Peach Palmer, the Prostitute
Across the town, the people of Grace readied themselves for the storm. They made such precautions a couple times a year ’cause folk still remembered the lives lost in the Super Outbreak in April ’74. They checked the news for weather reports but the rest of Briar County was clear and the front had come up outta nowhere. Trix took calls and sent Rusty out to check on the widows and make sure they were ready with shutters and shelters and flashlights. Sometimes they asked him to check their roofs, so Rusty walked a fair way back and nodded and squinted ’cause there weren’t no chance at all he’d climb a ladder.
Ginny Adams stocked the shelves in her convenience store and prepared for a run, same as always.
Black stood by the window and watched the main square. It was early but dark as night with the cloud above, quiet ’cept for a couple lights burning in Mae’s Diner and Benny’s Butcher Shop. Only five years back it’d been a hive, dawn till night, with folk riding the Transit to work at the Kinley Mill. That was till they shuttered it. No one blamed them. The Kinleys held it longer than they might’ve; gave work to shortwooders and mule-loggers and paid double to keep it local. Couldn’t run that loss forever though.
With so many outta work they lost stores quick; half gone in a matter of months and homes foreclosed. There was anger, especially being as they couldn’t switch on a television without seeing the moneymen grinning gleeful as they talked of booms, steady job creation, and golden times ahead in the rest of the country.
Milk walked into the station carrying a couple coffees.
“Fifty bucks,” Black said, hand out.
“Already said I ain’t paying till it’s done,” Milk said.
“All that DNA, ain’t a jury alive that’d let him free.”
“But it’s O. J. The Juice. Two thousand yards, fourteen games.” Milk whistled.
Black sighed.
“Anything on Summer Ryan yet?”
“Nothin’.” Black said.
“Three days. Still reckon she ran?”
Black turned back to the window and the dark sky and didn’t say nothing.
*
Savannah kept his photos in a shoebox in the closet. They brought his things when they moved ’cause it wasn’t up for discussion. Bobby packed them, wrapped all his toys, books, and clothes, then unpacked them careful in what would’ve been his bedroom. Bobby liked it contained ’cause they had guests often and he didn’t like them asking about Michael. She understood why but it didn’t make it any easier.
When she was home alone she’d take the shoebox out and she’d smile at the photographs ’cause she found that once she started crying it was tough to stop.
She walked to the window and looked out at dark sky despite the early hour. Her mind ran to Summer. When she hadn’t shown for her cello lesson on Saturday night, Savannah had called the Ryan house and Ava answered on the first ring.
She’s missing. She’s gone.
Savannah had left the house and run the length of Jackson Ranch, through the cemetery and into the old church where she’d found Bobby and had told him. Bobby had stood and turned pale and they’d driven straight over to the Ryan house. It’d been busy with pickups all over and big men looking out from the porch like they were expecting trouble.
She’d seen Joe and Tommy with maps and shotguns.
Ava had cut through the cluster and hugged both of them and said she was gonna kill Summer when she showed. But she’d said it with a smile like it’d keep the sharp edge from what was playing.
Bobby had driven the Grace streets till late while Savannah sat with Ava and watched the big men’s wives come with plates, and worry and tears, then leave again.
When the house was quiet, Ava had asked Savannah if Bobby would pray for her daughter to come home safe, and Savannah said of course like that was nearly enough.
Bobby had been out searching every night since.
*
Purv hid out in the alleyway behind Mae’s Diner. There was a low wall beside a Dumpster, and though the smell weren’t pretty, it offered him a place to sit when he grew tired of standing. He lit a cigarette and rolled it between his fingers as it smoked.
He’d bolted that morning, before Noah’s grandmother could get up and see him sleeping on their couch and give Noah shit for it.
He glanced up at the storm cloud and reckoned maybe it’d fallen lower overnight. He didn’t notice Roy and Rex till it was too late.
They were cousins, seniors; both a little affected but by what Purv didn’t know. There were rumors that Rex had once tried to fuck a stray cat.
“Purvis,” Roy said. Roy was the brains of the operation on account of the fact he could belch the alphabet.
Purv eyed them nervous.
“I heard you got a job,” Roy said. He was carrying a stick, leaning on it, and drinking a red Snapple. “Good timing, ’cause I’m comin’ up a little short this month.”
Rex tipped his head back and laughed, cutting an ugly shadow into the strip of light that fell from Mae’s kitchen. His T-shirt was a size too small and slivers of his pale gut hung from beneath.
“I ain’t been paid yet,” Purv said, his voice holding steady.
“You can pay up, or you can catch a beatin’ then pay up. It’s your choice.”
Roy laughed and made a show of clenching his fist.
Purv glanced down and saw an empty Sam Adams bottle but didn’t have the nerve to reach for it. Any case, it’d be the kinda show they’d look straight past. And then he saw Noah at the top of the alleyway beneath the streetlight. He quickly grabbed ten bucks from his pocket and thrust it at Rex, but not in time ’cause Noah saw what was going down and quickened his step toward them.
“Roy and Rex,” Noah said, flashing his badge.
“That ain’t even yours,” Roy said, laughing.
“I saw a stray just now, Rex. Maybe wrap up this time, there’s a litter been born in Brookdale that look an awful lot like you,” Noah said.
Purv clenched his fists and tried to swallow back the nerves ’cause he knew what was coming.
“We’re brave,” Noah said, loud and mighty like a call of the wild.
Purv couldn’t get the words out ’cause Noah threw the first punch. Always did no matter who they were up against. It was a hard right that connected nice with Rex’s forehead and dropped him, but that was all he managed ’cause Roy was still holding the stick.
When it was over, when Mae heard the noise and stopped it before it got bad, blood dripped steady from Noah’s nose and he blotted it with paper towels.
Purv was breathing hard. They’d mostly left him be, just pushed him to the ground, but that was all it took ’cause his ribs were still black from the last time his father got mad.
They walked slow.
“Almost had ’em,” Noah said.
“Yeah,” Purv said. They hadn’t ever won a fight so Noah reckoned they were due.
“I was thinkin’ about Summer last night. And then I was thinkin’ about those girls again. The Briar girls.”
Noah nodded. “Yeah, but Summer ran. The Briar girls were just out, taken without warning. Black ain’t linking it.”
“Could be he don’t want to. Maybe it’s on him a little . . . that sighting. My father said Black could’ve taken the shot. That was the talk anyhow.”
Noah shrugged ’cause no one really knew what went down.
“I ain’t sure what we’re doin’ with Raine,” Purv said.
“Helpin’. I’m a cop.”
“That make me your partner?”
“ ’Course. You can be Tubbs.”
“I ain’t black though.”
“You’re more black than I am,” Noah said, tossing the paper towels in the trash.
“How’d you figure that?”
“Halbert.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
Halbert was Purv’s uncle who lived over in Gattman and married a black lady.
“You think you got a shot with Raine?”
“Not in a million years. She did give me her gum though,” Noah said, smiling.
“That don’t sound like much.”
Noah raised an eyebrow. “From her mouth.”
Purv looked over. “She gave you the gum from her mouth?”
“She did.”
“That’s practically like makin’ out with her.”
They rounded the end of the alley and heard yelling. They saw Raine outside the station and Trix trying to calm her while Black looked on from the doorway.
Raine walked down the stone steps, her eyes hard. She crossed over to the bench and sat, glaring up at Black.
Purv followed Noah over.
Raine glanced at Noah. “What happened to your face?”
Noah brought a hand up to his cheek. “You should see the other guy.”
“Ain’t a scratch on him,” Purv said.
Noah sighed.
Purv looked out across the dark square, streetlights burning despite the hour. There’d soon be a run at Ginny’s.
“Black ain’t doin’ shit about Summer,” she said.
“We can go out again later . . . if you want,” Noah said.
They watched as an ’85 Camaro roared up and Raine stood. “No offense, boys, but I got a better ride tonight.”
Noah followed her a couple steps and felt the engine rumble right through him.
The window rolled down. “You been babysitting?” the jock said. He was older, Purv recognized him. Danny Tremane.
“She’s fifteen, pervert,” Noah fired back.
The jock made to get out but Raine said something to him.
She got in and stared out the window at Noah, half smiling as the Camaro tore through the square.
*
Noah and Purv caught the Transit bus all the way to Mayland. It was an hour late but Noah couldn’t risk taking the Buick out during light hours.
He sat on the torn seat and watched the trees slip by in the gray dark of the storm cloud.
Purv sat opposite. He caught a break getting a job at the Whiskey Barrel during the summer. He was too young to tend but Hank Frailey let him mop up the beer and piss and puke for a couple bucks an hour.
Sounded rough but it beat being at home.
Purv needed looking out for, always had done. When they were ten years old Noah hadn’t seen him for a whole day so he stopped by his place and found him beaten bloody. He’d fetched Trix and she’d driven them to Mayland in her orange Maverick, Purv laid out on the backseat and Noah holding his hand tight and telling him he was brave and fierce. Black had hauled Purv’s father in but Purv and his momma wouldn’t say nothing so they couldn’t hold him. Milk and Rusty knocked a shade of shit outta him then dumped him in the center of the square. But that didn’t fix nothing.
Noah pressed his face to the glass as the bus rumbled outta Grace. The sky cleared as they crossed the border into Windale.
Noah stood and walked to the back, looked up and saw a stark line that contoured the town. Dark then light like God had forgot to flip the switch in Grace. The storm cloud rose high toward the heavens; a sheer wall of gunmetal that looked about ready to unleash hell.
“Jesus,” Purv said, from beside him. “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that before.”
*
“You’re late,” Missy said, as Noah sat in his chair. Missy was old and black and liked to tease Noah about how pale he was. She’d place her arm beside his and call him a ghost, but she only did that to keep him from staring at the blue machine. She knew he still had nightmares about it. He flinched a little as she threaded the needles into the large scarlike vein that rose from his bicep.
“The Transit was late,” Noah said.
“You were in for yesterday, Noah. And no one answers your phone.”
Noah shrugged. “I was working on real police business.”
“That’s right,” Purv said.
“Shut up, Purv,” Missy fired back, then turned to Noah. “Three days is too long, Noah. You dumb or somethin’? You could die –”
He tried to wave her off.
“You want me to call Social Services? If you can’t remember, and your grandmother can’t remember –”
“Sorry,” he said, glancing up and meeting her eye.
Purv fell quiet beside.
Missy reached down and laid a hand on his cheek. “I’m just lookin’ out for you. You remember what happened to Landon –”
“Noah’s tough. And Landon was old,” Purv said.
“And would’ve lived to be older,” Missy said.
Noah nodded and Missy smiled at him.
“Television’s still fucked,” Purv said, nodding toward the screen.
“You got the video player,” Missy said, as she made notes on the board.
“Yeah, but we’re at the mercy of that bastard Goodwill lady and she keeps bringing us shit. I reckon she’s fuckin’ someone in Chemo. They got Alien 3 last week.”
Missy sighed.
“Ain’t never at the start neither. She never heard of be kind, please rewind?”
Purv had been a fixture at the dialysis ward ever since he turned eight and Noah’s momma said he could ride the Transit with them. He tried to give Noah his kidney at least once a year, the last time being a couple months back, when they’d seen Dr. Leggette walking his pinscher by the Red. Purv had been lit at the time, he’d taken his shirt off and demanded Leggette remove it there and then.
Noah had laughed too hard to try and stop him.
They kept the lights low. Paintings lined the walls, mostly local scenes; a cotton field, a blur of color that Noah guessed was Main Street.
Purv flipped his collar up then turned it down again. Purv didn’t ever sit still.
Noah glanced at the blue machine. “Think of it like a washer,” his momma had said to him back when he was small. “It won’t be forever, and I’ll always be here if you get scared.” She’d been wrong on both counts.
“All right?” Purv said.
Noah nodded. “Yeah, I’m all right.”
Purv asked him that a lot. Noah didn’t ever give another answer, even when it was all getting on him. Purv knew though. Sometimes he reached over and put a hand on Noah’s shoulder, other times he told him a fact so random it distracted for a little while. Noah loved him for it.
“Everyone in the world has a unique tongue print,” Purv said.
Noah smiled then turned to Missy. “We’re ready for the movie now, thanks.”
She walked over to the television carrying the tape.
“Dare I ask what we got today?” Purv said.
She checked the case. “Babes in Toyland.”
“Finally, she’s sent somethin’ blue,” Purv said, rubbing his hands together. “What kinda toys? Double-ended –”
“It’s Disney.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
*
Peach Palmer lived out in Standing Oak. The drive took a dead hour, from Highway 125 through Tessner and into the pines. It was the kinda haunting drive that kept Black swigging from his flask the whole way. He kept a hand on the wheel and used the other to rub the tired from his eyes. He passed blurred houses, metal and ugly, low-wide churches, and Briar girl ghosts. He slowed the car and cruised mile after mile till he sobered, then he took another drink and hit the gas. His jaw was tight and he caught a glimpse of his eyes in the mirror so he reached up and angled it away.
He killed the engine at the top of her street and let the cruiser roll the gentle slope to her place. He sat outside, waited for the last of the orange sky to die, and saw Peach watching him from the window, pulling the drape back just so and staring.
She met him at the screen door, a hand on her hip, then stepped aside as he passed.
Her place: three beds, a bath and small den, the kitchen opening up right into it. She kept it well enough but money was tight and the men that called regular couldn’t be trusted around nothing of value.
“You look tired,” she said.
“Always.”
“I can fix you somethin’ to eat.”
“I ain’t here to eat.” It came out bad and he caught it. “Sorry.”
“How do you want me?” she said with a glare that made him smile.
“I ain’t here for that, either.”
He moved a stack of newspapers, sat on the old couch and sunk low.
She passed him a can of Lone Star and he took it and drank half down.
“You seen him again? That tall guy that gave you a hard time?” he said.
“No.”
“You call me if he shows.”
She nodded.
“Serious,” he said.
“I called the cops last time, they didn’t show for an hour. Those cops . . . they know what I do.”
“So you call me, or call Trix and she’ll put you straight through to me.”
She lit a cigarette. He looked at her hands, at the lines that gave her age a decade older than her face; acrylic nails, one broke at the bed. She was still pretty.
“We don’t talk about what I do,” she said. “You get all funny and make me feel bad about myself. You want me to cry, Black?”
“I hate it when you cry.”
She nodded, her eyes sad.
“A girl’s gone missin’.”
She drew a long breath.
“She ran. Left a note.”
She breathed out slow.
“Time is passing . . . the family ain’t strangers to me.”
“But you’re worried.”
He nodded.
“He’s still out there.”
“He is.”
He held up a hand and it shook and he took another drink.
“It’s hot here,” he said.
She picked up a magazine and fanned him with it.
“And it’s so dark in Grace. So fuckin’ dark.”
“I heard,” she said. “Big storm headed your way.”
“This family. They got another daughter, troublemaker, she stops by the station, looks at me like I got answers to questions she ain’t even thought of yet. I locked up her daddy . . . in another life. She burns with it, you know?”
“It’s your job to bring her sister back.”
She moved over and sat next to him, close.
“It’s comin’ back.”
“What is?” she said gently.
“Him. Della. The trouble; devils and all that was. I can feel it, creeping slow enough that most people ain’t even seen it yet.”
They had a small service for Della, ’cause Peach couldn’t cope no more. Just her and him in the backyard beneath an apple tree that Peach said didn’t ever bear fruit. A service to keep her alive, Peach said.
“The Bird.”
He nodded.
“Maybe it weren’t him that time.”
“It was.”
“You didn’t have a clear shot,” she said, repeating what he’d told her.
“There’s no one lookin’ for Della no more,” she said.
“There is.”
“You?”
He didn’t say nothing.
Peach handed him another beer, then unbuttoned his fly. He moved to stop her but she pushed his hand away.
He opened the can as she went down. Closed his eyes and blinked back tears.
“Peach, I didn’t –”
She hushed him, then did what she did to make him forget awhile.
When she was done she wiped her mouth, grabbed his beer and took a long sip, then rested her head on his chest, her cheek on his badge.
“You ever feel like you’re not here?” he said.
“I spend most of my life wishing I was someplace else, if that’s what you mean.”
There was a photo on the sill, parting the drapes. Peach when she was seventeen, wearing the kinda firebrand smile that told him she’d slipped late, that there’d once been another path.
“I mean sometimes I really feel like I ain’t in the room. Maybe I float outside, but I can’t see myself, my body. I ain’t part of the world. The world that other people live in . . . I shoot the shit with Milk and Rusty, I keep at the bad men.” He rubbed his eyes.
She brought her face up, rubbed her cheek against his, her lips on his ear. “When I ask why, what do you say?”
“That y’s got a curl in its tail.”
She smiled. “Guilt.”
“For the things I’ve done and the things I should’ve done. Is that easy enough?”
She kissed him hard.
“Will you take me somewhere one day?”
“Where?” he said.
He was fading now. It was late.
“Away from this house. I hate it here.”
He took her hand, squeezed it tight then rested back.
She walked outta the room and came back with an envelope and handed it to him.
“What is it?”
“I found photos of Della.”
He had more than he’d ever need.
“She has her hair different . . . it ain’t . . . there’s some photos and she looks different. Maybe you need them. Maybe you could show them round.”
This was how it was. She rode him to keep him looking for her daughter. He rode her ’cause sometimes he forgot there was feeling beyond nothing.
“You can crash here.”
He shook his head like he could drive.
“You can sleep with me. Just sleep, in the bed, Black.”
He nodded, let her help him to his feet and felt her arm tight around him as she guided him to her bedroom. It was different, not where she took the men. There was something soft about it. He saw an ashtray, a pipe she’d used to chase night into day. She said she was getting clean. She had a long record.
She undressed him slow. She ran a hand over the long scar on his stomach then pushed him back onto the bed.
He feigned sleep till she was breathing heavy beside him. He reached into the drawer and took out what he needed and did what he did, and when he was ready he parted his toes and stuck the needle between, and he swam to the place where hands held him high above.
He listened to the lopsided sounds outside her house. He saw a Bible on the floor, the wind blowing in and fluttering the pages. He wondered if he was dreaming and what kinda dream it was, but knew in his heart it wouldn’t end good.
He stared at Peach, at the curve of her spine and the flare of her hips, and he thought about the cruelty and randomness of life.
“I love you,” she said, and he wondered how she could.
He closed his eyes like he hadn’t heard it.