Almost Heaven (28 page)

“I don't remember any last name. But I thought . . .” She opened the door wide and I noticed a cat curled up on the kitchen table next to some dishes still out from breakfast. “I think she said something about him being on her mail route. No, wait, that's not right. She met him when he pulled her out of a ditch. That's what it was. He's a truck driver for some outfit around here. Said he was real nice. And half-joking, I said since things weren't working out between you two, why didn't she give this Larry a chance.”

“What did she say to that?”

“It was just a passing thing. Poor girl, she was just all torn up about her life and not being able to find love.”

“Did she say who he drove for?”

She thought a minute. “I don't think she did, but I assumed it was the wholesale place up on Virginia Avenue.”

I nodded. “If you remember anything else, would you call me?”

She picked up another pack of cigarettes. “Sure thing. You be careful now, Billy. It can be a mean world out there.”

My heart pounded as I drove up the winding, two-lane road to Callahan Wholesale, a distributor of food to restaurants and supermarkets through the region. It was hard enough to call on businesses to advertise, but to go looking for some guy about a suspicious disappearance made me more than nervous.

Most cars were gone from the parking lot, but there was an older man hovering over the engine of a Ford F-150, his hands greasy and a baseball hat pushed back on his head. He saw me as I drove up and turned to me as he wiped his hands on a handkerchief he had stuffed in his back pocket.

“Can I help you?”

“What's wrong with your truck?” I said.

“Seems to be electrical. I'm hoping it's the battery and not the alternator, but the signs are a-pointing that way.”

I offered to go back and get a tool from my house to help him check the voltage on the battery.

“That would probably be a help. But I don't want to put you out. What can I do for you?”

“You work here?”

“Going on twenty years. But they're not hiring. They laid off a bunch of people about a month ago. The economy, you know.”

“I'm not looking for work; I'm trying to find a guy who works here named Larry.”

“Got four or five Larrys. What's he do?”

“He's a driver, I think.”

“That whittles it down. I know two Larrys who are drivers. I don't pretend to know everybody, you know. What's he look like?”

“I'm not sure. He pulled a friend of mine out of a ditch some time ago.”

“Why are you looking for him?”

“I think he might be able to help me find that friend.”

He scratched at his bald spot, the baseball hat flopping like some pelt hung up to dry on the side of a barn. “Well, there's Larry McCoy. He's about my age. Lives down Route 34 near Lincoln County. He has a haul each day.”

“What about the other one?”

“That would be Larry Childers. He was one they laid off. I don't know exactly where he lives, but most days after work you could find him over at the Dew Drop Inn.”

“What's he look like?”

The man smiled and coughed, showing some crooked teeth. “Not much. Kind of dark hair and a belly. He probably still has the company hat.”

“I'll head over there and then bring back the voltmeter.”

“No, don't bother. If you could just give me a jump, I'll get it home and worry with it there.”

We hooked it up and the truck fired to life, which made me think it was probably the battery.

“One more question,” I said over the roar of the rusted-out muffler. “What's he drive?”

He told me and I headed back the way I came. The Dew Drop wasn't that far as the crow flies, but you had to go the roundabout way to get to it. It made me wonder if this really was the fellow I was looking for. Why in the world would Callie go for a guy who sounded so far from the type of person she was?

The Dew Drop Inn had taken several manifestations in the many years it had been open in Dogwood. At one point, revival had broken out in some of the surrounding churches and there were picket signs every day talking about “Demon Rum” and “Beware the Asp's Bite,” and that discouraged some of the regulars. A year into that, the owners gave up and sold the dilapidated building to a group of people in the community who tore down the sign, painted the building white, and turned the bar into an altar. There were stories about that church that said they were known to bring snakes into a service, but I never investigated.

But you can't keep water from seeking its own level, and the Dew Drop opened under new management in a less-populated but still-accessible area near the newly installed power lines where nobody wanted to live. I pulled into the gravel parking lot and counted eight vehicles, one of them matching the description I'd been given. There wasn't one part of me that wanted to go inside, but I kept telling myself I was doing this for Callie.

The bar was dimly lit and it took me a few seconds to adjust. I thought of the verse that says men loved darkness instead of light. A jukebox in the corner played something by Hank Williams Jr. There was a musty smell, and smoke hung heavy. In some places you have the aroma of cooking meat to squelch the stale beer, but nobody came to the Dew Drop to eat. The closest thing to a square meal you could get was the crunching peanut shells under my feet.

There were a few people scattered at some tables and three men at the bar who turned and looked at me, then went back to their business. The bartender was a scrawny man who looked like he had experience with the product he sold. His voice was high-pitched and gravelly.

“What can I get for you?” he said.

I waved at him and nodded. “I'm good for now. Just looking for somebody.”

A guy at the bar turned and said, “Who you looking for?”

“Larry Childers,” I said, but evidently Bocephus's voice on “A Country Boy Can Survive” drowned me out.

“Who?” the man yelled.

I said the name again and a guy a few tables away stood. He had a pretty big belly and his arms hung in front of him like a gorilla's. The Callahan Wholesale hat was pulled low on his forehead and hair snaked out behind him in a tightly tied ponytail. His face was framed by reddish-brown stubble. His chest hair stuck out over the shirt collar and gave him the appearance of a man-bear.

“What do you want?”

The music seemed to get louder and I motioned for the door. “You mind stepping outside?”

He shook his head. “Whatever you need to say you can say in here.”

“Got that right,” one of his friends at the table said.

I held up my hands defensively. “I'm not here for trouble. I'm just looking for a friend of mine. Heard you might know her.”

“Her?” one of the guys said. Then he laughed and so did the other two.

Larry shoved his chair back and moved toward me. His fists looked like sledgehammers and his legs were like tree trunks, stiff and resolute. From the way he held himself, I had no doubt he knew how to use those sledgehammers.

“What's this about?” he said.

I leaned forward and said, “It's about Callie Reynolds. Do you know her?”

The muscles on one side of his face tensed. He glanced at the door and I read that as an invitation. He said something to the men at the table and then followed me outside.

“You her brother or something?” he said, following me to my truck.

I leaned against it and crossed my arms. “No. I just know her. I care about her.”

He scratched at his chin and dipped his head with each sentence, like a duck walking toward water. “Okay, then listen up. I don't know anything. I helped her on the road once when her car slid into a ditch. That's it.”

“You never went on a date with her?”

“I'm married.”

“A friend of hers said she mentioned you. That something was going on. Not that I'm accusing you. I don't care about that.”

“Get out of here and don't come back.” He pointed at my chest with a fat finger and turned to leave.

I grabbed at the back of his flannel shirt. “Wait. I need your help.”

He stopped and turned, leveling his eyes. “What you need to do is leave. You understand? Don't bother me again. I don't know anything about where she is or what happened.”

I returned his stare. “How do you know she's missing?”

He glanced away and cursed under his breath. I stood there, my legs and arms trembling, and at first I thought it was my nerves or fear of getting hit, but as he walked back into the Dew Drop, I realized I hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast and my levels were low. I kept a plastic bag with a couple of energy bars in the truck, but when I checked it, I remembered I ate those the last time I felt the trembles.

I stumbled into the bar, hunting for carbohydrates, my breath short. I could feel the blood draining from my face, like the last trickle of water in a dried-up reservoir.

“There he is again,” somebody said on my right.

I ignored them. “I need a Coca-Cola,” I said to the bartender.

He looked at the men coming toward me. “You need to turn around and go right back out that door.”

“I'm a diabetic,” I said. “I have to raise my sugar levels or I'm going to—”

“You're out of here,” one of Larry's friends said. He grabbed me and threw me toward the door. I hit it face forward, but he opened it and pushed me the rest of the way out until I stumbled in the gravel. I threw out my hands to catch myself and cut them.

He yelled something at me, but I was going in and out. It's hard to explain to somebody who's never been through it. Think about the time in your life when you were the hungriest. When you felt like you could grab a banana and eat it peel and all. That's what it's like when you go low, and there's nothing you can do but try to satisfy the craving.

There were two others behind the man. They stood at the door with their hands on their hips. I tried to get up but my head spun and I had to stay down. I prayed and asked God to help, and then I remembered the cake frosting in my glove compartment. I crawled my way to the passenger door and fumbled around inside, knocking out the tire pressure gauge and the title and insurance papers and some tissues. The music from the bar subsided and I noticed the men had gone back inside. I grabbed the white tube and unscrewed it. Just some of this on my gums could work its way into my bloodstream enough to keep me coherent. But when I got the top off, my heart sank because the end had to be cut off. I chewed on it, but it was too thick. As I reached for my pocketknife, I felt myself falling, my body needing a jump start just like the Ford earlier. My eyes blurring, air coming in short gasps, I lay back on the gravel and called out to God for help.
Send me an angel, Lord. Send me somebody.

I heard the “disappearing dreams of yesterday” line from “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and then saw a couple of cowboy boots coming toward the truck.

Whoever it was bent down to me and lifted my head. It was a gray-haired man with an open can of Pepsi. He held it to my lips and I took a long drink and felt the sugar and carbs hit my bloodstream. I drank the whole thing in two gulps and sat up and belched, then said, “Excuse me.” I was still trembling, but that would give me the jolt I needed and send me up.

The man smiled at my burp. “I had a son with the sugar diabetes, and I know what it can do to you. You got type 1 or type 2?”

He had breath that would have knocked down a steamroller, but if this was the angel God could use, I was okay with it. I held up one finger.

He nodded. “You feeling better now?”

“Can I get another one?” I said, some of the feeling coming back to my body. “Or maybe orange juice? You think they would have that in there?”

He smiled. “Just stay right here.”

I pulled myself up to the seat and tossed the cake frosting back in the glove compartment. I made a mental note to get another tube that was easier to open. My body felt tingly and hollow, almost like I wasn't really living in it anymore, just renting. It had been a while since I'd gone that low.

The man came back with a can of cold orange juice and I sipped at it, wondering how low my levels had gone. I needed something solid. I needed to get back to the station and put on some new tapes. But I needed to find Callie more.

The man leaned forward against the truck in the twilight. “You have many spells like this?”

“Not in a while. I'll go low when I'm home sometimes, but I'm always close to something that'll bring me back. Just kind of got caught out here.” I stuck out my hand. “Billy Allman.”

He shook with me, and by the shape of his hands I guessed he was a tradesman. Maybe drywall or concrete. “Pleased to meet you, Billy.” He thought a minute. “You're not the guy with the radio station, are you?”

“One and the same.”

He chuckled. “Gotta tell my wife I met you. She listens to that all the time.”

“Just don't tell her where we were.”

He looked toward the door. “What was that all about? I don't think I've ever seen Larry so upset, unless he's losing at poker.”

“Do you know him?”

“I drink in the same bar with him every afternoon. If you can know a person that way, then I do.”

“A friend of mine is missing. To be honest, I don't know if he knows anything or not, but I'm just trying to follow the trail and it's getting cold.”

“A woman?”

I nodded.

He scowled. “Larry's married. Maybe that's why he wouldn't talk to you. Probably thought you were spying on him for his wife.”

“I'm not here to get anybody in trouble. I got a friend who hasn't been to work in a few days who hasn't missed a day in years. Her family is worried sick. I'm just looking for clues.”

The man nodded. “Stay here. Let me talk with him.”