“I have never seen him do anything like that before.”
Leah’s laugh blew steam from her cup of coffee. “He’s a Bayne, Jordan. When it comes down to it y’all do the right thing, just in the wrong way. You can’t help it, it’s in your blood.”
“That’s always been my way, though, not his. I was dumb, he was smart. He followed the rules, I broke them. I used my hands, he used his brain. I went through life like a freight train and he slipped by undetected. My Pa told me once that I always went straight through him, never around. I didn’t know what that meant until much later. But Malcolm was different. He steered clear of us all. It was like he was playing by a different set of rules that only he knew.”
“That could just be his nature,” Leah said. Jordan asked what she meant. “You built your brother into this alter ego, who is smarter and faster than you, always one step ahead, but he grew up the same way you did. I mean, he might not have known that’s what he was doing, it was just the way it came out. I bet there is a lot he doesn’t know about himself. You’re not perfect but neither is he, so don’t take it so hard. Stop putting the suffering of the world on your shoulders. Jesus did that already—it’d be vain for you to even try.”
Jordan smiled. She kissed his chin.
“Now get them jeans on,” she said. “We have to go buy a new washer.”
Malcolm was on his hands and knees with his nose in the dirt. “Look at these flowers,” he said, annoyed. “The caterers keep trampling back and forth through here. God forbid people be mindful of their fucking actions.” He raised his voice knowing Elizabeth was behind him watching him hold the withered pedals. She bent down and wrapped her arms around his navy shirt damp with sweat. When he was upset, he projected static, concocting a buffer of space around him as he shifted from one frenetic activity to the next as a distraction. Elizabeth hated when it got all over her.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said, “but did something happen last night? I know you said you had a good time, but you’re my baby, Malcolm—I can tell when you’re upset.” Elizabeth kissed a spot of salt from Malcolm’s neck. He pulled away and returned his focus to the garden bed. She closed her eyes against the sun, then opened them to watch a butterfly with white wings hover over the rows of flowers like it was doting on a string. She asked again about the party.
“I told you, nothing happened.” Malcolm worked his arms in the dirt and recounted how they drove to Springfield to pick up Jordan.
“I thought you were going to New Orleans?”
“He was drunk, upset about something our uncle told him, so we said what the hell and went out up there.”
“Wait,” Elizabeth said, shielding her eyes. “What uncle?”
“Jordan found our uncle Jake living up that way. He sought him out, I guess he wanted to know the truth about something that happened a long time ago.” Malcolm grunted as he dug into the earth, twisting the soil. When he was not forthcoming with more details from the trip, Elizabeth grunted herself. “All right, fine,” he said. “He wanted to know why my dad and Uncle Jake don’t talk and Jake told him it’s because he blames Walker for killing our grandfather, Maurel.”
That was not what Elizabeth expected him to say. She asked if there was any truth to the claim.
“Who can know for sure? I’m supposed to believe Jake, who I haven’t seen since I was a boy?” He quit laboring and closed one eye to stop the sting of invading sweat. “It’s Jordan whose drudging all this up, not me. There’s a lot I don’t know, and I don’t need to know. I don’t know why he can’t let this go, but it’s starting to piss me off.” Malcolm stabbed his trowel in the dirt. “This family will be the death of me, I swear.”
“He told me he’s been thinking about the past, how things went. He just wants some closure. Is that so bad?” Elizabeth asked in earnest.
Malcolm inched the dirty yard gloves from his hands and climbed to his feet. “Everything my brother touches turns to shit. How do you not understand that yet? I don’t know why he is getting into this nonsense and I don’t care. People he never knew, things that have nothing to do with him that no one can change anyhow. Like I said, it’s best forgotten, that’s what the past is for. If he keeps on about this it’s going to blow up in his face. He won’t know what to do, he never does. But he will deserve it.”
They trudged back in the house and Malcolm washed a stream of brown water from his hands and watched the dirt circle down the drain. “Trust me,” he told Elizabeth. “You’ll see.”
“So, that’s it?”
Malcolm poured a cup of lemonade from the pitcher on the counter and took a long sip, holding the cold glass to the sweaty side of his cheek.
“I would love some lemonade,” she said. “Thank you, honey.” Elizabeth grabbed a glass and filled it herself.
“There’s more,” he said. Malcolm proceeded to tell her about Jordan breaking into the theater and how the evening took a turn at the casino. Elizabeth gasped and covered her mouth when he told her about the unconscious girl and his fight with Russ. “They got the girl to a hospital, thank God. I let him go, but I was angry, Elizabeth. I mean real anger. Then I realized what I was doing and let him go.” Malcolm paused and chose his words carefully. “This place does bad things to people.”
Elizabeth folded her arms across her chest. “You mean to you,” she said. “It does bad things to you.”
“Everyone hates where they are from, it’s a fact.”
“Not me,” Elizabeth countered. “I don’t hate where I am from.”
“You’re from the Outer Banks—that doesn’t count. The longer we stay, the more I am reminded of why I left.”
“Well, please try and make it until our wedding. You know, if that suits you.” Elizabeth slammed her glass on the counter and stormed out of the kitchen, stomping each step on her way upstairs.
“Y’all got Target now? Moving up in the world, I see.” Jordan pulled his truck into a newly paved lot filled with rows of parked cars shining in the midday sun. Leah dug smokes out of her purse and lit two, handing Jordan one as they walked across the massive parking lot. “Texas has anything you could ever want, but it took two hours to get anywhere. My friends thought where we’re from was country, they’re ones to talk.”
“Is it country down there? I never been,” said Leah.
“Not San Antonio, that’s for sure. The desert’s all right. I tend to like places with the least amount of people. There’s a bunch of ugly buildings, big highways, sky, desert, then Mexico.”
In the shining depths of a huge corridor lined with cheap products, Jordan pulled blouses and dresses off the racks and held them below Leah’s chin. She blushed and whacked a blue one with white flowers on the lapel from his hand. “You need a dress that rivals how pretty you are,” he told her.
“New and improved Jordan, same bullshit charm. What am I going to do with a thing like that?” she asked.
“I’ll take you somewhere. To the theater,” Jordan said.
Leah laughed, she rubbed the soft fabric between her fingers. “Do you even know where there is a theater? Besides, this is a summer dress. That’s why it’s on clearance, they want to get rid of it.”
“Hang on to it,” Jordan said. “For the future.”
“We came in here for a washing machine.” She nodded down the aisle. They stood in front of a wall of washer-dryers and picked out the one Leah saw in the seasonal mailer, which they paid for and loaded into the truck. Jordan pushed the heavy box all the way into the bed and strapped it down.
A flash of birds broke from the cluster of trees across the street. They shot apart and dove back together in unison before fading into another canopy. An alarm began to howl from a car on the other end of the parking lot. Jordan scoured the sea of cars and looked right below where the birds had passed. There was a Civic emanating the shrill wave of sound, and next to it Jordan spotted a peculiar-looking Cadillac Fleetwood. Nobody came running, fumbling their keys to stop the alarm. J
ordan thought it was odd, so he kept an eye on it. A man in a camouflaged hat circled for a spot to park his Camaro. A fat teenager drew from her cigarette and squinted at Jordan while holding a sun-bleached baby doll by its ankle. That was when Jordan saw someone ducking below the steering wheel of the Fleetwood, staring back at him.
Leah finished cinching straps around the washer in the back and waited for Jordan to get in the truck. He started the ignition and let his breath across the dashboard, pensive. He could not have explained it to Leah, he was barely aware of it himself, but Jordan knew he was being watched. It was as though he knew who was going to be in the car before he saw him sitting there. The draw of the man hiding in the white Cadillac was magnetic. Had Jordan seen him before? If he was being honest, he had felt the same piercing gaze upon him ever since he stepped out the door in San Antonio, though he had not been aware of it until that moment. His mind went clear, body shot with nerves.
Leah asked, “What’s the matter?”
“See that white car back there, the Cadillac?” He pointed across the rows. “There is a man in the car looking at us. I think he has been following me for a while.”
“Don’t you think you’re going too far with this stuff?” Leah asked.
Obediah Cob crouched behind the wheel of the Cadillac, unsure whether or not Jordan had seen him. He sat still trying not to move, but when Jordan let his truck idle for an inordinately long time, Cob was sure his cover had been blown. He tilted the brim of his hat above his eyes and quickly threw the Fleetwood into gear, wheeling around the opposite way through the exit.
Jordan and Leah watched as the car sped out of the lot.
“Okay, now you’re freaking me out.” Leah craned her neck to get a look before Cob piloted the Fleetwood out of sight.
The ignition grumbled while Jordan weighed his options. “Know what? Fuck this.” Jordan was fixed on the direction Cob had sped. “It’s time to find out what the hell is going on.”
Paced back on the road, Jordan followed the Cadillac. The lights at the center of town dissipated into the spectral spans of Felson Woods and the road wound from two lanes to a single, dimly lit path. Buildings and developments turned to dilapidated ruins that sagged by the roadside. Heavy green obscured what unknown bounds lay beyond.
Leah lived on the far side of the nearest town but had never ventured out this far, for obvious reasons. She could not believe what they were doing, descending into the backwoods alone, chasing a phantom. She knew Jordan was not going to change his mind, not now. She kicked her foot up on the dash and sulked in her seat. The trees took over and civilization decayed out her window.
After meandering miles of woods they turned on a dirt road called Iron Mire. They wound down a shallow hillside that leveled out across the valley floor. It was like moving backward in time, Old Chevys tarped on blocks, their back halves chopped off. A wagon sat abandoned in the gulley of a ditch, windows busted, vegetation bursting through corroded floor panels, vines climbing out of the spidered windshield. Mounds of hay and garbage were piled high in the fields. An emaciated dog slept in a cracked plastic swimming pool. When the truck slowed around a bend, they passed a collapsed barn painted with the American flag. In the stripes were tall letters that spelled out, GET U.S. OUT OF THE U.N., and Leah spied an effigy of Obama hanging from a tree by a noose, shot through with half a dozen arrows and rotted from years of rain.
“Jesus,” Leah muttered against the fogged window.
“Do you know where we are?” Jordan asked.
“I don’t get out this way very often, if you can imagine.” She checked the dim display of her phone. “Great, there’s no reception.”
They had fallen far behind Cob, the teardrops of the Fleetwood’s taillights no longer visible. Trees choked out daylight and cooled the air. A pit pried opened Jordan’s stomach. Something didn’t feel right. The sureness he set out with in town had turned to anticipation and worry. He had no way of knowing where the car went, or what he would do if he somehow found him. He glanced at Leah, cursing himself for involving her, then he cracked the window and took deep breaths of air mixed with cigarette smoke.
Jordan slowed at a fork. There was no one else in sight. Leah waited for his next move as he fought to dispel a rising negative tide. The shrill call of crows filled his mind. He looked around. The birds remained hidden but Jordan listened closely to their song. The murder was calling from the north, farther down the road that bent to the right of the fork. Leah was relieved they were moving again. She craned her neck and barely caught the lithe black bodies of birds hovering together over a tall stand of pines. “Over there,” she yelled. More ravens swooped in to form a continuous, revolving circle. Jordan drove slowly through heavy forest, cautiously spying the shanties at the roadside. A mile in on the road, he spotted the back end of the Cadillac parked beside a cabin. He pulled the truck alongside some heavy brush and killed the engine. He got out and approached on foot. Jordan raced alongside the trees, past a portage covered with moss, and came to a stop below a small window. He leaned against the wall of the cabin and caught his breath, watching the cord of gray that rose from the chimney stones.
A dark rock sat adorned with strange markings drawn in white chalk above Andridge Grieves’ mantelpiece. At the center, a large circle was struck through with four lines, summoning each cardinal direction. Through a small side window, Jordan thought the circle resembled a target. On one end, two dots filled the ends of a horizontal X, on the other an egg was cracked open by a bolt of lightning. Stacks of dots along the bottom were arranged in sets of interconnected triangles. They were marked with the characters of a language Jordan could not understand. The circle in the center was made up of seven smaller concentric circles. At each sight of their intersection was placed an astrological symbol, one for each house of the zodiac. To the right was a list of dates, times, and locations that pertained to the Bayne family.
Jordan cupped his hand over glass and squinted into the cabin. He was unable to comprehend most of what he saw, but in reading the list of dates and times he recognized the date of his and his brother’s birth. There was also a map with a pin on the location of the motor court where Jordan lived in San Antonio. If he had a hunch before, his curiosity was full-blown concern now.
Cob came into the room. It was the first time Jordan had gotten a clear look at him. His face sat pudgy and fat beneath the curled brim of his bowler and a vested tan suit. A larger presence passed close in front of the window, causing Jordan to shrink back and duck in the grass. The looming body lowered into the leather chair beside the fireplace, and Jordan saw a wraith of an enormously tall man stroking the cloudy strands of his beard while flipping through the densely annotated pages of Cob’s notebook. Jordan guessed he stood almost seven feet tall, which was why the writing on the slate was up so high above the fire. His gray whiskers and beard hung like strings of moss from an ancient tree. His movements were slight but deliberate, as though everything he did was of great importance. Jordan could not help but recall the local lore, stories passed down as kids, about a giant who stalked the hills and preyed on children, elusive as a ghost. Never for a second did Jordan ever consider that he could be real.
Andridge Grieves sat beside the fire, pushed a thumb full of tobacco into a briar pipe, and lit it. Jordan could barely make out what was being discussed, but he heard Andridge ask Cob if they had returned from Missouri yet.
“Yes, Andridge, early yesterday morning. There could be a problem, though.” Cob was reluctant, almost scared. “I sat on the kid at a shopping center. When they came back out, he may have seen me.”
Cob kept talking but Andridge cut him off. “How could you be so reckless? Were you just sitting out in the open?”
“Of course not,” Cob said, vehement in his denial. “It was a busy parking lot. To be honest, I don’t know how he saw me. The kid is keen.”
“This has the potential for trouble.” Grieves’ voice was like ripped paper. “Should I be troubl
ed, Obediah?”
“No sir, I will handle it.”
“Good. The father is almost ready, anyway. It is close now, we mustn’t interfere. I’m concerned about our proximity. We may now be exposed, thanks to you. No more close calls, got it?” Andridge cleared his throat and Cob disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a mug of tea. He asked if Andridge needed anything more. “I will be fine. Where is everyone now?” he asked.
“The watcher is staying close, with the bride and her family at a nearby hotel. Walker is at home,” Cob assured him.
“When’s the wedding?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“It will be done by then, I am sure of it.” Andridge sipped his tea.
Cob tilted his head back and began humming in soft intervals, letting the language of the earth swirl through his senses. Andridge looked on with interest from his rocking chair as Cob walked to the head of the cabin and opened the front door, his peculiar shadow stretched by a halo of porch light. Jordan crept a few steps back to the far side of the cabin as Cob stepped into the grass after him, emanating the same two-tone pattern, trying to locate him through song. When Cob turned the corner, though, he found nothing but the wind.
FOURTEEN
IN ROOM SIXTEEN OF the Seven Pines Motel, Jordan paced in front of a closed burgundy curtain. A television beat the room with a kaleidoscope of State Little League championships, failed transportation bills, and four thousand birds falling out of the sky in Ono. Jordan switched to the weather, where a sun wearing black sunglasses baked Newton County in sizzling waves for the rest of the weekend, with the exception of one frowning cloud that cried raindrops from its eyes. He muted the volume and tuned in a George Jones song through the static on the wood-paneled radio. He took a seat at the round table and poured a healthy amount of bourbon into a Styrofoam cup from the coffee maker, assessing the seriousness of what he had just done.
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