You Believers (26 page)

He still wasn’t looking at me. “We should go somewhere,” he said.

He’d tried that before. Tried to get me to go to Tybee Island, Pauley Island. Even Savannah. Told me I might be interested in the graveyards there. He’d said that with a smile. Roy has a way of smiling. Even when he was giving you shit. He was always trying to get me out of town, as if leaving could get me out of me and into a new me who doesn’t look back, a new me who could look ahead only to the next round of fun the way Roy did. I never was one of those happy, giggling girls—that was Darly. Momma used to try to get me outside playing and tell me, “The good Lord didn’t mean for you to be such a deep child.” She called my way of thinking about things
questioning the good Lord’s mysteries
. In her mind we were supposed to embrace mysteries—her word for the bad shit that happens to good people. We were supposed to have faith in the Lord’s will. Like Job. She was always talking about Job. But I’m guessing Job never walked into a crack house. My guess is Job’s daughter never
had half her face chewed off by a Rottweiler when she tried to blow the dog for a dealer who said if she did it, he’d give her a rock of crack to smoke.

I realized that Roy was still talking about the idea of going somewhere, and his words were hanging in the air like some kind of smoke signal that was rising, fading away. I hadn’t answered, and he just stared out at the dark like there was nothing but darkness between us. I noticed he wasn’t drinking his beer. And he wasn’t teasing at me the way he usually did when I needed steering away from the black turn and onto a brighter road. I was wondering if he didn’t want to meet Livy Baines, didn’t want to face another mother who’d lost a daughter somewhere. Maybe he was tired of all those dark roads I kept pulling him down. It’s not like there was much crime in the small town of Lake Waccamaw. That was why he liked his job there. He liked being happy, and I guess that was why I liked having him around. But I couldn’t let him out of meeting Livy. She was aching to meet the man who’d found Katy’s truck. She was convinced that Roy had the secret that could lead us to Katy.

I kept watching his face, waiting for him to feel my watching, to look at me, but it seemed the longer he stared out at the darkness, the more he could see. And whatever it was he was looking at, it was bad.

Sometimes the hardest part of my job is listening. Sometimes I have the urge, like we all do, to fill and empty space with words, as if words are like little cushions to take the nervous edge off. But silence is a big space, and if you sit still and open your ears to it, you can hear all kinds of things that go missed most times. I was hearing his hurting inside. And I knew to sit quiet until he could find the words to tell me why.

He finally moved, sipped his beer. “You believe in evil, Shelby?”

I looked out at the darkness and thought about those black
turns my mind takes. If you look at darkness long enough, you can start to believe evil things are hiding in the shadows. And I was thinking, was it a man or evil that did things such as snatching a woman off the side of a road? Then a gusty breeze blew up, filling the air with that honeysuckle smell that wraps around your skin, softening everything and filling your head with nothing but the sweetness of things. I couldn’t declare a belief in evil. Not with that sweet air all around me and the goodness of Roy beside me. “On bad days,” I said. “Not always. And today was feeling like a bad day until you came along.”

Without seeing his face, I knew he was smiling. I can always feel him smiling, even when he’s on the phone. He turned to me and shook his head. “There was a girl in Land Fall.” He looked back at the dark, and his words played again in my head like the beginning of a story. This was the bad thing hiding behind the hurting in his face. Land Fall. I knew where Land Fall was. I didn’t know anybody there, but I had this feeling that what he had to say would have something to do with me. So I asked him what had happened to the girl in Land Fall.

He went to the screen door. “It’s hard to believe a man could do the things he did to this girl.” I thought of Darly. I thought of all the girls who had been and still would be damaged by some man turned monster. You know, we all know it happens every day. He didn’t tell me what this man had done to the girl in Land Fall. Just said it in three clipped words:
rape and assault
. He said it was a rape and assault like he’d never seen. And I sat thinking about those words
rape
,
assault
, like Band-Aids, little plastic sticky things we paste over some wounds to hide the damage done. The words can never speak the truth.

He finished his beer and put the bottle on the table, and I could see the hard trembling in his hand. I reached, took his hand, and
pulled him back to sit with me. I thought of lighting a candle to bring some softness to the porch, but I didn’t want to move away from him. It seemed he’d fly apart into pieces if I stopped stroking the back of his hand.

Finally he sighed, eased up enough to talk. “It’s a miracle,” he said. “Somehow the girl got away. Ran to the neighbors’ house. They said she looked like a bloody angel, a naked, bloody angel falling in their door, said they’d never dreamed of such horrors in the world. The girl’s mom, they’ve got her so sedated she can hardly move.”

“What about the girl?” I said.

He shook his head. “Unconscious. They don’t know if she’ll come out of it.” He let himself lean into me then. I’d never seen him broken like that, and we’ve seen a lot of things. I wrapped my arm around him, pulled him close. I’d always seen the cheerful, we-can-solve-it Roy, a man who could wade into any kind of mess, fix what was broken, find what was lost. That was why every county, township, city around here kept him in their loops. Cops, they get mighty territorial, but everybody welcomed the eyes and instincts of Roy.

I thought of the words people like to say at time like this:
It will be all right; we’ll have to wait and see; we’ll get through this; everything happens for a reason
. I hate such words. Let them go to a preacher if they want some patched-up hope based on nothing but a need. I knew he wasn’t telling me everything. He knew I didn’t need to hear about another girl torn apart. There’s a wisdom in not telling all you know. I held Roy close, rubbed a light circle on his shoulder to soothe him the way my momma used to do. “We’re gonna get out of all this mess one day,” I said. He nodded, just barely. He didn’t need to say what he was thinking. He was always wanting to go somewhere. I know in his mind he likes to see himself throwing a fishing line into the surf, standing in the sand barefoot, not really giving a shit if he catches something, just happy to be standing in the sun
with cool water foaming and swirling around his legs. I know he sees the two of us biking on a beach. He’s told me you haven’t lived until you’ve biked on a beach with that sea air blowing all around in your hair.

He sees going to these happy places as a solution to most all things, but I know they are only distractions. They give a way of stepping out of the mess of this world until it’s all over and we cross that line to the other side of living. And even then, I wonder, do we really ever get set free from this world, or does it keep calling? I’ll have to live with not knowing. And like you, like all of us, I have to work to make some kind of peace with not knowing a damn thing about this world we like to think makes sense according to some grand design. I thought of Billy’s words:
This is fucked up
. Then realized I’d said it out loud. Roy nodded and sank deeper into my arms. We stayed on the porch that night, dozing in and out on the wicker sofa, waiting to see if a phone would ring. But there were no calls. It seemed the whole world was worn out from the day.

A Simple Plan

Jesse woke to the sound of Luke’s dog collar clanging. He sat up, saw Luke looking at him, then back to the door. “Sorry, Luke. Guess I slept too hard to hear you.” He got up, opened his door, watched the dog head down the stairs for the kitchen, where he’d push through the doggie door and go outside. Jessie listened for any sounds in the house. His mom would be on a plane by now, but his dad … he heard his dad downstairs talking to Luke as if Luke were his favorite child. Jesse turned toward his bathroom, remembered his pants on the floor there.

He went on down the hall to the guest bathroom, then saw his dad coming up the stairs. “Your mom said you were sick last night.”

Jesse dropped his head and nodded. “I’m doing better.” His dad followed him into his room. “You want to see a doctor?”

Jesse shook his head, sat on his bed. “I’ve got crackers. Soup in the kitchen. Plenty of Coke. I’ll just take it easy today, and I’ll be all right.”

His dad glanced toward his bathroom. “The maid will take care of things.”

“She already here?”

His dad shook his head. “I told her to come after lunch. Figured you’d want to sleep in.”

“Good,” Jesse said. “I’d rather throw those clothes in the trash than have her clean them.” He’d have to burn it all in the fire pit out back.

His dad nodded, stood, and went toward the door.

“You heading out to the marina?”

“I thought I’d stay on the boat for the weekend since your mom’s gone to Dallas. Hang with some old fishing buddies of mine.”

“Cool,” Jesse said. “You go on and have a good time. Mom said she’d leave me some cash and her car.”

His dad reached for his wallet, put a fifty on the bedside table. “Here’s a little more. Call my cell if you need anything.” Jesse watched his dad, head down, guilty, start to head out the door, then stop. “Be sure to set the alarm when you leave. There was a family robbed on the next block.”

Jesse sat up straight. “Really?”

“Yep.” His dad walked out the door.

He waited until he heard the garage door open, then close. He grabbed the backpack from his closet. He pulled out the fluffy stuffed dog.

He reached into the bag to see what might be of interest to Zeke. The lady’s Rolex. Pearls, and what looked like ruby earrings. A diamond tennis bracelet. He wrapped the jewelry in a t-shirt, slipped it into the bottom of the bag. Wrapped the vase in another shirt, put it in, then shoved in a couple of books in case he got searched. He put the dog on top, its dumb little face sticking out. His phone buzzed. “Yeah.”

“It’s Mike.”

“I know it’s Mike.”

“You do it?” Mike asked.

“Do what? Let’s see, I’ve done a lot of things since I last saw you.”

“The rich girl. Did you do that rich girl out there where you live?”

“Want details?”

Mike was silent.

Jesse waited. “You there?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Look, Jesse, I need some cash. There’s an old farmer out here. He died, and they’re all going to his funeral tomorrow. I figured we could hit the house while they’re all at the funeral. This old man, they say he had a gun collection. No telling what we could find. We go in, we get the stuff. Nobody gets hurt.”

Jesse rubbed his neck, already going tense. “Look, man, I’m busy. I’ll give some thought to that dead farmer. I’m getting some shit together to take to Zeke. Nicki Lynn had the kid. So I’m gonna go to the hospital, try to unload some stuff to Zeke.”

“It’s on the news,” Mike said.

Jesse picked up the remote, aimed it at the TV, flicked channels, sports, infomercials,
Survivor
, and some game show. Nothing about a rape in Land Fall. Just CNN, and they were talking about some earthquake. “What’s on the news?”

“That girl.”

“Which girl?”

“The rich girl. My granny was watching her story on the TV, and I heard it.”

Jesse flicked through the channels again. Nothing: game shows, talk shows, the usual shit. “I guess I just missed it. What’d they say?”

“Something about a girl getting assaulted.”

“What else they say?”

“Just kept going on about something like this happening in Land Fall.”

Jesse looked out his window to the empty street. “They’d have come by now if they thought it was me.”

“They’re just saying the home was robbed and the girl was assaulted in Land Fall. No leads yet, they said.”

“They never say everything on the news.”

“So you want in on the farmer’s house?” Mike asked

“Maybe. Let me call you after I see Zeke.”

“I really need some cash, man.”

“I’ll front you some,” Jesse said. “Just let me do my business.”

“When?” Mike said. “There’s hardly nothing to eat in this house.”

“And this means what to me?” Jesse said.

Mike sighed. “I guess I could get out there, hit the house myself.”

“I guess you could do that.” Jesse remembered his clothes on the bathroom floor. “Look, I got stuff to do. Sit tight.”

“I’ll handle it,” Mike said, but his mind wasn’t in it. Jessie could always tell when Mike’s mind was someplace else.

“Something doesn’t feel right,” he said. “I gotta go.” He clicked off the phone. It would take less than an hour to burn his clothes, clean the knives. Then he’d have to burn the towel that covered the knives. He’d dump the knives on the way downtown. He had a new plan, a simple plan. He’d get out of town, get a new ID, disappear before they even figured out he was gone.

Little Room for Lying

It didn’t seem right to eat a dead man’s food, but Mike figured he’d done worse. And the old farmer didn’t have family in town, so most likely the stuff would be thrown away. Canned stuff might go to some shelter. But Mike needed it, and his granny, she deserved a good meal. He ran cold water over the frozen ham in the sink and told himself he was doing the world a kindness in some way, making a meal for his granny, even if he had to steal it from a dead man. His granny loved fried ham with her eggs. Mike smiled, thinking how she’d like the surprise. In a drawer he found white potatoes that had gone soft, but there was one good sweet potato left.

Mike left the ham in the sink to soak and went out on the back porch to have a smoke. He’d found the cigarettes on the old man’s coffee table. Mike stood on his granny’s back porch and looked across the fields to the old man’s house, still empty, waiting for someone to come and carry the rest of the stuff away. Maybe they’d have a yard sale. That was what they did with dead people’s things.