11

Rufus came by that evening, wanting to hang out again. He seemed a little out of sorts and tired. His usual gaunt face was positively hollowed out. Once again, he wouldn’t say what was bothering him, and when I pressed him on it, he changed the subject to his favorite whipping boy, Ronnie Thrash.

“He’s back,” Rufus said.

“You’re kidding?”

“Nope. Asshole showed up today. That piece of shit he calls a truck nearly blew out the doors of my place, and I knew he was back.”

“Well, shit. He didn’t even call me.”

“He’s probably still mad at you,” Rufus said.

“Nah, I visited him a few times and we worked it out. Ronnie can’t stay mad at me.”

“Eight months?” he said, shaking his head. “For running a man down in that truck? A man lost his life because of that asshole. Don’t seem much like justice to me.”

We were sitting in the two wooden chairs near the ridge. From here, I could see nearly the whole southern valley—the lights of Riley, the endless trees on the ridges below, the peaks of the nearby mountains, the way the stars circled them like halos adorned with space dust—and beyond that I could see vast fields fading into a horizon still bleeding purple from the resonance of a recently vanished sun.

“The man he hit was a violent white supremacist. He was participating in the kidnapping and torture of a police officer. Ronnie was there purely to help put a stop to that. He didn’t intend to kill anyone. If you ask me, the punishment was too harsh.”

“Nobody asked you,” Rufus scoffed.

I chuckled. “Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”

“Just pass that bottle.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“Nope. I’ll be okay. Just pissed off that out of all the places in these mountains, that piece of steaming shit decided to live twenty fucking yards from me.”

I wasn’t stupid. I understood Rufus didn’t like Ronnie, but I also understood Ronnie was just a punching bag right now. Something else was definitely on his mind.

“Did you get any sleep last night?” I asked him. Based on the bags under his eyes, I thought the answer was probably no.

He didn’t bother answering. Instead, he tilted the bottle back and took a large swallow. “I’m going to sleep tonight.”

*   *   *

We both did. Right there in our chairs, overlooking the ridge, we fell asleep. It took me a while because Joe and his connection to Dr. Blevins and the Harden School were weighing heavy on my mind. I’d considered mentioning it to Rufus several times, but then stopped short. Not only did he seem to have enough on his mind at the moment, but I also felt hesitant to bring up the issue with Rufus because he’d proven so unfailingly sharp at seeing through me in the past. Opening that door would almost certainly allow him to figure out the secret I was hiding about Joe. And the last thing I wanted was Rufus knowing what I’d done. Knowledge was implication, and I meant to make sure no one else but me had a chance of being implicated.

When I did finally fall asleep, rest was short-lived. Something woke me up in the early dark of the morning. Sounds from the ridge below. A car engine, country music floating through the night, the sound of a door creaking open.

I opened my eyes, found the dark sky, gone cloudy now, the moon in silhouette, its pale fire surreal and dreamlike.

A voice on the ridge below almost got me out of my chair. It was female, something low and sexy in the tone. She was murmuring, the way Mary murmured sometimes just before sex. God, how long had it been? Weeks, going on a month. Too long even for my old ass.

But I still didn’t get up. I closed my eyes again, fading into blackness like the moon, like all of those stars that had seemed to vanish from earlier. The woman’s voice from the ridge below walked into my dreams, and now it was Mary’s voice. She’d come to the house like she’d promised. A total surprise. Except she’d only been home a short time before we were thrown into turmoil. The dream didn’t make anything clear except the emotions. A bitter despair settled over me.

Then I woke, the sun shining in my eyes. I sat up. Rufus was gone. How long gone, I wasn’t sure. Maybe he’d walked home in the darkness the night before, or maybe he’d waited until morning. Either way was the same to him.

I walked over to the ridge for a piss. I’d already started when I remembered the voice from last night. I looked down and saw that the vacant trailer that had been there since I’d moved in now appeared to be occupied. A Toyota Corolla was parked out in the grass in front of the trailer. Inside, I saw someone move past the open door. I turned around so that I was peeing on the ground in my yard instead of out over the ridge. When I finished, I zipped up quickly and turned back to see if anyone had been watching me.

As soon as I did, a woman stepped out of the trailer. She walked over and stood beside the driver’s side of the car, pausing to light a cigarette. She smoked it for a moment, just standing there, her hair an electric gold in the morning light. Despite the distance, despite the odd angle from above, I was struck by her. There was an energy about her, a kind of attitude that drew me. I felt a sudden attraction but tried to repress it. It was just going a month without sex that caused it, I told myself.

Then something happened, something I hadn’t been expecting. She looked up. I felt like I’d been caught and started to back away from the ridge before realizing how foolish that would be. Instead, I stayed put and lifted a hand awkwardly.

“Hello,” I said.

She blew out some more smoke, her face upturned, her features nearly invisible, lost to the harsh light of morning.

“I can barely see you,” she said, squinting up at me.

“I’m up here. On the ridge. We’re neighbors.”

“That right?”

“Yes. My name is Earl. Earl Marcus.”

“Hey, you were running for sheriff,” she said.

“That’s right, but I didn’t win.”

“Good for me,” she said.

I waited, expecting more, some explanation of the cryptic comment, but she said nothing else.

“Well,” I said. “If you need anything …”

“I’ll holler,” she said, and opened the car door and climbed inside. I watched her pull away from the trailer and onto the rutted dirt road. It wasn’t until her taillights had disappeared that I realized she’d never told me her name.