The More They Disappear (26 page)

“Go on inside,” Chance said after he'd finished hollering. “And leave the gun.” Mark closed his eyes and prepared himself for the blow that would knock him out. “You wet your pants,” Chance said. “I have a bathroom, you know.” Mark couldn't have replied even had he wanted to. He had no breath to speak. Chance grabbed his chin and turned it toward him. “Open your eyes,” he said. Mark did. “You shouldn't have come here like this. It's not fair to me. Bring all this shit out here and beg for money. A rich boy like you? How would it look if I played along and helped you?” It wasn't anger but disappointment that colored Chance's eyes. “I guess I should say something like don't hustle a hustler. But you weren't trying to hustle me. Or maybe don't trust a drug dealer but that shit's a given.” Chance reached his hand inside Mark's pocket and took back the cash, then peeled off a handful of bills and dropped them in the trunk before taking the pills as well. “Gas money,” he said and snorted. He craned his neck to look around. “It could be worse. I know you wouldn't have come out here unless you were scared, but you're still alive. That's a start.” Chance sucked the cool night air and exhaled. “There's something else John Donne said that I like. I don't get to say it enough 'cause nobody around here appreciates poetry, but you might.” Chance looked to the sky or to God or to the heavens, then closed his eyes and chanted. “‘But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.'” Mark cried in silence.

*   *   *

Lewis swung a loopy left after Joe O'Malley finished chronicling the details of his father's carousing. O'Malley ducked and gave Lewis a sharp punch to the kidney followed by a left hook that knocked him breathless. As he dropped to one knee, Lewis realized the smaller man could have done much worse. O'Malley set to apologizing—for punching him, for his shit father, for his mother's predicament. Then he said, “But it's just business, kid.” Lewis tried to respond but he could only gasp.

Once his feet found purchase, Lewis staggered to the Explorer and made his way home. Sophie and the girls were gone. He started rereading his father's will while nursing a fifth of bourbon, and with each sip, the booze ate away at whatever lay inside him. By the time his family came home, most of the bottle was gone—hard at work corroding Lewis's better qualities. Though his drinking had long been on the verge of problematic, Lewis rarely lost his temper. He was a silent, apologetic drunk, but now his eyes were reddened from a stress that seemed primed to break him. He wielded the rolled-up copy of his father's will like a club.

“Go to your room,” he snapped at the girls. Ginny and Stella froze—rooted by fear, but instead of backtracking, Lewis embraced the path he'd started down. “Now,” he barked. Sophie glanced at the bottle, gave each girl a push in the right direction, and marched valiantly past Lewis to the kitchen.

“There's chicken and fish,” she said as she put away the leftovers.

“So you saw your dad tonight?”

“He treated us to dinner. We talked strategy for your campaign, but I don't recall it involving getting drunk.”

“Maybe if you'd consulted with me, I could have let you in on the plan.”

“Consulting? Is that what we're calling it?” Sophie closed the refrigerator and faced him.

“I don't want your father around,” Lewis said. “He's not welcome here.”

“What are you talking about?”

Lewis tossed the will onto the counter. “You know that money my dad lost, how yesterday you felt so sorry for my mom, well, your father knew all about it.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“He's a liar, Sophie. And he controls us with his money. He did it with this house. He did it to my dad. He's doing it with the election. He's playing God or the devil. Who knows?”

“You're drunk, Lewis. You're not making sense.”

“He knew my dad was gambling but he didn't tell me or you or anyone else. Then he paid off my father's debts knowing he would just lose more. Why would he do that?”

“It sounds like he was trying to help.”

“Right. He's always helping, isn't he? Has all the answers. He pushes the buttons and pulls the strings and we dance like we're fucking puppets.”

Sophie shook her head. “Does he push buttons or pull strings, Lewis? I'm a bit confused.”

Lewis felt tongue-tied and punched down on the will. The jars atop the kitchen counter shook and Sophie yelped before slipping past him. “Fuck you,” he managed to say as she fled. He stalked her to the living room with the will in hand. She took up residence on the other side of the couch, which they circled like wrestlers.

“Don't do this, Lewis,” she said. “You're scaring me. You're scaring the girls.”

“Maybe I should hand you a couple pills like your daddy, drug you up so you don't feel anything, so that you're not scared. And maybe I should do the same, so we don't realize what a sham our life is.” Sophie said nothing. Her eyes darted around the room. Lewis wanted to hurt her, not physically, but he had so much hurt to give. “Maybe if we take enough of them, we'll forget what a terrible mother you are. Maybe we won't think about how selfish you are, how you're just your father's plaything. Maybe I won't pay attention to the way he puts his arm around you like you're your fucking mother reincarnated.”

Sophie started to cry. “Stop it, Lewis,” she whimpered. “Stop it.”

The door to the girls' room opened. Stella was standing there holding Ginny's hand. Sophie said, “It's okay, girls, just go back in your room. Your daddy and I are talking.” The door shut softly—the girls afraid of breaking things more than they were already broken.

Lewis winced at what he was doing. “It's bullshit,” he said and threw the will at Sophie. She ducked and it thudded against the wall. Pages scattered to the floor.

“Who's the creep, Lewis?” Sophie said, taking her turn. “Who's the bad parent? The lousy husband? Without my father, you'd be nothing. You're right. Our life is a sham. Because you've done nothing to make it better. You relied on my dad. And you relied on your own dad, too. Even fat Lew Mattock was more of a man than you.” Sophie's words stung more than she could realize, and still she kept on. “You've never made me happy. I take pills so I don't have to look at the man I married and think about how I only stay because of the daughters
I
brought into this world.” Lewis lunged to grab her, not to hurt her, but to stop her, to smother her words, but Sophie slipped his grasp, grabbed a candlestick from the shelves—one of her countless knickknacks—and hurled it at his head. When she missed, she picked up another and tried again. Then she ran to the girls' room and turned the lock.

Lewis slumped to the ground and cried into his hands, which he'd balled into fists. A quiet blanketed the house. In time his fingers relaxed and he picked up one of the candlesticks. It was spotted from lack of use and on the bottom there was a
MADE IN TAIWAN
sticker. Lewis had never seen the candlesticks before, never noticed them at least, but now, as he looked at the dents in the wall above his head, he knew he'd never be able to forget them.

 

nine

Harlan woke to the sound of scurrying outside his bedroom and mistook it for a creature that had risen with the sun. Then he saw Mattie's face peering through the window screen. “You driving that police car exclusive now?” she asked. “'Cause if you don't want your truck, I'll take it off your hands.”

Harlan sat up. His chest was pale and flat as a pine board and his feet poked out from the bedrags like prairie dogs checking for danger. “That truck's the only decent thing I own.”

“Then why ain't you drivin' it?” The sunlight pounded through the window around Mattie's head. There must not have been a cloud in the sky. Harlan closed his eyes. “You hungover?” she asked.

“No.”

“You look hungover.”

“I'm tired.” He'd been unable to sleep the night before and tried smoking dope to relax, but it had just set his mind to wandering.

“I'll make coffee,” Mattie said and disappeared.

Harlan heard her barge in the front door. “Shouldn't you be in school?” he called out.

“It's the weekend.”

“Is it?”

“Yep.” A minute later she walked down the hall into his bedroom. “Don't you even have coffee?”

Harlan pulled a pillow over his eyes and fell back into a restless sleep with dreams he couldn't remember other than that they weren't sweet. The noise of Mattie flitting about roused him every now and again but not enough to spur him from bed, and when he finally dragged himself back into the world, it was to a new home. Papers that littered the hallway were piled in neat stacks and the busted gasket, which had made a stain on the kitchen's splintering hardwoods, rested on a dish towel. Half-empty soda cans had been thrown away and the ashtrays were emptied and the dishes sat clean in the drying rack. Mattie had opened all the windows and a brisk wind swept the stale air from the house.

Harlan ran the shower. He was run-down and spread thin—the weight of things since Lew's death taking its toll. He felt good about the investigation, but there was nothing concrete pointing to the murder, and in the back of his mind a voice fretted that he was following the wrong track.

He found Mattie outside, wiping down the porch with a ragged, dun-colored mop. She picked up the fraying pieces of cord that fell from it and stuffed them into a trash bag tied to her belt. Another bag of trash was burning in the drum and sour smoke rose to the sky.

“We need to get you a comb,” she said.

Strands of Harlan's wet hair had clumped together like muddy icicles before his face. He pulled them back and snapped on his hat. “That's what these are for.” He looked at the house and whistled. “I don't think the place has looked this good since—” He paused, thought of Angeline. “Since a really long time. What do I owe you?”

“Not a dime. I was thinking we could spend the day together and hunt for sang or fish for channel cats or just pick up trash like good citizens.”

“I'm pretty busy,” he said.

Mattie planted herself before him like an emaciated sentry—skeleton fingers on bony hips. “Is that why you got fucked up last night?”

“I didn't get fucked up. I've been working overtime.” He looked in the direction of the Spanish Manor. “Your dad know you're over here?”

“Nope.”

“He didn't seem to like you spending time with the sheriff.”

“Henry's full of it,” she said but there was a hiccup in her voice.

“If he ever tried to hurt you, you'd let me know, right?”

She ground the ball of one foot on the ground like she was squishing a bug, muttered, “Yeah.” He wished she'd look him in the eye but understood her hesitation. He hadn't exactly stood up to Henry Dawson when they'd met.

Harlan put out his hand for a formal shake. “I owe you, Matilda. How about a rain check?”

“I don't accept credit,” she said. “How about you spend ten minutes looking at that burnt trailer with me instead. That's part of your job, right? Investigating fires?”

“I've been there already,” he said. “Why are you so caught up on that fire, anyway?”

“Well, this morning I caught a big, black snake over there and while I was stringing it on a fence, this old man comes out and starts talking to me about how that fire weren't no accident.”

“What old man?”

“Henderson Jones. Two last names. He's lived there like forever. People say he's crazy but he ain't. Anyway, he took care of that burnt property, so he should know. I seen him out there mowing. Hell, that trailer looked better than Henry's and mine.”

“What did he say caused the fire?”

“He didn't. Maybe you can get it out of him with your policeman ways.”

Harlan looked up at the sun. “Ten minutes,” he said.

Mattie led him through the woods on a path that came out along one of the trailer park's gravel roads. From a distance Harlan could see her father's place but she took the long way around. When they came upon the remains of the fire, he tried to entertain Mattie's suspicions, but Harlan couldn't tell arson from an accident. The trailer looked the same to him as it had the night it burned. Mattie was right about the lawn, though—the grass was shorn neat. And the site backed up to a rocky, less used road into the trailer park—something Harlan had missed earlier. If you wanted to set a fire and get away, there wasn't a better property in the Spanish Manor.

“Who'd you say took care of this place?”

“Henderson Jones. He lives right there.” She pointed to a trailer with mums in containers and a collection of garden gnomes.

Harlan climbed the steps and knocked. An ancient-looking black man came to the door and asked him what the hell he wanted. Harlan apologized and asked him if he might know anything about the fire next door.

“It's about damn time,” Jones said and stepped outside with the help of a cane. “That wasn't no damn electrical fire.”

It turned out Frank hadn't talked to Jones. The old man said his neighbors had been too busy spinning yarns and giving the deputy a hard time, and the deputy, for his part, wasn't interested in information that didn't make his job easier.

“Why not call the sheriff's department and make a report?” Harlan asked.

“Shit. I don't care
that
much. I just took care of the place so I wouldn't get no devil snakes in my yard. I can't stand no snakes.”

Mattie pointed to a four-foot black racer draped over the bent fence that separated the two trailers. “That's the one I got today,” she said.

Jones glanced at the snake and shivered. “If no one cleans this place up, it's gonna become a den for snakes and yellow jackets and all sorts of mean-ass shit.” He shook his head.