A Tree Born Crooked (13 page)

Rabbit stopped for a moment. James crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows expectantly. Marlena was still, just watching.

“So, I go inside, but I don’t see Delmore nowhere. I start calling out for him, but there ain’t really nowheres to get lost in that trailer, if you know what I mean. So, I think he must be still sleeping or something. I went on into the bedroom, but he weren’t there.”

Rabbit paused again, his eyes enormous and his knuckles white, as he gripped the chair.

“He weren’t there, but there was a mess a blood on the bed and on the wall behind it, too. But there weren’t no Delmore. Just the blood.”

James leaned forward, trying to keep Rabbit focused.
 

“How much blood?”

Rabbit threw up his arms and started pacing the room again. He was sweating, and his white T-shirt stuck to his chest and lower back.
 

“I don’t know! How much blood is a lot? Or a little? I ain’t known nothing ‘bout no blood ‘til today. Jesus, you know me. I pass out at the sight of someone else getting their blood taken outta one of them blood vans in the Winn-Dixie parking lot.”

James nodded and lowered his voice.

“I know, Rabbit. What I’m trying to get at is, do you think it was the amount of blood that someone loses when they die, or when they’ve just been shot?”

“I don’t know! This morning, that girl, was the first time I ever seen a person shot for real.”

Marlena slid down from the bar and straddled one of the bar stools, laying her arms across the back of it.
 

“It’s okay, you don’t worry about that. Do you remember if there was anything else different about the room? Or the trailer? Anything?”

Rabbit turned to Marlena.
 

“You mean, ‘sides the blood?”

Her voice was cool and level. It has a lull to it that James had not heard before.

“Yeah. Anything different.”

Rabbit stopped pacing long enough to think.
 

“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know. The place was trashed, but that ain’t no different than usual. A tornado could rip through there and I’d like as not notice.”

“Now, I know you don’t want to think about it, but can you try to remember if there was any blood on the floor? Coming from the bedroom, going to the front or back door?”

Rabbit’s bottom lip trembled and he started rubbing his palms together in front of him.

“No. I mean, I think I woulda noticed it. I didn’t see nothing ‘til I went into that room. That mean something?”

James shared a look with Marlena.
 

“What does that mean, James?”

James turned back to face Rabbit.

“It means that Delmore most likely isn’t dead.”

Rabbit exhaled loudly.

“You serious? Oh, man, this whole time I was ‘bout to lose my shit ‘cause I thought he was dead.”

James drummed his fingers on the tabletop.
 

“If there was no body, and it doesn’t appear that they dragged it out, or bothered to clean up after themselves, then he’s probably okay. Shot, I’m sure, but most likely not as bad as you think.”

“But who is they?”

James stood and picked up the .45 on the table in front of him. He slipped the safety on and shoved it into the back of his jeans.
 

“That, Rabbit, is the question we need answered.”

SEVEN

Marlena came silently into the kitchen, and James looked up when she sat down across the table from him. He picked up the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and poured out a shot for her.
 

“Still nothing on the news?”

Marlena sighed and brushed her hair out of her eyes.

“Nope. I guess that a strip club getting robbed and a girl getting killed just can’t compete with the rising price of gas and that one reality TV star who just turned up pregnant.”

“No, I guess it wouldn’t. Rabbit sleeping?”

“Like a bear in a cave. I swear, for all his jumping ‘round all the time like he’s got ants in his pants, he sure can pass out in a hurry. Didn’t even take his shoes off.”

“I really appreciate you letting him stay here.”

She paused in the middle of raising the shot glass to her lips.

“Why? Where else was he gonna go?”

After some initial resistance, James had finally agreed with Marlena that the safest thing to do for the time being was to take Rabbit back to her house. He had been unable to provide any more information, no matter the different ways James had tried to frame the questions. Rabbit had only shaken his head and repeated over and over that he didn’t really know Lyndell or who his boss was. He didn’t know any more about the Alligator Mafia than they did. He claimed that Waylon and Delmore were the brains of the operation and that he was just a thief, going along for the ride. James suspected that Rabbit knew more than he was admitting, but Marlena had finally stepped in and suggested that they all go back to her place to wait the night out. Maybe Waylon would respond to the many messages she had left on his cell phone, and they could figure something out once they had more information. James had to agree with Marlena; Rabbit looked like he was about to crack into a million pieces. He had forgotten that Rabbit had been running on fear and adrenaline for the past twenty-four hours. Maybe he would remember something else once he had gotten some sleep.
 

It had been the tail end of dusk when Marlena jumped out of James’ truck to drag open the cattle gate and let the vehicles through. As she held the gate open, a crack of thunder resonated through the air and Marlena had looked upwards. Even in the fading light, she could tell that the amassing clouds from earlier in the afternoon had taken over and were preparing to have their dance in the sky.
 

Lightning was already streaking overhead when they had pulled up to the house. Marlena had called the dog inside from its hiding place under the front porch, locked all the doors, and taken her .38 caliber revolver down from the top of the refrigerator. She had microwaved Rabbit a cup of instant noodles, made up the couch in the living room for him, and did her best to make him comfortable. James was slightly surprised by the ease with which she could switch from a pistol to a pillow. She was unlike any woman he had ever met. She drank the whiskey, carefully set her glass back down, and looked past James out through the kitchen window. As darkness fell, so did the heavens.
 

They talked quietly against the pulse of rainwater caressing the tin roof above them. James and Marlena spoke and drank in the yellow stove light, and as the night unraveled, and the darkness and rain enveloped their small world, they learned many things about one another.
 

Marlena learned that James had not graduated from flight school, but had been tempted by avarice and stupidity to follow his friends into the life of petty crime that he now tried so hard to float above. She learned that he knew how to hotwire cars as well as fix them, that he had once broken his leg by jumping out of a second-storey window, that the name tattooed on his right bicep belonged to a girl who was no longer with this world. They had that in common: tattoos for the dead. The name Marlena harbored between her shoulder blades belonged to her aunt.
 

“Ruth. This used to be her house, actually. When I came to Crystal Springs during the summer, she was usually off traveling somewhere, so I didn’t get to see her too much then. She loved to travel. Her son, Topher, worked for the airlines and she was always getting some kinda deal. One year, she went to Australia and went on a bus tour in the outback. When they stopped to take pictures, she forgot to get back on the bus and nobody noticed. She was lost out there for near three days before they found her. Said the dingoes just about ate her.”

“How did she die?”

“Liver cancer. It was pretty bad, especially near the end. I found out later that she had left me this house. I didn’t spend much time with her when I was a kid, but as an adult, she was my refuge, my soft place to fall.”

James learned that as a child she had climbed trees to hide in the crooks of branches and read novels she didn’t really understand. He learned that she believed in ghosts, and in God, but was terribly and unexplainably angry with him. They swapped stories of scars. The long thin one across the plane of her breastbone was from wrestling a knife away from a desperate friend. The scar on the back of his hand that she had noticed before was from a bicycle chain wielded in a parking lot fight. She had a scar on her hand, too. A burn from her mother’s rage at her inability to cook from the height of a kitchen stool.

He learned that she loved walking along the dirt trail behind her house at night and looking up at the stars, wondering what she was doing on Earth. She learned that he loved rock bands from the seventies, but never sang along. They traded demons and devils as the electricity and the atmosphere brawled above them, the fistfight in the sky mirroring the struggle their hearts were playing out, blow by blow.
 

Marlena ran her fingers through her hair, separating the tangled strands.

“You regret coming back here?”

James studied the inside of his empty shot glass, a place he often turned to for answers.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to find. I quit my job in Callahan, left my place, but I don’t know that I was aiming to stay here after the funeral. When I was driving down here, I kept thinking I was just gonna be passing through, like always.”

James spun his glass around on the table and watched the edge of the glass glinting in the light.

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You regret moving back here? Giving up everything to come help Waylon?”

Marlena sat up straight and stretched, before leaning back in her chair to balance it on the two back legs.
 

“I’m not sure what all I gave up. I know this wasn’t what I pictured doing with my life, though.”

“What did you picture?”

Marlena set her chair back down and rested her elbow on the edge of the table. She cupped her chin in her palm and looked over at Roscoe asleep on the rag rug in front of the sink.
 

“See, that’s the thing. I don’t know what I pictured. Oh, I mean I used to dream about things I wanted to be. A horse trainer when I was younger. Then an actress when I was in high school. Only I can’t act.”

She grinned at James. Her vulnerability was spilling over, engulfing him as it did.
 

“I wanted to travel. Maybe even see Europe like my aunt did. The cathedrals, the art museums, you know, all of it. I’ve never been west of the Mississippi or north of the Mason-Dixon.”

“I been west, but not north. I don’t think you’re missing much.”

“I hope not. I never did see myself living alone back in Crystal Springs, with only a gun and a dog for company. Like some bad country song.”

James looked over at the sleeping animal. It was whimpering at intervals now, its tail straight out, chasing rabbits or cars in its dreams.

“You know, I had a dog once that could—”

But Marlena never found out about James’ dog because the roar of dual-carb V8s, followed by two shotgun blasts, had Marlena and James out on the front porch, guns ready, facing two pickups with blinding high beams and three men getting out of them in the front yard. It was slowing into a drizzle, but James still had to squint his eyes against the rain and the startling light from the trucks’ headlights. Marlena kicked the screen door closed to keep Roscoe inside. Rabbit was still in the living room, probably hiding in the corner behind an armchair.
 

One man stepped forward, almost up to the porch.

“Well, hello there. Not sure we’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”

He was big, with a beer gut barely covered by his Harley Davidson T-shirt, and shaved forearms to display what he must have thought were muscles. His rebel flag-embroidered trucker hat was pulled down over his large shaved head, so that in the porch light James couldn’t see much of his face. He didn’t need to, though. The man’s AR-15 at his side, and those of the men behind him, announced his intentions. James glanced over at Marlena without turning his head toward her. She was scared, but didn’t let her gaze back down from the man trespassing on her property. Neither she nor James said anything.

“Well, since you all ain’t so talkative tonight, let me get straight to the point. I’m guessing you’re Waylon’s girl.”

The man looked at James and frowned.
 

“Don’t know you. But that don’t matter. Folks call me Big Ted and my boss is Sully Granger, so that should tell you all you need to know. We’re here for the Rabbit-boy, so you two can just set down your pieces and let us inside, so we can get what we come for.”

Marlena quickly spoke up.

“He ain’t here.”

Big Ted switched his gun from one hand to the other.

“Now look here, missy-thing. I may be able to break you in half over my knee, but that ain’t mean I’m stupid.”

James stepped forward.