November Mourns (14 page)

Dave glared, and his tie somehow became even straighter. “You gonna make me sorry you ever came back to town?”

“What a vicious thing to say.”

“I know, I’m appalled at myself as well.”

Lament had the window a quarter of the way down and was sticking his snout and jowls out, tongue lapping at the glass.

“I suppose you’ll do what you have to do while you’re home,” Dave said, “whatever the price.”

“You only know that because you’d do the same.”

“I believe in stepping lightly until it’s time to jump.”

“So do I, but until you all decide what ‘death by misadventure’ means, I guess I have to go my own way on this.”

“Look, I don’t expect you to hand out buttered hot biscuits and gravy to your neighbors. But the sheriff isn’t going to put up with too many problems.”

“If that’s true, then why isn’t he here talking to me instead of you?”

It was a good question. Lament considered it too, head cocked and tail swiping back and forth, oversized puppy paws looking like they were too heavy for him to lift. Dave shifted his stance and Shad saw the hardness come into his eyes. “There was a stabbing at Dober’s last night. Sheriff’s busy with that.”

“Anyone I know?”

“No. I followed up with you as a courtesy, and you ought to count it as such.”

“I do.” This sort of jab and feint was beginning to chip at his resolve. “If you’re interested, Zeke came at me. From behind, charging like an ox. I wasn’t looking for a fight.”

“Learned to be nonviolent in prison, that so? Studied up plenty on the principles of Gandhi.”

“I admit I didn’t mind knocking him on his ass.”

“You did a little more than that.”

“Yes, and it could’ve been worse. Let’s leave it go.”

“All right, for the time being.” Dave turned aside, stared into the deep reflection of his own face peering from the highly buffed hood of the Mustang. Dave Fox’s daddy had once owned one just like it, when he’d gotten back from Da Nang. “Where you headed now?”

Already knowing where Shad was going, but making sure he realized the pressure was on, that the eye was on him.

“Luppy’s place. I want to talk with his new wife.”

“Callie. She’s young, but has a real flair. I like her a lot. Joe’s lucky, and she’s gotten him to change some of his more dire ways.”

“I look forward to meeting her.”

“Wonder if she’ll feel the same.”

They let it go at that. When Dave pulled out and drove past, Shad had the angry urge to race after him, get in front, and smoke him all the way out to Waynescross.

Okay, so that hadn’t gone as well as it might’ve. He got the distinct impression that he’d possibly lost the one friend around here who could actually help him find out what happened to his sister.

Lament picked up on the mood and flicked his tail cautiously, heavy hound dog face drawn into a grief-stricken look. The window was all the way down and Lament hung halfway out of the car, uncertain whether he should jump free. Shad knew how he felt. Hung up half-in and half-out, too scared to leap.

LUPPY JOE HAD BEEN THE KING MOONSHINE MAKER
in the hollow for about ten years, running more than three thousand gallons a month. He had fifteen men working for his outfit, driving moon around to three counties, spreading it to the bars and shake shacks, the trailer parks and dice dens, where they’d use food coloring to turn the moon into bourbon, rum, tequila, and scotch.

Shad drove up the deeply grooved back road and swung toward the Anson farm, past clumps of birch and virgin white pine. He didn’t know most of the men wandering around the property stacking boxes inside the barn and hiding the drums and sugar sacks around back.

He expected at least a little hassling but no one flagged him down or gave him any trouble. Luppy must’ve been paying the Feds and local law an even higher kickback, allowing them to pinch a couple of the sixteen-year-old haulers now and again. The kids would only get probation, and the department could spend their money and still look like they were doing their jobs. Nobody gave a shit about the hollow anyway.

Jake Hapgood squatted on the far side of the house near a vat of corn mash, working one of the old-timer stills. He was tapping at the coiled tubing with a wooden bedframe slat. He chawed on a stalk of grass, boots covered with pig shit. He’d trimmed most of the singed ends off and needed another shot of mousse, but his hair was hanging in pretty good, one curl uncoiled over his eye. More duck’s ass today than pompadour.

Shad drove up slowly, watching out for the hogs, and parked. Jake turned and smirked. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of getting back into the make-liquor business.”

“I’ll leave that to the professionals,” Shad said.

“Run-liquor then?”

“No, I’m just here to visit with Joe.”

“Don’t think he’s home, but maybe he snuck in while I wasn’t watching.” He wore a slightly shamed expression that threw Shad for a second until he realized Jake felt guilty about being seen with Becka Dudlow at the bonfire. Situations like that could catch up with a man in the light of day.

Shad decided to ignore it, and soon the embarrassed look slid from Jake’s face. It occasionally took folks a minute or two to realize they had nothing to feel remorseful about in front of an ex-con.

A chuckle eased from Jake, filled with a certain nastiness but not his own. “Heard about what happened to your friend Zeke Hester. I thought you said you weren’t looking to get sent back to the joint.”

“I’m not.”

“You probably shouldn’t have left a good old boy like Griff as a witness then. He hates to talk unless it’s about the Normandy Invasion or something that happened out in front of his store.”

Left a witness. Like Shad was robbing the place and should’ve used a shotgun on anybody who saw him. “All that matters is what Zeke said.”

“Zeke didn’t say anything,” Jake told him. “He sure can blubber like a little girl though.”

“Throws like one too.”

Jake’s torso trembled with silent laughter, holding it in where it belonged because one day he might have to make a choice, and Zeke Hester was always going to be his neighbor. The curl flipped over Jake’s eye one way, and the breeze hiked it back the other. He acted like he was about to tell secrets again, leaned in, but didn’t say anything for a minute. His cooler sat nearby in the hay and he gestured toward it. “Want a beer?”

“No thanks.”

“I can’t go with whiskey every day and night like the old days.”

“Anybody who tries isn’t worth much before long.”

It was the truth, but having it laid out like that took Jake back a step, as if Shad might suddenly be judging.

Maybe they were all losing their slickness. Christ, you couldn’t say any damn thing without offending somebody. He didn’t know when everyone in town had gotten so sensitive, and couldn’t decide if he’d hardened up too far to simply make regular conversation now. The things you had to worry about.

Jake squinted at him an extra second and broke into a grin. He still had every tooth in his head, so he hadn’t started down the road yet. “Jesus, you haven’t lightened up half an inch since the other night. I thought after you were home a while you’d have settled back in.”

“I’ve got too much on my mind,” Shad said. “Sorry if it puts me out of sorts. Tell me . . . what do you know about Luppy’s wife?”

Chickens squawked and two angry hogs roamed by searching out the fallen corn kernels. Lament whined from the passenger seat, tried to loose a bark but was still too young.

“Callie’s sharp, has a nice way about her. Young still, but mature. And I’m not only talking about her body, which is fine, you understand. She can lighten your load just by standing near you. She’s smart, and grasps exactly how to keep Joe on his best behavior. He hardly drinks anymore, and you recall what kind of a miscreant he could be when he was tappin’ the jug too much.”

Luppy used to get drunk and sit naked on the porch with an eleven-gauge pump. He’d fire into the darkness at the smallest noise and claim he was aiming at gophers. He’d wounded two of his employees that way. One lost the tip of his left pinkie, and the other took thirty stitches in the buttocks and wore the flattened shot in a locket around his neck as a kind of good luck charm.

You found providence wherever you could, even if you had to pull it out of your ass.

“You ever see my sister out this way?” Shad asked.

“Here on the farm? Mags? What in the hell would she be doing out this way?”

“Someone said she and this girl Callie were friends.”

“Not that I ever noticed.”

“They were in Preacher Dudlow’s Youth Ministry together.”

You couldn’t help but come full circle when you were dealing with such a tight circuit. It was no different than when you were making a break for the county line. No matter what back road you took, you eventually hit the river, the gorge, or the highway. You couldn’t do ninety across the hollow for more than ten minutes before you had to turn around and go back again.

Jake lit a cigarette. The fumes from the vat caught high above and a blue burst of flame scurried wildly through the air. There were men all over town whose eyebrows would never grow back. “I know Callie used to stop in there on occasion, help Mrs. Swoozie bake pies for the church sales. Go clean out some of the river shacks and sell odd goods at the parking lot flea market.”

With a whimper, Lament hopped into the driver’s seat, stuck his paws up on the steering wheel like he wanted to drop into fourth gear and rip the hell out of there. Smart dog, all right.

The pigs squealed and circled closer and closer, agitated, noticing something.

His field of vision began to narrow. He blinked but nothing changed, except the night came pushing in, pressing forward as if coming for him. The whole world began to darken. This was new. He took a deep breath and drew a trail of smoke off Jake’s cigarette into his face. He felt another presence near him, possibly even watching him from the fields.

Lament pawed the horn twice and Shad’s eyes cleared. He snapped to attention as if somebody had pressed a shiv into his kidney.

“Go on in,” Jake told him. “You know the way. She ain’t the edgy type.”

Shad walked across the yard noticing marks in the flattened grass where federal helicopters had landed this week. The other men eyed him and nodded and kept on going about their work, loading the plastic jugs into the backs of pickups, the blockers working on their engines.

If Mags had come around here, what would she have thought of all this? The heat intensified and inched across the back of his neck, and the hinges of his jaw began to ache. Was this where her death had started? Whatever had led her up Gospel Trail?

He stepped to the door of the Anson house and suddenly wanted to talk to his father, put this off for a while and get back to the old man. He didn’t know why.

Lament honked again.

Luppy’s door was always open. Shad stuck his head in, glanced around.

She was sitting at the kitchen table poring over papers, looking very much like his sister had when Megan was busy doing homework.

Eighteen or so, with willowy blond hair like layered lace adorning her shoulders. She had intense, dark eyes that drew your attention directly to them, even if she wasn’t staring at you. They shone like black gems. She wore jeans and a white cable-knit sweater that also reminded him of Mags more than it should have, but perhaps it was good to keep the dead in mind now.

Callie Anson got up and walked across the kitchen carrying a checkbook and bills, frowning as if she didn’t like the numbers she kept coming up with. She threw everything down with an aggravated huff of air.

Shad could imagine what Luppy’s bank account must look like. For years he’d followed his grandfather’s tradition of burying cash in mason jars around the farm. Luppy used to keep intricate maps drawn on graph paper, but one rainy season half his property flooded out, and he lost eighteen grand to the mud. If Luppy Joe was keeping his money in the bank now, he probably had a dozen scattered accounts, funds going in and out of them arbitrarily.

She bustled into the hall, came around toward the living room, and spotted Shad taking up space in the doorway. A breeze washed in around him and her hair whisked about her chin.

Without any show of alarm, she peered over his shoulder and saw Jake still working out there with the wooden slat, the other men crossing the yard to the barn. She was reassured that they’d let Shad through.

She drew to her full height, nearly six foot, as tall as Luppy, and asked, “Who are you?”

“My name’s Jenkins. Shad Jenkins.” He tried to give a disarming grin but wasn’t sure it was coming along the way he hoped.

The dark eyes softened. “Megan’s brother?”

“That’s right.”

“You were in jail.”

“Yes.”

“And you just got out.”

“Yes.” So it was going to be like this.

“You’re not looking for Joe?” It wasn’t really a question, more like a topic of conversation already rejected the instant it was touched on. “You’d like to talk with me.”