20

It took the paramedics so long to get to the hidden beer bar that Slim woke up, put some ice on the gash in his forehead, and elected to go home rather than wait any longer. He was a different man upon waking. Instead of looking at me with that burning gaze of hatred, his eyes were softer now, uncertain and filled with gratitude when I offered him a hand.

“Do you need a ride?” Eleanor said.

“No, ma’am. I’ll be all right. I been hit harder than that before,” he said, some of his former bluster returning. He straightened his cheap tie, which had now turned red with his blood, and walked on rubbery legs toward the exit. He paused just before opening the screen door. “Who were them boys?”

I shook my head and deferred to the bartender, Livingstone.

Livingstone opened his big meaty hands to the roof. “They come in every now and again. I learned a long time back to just let them have their way. Give ’em a wide berth. Seems to be best.”

“Well, goddamn, next time I’d appreciate a warning,” Slim said. “I still can’t see straight and my head feels like it’s got glass stuck up inside it.”

“You need to see a doctor,” I said.

He was fully back to himself now. He glared at me. “Fuck you, old man. I wouldn’t never take advice from a man such as you that let a lady buy his beer.”

I laughed. What else was there to do?

Slim snarled at me and walked out, letting the screen door smack the doorframe and echo away into the deep heat of the midafternoon.

*   *   *

I asked Livingstone what else he knew about the brothers.

“Not much,” he said. “They usually come in with this woman. Don’t know her name, but she doesn’t really fit them.”

“What do you mean, fit them?”

“I don’t know. She seems educated, maybe. Smart. It’s almost like they’re her hired bodyguards.”

“Can you describe this woman?”

“She’s about your age.” He glanced at Eleanor. “She’s …”

“Go on.”

“A looker. Turns heads.”

“Hair color?”

“Varies. She’s always dying it.”

“Height?”

“Maybe five six. Average, I’d say. But when she wears that red dress …” He shook his head and then remembered Eleanor again. “Sorry, El.”

“It’s fine. I think I’ve seen her before too. She’s hard to miss.”

“So, do you have any idea where she’s from, what she does for a living?”

He shook his head. “You run a little out-of-the-way place like this for your livelihood and you learn not to ask too many questions and forget all the rumors you hear. Like I said, she seems to be with them brothers, so I go out of my way to mind my own business. Keep everybody happy, you know? Them boys don’t function too well in polite society. It’s a damn lucky thing they didn’t just kill Slim.” He glanced at Eleanor. “I apologize you had to see that, El.”

“It’s okay. I’m not going to stop coming. You know I love this place, Ralph.”

He nodded and looked at me. “You’re the one who lost sheriff, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s me.”

He pulled out two more cans of Mexican lager. “These are on me. One for the lady because she had to witness that, and one for you, sir, for having the guts to run against her asshole of an ex-husband.”

I thanked him and briefly considered correcting his statement. I hadn’t run against Walsh. I’d run against Preston Argent. But what was the point? In some ways his statement was actually more truthful. I really had been running against Walsh and his political machine. Argent was just the tool Walsh used to tighten his already viselike grip on the county.

“You know,” he went on. “I can’t think of a single person who voted for that Argent fellow. You ever think of investigating the election results?”

I shook my head. “I think that would be an uphill battle, but I do appreciate your vote.”

“Enjoy the beers,” he said. “And I apologize for all of that stuff.”

“Not your fault,” I said. “Might help if you could get some police presence up here.”

“I called them,” he said. “But I ain’t holding my breath.”

“Shit,” I said, looking at Eleanor. “We better boogie.”

“Yeah. If Argent does come, he’ll be on the phone to Jeb as soon as he sees my car.”

We took the beers with us and headed for her Volvo. She drove fast so as to get off the small dirt road before we had a chance to meet Argent or one of his deputies coming the other way.

Once we made it to the main road, I popped open the beers and handed her one. “Here’s to the one good thing about Preston Argent being sheriff. You can get away with damn near anything.”

She bumped her can against mine, and we drove out toward the county line. The sides of the road were lined with trees and sometimes old filling stations in various stages of decay. Other times burned-out houses flew past us like memories a person once held and then forgot. Eventually all was clear and there was only flat land and old fencing, dragged down by time and gravity, spindles of barbed wire disentangled and dead beneath a sun whose power seemed eternal.

“You were telling me about the boy who died,” I said. “What was his name?”

“Weston Reynolds. He was seventeen. They say he snuck out of the dorms, or whatever you call them, one night and made his way to the waterfall that edges up against the school property. There’s a rock there the boys tell stories about. They say he climbed up on top of it and flung himself off into the river below.”

“But you don’t believe it?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t. I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened. Sure, it’s possible. Eddie doesn’t think so, of course. He swears Weston would never do anything like that. He says they killed him because they couldn’t change him. A lot of the boys, according to Eddie, pretend to be straight so they can get out. Makes sense. I even encouraged Eddie to do it, but he won’t. He says it would be disrespectful to Weston’s memory to do that. Can you believe it? I mean, I don’t believe in genetics anymore. There’s no way that boy is Jeb Walsh’s son.”

I was less shocked about the whims of genetics than she was. People had long wondered how I could be my father’s son. Except, in most scenarios, I was the one who’d been born wrong and he was the one who was innately good. What a screwed-up world we tried to navigate. No wonder it was so hard.

“So, you went to Harden about this?” I asked.

“Multiple times. I demanded to know what had happened. He said the police had looked into it and determined it was suicide. End of story. Except it wasn’t the end for me. I wanted to know if they’d driven him to it. Eddie told me there was a rumor they made some of the boys have sex with some woman.”

“What?”

“That’s right. It was like a test. There’s some woman they know that meets the boys out by the waterfall to, you know … have sex with them. According to Eddie, it was Weston’s turn to meet her. He didn’t want to go, but if you didn’t show up, they’d make life really hard on you. So he went. He never came back. Of course, Harden and Blevins deny all of this, and Jeb does too. They say it’s just the boys making up stories.” She shook her head and looked for all the world like she wanted to cry.

“Take it easy,” I said. “I’m going to help you.”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “You can’t help. No one can help. Now that Argent is sheriff, he told me the next time I called the school about anything, he’d have me arrested for harassment. He said things would get harder on Eddie, too. What can you do when there’s no law willing to help you?”

It was a good question, just one of the many I didn’t have a satisfactory answer for.

“We’ll figure something out,” I said.

She sighed. “And until then?” she asked.

“Stay in touch with Eddie and keep your distance from your ex-husband.”

She gave me a look that suggested she’d been hoping for more from me. I resisted telling her that it was okay. I knew exactly what it felt like to expect more from Earl Marcus than he’d ever been able to deliver.