You Believers (29 page)

So we joined in the barbecue at the back of my house. And volunteers brought on the groceries, all right: ribs, greens, cornbread, chocolate cake, and homemade ice cream. Sam got silly-ass drunk on whiskey while the rest got nice and juiced on the rum-runners Sam’s girlfriend was mixing up. We ate and drank and danced until we could hardly stand the laughing anymore. And suddenly they all left. It was like Roy gave some signal, and they started packing up and leaving until it was just Roy helping me clear up things, with that way of smiling he has. I swear you can feel the heat of his smile in the dark. So he stayed that night. And we slept on blankets we piled under the tarp that had been put up for shade during the day. Roy hates coming inside my house, and he won’t sleep there. So we stayed out all night. Woke with the predawn birds. When he was leaving—as much as I wanted him every night—I told him we couldn’t be doing that again. I told him I didn’t have time for pleasures like that in my life. He told me I was crazy. He didn’t get mad or sad, just told me with that smile he wears even when he’s hurting.

I heard Livy yelling inside, and I was glad to hear her holding her ground with her husband on the phone. It would make her stronger for what was to come. I thought of Roy out there by the lake, waiting for us with information about the Land Fall girl. I leaned in the door and called, “We really ought to get going. I’m heading to the truck now.” I went down the sidewalk and admired the lantana spreading past the flower beds and into the driveway, and I saw the purple wave petunias wilting in the baskets along the fence and the whole yard suffering from neglect, and I thought the first thing I’d do when we came back was water those plants. I knew Katy would want it that way.

I got in my truck, started the engine, and looked toward the house. Finally she came out, struggling with her purse and her sunglasses and the leather tote bag crammed with the scrapbook and that framed poem and who knew what else. She got in, arranged herself, and pulled her seatbelt on. “I’m sorry,” she said. “My husband.” She slipped on her sunglasses and looked ahead, and I could she was fighting tears. “My husband,” she said again. “He’s like that detective, says I should let the police do their job and come home where I belong.” She sighed, shook her head. “Truth is, he just wants his dinner on the table and his breakfast made.”

I put the truck in gear, hit the gas, and said, “Everybody wants breakfast made.”

“He wants his wife,” she said. “You know men, whether they’re from Suck Creek or Lookout Mountain, they want their wives right there doing what they expect their wives to be doing: menus, dishes, laundry.”

“That’s why I’ll never marry,” I said. She looked at me with a sadness like I’d just said I had an incurable disease.

“How old are you?” she asked.

I made like I was checking my cell phone. “Old enough to know better,” I said. I know I broke my mother’s heart not getting married, not giving her the grandbabies she wanted. I didn’t need another woman telling me I’d chosen the path of least reward, suggesting that I’d regret my selfishness one day.

We got to a red light, and she pulled the overstuffed tote to her chest as if Katy’s stuff gave her comfort. “You think this Roy will help?” I looked at her clutching that tote, and I smelled her perfume, and I took in those leather pumps, jeans pressed with a crease, starched blue shirt, and string of pearls, and all I could think was
God bless you, lady
. I don’t believe much in God, but you can’t change your
raising, and my momma raised me to say
God bless their hearts
when you saw some frail, misguided soul doing something vain or stupid or flat-out wrong. “Do you?” she asked.

“What?” I said, my eyes on the road.

“You’re not telling me something,” she said.

I gave her a glance to show I meant respect. “I’m just thinking.” The light changed, and I remembered her question, and I said, “Roy will do all he can to help you.” I didn’t tell her that Roy had said she wouldn’t want to know what the man had done to the girl who’d lived. And I could feel it, that shift I get inside when we’re searching for clues. We were on the right track, and I had a stronger feeling that it wouldn’t end at a good place. I said, “Roy always helps. ”

She rummaged through her tote, said, “I meant to bring some bottled water.”

I nodded toward the backseat. “You know, I’ve got just about anything you could want back there. Water, soda, trail mix, and whiskey. I’ve got some Xanax tucked away in the first-aid kit. And a Smith and Wesson, a hunting knife. Even got a snakebite kit.” I looked to her. “Just reach back in the cooler and get a water.”

She grabbed a water and put the cool bottle to her face. “Billy told me there are alligators out there where Katy likes to go sit and write.”

I nodded.

“What do you do if you see one?”

I was thinking,
Dear God, don’t let us find this girl half eaten by some alligator
. And I thought of that woman’s leg they’d found. It was too short to be Katy’s leg, They were figuring a Hispanic girl. And I felt Livy looking at me, wanting an answer. “You make a point to stay clear of where you might see one. Unless you’re in a car or a good-sized boat. Lots of Billy Bobs around here get in deep trouble fast, thinking they can poke a gator with a stick or tease it with a chicken leg or a rib bone.”

I looked over, saw her eyes skittering. “Don’t worry about gators,” I said. “According to Billy and the folks at the lodge, she likes to park by the lake to watch the sun set. There’s no alligators in that lake. They’re back in the canals.”

The Cape Fear River bridge was rising like a roller coaster in the distance. Livy looked out at the bridge and went for tissues in her purse. “She should never have left home.” I was trying to get in the right lane, but the semi ahead was going too slow, and the one behind was coming up too fast. I heard her say, “I’ve never been over this bridge,” and I saw a chance to break between the trucks. I stomped the gas, scooted in and out and passed, and boom, we were ahead of the clump of traffic and zooming on in the open lane. Livy clutched her tissue with both hands and smiled at me. “That was some race-car driving, there, Shelby.” I liked the way she said my name, the way my momma used to say it, all soft and drawn out and round, the way you draw out the sounds of the things you love. I blinked that thought away and said “I guess all us Southern gals got a little NASCAR driver in us just waiting to rev up and stretch on out to the passing lane.”

“Not me,” she said. “I’ll never get used to driving those mountain roads, those sheer drops down.” She sighed. “But Katy, she loves zipping along, taking those curves so fast I sit and grip the car seat like that could keep me safe on the mountain with her behind the wheel. Katy always says, ‘It’s just a road, Momma. What’s a road gonna do to you? You’re the driver. You just keep your eyes on the road, and you’ll be all right.’ And she knows full well people go spinning off roads all the time.” She looked down at that water churning below. “That’s awful looking,” she said. “It’s so dark.”

“It’s tannins,” I said, “All the vegetation up the river.”

“I never had a need to go over this bridge,” she said. “We only visited the nice parts of town. The beaches, mainly. Sometimes we’d
come in, do shopping downtown, have lunch by the river. It doesn’t look so scary from back there.” We were back to solid ground, and I was praying Roy would have a good lead. “This place we’re going used to be nothing but farms,” I said. “But Lake Waccamaw is some prime real estate these days.”

She squeezed my arm. “So this sheriff. You’ve worked with him before?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, and I felt myself smiling.

She poked at my arm, grinned. “Ohhh, you like him.”

I nodded, kept my eyes on the road. “He’s a friend—a good friend. The kind of man anybody likes.”

“But you
really
like him,” she said.

“I don’t have time for that,” I said, but I was still grinning. “You’re gonna love Roy,” I said. “All the woman love Roy. He’s kind of a mix of devil and angel, has those big, soft brown eyes that make you feel warm and safe, like the world is a good place just waiting to happen if you give it a chance. Then he’s got this little devil grin that makes you want to do something bad.”

“Shelby Waters!” She slapped at my arm. And that was all right because I wanted to pull her out of that worrying place. “I’m a married woman!” she said, but she was grinning too.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I know. But that Pete, he keeps asking when you want to move into his condo.”

“Quit,” she said. “I wish I could leave that house, but Billy needs me around. Drives me crazy sleeping in that place. But he needs me.”

“But you need the ocean air,” I said. “You need to take care of you.” She had no idea where her road was going. But for the moment she looked almost content.

She got busy pulling out her compact and checking her lipstick, and I thought how sometimes a little vanity can be a comforting thing.

It’s the little things like that that I love about this world. Even at our worst we want to look good for somebody. And Roy would make her feel good, nothing lewd, but he’d just help her remember she was a woman, a good woman who was patient and strong. He has a way of reminding you of your best self.

And as if he could hear my thinking, my cell rang: Roy. “We’re over the bridge, almost there,” I said. He asked if he could tell me now, and I said, “Sure,” all light and lively, as if he’d just asked if I wanted a Coke. And he told me. The man did brutal things to a girl. He liked doing it. He took his time. And he kept talking about a girl he’d jacked, a girl in a blue truck with plates from Tennessee. I just nodded and kept my eyes on the road, knowing the words before he said them. “You’re gonna have to tell her,” he said. I felt Livy looking at me, so I gave her a we’re-working-things-out face and a little nod. Roy was saying that they were releasing only the assault story on the news and that they were offering a thousand-dollar reward to anyone with information. I asked, “You still meeting us at the inn?”

“I’m already here,” he said.

“That means you were in a hurry.” He didn’t say anything. Roy never hurried. “I’ll be right there,” I said. I stepped on the gas as I hung up the phone.

She was looking at me. “What’s the news?”

I looked over to a mother about to go on the worst journey of her life. “He’s already there,” I said. “That’s all.”

She knew there was something more, kept her eyes on the highway. “This is a long road,” she finally said. And I could see that she was crying, just a dabbing at the eyes with her fingertip the way ladies do. I put a tissue in her hand.

“Yeah, it is a long road,” I said. “There’s not much out here but old family farms—they’ll slowly be sold off, chopped up into residential
developments. It’s the way of the future. Nice brick homes and cul-de-sacs.”

She took a breath, sat straighter, looked out. “What do they grow around here?”

“Mostly corn,” I said. “Tobacco. In the old days it was cotton. But it’s cheaper to import cotton now. Slavery, it just moves around the world. It don’t ever really go away.”

“Doesn’t,” she said.

I looked at her.

“Slavery
doesn’t
ever really go away.”

Now, I’m not one who minds being corrected, but that’s for important things. I couldn’t let her play school marm. I could have said something hard to her, but what she had going was hard enough, so I just told her I had my natural way of talking and my public way. Told her that with her I thought I could be my natural way. She touched my arm and said it didn’t matter how I talked, and I knew she was saying she was sorry. “They grow corn, tobacco, soybeans, even marijuana in some parts. Those are the big cash crops these days.”

“Oh, yes,” she said “Lawrence told me about that. He’s big on knowing where the money is, where it’s been, and where it’s going. He’s big on knowing things. Swears by the
Wall Street Journal
the way folks used to swear by the Bible.”

“It’s the way of the world,” I said.

She sighed, did a little tight thing with her mouth the way people do when they’re not sure they want to tell you something. “Lawrence is big on knowing things and making sure you know he knows things.”

I gave a laugh. “Sounds like a lot of men.”

“Like that detective,” she said. “The detective should know things. He is a professional, and he profiled Katy, and he said she probably was drunk and out running around. Lawrence was furious
when I told him I slapped that man, said it was a serious offense, said the detective had done me a favor.”

I said, “Fuck the detective.” She flinched at the word, so I told her I was sorry, and she gave a little nod. I scrambled for something useful to say. “I read an article in the
New Yorker
about profiles. These profilers act like scientists, but they basically use fake psychic tricks, the leading questions, the broad questions. They’re actually right 2.7 percent of the time. Call Lawrence and tell him that.”

She smiled, looked at me. “He’ll want to know which issue of the
New Yorker
.”

“I don’t know,” I said, laughing. “But I’ll let you know when I get back home.”

She sighed and looked out at a field of blown-down trees. It was eerie-looking, had to be five to ten acres, just piles of broken tree trunks, branches, not a green leaf left. In time the kudzu, honeysuckle, weeds would take over. Or more likely one of those developers with model homes in mind. I was feeling sad for all the lost wild places. Livy had told me that even Suck Creek was filling up with condos sprawled along the river. She said I wouldn’t know it anymore. And knowing that made me want to go back. But my house, it was gone now. Then she asked, “When did you lose your faith?”

I knew this would be coming. They always expect a searcher to be some kind of believer. And when you’re not, it hurts.

“When my sister was killed,” I said. She looked at me, wanted more. “I was sick with sorrow, so I went to the pastor, and I said if Jesus had his eye on the sparrow, why wasn’t he looking after Darly? And he said some of us, the best of us most often, were sacrificial souls, meant to give our lives.
Kind of like Jesus
was exactly how he put it. My daddy, he just gave a snort—a quiet man’s way of saying,
To hell with you, mister
, but Momma, she held on to that line like a comfort—her daughter was made into some sacrificial lamb. I don’t
believe in sacrificial lambs. I believe in cruel people and good people and weak people and strong. You mix ’em up, and shit goes down. That’s all.”