by Chris Offutt
“So you’re a logging expert now.”
“No, I understand humans.”
“Other ones, maybe. But not yourself. You ort to try that.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I need to find myself. I should do yoga and get my core grounded. What’s got you eat up?”
“Them city cops. They grew up with Bobby. One of them said Tanner probably killed himself.”
“Maybe he did. Maybe Bobby came in and shot him twice more to make sure.”
“They’re on the phone right now to Murvil Knox. He won’t like it. He already chewed my ass last night for letting the Dopted Boy out. Called me at home.”
“You did your job, Sis.”
“Sometimes I don’t like my job.”
“Most people don’t.”
“You, too?” she said.
“Try going into a barracks and arresting a twenty-year-old man stout as a bull. That’s what I did instead of being home with my wife. So no, I don’t like my job. I’m just good at it.”
A carload of teenagers drove by, their music roaring from the windows. They pulled into a fast-food lot and poured from the car like cattle released from a pen, three boys and three girls. Four had brightly dyed hair. The other two, male and female, wore their hair in short mohawks greased to a woodpecker’s crest. In the way of small-town rebels everywhere, they conformed to each other. Mick wondered who owned the car, who paid for the gasoline and hair dye.
“Those kids,” he said. “They’re free as jaybirds. You ever drive around like that?”
“Sure. We called it ‘cutting the gut.’ Drive to one end of town, turn around and go back. Our record was ninety-three. We were trying to hit a hundred but the driver had to go home and eat supper. You ever do it?”
“I lived too far out to have any buddies. Sometimes I think that’s why I joined the service, to get some friends.”
A late-model Ford Explorer with heavily tinted windows entered the parking lot. It rolled to a stop and Special Agent Wilson slowly disembarked. He stretched his back like an old man getting out of bed, then twisted his neck until it popped on both sides. His skin had gone pasty. Mick recognized the signs of a prolonged stakeout in a vehicle. They all three looked at each other, waiting for someone to talk.
“Sheriff,” Wilson said. “I hear you got more trouble.”
“And I hear you’re assigned to surveillance on the interstate. You make an arrest?”
“No. My boss shut down the rest stop. Saves the taxpayer two ways—maintaining the building and paying me to do nothing.”
“Tough on blind people,” Mick said.
“What?” Wilson said.
“The money from those vending machines at rest stops. It goes to the blind.”
Wilson looked at Mick as if he were a pup who’d shit on the porch, then switched his focus to Linda.
“Now I can assist your investigation,” he said.
“Don’t need it,” she said.
“My orders are to offer federal help.”
“Last person you brought in is dead.”
“You shouldn’t have let him out.”
Linda sprang toward him as if launched from a catapult, her face red, both fists rising to attack. Mick stepped between them. He wrapped his arms around Linda and walked her backward across the blacktop lot.
“Get the fuck off me,” she yelled. “Quit it, Mick.”
He released her and lifted his arms, hands open.
“Ain’t worth it,” he said.
“It is to me.”
“Beat on me all you want, but don’t hit a Fed.”
She struggled to regain composure, her hands shaking with rage. She began a pattern of slow breathing that he recognized from her teen years. She called it the 5-3-6: a five-second inhale, hold for three seconds, let the air out for six. A school counselor had taught her the technique after Linda engaged in a schoolyard fight. Her opponent, a boy bigger than her, had called their father a drunk and she’d beaten the holy hell out of him because it was true. Later the boy tried to date her.
The color of her face receded to its normal ruddiness, the result of too much weather and her refusal to wear makeup or sunscreen. She spoke through teeth clenched tight together.
“Get him out of here.”
Mick nodded, watching her walk to the office. He considered warning Johnny Boy with a quick text but his phone was tucked away in the glove box. He turned to Wilson who stood in the stance of a boxer.
“Don’t worry,” Mick said. “You’re safe with me.”
“Attempted assault on a federal officer. I can have her in court.”
“You bring charges and I’ll say you initiated it.”
“You’d do that? You’d lie under oath?”
“For her, yeah.”
The ire leaked out of Wilson, slow at first, then in a rush like a board bowing under heavy weight before it broke. Mick almost felt sorry for him. Wilson didn’t like his job, either.
“Look,” Mick said. “You collared the wrong guy and now he’s dead. It’s the sheriff that looks bad, not the FBI.”
“Who killed the Johnson woman?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Let me help,” Wilson said.
“Not a good idea.”
Mick walked to his truck and left.
Wilson felt trapped like a mouse with no choice but to nibble the cheese. He envied Mick’s loyalty to his sister. Wilson’s only sibling was a brother six years older who’d bullied him unmercifully, graduated from West Point in the top ten percent of his class, and died in Afghanistan while leading a patrol. He was buried in Arlington with a twenty-one-gun salute. Their mother received a folded flag and three posthumous medals. She retreated into depression while her husband lost himself in eighteen-hour work days. Wilson had wanted to study history and become a professor. Instead he entered the ROTC program at the University of Louisville and received his commission as second lieutenant.
In order to spare the family any possibility of further loss, the army posted Wilson stateside. Murvil Knox, a family friend, claimed credit and demanded compensation through the arrest of Tanner Curtis. Wilson had complied. He had always complied—with his brother, his parents, and Knox. He hated himself for his innate passivity.
A sense of despair settled over him like a quilt made of concrete. If his brother had come home, things would be different. Wilson would have his PhD and be working to secure tenure. Instead, the reward for his academic prowess was getting sent to a small town he didn’t like, ordered to help people who didn’t like him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Peggy’s mother was an overly tidy woman, one of many traits that irritated her daughter. During her visit earlier they’d eaten a muffin and drunk tea in the small kitchen, and Peggy’s mother left not a single crumb or a drop spilled. She’d patted her lips with a napkin then refolded it. Peggy was glad to see her go. Her mother had never approved of Mick due to his family: parents divorced, mom a shut-in, father a drunk, grandfather a hermit. In her mother’s view, Mick had dragged Peggy out of the county to places she didn’t belong. The only thing her mother gave Mick any credit for was the pregnancy. Finally, she’d said. Thank God, she’d said.
Peggy wiped the table and rinsed the dishes. She repositioned the chairs as if trying to conceal all evidence of her mother’s visit. She feared her mother’s judgement, which would eventually arrive, an onslaught of silence sprinkled with comments of petty cruelty. Peggy wished her father was alive. He’d died on her sixteenth birthday, the worst blow of her life. Peggy married Mick three years later.
Now, at the juncture of what she suspected was the end of their marriage, that seemed significant. She wasn’t sure how. She’d been young and eager for the adventure of travel, which quickly wearied her. Mick was a good man, as steady as her father, able to endure difficulty without complaint. He worked hard and came home cheerful. Even now, when she’d provided him sufficient reason for fury, he kept his temper in c
heck. Another man would scream that she was a whore and slam his fists into the walls. Another man would show his emotions if for no other reason than a display of caring. She knew he loved her, that his steadfast loyalty would never wilt.
Peggy had never been the kind of woman who rushed toward a baby, eager to hold one, cooing over its tiny hands. Friends with young kids were perpetually fatigued, often complaining, their houses messy. Nevertheless, she wasn’t convinced of giving the baby up for adoption. It was growing inside her own body, a preposterous thought in the abstract, but the concrete reality was something altogether different. More than anything it was hers, hers alone. She’d felt its movement for the past three months, increasing in frequency at night. She’d told no one about that. She didn’t want to share the thrilling sensation with her doctor, her mother, or Mick. It was her baby.
Peggy sat on the couch and played a game on her phone, dozing against the cushion. She preferred being asleep, the only time she had a break from the discomfort of her body and her rushing thoughts. The door knocked twice and opened. Linda came in.
“Oh,” Linda said. “Sorry to wake you.”
“No,” Peggy said, “it’s okay. I was just resting a little.”
Linda placed a takeout bag from a Mexican restaurant on the table.
“You still craving tacos?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Thank you. I just had a snack with Mom.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Getting on my nerves mainly.”
“What do you tell her about Mick staying at the cabin?”
“Not much,” Peggy said. “She’d rather visit when he’s gone anyhow.”
Linda settled in her usual chair. She and Peggy had been close in the past, closer than now anyway, and she tried to stop by every couple of weeks. She hadn’t since Mick’s return. Learning that he wasn’t the father had changed everything Linda had thought before. She understood Peggy keeping it secret, but now that Linda knew, she felt awkward, as if she was concealing information.
“How’s Mick?” Peggy said.
Linda considered how to answer, then realized that they always talked about Mick. Not Linda’s work or Peggy’s mother or local gossip. Just Mick. Linda wondered if she and Peggy had anything else in common.
“He told me about the baby not being his,” Linda said.
“Yeah, well. It’s true.”
“I didn’t think it’s something you’d lie about.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Linda said. “I’m glad you told him.”
“Are you mad I didn’t tell you?”
“No,” Linda said. “I’m mad that you hurt my brother. That’s what I’m mad about. How could you do that?”
“It was an accident. A mistake.”
“That’s what teenage girls say. You’re thirty-three years old. You know better. He’s tore all to pieces about it.”
“You shouldn’t have told him.”
“He needed to know.”
“My decision, Linda. Not yours. You stuck your nose in and now you’re in my house criticizing me. I didn’t want him to see me like this. I had a plan and you ruined it.”
“What plan?”
“Have the baby and give it up before he got here. It’d be easier on him that way. Easier on both of us. But no, you had to go and call him. Him being tore up is your fault.”
“You’re his wife. You’re supposed to talk to him.”
“What do you know about it?” Peggy said. “You’ve never been married. Longest you ever had a boyfriend is what, six weeks?”
“Eight months.”
“Oh, right. That Collins boy from up Brushy. I remember him. You broke up with him because you didn’t like the way he ate.”
“He scraped his teeth on his fork.”
“It’s always something with you,” Peggy said. “That Jackson guy, let’s see, he bit his fingernails. And Orville Carter, you said he dressed too nicely. Who am I forgetting? Bobo Fraley drove a car you didn’t like. Leonard from the sawmill, he liked to watch too much TV. One of them Anderson boys, I forget which one, you didn’t like his haircut. Did I say anything? No, never. Not my business if you want to get a reputation.”
“A reputation for what?”
“You tell me, Linda. You’re the one who dated half the guys in the county.”
“At least I used a condom.”
“All that means is you planned it out ahead of time. You’re no better than me so don’t act like it. When you’ve been married fifteen years to a man who’s gone most of the time, I might pay attention to what you have to say. Till then, stay out of my life.”
They stared at each other, both angry, both afraid of what the other might say. Neither knew how to head things off.
Linda stood and moved to the door.
“You were like a sister to me,” she said. “What happened?”
“I got bored,” Peggy said.
“Of me?”
“All of it. This house, Rocksalt, Mick being gone. Every day I do the same things and have the same conversations with the same people. They’re always watching and judging. Never to your face but you can feel it. Now you and everybody else has a good reason for it. When was the last time we talked about something personal?”
“We are now.”
“Too late,” Peggy said. “Everything’s too late.”
“Mick came back for you.”
“He won’t stay.”
Linda left, already thinking of the responses she could have made. Things she should have said. Mainly she felt bad for having lost a friend. She didn’t have many and she’d known Peggy for twenty years. Peggy was too young for a midlife crisis but they came early in the hills. Everything did—death, hardship, and loss. Usually kids, too. Maybe after the baby was born she’d settle down but the impact of ugly words would stick around. Peggy’s assessment had stung because it was true. Linda constantly evaluated men, seeking reasons to rule them out. No one was ever good enough.
All the complaints Peggy had about life in Rocksalt were the same reasons Linda liked it. The security of seeing the same people, sometimes three times in a single day at different stores. There was a protocol for such encounters. The first time you asked about family. The second time you smiled and made a joke about running on the same schedule. The third time you smiled and waved. It created an intimacy that felt safe. Part of the reason she liked law enforcement was a desire to maintain order for everyone, an order that Peggy no longer cared about.
After Linda left, Peggy sat on the couch and cradled her belly. She was angry with Linda and mad at herself, mad at everyone except the baby. She was surprised by what she’d said, thoughts never articulated or acknowledged. She’d been supremely bored and had been for a while. Well, she wouldn’t be after the baby was born. Being a mother would give her purpose, one that didn’t wane like being a wife or a sister-in-law. Linda had a career and Peggy would have a baby. It’s what she wanted.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mick drove east on country roads, glad to get away from the whole mess of civilized life. He missed the simplicity of the army. Time had a malleable quality in the desert, as if it ran slow or not at all, then jumped ahead or receded two centuries. Life there was similar to the hills. He’d missed the color green, shade thrown by trees, and even humidity. Now he yearned for the desert’s crystalline air and the solace of vast empty space.
He stopped to consult his map, hand-drawn following the plat he’d photocopied at the courthouse. Johnny Boy’s directions had helped—up old 60, right at Open Fork past the creek, left on Bearskin, keep going over Crosscut Ridge then look for a gap in the trees. It led to the old Caudill place. Mick continued east, thinking about the Caudill brothers, Virgil and Boyd. He wondered if every family history was that sad, or just in the hills. Appalachian people lived by old codes that compelled them to take action. Affronts were always personal. Acts of vengeance maintained themselves through generat
ions. Before school started each morning Mick had recited the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer. Every child learned the words: “As we forgive those who trespass against us,” a strong and generous message that neglected to include a timeframe. In the hills it was handier to forgive trespassers after killing them.
Bearskin was a single-lane blacktop road that had been dirt when Mick was a kid. At the end of the holler, he ascended the steep winding slope to Crosscut Ridge. The top of the hill caught a breeze that cooled his face as he watched for the space between the trees wide enough for an old road. He stopped twice. One turned out to be a gap left by past loggers and the other was a natural break in the tree line. He continued more slowly, enjoying the beauty of the hills. The opening, when he finally saw it, was obvious and man-made. He drove beneath the canopy and parked beside a stand of evergreen that would conceal his truck from the road. He squeezed out, the pine needles scratching his face, then reached into the cab for his knapsack and gun.
He looked around carefully, memorizing the area in case he returned by a different route. This was the last place Mr. Tucker had mentioned and Mick hoped he’d find Delmer Collins here. His plan was simple—take him into custody and let Linda use him to get Murvil Knox off her back.
He squatted to examine the weeds and shrubbery mashed by a recent vehicle. Each blade of grass was still bent in a slight arch, meaning the tracks were from earlier in the day. The distance between the tires indicated a large pickup truck. A few feet farther he saw another set of slightly older tracks beneath the fresh ones. Mick entered the woods and moved parallel to the old road, stopping every few steps to listen. A bobwhite announced its name as if introducing itself to the woods. An early owl called. In two hours full night would arrive, the darkness heavy and thick, the canopy of interlocking tree limbs blocking starlight. His impulse was to rush so he slowed his pace.
At the top of a slight rise he stopped in mid-step, keeping his arms and face still. A truck stood in the remnants of the road, a late-model Ford F-150 four-by-four, the same one he’d seen parked at the Johnson house. Whoever had parked there wanted to approach the old Caudill homeplace on foot.