Soil (30 page)

43

The first drops of rain pecked the windshield of the Boss as Shoals eased up the driveway toward Mize's. Reception on his phone flickered in and out. Maybe that's why he couldn't raise Leavenger after repeated attempts. The house was black, not a wick of light in the place. He sat in the driveway waiting for someone to come slinking out. Finally he killed the engine and got out, sat against the car listening to the loose pellets of rain brush the trees and gravel. It began to stream before long and he ducked under the carport, pulled out his pocket flashlight, and nosed around. No one answered his repeated knocks, so he tried the knob and let himself in.

He called out for Mize and flipped the light switch, all to no avail. He waved the light around the mudroom and found what he thought to be a pair of men's shit-stained underwear draped over the washtub. Upon closer inspection he determined the rusty stain to be blood. Shoals lifted the sopping wet skivvies with a screwdriver and dumped them in a plastic grocery bag for evidence, then made his way into the kitchen. Just looking for clues, he'd convinced himself. A fifth of good tequila called to him from the counter. He uncapped it and took a glass from the neat row in the cabinet and poured several healthy swigs. He meant to add a splash of water at the sink tap but nothing came. The place must be abandoned, Shoals decided. He walked room to room, swinging his beam, expecting at any moment to stumble upon slaughter. But each room was spare and orderly, no signs of struggle or wrongdoing. Just a mild rotten scent like dead mouse or leftover garbage.

After a complete sweep of the house, Shoals came back to the living room
and explored the bookshelves while the tingle of liquor made its own course through him. The book titles meant nothing to him, just represented ages of wasted time. He was interested to find a little wooden box containing marijuana dust and some paraphernalia. And then he discovered a child's shoe box filled with photographs.

He found a votive candle stuck to an empty CD case and lit it, sorted through the images by candlelight. They were mostly of the baby—sleeping, eating, standing, crawling, sitting up in the wading pool, sniffing a beer bottle, gobbling a mango. The baby, stupefied, propped up on his mother, looking over Sandy's shoulder, a nice view of cleavage.

There was Mize standing awkwardly beside another man, had to be his father, similar build and facial expression. He appeared sheepish next to the old man, more out of shame than out of reverence. There were friendly shots of the couple in their fairer days, always cuddled up and smiling. He collected the photos of Sandy and set them aside—her laughing, holding a football in the yard in a big jersey with a bandanna tied around her head. Intent, slicing birthday cake. Frustrated in glasses.

He was mystified as to how a loser like Mize had won her heart, how he'd managed to lure her into the sack enough times to make a child, an admittedly cute little sucker. And he was curious about how he ultimately lost her. Had he taken his life for granted? Why? To Shoals it was unforgivable. He was never one to covet another man's possessions, but he was touched by the rare desire to trade places with Mize, to go back to the start if only to look over his shoulder and imagine how he would do things differently. To solve the case at least.

He helped himself to another glass of tequila and went back to the photo box. “Lord have mercy,” he proclaimed, his attention snared by a well-­handled photo, the wife in a flimsy bathing suit, which must have been taken years ago. He sat down in an easy chair and studied every millimeter. It deserved to hang in a museum, he believed. A candid classic of cheesecake photography. She was young and hopeful, very playful, suggestive. The look on her face said,
This suit won't last long past the shutter
.

He felt a stirring in his loins and might have been moments from intimacy had he not heard that most pleasing and dreaded of sounds, the chuck-chuck of a pump shotgun being readied. At the edge of candlelight, a barrel emerged from the shadows, followed by Mize, drenched and bedeviled, a look of queer menace all about him. A jolt of adrenaline raced up the deputy's bones. He'd left the flashlight facedown on the shelf, and his gun was tucked under his leg. “Well, well, well,” he said with boozy cheer and peaceful intentions. “Look what the storm blew in.”

“Where's your warrant?” Mize asked.

“No, just came for a friendly visit,” the deputy replied.

“I don't find it so friendly.”

“But you just got here,” said Shoals. He remained pasted to his seat, trying to squirrel away the bathing suit photo into his pocket. “Hope you don't mind I let myself in. Didn't want to stand out in the rain.”

Mize looked around, trying to piece together the scene. He noticed the box of photos on the floor, the glass of tequila on the armrest.

“Look, I'm not trying to hide anything,” said Shoals. “Put the gun down and have a seat.”

“You're trespassing,” Mize replied. “You think you got special rights over and above me?”

“Well, I kinda do. Don't want to abuse them, but maybe it appears to you that I am.”

Mize held quiet, his weapon still trained. For him, the explanation would never be good enough.

“Okay, I guess you could say I'm here on official business,” Shoals said with sternness, speaking to reason, trying like hell to talk the gun to rest position. “It's not all good cheer and conversation.”

“Unless you got a warrant or a goddamn good explanation, you better get your ass out of my house or we're gonna have some real trouble.”

Shoals moved his leg millimeter by millimeter, trying to maneuver the holster free, to put the weapon within clean reach. “What have you been
doing out in this weather?” he asked, trying to stall, to draw something out of Mize. He seemed crazed and unreliable. “You look a wreck, friend.”

“Once more,” Mize said. “Tell me what you want, or get the fuck gone.”

Shoals came to the bottom of his drink and set it aside. “A friend of mine has gone missing, called me yesterday evening and told me he was coming to see you. A fella named Leavenger. You know him?”

“How come every time somebody comes up missing, you start nosing around here?”

“Well,” said Shoals, “I started asking myself that same question. It intrigued me.”

“It doesn't have anything to do with my wife, does it?”

So he knew. They'd obviously been in contact.

“What would your wife have to do with this?”

“You think I don't know what's going on?” cried Mize with a quake in his voice. “You got something on me I suggest you bring it or leave me alone. I got no time for this cat-and-mouse shit.”

“I don't have a damn thing,” Shoals replied. “My friend Leavenger, on the other hand, has made some interesting accusations. Interesting enough that I would be well within my rights taking you in for questioning. I didn't want to play it that way, but your peculiar brand of hospitality gives me cause to reconsider.”

Mize lowered the gun ever so slightly. “I don't know any Leavenger. No one has been here in a week.”

“You might remember Leavenger. Strange older guy, limping around, trying to get revenge for you killing his dog?” said Shoals. “It's doubtful you'd forget him. Actually, I was hoping to get to you before he did. He aint altogether right, and I was aiming to protect you from whatever crazy idea he had rattling around in that hollow skull of his. But now I'm starting to wonder if I was trying to protect the wrong fella.”

He caught Mize withering a bit. Shoals wasn't sure if he could take him in peacefully. If Mize was guilty, he might be prepared to go all the way. They had that, among other things, in common.

“And as for that pretty wife of yours,” said Shoals, licking two fingers and rubbing them together with his thumb, “I'd hate for her to get drug into this as an accomplice.”

He reached over and plucked out the candle and rolled to the floor. The shotgun erupted with thunder and flash and a shatter of glass. Stray shot nipped Shoals in the side, the tender meat just above the hips. He yowled, whipped out his Colt, and returned fire, a couple of wild rounds that scarred up the walls if nothing else. He heard screeching feet in the kitchen and crawled out in blind pursuit.

Shoals followed the sound of the storm door slam and burst through it. He just made out Mize in the glow of the half-clouded moon, hauling ass over the hill into the pasture, and cried after him, “You're gonna rot like your granddaddy, Mize!”

His instinct for pursuit was not on foot but astride his Mustang. He had complete faith in this beast and spun it through the backyard, up the hill at an angle, and whipped it back into the pasture, bucking over the terrain like a hell-bent steed or some spastic, tricked-out barrio lowrider. The bouncing headlights spotted the man in flight on the next ridge. Shoals found the path of least resistance and eased up, careful not to bottom out or rip the fender off. He made it over the next hill and found a level stretch, caught some speed and shrunk the distance. Mize was barreling for the tree line. The Boss hit a soft patch at the soggy bottom and fishtailed. Shoals let off before it bogged down. No sense fighting the mud. The vehicle wouldn't make it into the woods anyway, but it put him back within fair reach. Shoals snatched a big flashlight from under the seat and yanked Luther up by the strap, fed it a few shells, and slung it over his back. He inspected his side, which had begun to itch and throb, and raced into the trees, trying to land his man before he hit the river.

44

His first night back, Jacob insisted that his dad would be home and they would take his new sleeping bag into the park and camp under the jungle gym. But Jay never showed. Sandy made a concession and let Jacob set up his pup tent in the living room. She spent half the night packing their clothes and personal things, stacking everything in the foyer, ready to load the trunk and backseat of the car in the morning. The other half of the night she spent at the window, watching for her husband or whomever else might show up and further disrupt their lives. At 4:00
A.M.
she turned off the lights and sat on the couch and listened to Jacob snoring inside the tent, holding the canister of pepper spray in one hand and her cell phone in the other.

The phone rang a little before eight. It was Shoals. She rejected the call and blocked his number. She knew it was time to go.

She crawled in the tent and tickled Jacob awake. “Wake up, little camper. We're going on an adventure!”

“Where?”

“Don't
you
wanna know,” she teased him.

She was convinced Jay wouldn't show and loaded the car with their clothes and essentials. They would leave most of it behind, she decided, in order to make a clean start. Anyway, there was no one left to help her move the heavy furniture.

She handed Jacob an empty cardboard box and told him to fill it with any personal effects he wanted to keep. He bargained with her to take all of his toys, but she said they were sticking to the one-box plan. He filled it easily
with video games and toy cars and robots and stuffed animals, along with a plastic bag containing a few buttons and rusty coins. “Dad gave them to me,” he told her. “He found them in the dirt down in his field. We can't spend the money though.”

She opened the bag and dumped the coins into her hand. They were just small ancient currency with an engraving of a Native American in headdress. A few faded fancy buttons with vaguely militaristic insignias. One of the smaller pieces looked like a scorched lump of copper or rusted metal, filigreed with some design she had to scrub clean with her fingernails to read. Levi Strauss & Co.

“I found that in Dad's compost,” Jacob said.

“It looks like a button off a pair of blue jeans.”

“I know, I want it.”

“Why would you want a filthy button?”

“To remember Dad.”

Useless ornaments and unspendable money. She couldn't begrudge her son this pitiful tribute. She put the objects back in the bag and sealed it and tossed it in with the rest of his junk, which she agreed to load into a larger box.

At the bottom of his things she found a sheaf of papers, more of Jay's stuff. Here were all his farm diagrams and notes, including the map of his proposed underground complex.

“Dad asked me to keep that for him,” Jacob said.

Disconcerted, she tossed the packet back into the box. Was he getting rid of it for good or just passing it along to their son like some congenital obsession?

“Mom,” Jacob said. “Where are we going?”

“We're moving.”

“Is Dad coming with us?”

“I don't know,” she said. “He still has a lot of work to do at the farm.”

“Don't tell Dad,” Jacob said, “but I don't think I want to be a farmer when I grow up. It's too much work.”

They'd left by lunch, carrying their things in one giant load. There was
barely enough room to ride in the Maxima, and they looked comical, all crushed and contorted against boxes and bags and bins of their possessions, but it was only a ten-minute drive across town to her father's house.

Sandy filled her old room with their things. She didn't want to impose on her father when he returned. It was a spacious house, but it could fill up quickly, especially if they had to make room for a day nurse to come in and help with his recovery.

Sandy spent the afternoon tidying, and by early evening she and Jacob were set up comfortably. They ordered delivery pizza for dinner, which they ate in her father's bed, snickering, sometimes laughing outright at a bloopers-and-pranks show on television. It was their first easy moment since Jacob had returned from the farm.

After the show, she left Jacob in bed while she took a shower. She returned fifteen minutes later in pajamas, her spritely hairdo already dried, and Jacob said the hospital had called. “It sounded like an emergency,” he said.

She called the number back but the line was busy. She called the front desk and got lost in reroute. Her heart sagged and seemed to pull free of its tether, just hanging miserable down there in her chest. She pulled on sweats and then decided on something less casual. She put Jacob in a pullover and jeans, deaf to his childish inquiries. She couldn't breathe or find the words to explain where they were going.

She didn't remember the drive to the hospital. It was someone else driving, some transition between the real Sandy and the person who had briefly mistaken her life for something tolerable.

At the hospital they walked the same sterile, fluorescent-lit maze of halls they'd walked a hundred times already, the passages mostly empty at this hour, only a grim, hopeless few left in waiting rooms they seemed unlikely to leave anytime soon, and down the oldest, most haunted corridors of the hospital with its outdated fixtures and depressing signage that hinted at worse possibilities (“Radioactive Medicine”), and they endured the same overly long wait for the aged elevator to groan and hoist them up to the third floor, where the same haggard faces at the nurses' station and the same sharp whiff of antisep
tic would greet them. No matter what was happening, why ever they had been called, she believed this would be the last time they'd walk this route.

The halls were narrow here, the rooms on every side dark, until it seemed she was walking a whip-thin line of white. The linoleum, recently mopped, shone crystalline, and every clip-clopping step she took across it shouted back in amplified echo. She kicked off her shoes, left them in the hall, and glided over the floor as if over thin ice. She kept a hand on Jacob behind her, their march a quiet escape, as if they were trying to achieve an end without notice, trying to keep from wandering off into the darkness.

The door to her father's room was closed. She put her hand to the brushed metal handle, paused, reached for a squirt of sanitizing foam from the pump on the wall. One for Jacob too. The patient's chart was missing from the clear acrylic sleeve on the door. Maybe the doctor had it inside. Was he recording the patient's miraculous improvement or fulfilling the do-not-resuscitate request?

Crossing the threshold meant a new life for them. Nothing would ever be the same. She bowed her head, said a quick word of prayer. She knocked once, perfunctorily, then pushed open the door. There were people within, their backs turned, and she eased out, closing the door.

She looked down at Jacob. “Maybe you should stay here for just a minute. Just let me find out what's going on.”

He took her hand. “It's okay, Mom,” said her little man. “I'm not afraid.”