A few days later he kissed me again. I felt sorry for him. It just happened.”
“How many times?” he said.
“Three.”
“Why’d you stop?”
“It wasn’t right. I knew it but didn’t know how to stop. I’m sorry, Mick. It was wrong. I don’t know what happened. None of it felt real. You were gone so long and I didn’t like my life. It wasn’t about him. It was like I wanted to be someone else. Another self with another life. It was so stupid.”
She watched him roll his shoulders to relieve tension, then tip his head until his neck popped. He was trying hard and she was grateful.
“Where’s he live?” he said.
“Owingsville.”
“Did you bring him here?”
“No, never. It was at work after everybody left.”
“At a lumberyard? Where, on a stack of plywood?”
“They sell patio furniture.”
“Oh, Peggy.”
His tone lost its former crispness, a slight shift that gave her a glimmer of hope. She felt suddenly hungry. In Italy people ate lunch then talked business over tiny cups of coffee, the food having softened any ire between them. She wished they’d done the same.
“Are you hungry?” she said.
“No. Did you tell him you were pregnant?”
“Yes. He quit work the same day. I never saw him again.”
“What about the paternity test?”
It was the question she’d been dreading. The longer she waited before answering, the sooner he’d figure out the answer and could brace himself. Too long would be cruel.
“Not yours,” she said.
He sat immobile. He didn’t know if two minutes passed or twenty minutes or an hour. His eyes began to sting and he understood he needed to blink. He looked at his hands resting on his legs as if they belonged to someone else, tools set aside for future use. Twice he tried to speak but his throat felt compressed.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I trusted you.”
“You still can.”
“How?”
She didn’t answer. Mick understood that she’d hadn’t considered this before—the significance of the effect on him. He knew her, knew that she’d focused exclusively on her own sense of guilt and sorrow, ignoring the consequences for him. It was why she hadn’t told him.