Rivers to Blood (10 page)

I wasn’t even sure why I came. Carla didn’t need looking out for now that she was no longer spending all night every night alone in an open diner on the side of a rural highway, but here I was again, walking through the door at a little after nine.

Rudy’s Diner served Southern fried food just like all the no-name cafés in small Southern towns, but it didn’t look like one. With stools and a counter fronting a grill and booths next to plate glass windows it looked more like a welfare Waffle House than anything else.

Jake and Fred Goodwin were in a booth in the back on the opposite side of the restaurant from the booth I considered mine. I was sure they had just come in from the woods and were probably talking about the search or the weather—anything but the election, but it looked conspiratorial, as if Jake were somehow betraying Dad.

Next to them four men I recognized from the prison but didn’t know were laughing loudly when not shoveling grits, eggs, bacon, and toast into their mouths. Across the room, Carla’s boyfriend slouched in a booth with a group of guys his age, their posture conveying how bored they were with life. Todd and Shane sat in a booth next to them, and at the counter in the center Sandy Hartman sat alone, his head down, shoulders hunched, sipping coffee.

Beyond him, Carla, hair fallen, face drawn, fatigue obvious, was balancing plates on her hands and arms. She gave me a half smile, then looked away. As she carried the food over to Todd and Shane, I walked over to Sandy.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

He looked up at me, squinting against the light above us, frowned, and shrugged. “It’s going.”

I waited for him to elaborate but he didn’t.

“You okay?”

His eyes widened and locked on mine. He then glanced around the room to see if anyone was witnessing our interaction.

“I’m just fine. Thanks. You?”

It was a dismissal.

I nodded then walked over toward my booth, nodding to Carla’s boyfriend, Cody Gaskin, and his friends as I did. They didn’t respond.

I stopped at Todd and Shane’s table.

“You gotta concentrate to be that cool,” Todd said, looking at the boys. “Can’t be distracted by nodding or speaking.”

I smiled.

What made that funny was the way Todd was just like them when he was that age and wasn’t that much different now.

Looking down at Todd and Shane I realized again how much alike they looked.

Todd and Shane had thick necks, crew cuts, and even sitting, bowed out their chests and flexed their muscles against the tight, too small T-shirts they wore. Completing their look of pseudo-soldier, their camouflage fatigues were tucked into their black tactical boots.

There was one big difference though. Shane was nearly twice the size of Todd. It was as if Todd was a smaller version of Shane, a to-scale model that maintained the exact proportions in miniature. They even had identical razor wire armband tattoos around their right biceps.

The boys were talking so low it sounded like whispering, but occasionally I heard a string of words well enough to make out most of a sentence. “If I caught one throwin’ my bitch a bone I’d damn sure do it.”

Shane was saying something but I was too distracted for it to register.

“How often you tappin’ that ass, man? She looks like she can hardly walk.”

Before I realized what I was doing I had stepped back over to their table.

“That’s because of how tired she is,” I said. “And if I ever hear any of you say anything like that about her again, you’ll be walking funny for the rest of your little lives. Promise you that.”

“Shit, man, chill out,” one of them said.

He was a pale, pimply faced boy with a bad haircut and wounded, angry eyes.

“Stop it, Sean,” a boy I recognized from the football team said. “Just stop.”

But Sean couldn’t.

“I’s just kiddin’,” Sean said. “Besides, I wasn’t talkin’ to you.”

“But I am talking to you,” I said. “And you better listen.”

“We hear you, okay?” the other guy who wasn’t Cody said. “He’s a dick. We’re sorry. We won’t let him say anything like that again.”

“Okay?” Sean said. “So will you leave us the fuck alone now?”

Cody had yet to utter a sound or look me in the eye.

I stared at him.

After a few moments of him refusing to look at me, I shook my head and walked back over to Todd and Shane’s table.

“What’s wrong with him?” Shane said.

I looked back at the boys who were now dropping their napkins on the table, preparing to leave.

“No, him,” he said, nodding over at Sandy. “Somethin’ just ain’t right with him.”

That was another difference. Shane did most of the talking.

I followed his gaze over to Sandy, who had stood up and was dropping a few bills on the counter. He leaned over slightly as if from an unseen weight pressing down on him, and moved slowly like someone terminally ill or deeply depressed.

“Not a team player,” Todd added.

“Whatta you think it is?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“Told you,” Todd said. “He’s a quitter.”

“Hell if I know,” Shane said. “Don’t know that much about women.”

“I’ve heard that,” I said.

Todd laughed.

I looked back at Shane.

“He quit SAR?”

He nodded.

“Any idea why?”

He shook his head.

“Still no sign of the inmate?” I asked.

He frowned and shook his head, then rubbed his hand across his military haircut. “We’ll get him.”

Todd nodded. “Hopefully before he kills anybody else.”

“You think Jensen killed the man at the river?” I asked.

He nodded. “And he’s wearing his clothes right now trying to hitch a ride somewhere.”

“Or hiding out until things die down,” Shane said, “and then gonna hop a ride outta here.”

That gave me an idea, and I made a mental note to talk to Dad about it.

After a few more forced comments our conversation dwindled and I made my way to my booth in the back. As I sat down Cody and his posse stood up and slowly walked out of the diner without paying, a couple of them glaring at me as they did.

Carla said something to Cody but he kept walking.

Cody and his friends reminded me of Todd and Shane and so many other guys around here—especially those in law enforcement—and I wondered what it was about small Southern towns that turned out misogynistic young men with such regularity and proficiency. Equally confounding were the mothers who raised such sons and the young women who were attracted to them.

“I’m so worried about him,” Carla said.

I had been staring at the door, thinking, and didn’t realize she was standing beside me. I looked up at her and gave her a weak smile.

“I’m worried about you,” I said.

“He’s usually very good to me,” she said. “Something happened. Last week he was gone for three days—just disappeared. Nobody knew where he was—including his dad. When he showed up again, he wouldn’t say where’d he’d been or what he’d been doing, and he’s so different now. Something happened.”

“Any idea what?” I asked.

She thought about it for a minute, pursing her lips, then shook her head. “Would you talk to him?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You’re so good at––”

“He’s not a fan and it’ll probably make things worse, but if you want me to …”

“It’s hard to imagine it being any worse.”

“At what point will you walk away?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

I shook my head. “I know how––”

The bell above the door sounded and we both turned to see Anna walk in.

“Tell you what,” Carla said. “I’ll walk away from Cody when you walk away from her.”

Chapter Twenty-one

C
arla had compared her two-month relationship with her boyfriend to my over two-decade obsession with Anna. It was surprisingly teenage girlish of her, but I understood what she meant. The hopeless hope love inspires isn’t easy to surrender even after two minutes.

Would I ever be able to walk away from Anna? Would I ever be free of the notion that the fates would finally relent and look with favor on us? Probably not, as long as the slightest wisp of hope remained.

As Anna crossed the room toward me, I wondered how my life might be different if we were together. Circumstances—some of them far beyond my control—had ended my marriage twice, but I wondered if Susan and I might somehow still be together if I hadn’t held in reserve some small part of my heart for Anna.

I hadn’t thought of Susan lately. Our marriage ended badly the first time—worse the second, but I wondered how she was doing. Was she remarried? She had never been good at being alone. Did she have kids? A pain of guilt and regret ran through me as I thought about our child that might have been.

“You don’t look too happy to see me,” Anna said.

“Actually, thoughts of just how happy I am to see you led to darker, troubling, unhappy thoughts.”

“I can tell,” she said. “Wanna talk about it?”

I shook my head.

“Sure?”

I nodded.

She slid into the booth across from me, a clean, fresh, slightly fruity fragrance following her, filling the air around us, and before I realized what I was doing, I started breathing a little more deeply, as if trying to inhale her.

As I gazed into her infinitely deep brown eyes, I wondered how much of my life I had spent doing that. I thought about all we had shared since childhood, all we knew about the other, all our eyes had witnessed of the other’s life, all the words our mouths had spoken, our ears had heard, all we had perceived of the other’s silence.

Carla walked over with a pot of coffee and a couple of cups. As she filled my cup, she said, “Y’all want anything to eat?”

I shook my head.

“No thanks,” Anna said. “And can I just have water?”

“Sure,” she said, then paused for a moment to consider her. “You look tired.”

“I am,” Anna said.

When Carla went to retrieve the glass of water, I said, “You still look great.”

Her face lit up and her eyes moistened. “Only because you’re looking through the eyes of love.”

“Without denying that’s what I’m doing,” I said, “I refuse to concede that what I said is anything but absolute and objective truth.”

While getting Anna’s water, Carla had to stop to checkout Todd and Shane and the other group of correctional officers. When she brought the water to the table, only Anna and I and Jake and Fred remained in the restaurant.

“Jake’s eating with the enemy, isn’t he?” Anna asked.

“What are they talking about?” I asked Carla.

“You know I can’t reveal what clients say,” she said with a smile. “And you of all people should be glad I can’t.”

“Know his secrets, do you?” Anna asked.

“Just the incriminating ones,” she said.

“The only ones worth knowing,” Anna said.

“Why don’t you go try to get some sleep,” I said to Carla. “I’ll take Jake’s money, and we can wait on anyone else who comes in.”

Anna nodded vigorously. “John can’t even make coffee, but I’m hell in the kitchen. Get some rest.”

“Y’all sure?”

“I insist.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Come get me if you need anything.”

Carla lived with Rudy in the back of the diner in a small area she normally tried to avoid, but by this time Rudy would be passed out in front of the TV, a long since emptied bottle of vodka on the floor beside his chair.

As Carla walked behind the counter, she took off her apron and hung it on a hook next to the back door. After saying something to Jake and pointing to the coffee pot, she turned back toward us. “And Anna.”

“Yeah?”

“John has something important he needs to tell you,” she said.

She then smiled at me and disappeared into the back.

“You do?” she said.

I shook my head. “She’s trying to be funny.”

We fell silent a moment. I drank my coffee. Anna sipped her water and made a face. “I always forget Rudy’s water comes straight from the tap.”

“But it’s the chlorine-laced sulfur that gives it flavor,” I said.

I slid my saucer and cup toward her.

She shook her head. “No thanks.”

“Try it,” I said. “Bitterness completely covers the sulfur and chlorine.”

She smiled.

I smiled.

We were still smiling when Jake and Fred walked over.

“I was just telling Jake the first thing I’m going to do when I’m sheriff is offer you a job,” Fred said in his deep, rich voice.

Beneath his thick silver hair, Fred Goodwin’s ice-blue eyes were intense and bloodshot, etched with lines nearly as red as his fleshy sun-kissed face.