November Mourns (15 page)

“Yes.”

That sweet girlish voice was pure tallow in the winter, creamy and thick, smooth and somehow feathery. It reminded him of how young she truly was, and he felt oddly upset with Luppy.

“To speak about her. ’Cause you were away for so long.”

You could only nod so many times before you started feeling like a moron, so he just waited until he got an invite to take a step off the welcome mat.

“I don’t know what you expect from me.”

“Neither do I,” he told her.

“Come on inside then.”

On the mantel sat a large framed photo of Luppy Joe and Callie on their wedding day. Luppy looked happy but uncomfortable in a short-sleeve shirt and bolo tie. His huge belly hung low over his belt, the button there straining to keep shut. Callie had on a half veil that came midway down the bridge of her nose, obscuring her eyes though you could still discern them under there, black like punctures through the cloth. She wore a long white silk dress, almost antediluvian in style. The kind they wore while strolling their plantations before the War of Northern Aggression. She was at least six months pregnant in the picture.

Shad didn’t see any kid’s toys around. No crib, no bottles or jars of baby food. He didn’t know if maybe her parents were taking care of the child or if she’d lost it. You could never ask certain questions.

“You’re the one who bought the Mustang that Joe’s cousin died in, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Way Joe tells it, the guy’s hair killed him.”

“Chuckie Eagleclaw’s mother killed him, though you could say it was the receding hairline that caused his death.”

It nearly brought a smile to her lips, which was enough for the time being. “How’s that?”

“He kept checking himself in the rearview and took his eyes off the road.”

She grabbed the top of a ladder-back chair and squeezed until the muscles of her neck stood out. Shad tried not to stare at the tightly angled curves packed into the well-fitting clothes, the meaty crook of her throat. It wasn’t easy.

“I heard you’re scrambling for trouble,” she said. “Causing discomfort everywhere you go.”

It stopped him cold, the way she put it. “Who’s saying that?”

“Everybody knows it. You think hollow folk got something better to talk about than an ex-convict who comes home to find his baby sister dead?”

So much for tiptoeing. It proved she was astute, already in tune with his purpose, and didn’t mind laying it out on the line. “I suppose not.”

“You’re not going to bring any of that distress and annoyance into my house, now are you, Shad Jenkins?”

“I only want to talk.”

“All right. Come sit.”

Moving across the house was no different than traveling through his own life. He remembered returning here late at night after delivering liquor to the roadhouses and parish bazaars. The guys would be playing poker with their watch fobs and silver dollars in the pot, the same as their fathers and grandfathers. Shad would know he was connected by a real but intangible trail leading back across the dim leagues of his own ancestry.

On the counter sat a jug of moon, a bottle of wine, and a freshly made pot of coffee, but she didn’t offer him anything.

“I’m not sure what to ask,” he said.

“I’m not sure what I can tell you.”

Now that he had someone who might help, every question he came up with sounded faint and weak. “Like you mentioned, I was out of touch for the last couple of years. I missed a big part of her life as she grew from a girl to a woman. I’m trying to find out the kind of things my father wouldn’t know.”

“Okay.”

“What did you do? Where did you go?”

She gave a rough scowl. “What the hell kinds of questions are these?”

She was right, he had to focus. “You were in the Youth Ministry together.”

“We went visiting around the county. In the hollow alone there’s four Christian churches, including Reverend Sow’s room in back of his dry goods shop where he’s got a couple pews. Some of them like wine and dancing, some prefer more puritan behavior with the occasional all-night gospel sing. Then there’s others who stick to the old ways, around the bottoms. You know how it is. Reverend Dudlow would ask us to talk to them, hand out literature, try to get them to come into town more often and listen to his sermons.”

In a movie, the guy playing Shad would’ve reached out about now. Maybe brushed her on the wrist or the back of the hand, and the audience would’ve sunk into their seats, feeling the sexual tension building on the screen.

Christ, he was as bad as Zeke, always thinking about a camera going in for a close-up.

It was too easy for your vengeance to blur into something like hope. Shad pawed at his chin some, trying to get a bead. “So you girls went visiting.”

“Don’t call me a girl, please. You might not mean it to sound offensive, but it is. I’m sensitive to that tone. My mother often gives it to me.”

“I apologize. So you both, ah, did what exactly? Knocked on doors?”

“Handing out pamphlets. We sometimes went out as far as Enigma, Poverhoe City, and Waynescross.”

A thread of sweat worked down his collar. “Did you go to the Lusk farm?”

“Which one’s that?”

“Place out on Route 18 in Waynescross. A sad few acres with a dying cherry orchard and ill children. Two that have flippers instead of arms, another who’s hydrocephalic. Kid with a big head, shaped like a pumpkin.”

“I know what it means, Shad Jenkins. We had a couple of drop-offs along Route 18. But I don’t recall the name Lusk or anything like those children.”

“Are you certain?”

She frowned again and a crease appeared between her eyes. “I’d remember a kid with a pumpkin head, don’t you think?”

It couldn’t be a coincidence, that Megan should be in the area where her own mother lived and not see her.

“Was there ever any trouble? Handing out Preacher Dudlow’s brochures? Two young ladies like yourselves?”

“Sometimes we’d get shooed off. Folks aren’t very open-minded in praising God some different way than they’re used to. Or not at all, as it mostly turns out. A truckful of the Sweetwater haulers give us a hard time once, hootin’ and fallin’ down in the street and such, but nothing a woman doesn’t have to deal with almost every day in this town.”

“Zeke Hester?”

“What about him?”

“He ever bother Megan?”

“After she smashed his mouth and you busted him up the way you did? No. He cut a wide path around us.”

Lament gave a prolonged honk, and Jake shouted, “I do believe that dog might be asking for a job as a blocker. You boys think we should give him a trial run?”

The flat of Shad’s hand began to creep along the table and he realized he was reaching for her, like he had the right. He stood and put his fists in his pockets, leaned against the wall. “Did you ever go up to Gospel Trail Road?”

“No. Nobody needs go up that way.”

“There are hill families beyond the ridges. The Johansens. The Taskers. Burnburries and Gabriels.”

“I never heard of them before. Besides, it’s too far. We usually walked.”

“You walked to Waynescross and Enigma?”

“No, Joe gave me his truck on those days, of course.”

He caught on at last. An instant wash of regret went through him for being so ignorant, but he didn’t let it show. “To make a drop-off. You weren’t just handing out church literature; you were delivering moon.”

“I was doin’ both on certain days. I thought you would’ve understood that, considering who I’m married to.”

“I should’ve. Did Megan often go with you on runs?”

“She was only trying to get folks involved with the church. If I had a delivery to make, I just brought it along in the truck. The rest of the time, we visited, helped with the bazaars, bake sales, things like that. She was an old soul.”

“Preacher Dudlow told me Megan visited him three days before she died.”

“Mrs. Swoozie likes a tap of whiskey with her pies. I asked Megan to get the money we were owed.”

“She knew it was for moon?”

“She wasn’t stupid. Of course she knew. It bothered her on occasion, that so many folks drank, even old church ladies like Mrs. Swoozie. But she never held it against anybody. It’s the way of the hollow.”

He wanted to ask Callie about the baby, see if there was any story there that would lead him back to his sister. It seemed so foolishly important that it might have some real bearing.

Sex? Underground baby trade? He’d met a couple guys in the slam who’d made big money off that before taking their falls. But Shad couldn’t figure out how to go about asking.

“And she didn’t have a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Why not? She was beautiful. Didn’t any come around?”

“No,” Callie whispered, so quiet he almost missed it. “She believed.”

“How’s that? Believed?”

“Yes.”

“In what?” he asked. They were talking at cross angles. “In God?”

Callie Anson looked away for a time, working up to it, as the mood around them grew heavier. With confusion, unspoken tragedies, and general senselessness, like a guy who can die by checking out his hair, a seventeen-year-old girl from a heart attack.

She checked him over to see if he could handle her words, unsure and thinking twice about it, but she decided to press on.

“She thought somebody . . . loved her.”

“Who?”

“I was talking about marriage. I told her it was hard sometimes, to curb Luppy and his drinking. I mentioned some of the rough patches we’ve had. I told her she was lucky not to have to worry on the troubles a wife had all the time. She said, ‘I may not be married, but I am loved.’”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m probably wrong about this. I might be making more of it than there is.”

He shrugged. “It’s okay, speak your mind.”

The black gems lost some of their shine for a moment, then turned on him, blazing. “Over the last couple of days, when I heard you were back home in the hollow kicking up a fuss, I started to think on it some more. It seemed she might be talking about a man. Like a man wanted her, you understand? And she liked it.”

Chapter Ten

VENN LUVELL, GLASSY-EYED, STOOD ON MAIN
Street in front of Bardley Serret’s Rock Museum, his bottom lip dangling low and to the left like it had been tugged permanently out of shape by a jerking fishhook. There were bits of straw in his hair.

A few years back, he’d been one of the strongest men in Moon Run. He used to tussle with anybody at any time, and his reputation as a grappler grew until guys from all over the county would make official challenges against him.

So they built a ring over in the town square and the gamblers rampaged through the crowd fanning fifties and giving points. The ex–high school football stars and gator wrasslers would try him on for size every Saturday. Venn would end each match by holding his opponent overhead and flinging him over the ropes.

Shad remembered being a kid and looking up to him, hoping one day to be like that.

After a few months of battling and making some money, Venn considered moving to California and becoming a professional wrestler. Sheriff Increase Wintel promised to invest in Venn’s career and get him a promotional manager. But before they could gather the gumption to make a real effort, the moonshine got Venn the way it got nearly everybody and it brought him down hard.

The memory gave Shad some pause now as Venn clomped into the street directly in front of the ’Stang and Shad nearly ran him over.

It was close.

The pup yawped. Shad let out a cry and stood on the brake with his full weight, spinning the wheel hard to the left. Lament let out another throaty, terrorized bark and slammed up against the back of the passenger seat. The screech of tires sounded like a girlish scream of frustration, and the blue smoke of burning rubber rose up in a swirling gust. Shad cracked his temple against the window. His head filled with a billowing pain and the ghosts of the two previous owners. You couldn’t feel sorry for them, but man, you could feel them.