These People That Are Broke
They walked the half mile slow. They cut from dark streets into dark woods despite the early hour.
“You bring the knife?” Noah said.
“ ’Course,” Purv said, patting the backpack slung over his shoulder.
They padded across dry leaves and broken branches. Purv stumbled once, Noah grabbed hold of him. The breeze was too light to make it through the trees so nothing shook above them; all they could make out was the steady rush of the Red, going on like it always did, no matter the weather.
“My foot is cold,” Purv said. He stopped for a moment, leaned on a wide trunk, and lifted his foot. His sneaker was old.
“There’s a hole.”
Noah stopped. “Maybe tape it, or pad the inside with newspaper. It’ll hold awhile.”
While he was leaning Purv lit a cigarette, then passed it to Noah and lit another for himself.
Purv had come by that morning early, found Noah in the kitchen eating a bag of Cheetos for breakfast. They’d shared them while they watched the news report and saw a pearly reporter standing in the center of the square, Mae scowling from the window behind.
“Has your grandmother seen the Buick yet?” Purv said.
“If she has she ain’t said nothin’. I reckon I could convince her it ain’t supposed to have four doors.”
They walked on, twisting lines of smoke rising from each, only the glow of their cigarettes sharp enough to shape them.
They’d seen men by the end of Raine’s street earlier, big men with reputations, exchanging looks and glancing up and around. Noah was glad they were searching too, that Joe had friends like that.
Purv kept his eyes on the ground, kneeled sudden, and sifted the leaves. “Thought I saw one,” he said, then stood again.
They’d been searching for Alabama Pinks since they were small. They hadn’t ever found one.
“There’s a guy in Windale that’ll pay fifty bucks for a single flower,” Purv said.
Noah frowned ’cause Purv had been saying that for years.
“I’m serious. Ricky Brannon reckons his brother found a whole load in Hell’s Gate. Made thousands.”
“Ricky Brannon’s full of shit,” Noah said.
They walked on.
“I was thinkin’, how come you ain’t told Raine about dialysis?”
Noah shrugged. “ ’Cause that’s all she’ll see.”
*
They found her by the Red, sitting on the bank with her legs falling over.
Her eyes were red. She told them to go.
Noah settled beside her. She looked sad so he tried to take her hand in his but she batted it away and she told him she’d cut it off if he tried it again.
“I heard Black say they’re searchin’ the Lumen house today,” Noah said.
“You reckon Samson Lumen is the Bird?” Purv said.
“No. Samson goes to church. The way folk tell it, the Bird is the devil,” Noah said.
“You believe in the devil?” Raine said, looking over at him.
“If you believe in God it ain’t much of a reach.”
“I never said I believe in God,” she said.
“What then?” Noah said.
“Maybe nothin’. If he wants me to look up he’s gotta come down . . . prove himself.”
“You have to believe,” Noah said, staring. “You have to, Raine.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause this can’t be all there is. It ain’t long enough . . . it ain’t even close.”
Purv picked up a small rock and tossed it in the water.
“What about the lady from the clinic? What are we gonna do?” Purv said.
“Watch her,” Raine said.
“What if there ain’t a link? Just a sad story.”
“We’ll watch her just in case. We’ll keep searchin’. We’ll follow up on all we got.”
Raine stared at the water, at the turn and the rush.
The three sat together, wondering what had gone and what would come.
*
Black stood out front of the Lumen house, drinking coffee from a flask, a grim look on his face. They couldn’t search the house. Deely had pulled Milt Kroll back from vacation. He’d been fishing the Caney Fork River and weren’t happy but he was doing his job. Samson said they could go in but Samson’s name weren’t on the deed. It was a blow Black saw coming a mile off, which was why he requested a warrant, but Judge Delane weren’t having none of it. The grounds were soft and everyone knew it.
They’d called in men from the Briar County Sheriff’s Office. They were at the station now, watching the trucks out front and waiting.
Joe would likely make a move if Black didn’t do something soon.
They could’ve charged Joe for knocking Milk down. They could’ve locked him up and with his record he’d serve decent time again, but Milk wouldn’t allow that, not with the man’s daughter still out there.
There were fields across from the house, long straight fields that used to be colored and worked.
Before long he was joined by Ernie Redell. Ernie had been sheriff for ten years, though Black had known him twenty. With a sharp mind and an easy charm, there’d been talk of Ernie running for senator as long as Black could remember. Ernie always maintained he was doing what he loved, serving the people and all that, but Black had heard he was tiring of late. The Briar girls wrecked him. Now his smile took a breath longer to form, his voice had lost some of the oil.
They shook hands. Ernie turned and watched the house. The lights were on ’cause of the cloud, they’d set up a couple of floods too but the team were packing their shit. Deely had left it late to saunter over and halt the search, with Milt frowning from his Mercedes.
“Nice weather you’re having,” Ernie said.
Black didn’t have the energy to smile.
“You all right, Black?”
“This one kinda crept up on me, now it ain’t goin’ the way I thought.”
“I heard you got a situation brewing with the locals. Can’t say I’m surprised, once I heard the girl was Joe Ryan’s daughter. I don’t envy you.”
“Ain’t many that do.”
“You got much so far?”
“No.”
“You want us to take him?”
“I can’t see a way of movin’ him without trouble.”
“It’ll calm soon enough.”
Ernie reached over and patted Black on the shoulder.
“I got Burns and Urliss out knocking doors by our side of Hell’s Gate. And I got men I can get over quick if you need more help in the square. Can’t get a helicopter up in this weather, but soon as it breaks –”
“Yeah,” Black said. “Soon as it breaks.”
“You thinkin’ about the Briar girls now?” Ernie said.
“I ain’t stopped thinkin’ about ’em.”
“Bird huntin’. Five times and he played it near perfect. Makes you wonder.”
“What?”
Ernie shrugged. “If his luck is running out. Where he went. Why he stopped for a while. Why church girls . . . Those same questions we been turnin’.”
“You don’t buy into that satanic shit,” Black said. They’d had this same conversation over beers and whiskey a while back, though neither could recall the details.
“You can’t deny the religious angle.”
“You can. They’re all young and pretty. That’s what links them much as anything. It’s harder to find girls that ain’t believers in Briar.”
Ernie ran a hand over his badge. “I saw Mae this morning, on Channel 14.”
“I heard. We got a news van parked up now, saw it on the way over. Ain’t sure what they want. Last thing I need is a bunch of idiots trailin’ through the square.”
“You never were much of a people person, Black.”
“Give me a desert island and I’d be happy.”
Ernie laughed.
Black watched him leave. Ernie flashed his lights as he passed, on the way outta Grace. Black loosened his collar, the panic creeping up outta nowhere.
He’d rolled the idea around in his head, that Samson and the Bird were one and the same. It fit nice, the religious angle, loner. He allowed himself to think maybe it was over, they had the Bird and it was over.
The Lumen land ran to Hell’s Gate, and there was a lot of it. Black walked around back. There was the jagged remains of a fence that ran maybe a hundred yards into the dark. Black turned his flashlight on and cast it over the area, over Merle’s farmhouse next door and the barn.
He walked through deep grass, the roots damp. There were fruit trees planted.
He thought about the Briar girls, about Peach Palmer and the men she fucked. It hurt him, being needed that much, made him feel a hellish kinda unworthy, that there was someone lower on the chain than him, someone that craned their neck just to see the failure in his eyes.
He walked back and he sat heavy in the cruiser and closed his eyes ’cause he weren’t making no progress.
He reached into the glove compartment and grabbed the bottle of whiskey. He drank it all down, too much and too fast. Then he reached for the bag he’d taken from Peach’s drawer. He was sloppy and spilled as much on the seat as he got up his nose. Then he climbed outta the car and got up on the hood and heard it creak. He could just about make out the sunlight a long way in the distance. He reached for his gun, held it high, aimed it at the cloud and pulled the trigger.
*
They got Patty to serve crab potpie ’cause it’d been Savannah’s favorite, but she didn’t eat much at all. After, they sat beneath the glass roof in the orangery and her daddy sipped brandy from crystal while her mother held her hand.
She looked at the sky like she’d forgot how many stars could shine.
“Donald called and wanted to know if you’re ready to proceed,” her mother said.
“I’m not . . . I don’t –”
“You’ll feel better once it’s done, sweetheart,” her daddy said.
She glanced over at him. He was aging better than her mother; thick hair only touched with gray framing a handsome face.
“I said he wasn’t right,” he said. “I said it from the start but you’ve always been stubborn.” He winked at her like that’d soften it. “Bobby’s got that look in his eyes. I’ve seen it before in boys who have been through the system. Dally does pro bono at Grove and he says half the time he’s dealing with these people.”
“These people?” she said.
He caught it and smiled. “It’s not Bobby’s fault, and it’s noble what he’s doing, we can appreciate it, the church is lucky to have him. But you and him . . . and us too –”
“You know they brought charges against another man last week,” her mother said. “He worked at that home where Bobby was and they only just caught up with him. You can’t undo damage like that, sweetheart. Who knows what that does to a person. It breaks my heart, really it does, but we have to look out for our own. And you have a chance now –”
“What do you mean ‘now’?” Savannah said, snatching her hand back.
“I just –”
“You couldn’t have walked out before, when you had Michael to think about. You couldn’t do that to him, you’re a good person, sweetheart,” her daddy said, easy like he didn’t know how it sounded, or like the brandy was lulling. “But even now, when you smile, it’s not the same smile my little girl used to have. You just look so sad.”
She felt heat rise to her cheeks. She saw them, caring in their own way on their own terms, and for a moment she hated them. She didn’t get angry; she didn’t yell and curse.
“Sign the papers and come back to us, and you can start again,” he said. “You’re young and beautiful and I know you’re not ready to think about dating –”
Savannah stood. “I still love him.”
She caught her mother, the way she looked at her daddy, like she was fifteen and crying love for some boy at the club that’d danced with her.
“I still love Bobby.”
She heard the sounds they made as she left them to their beautiful life, sounds of despair ’cause their daughter was lost and they didn’t know how to right her.
*
“You look better,” Black said.
Peach glared at him.
“I mean good. You look good, Peach.”
She smiled, something fresh in it. “I feel better. Those folks I been speaking to, over at the program I was tellin’ you about –”
“Pinegrove.”
“They been helpin’ me.”
Black walked through the house and out into the backyard.
“I took it for granted. Just seeing the stars,” he said, looking up.
She brought out two glasses of iced tea and set them down by the swing seat. They sat together close.
He sipped his drink, pulled a face and she laughed.
“Ain’t no tequila, or vodka,” he said.
“Ain’t no rum neither.”
She took his hand in hers, rubbed it light, and stared out.
Her yard was long; no back fence saw it run to the trees beyond. Black heard night songs and felt far from Grace.
“I was thinkin’ . . . I been talkin’, I been thinkin’ like she’s dead, but that don’t mean she is.”
Black looked down, didn’t meet her eye.
“Same with those other girls. Maybe they’re holed up someplace. Or maybe he’s still got ’em. I know it won’t be nice there, I ain’t foolish enough to think that, but it . . . she might still be livin’, might be breathin’. All the stats I read, it don’t really mean nothin’ when you ain’t certain. That right, Black?”
He squeezed her hand.
“I like your dress,” he said.
It was light and had flowers on it. Daisies. She had her hair pinned up and her lips painted.
“I been for a job. That diner on Route 11. You know it?”
He nodded.
“It’s just waitressing.”
“That’s good, Peach.”
“Yeah?” she said, looking over.
The moon was too big and too blue.
“I ain’t seein’ those . . .” she trailed off. She gripped his face and turned it toward her, holding it tight. “I’m stopping. Those things I do, I’m stopping.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “I worry . . . about that man. I listen out in case you call. I don’t want nobody to hurt you, Peach.”
She nodded.
“I hate it when you cry,” he said.
“I know.”
“Stop it then.”
“I know what you see in me,” she said. “I see it too. I hate it but I see it.”
“I don’t -–”
“You reckon one day you’ll see somethin’ else, when I’m a better person.”
“Why do you talk like that?” he said.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m good and you ain’t.”
“Everyone’s lookin’ to be more than they are.”
He pulled her in.
“First I just wanted you to keep lookin’ for my daughter,” she said.
“I know.”
“Now I just want you to keep lookin’ for me.”
“I see you,” he said.
“You don’t, Black. It ain’t sex, like it was at the start. That’s me, what I know to do, sex for money or sex for favors, there’s somethin’ at the end of it more than there should be. But now . . . I wait for you to call and to stop by, but not just ’cause you might’ve got someplace with Della.”
She looked at him deep and he fought the urge to turn away.
“So, at Pinegrove, they said it helps, bein’ honest about your feelings and facin’ up. So that’s what I’m doin’.”
Later, when she was sleeping, he took the last of the old her from the drawer and sat out back beneath the broke blue that fell between swaying trees. He put the rock on the spoon and the spoon on the flame of the silver lighter his daddy had left for him.
“Enough now,” he said, as he breathed deep. “Enough.”
*
He slipped silent from her house and drove back to Grace. He left the cruiser parked in a copse a quarter mile from the Lumen house.
It was dark and it was silent and he sobered fast. He wouldn’t leave nothing, he’d bare all the secrets till there weren’t no lingering doubts left no matter the cost. Peach was right, it was time to stop hiding and face up.
He thought of Summer Ryan as he broke into the Lumen house. He swept each room quick and with care. The house was big but the rooms were empty, only a couple lived in ’cause maybe they couldn’t afford to heat the old place.
He saw photos on the wall, the old man smiling that tight smile, eyes so hard he could’ve broke the lens. There weren’t a trace of Samson, not in the frames or anyplace else. There was guest beds upstairs, sparse and dusty, the smell unkempt and cold. Wallpaper peeled and gold sconces hung loose. There was furniture, old and brown and heavy.
He found Samson’s bedroom. There was a bed and a cross above it, a desk and some baseball cards in a neat stack on the small chest. He searched it careful and found nothing. Then he moved to the old man’s room and did the same.
He wiped sweat from his head as the grandfather clock chimed loud. Black knew he couldn’t use nothing he found, but Summer kept him moving, and when he saw the old staircase leading to the attic he climbed it quick and quiet.
The roof was stripped back and he could see white tarp that held out water but none of the night noises. He could see the cloud through gaps, its body so leaden folk were saying if it dropped it’d flatten the town dead.
He walked thin boards that ached and groaned and gave a little with each step. The timber was rotted and junk was piled. He searched awhile and was about to call it quits when he saw it: an old file cabinet in the far corner, a dust sheet covering one side.
When he got close he saw it had a lock but it was busted like it’d been jimmied. He opened it and took out the magazines. There was a decent stack, the kind Lucky Delfray sold at his gas station, sins of the flesh burning hot in Black’s hand.
He shone his flashlight over them. He thought of the pastor, and of that fear in Samson. He closed his eyes and nodded, ’cause now it fit.