26

Ronnie refused to let me self-medicate. There was no bourbon, and when I told him I was going to walk down the mountain and buy some, he took my wallet and threw it onto the roof of my house, and I didn’t have the energy to climb up there to retrieve it.

I went to bed, slept for six hours, and rose again to find Rufus sitting out in the yard with Ronnie. Twilight again. Eternal dusk, the light lingering, mingling with the invading dark.

Rufus nodded when he heard me coming outside. He still looked about as bad as I felt. The hollows in his face more pronounced, his lips dry and chapped red, his hair standing up in a cowlick that made me think he hadn’t showered in days.

“We need to talk, Earl.”

“About what?”

“About the Harden School.”

“Okay, but so you know, I’m off that case.”

“Since when?”

“Since all this. You do know Mary left me, don’t you?”

Rufus was silent, but I didn’t like the expression on his face. Somehow, it seemed to say he was not at all surprised. But there was more, wasn’t there? He was angry.

“You got something you want to say about that?”

“Yep,” he said. “I sure do.”

“Say it then.”

“I can’t believe it took her so damned long.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Normally I would have punched him over that, but I felt like a hollow man, devoid of energy, just skin and bones holding in hot air, no blood to boil, no muscle to fight.

“It means a woman like that shouldn’t have ever had to hold your old ass up.”

His words hurt me, but I could hardly argue with him. He was right. Somehow I’d lost my way. Or maybe I’d never found my way. It was as if after escaping the clutches of my father and his suffocating religion, I’d been lost to the wilderness of the real world. I’d believed I’d vanquished my father when I’d watched him fall to his death three years earlier, but now I saw that his legacy still haunted me, that it dogged my every step and had imprinted itself upon my very DNA. Damnation had found me, just as he’d predicted.

“Did you come just to ridicule me?” I asked.

“Nope. I came because Ronnie told me you’ve been looking into the Harden School. I’ve got some experience with that place.”

“I told you. I’m done with that.”

“The hell you are.” Rufus stood up. I could tell he was trying to locate me.

“I’m right here. You going to punch me?”

“Maybe.”

“Bring it on.”

Ronnie cleared his throat. “Why don’t you two boys have a beer?”

“I’d rather take a drive,” Rufus said.

“We can do that too,” Ronnie said.

“Not you. Just me and Earl.”

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s got for a ride. You can tell me about how much of a loser I am.”

“Nope,” Rufus muttered. “Going to tell you about how much of a loser I am.”

I hadn’t expected that. Suddenly, the mood changed. The sun seemed to lift a little bit, to return a piece of the afternoon that had been lost. The idea of Rufus making mistakes seemed to offer me some hope. He had his shit together now. He was clearly a force for good in the world. Wasn’t he?

*   *   *

Once in my truck, I asked him where we were headed.

“Down the mountain,” he said. “Over toward the east side of the county. There’s a farm there. It’s where I went after I left the church.”

“You never told me how you left the church,” I said.

He smiled. It was a genuine smile this time, the kind that could lift any amount of weight from the past, the kind that broke his face in half before reassembling it into something that was pure joy.

“That was a good moment for me,” he said. “A real good moment.”

“I can relate. The day I left the church is still the best moment of my life.”

“Yep.” He laughed again. “Ain’t we something. A couple of old timers reminiscing about the good old days when we stuck it to the man. I thought I was well on my way then.”

“What do you mean, well on your way?”

“Just that I had life by the balls, that I’d stood up to fucking RJ Marcus, and that meant I could stand up to anybody. But that was a mistake. You don’t never take life by the balls. It’s always got you.” He shook his head. “And the world never runs out of men like RJ Marcus. Evil men, you know?”

I did. “Jeb Walsh?” I offered.

“That’s right, but sometimes the most evil men are the ones who know they’ve got something you want, and they know how to lord it over you just so.”

“Well, Daddy did that,” I said.

“Sure. I guess so. With you, especially. With me, it was more about my mother, about not wanting to disappoint her.”

“Understood. So where are we going exactly?”

“Stay on Fifty-Two. It’s a ways. Just relax and listen, okay?”

I tried my best. Truthfully, relaxing just wasn’t an option. Distraction, though, had potential. I focused on trying to think about what Rufus might be able to show me. If it could have any bearing on the mystery of the Harden School. What had happened to the kid, Weston? Was I going to give up on that? And what about Joe? Didn’t I owe it to him to finish what he’d started?

Not to mention that giving up on things had never been my style. I’d made a career out of solving mysteries, and I’d done it mostly through sheer force of will. Determination had been a far greater ally in getting to the bottom of problems than talent, smarts, or even luck. I tended to just wear a case down, or short of that, I simply used brute force to break it wide open.

I could still do that much, couldn’t I? If the answer was no, I wasn’t sure who I was anymore.

There was also Eddie Walsh and the other boys at the school to think about. They were depending on me. I couldn’t forget Rufus either. Despite his current easygoing manner, I still felt like something was off with him. There was certainly a physical element to my feeling: he was gaunter than usual. Pale and haggard, the way I used to look in the mirror after three or four nights without sleeping because of a case. It was probably how I looked now, too. I wasn’t sure because I hadn’t been able to bring myself to look in the mirror since I had cheated on Mary.

“When I left the church, I went by my house for my fishing pole and twenty dollars I’d stashed away. Didn’t know where I was going. I just started walking. Went to Ghost Creek, followed it up the mountain to its source, and slept there for three or four days, fishing the creek. From there, I moved down the backside of the mountain, into the valley. I’d stop when I found a pretty spot by some water and make camp for a few days. I must have wasted a few months doing this very thing until I woke up one night shaking from the freezing cold. I knew I had to at least head to town to buy some warm clothes, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to go into Riley, because that was where I was most likely to see somebody from the Holy Flame, so I made the hike east toward Brethren. At the time, Brethren wasn’t much more than a couple of churches, a post office, and a gas station that also doubled as a general store. It was there I bought a winter coat and some new shoes. I didn’t have enough cash to pay for it, so the owner agreed to let me work it off on his farm. Wasn’t long before I’d paid the jacket off, and he hired me full-time. He let me sleep in a bunkhouse with the other workers. I was fairly happy. Didn’t even know it at the time.”

I was on 52 now and was afraid Rufus had forgotten that I didn’t know where to go. “Do I just go all the way to Brethren?” I asked.

“Not quite. There’s a farm right before the town where I want you to stop. Where are we now?”

“Just passed Jessamine’s, about to hit downtown.”

He nodded. “Still got about ten minutes before you need to start looking for it.”

“So how did you hook up with Harden?” I asked.

“I’m getting there,” he said. “Do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Pretend you are a patient man. It’s important for me to tell it my way.”

“Sure.”

He nodded and cleared his throat. He adjusted his shades on his nose and continued. He told me about being happy at the farm, about rising early and having his coffee in the morning dark before beginning work in the field each day. He told me about the work he did on the farm, and how the landowner said he wanted Rufus to come to dinner at his house one evening.

“I sort of expected he might be about to set me up with his daughter. Only problem was he didn’t have one.” Rufus grinned at the memory. “No, he wasn’t setting me up with no girl. That came later. He was setting me up for another job, a bigger and better one.”

He went on to tell me how Harden came by for dinner, how he talked to Rufus directly, man to man, and how Rufus found himself wanting to please the man despite his misgivings. I understood. It was exactly the way I’d always felt around my father.

“Next thing I knew,” he said. “I was working at the school. They said I was a counselor, which meant I didn’t get paid much, but Harden believed I would be a teacher there one day, so I believed it too.” He fell silent, as if silently debating the internal logic of believing anything Harden had told him.

“Was Dr. Blevins at the school then?”

“Who?”

“His name is Timothy Blevins. He’s supposed to be some kind of conversion therapist.”

“You mean like converting kids from gay to straight?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus. It’s gotten worse, then.”

“Worse?”

“Where are we now?” he asked, ignoring my question.

I told him we’d passed through the city and into the open part of the county, where the valley spread out briefly before turning to hills again, and finally mountains.

“There’s an old farmhouse on the right. Be on the lookout for it and pull over when you get there.”

I saw it a few minutes later. It was old, all right. Years of neglect had taken their toll on what might once have been a nice place. There was certainly plenty of land and two large barns, both of which were in better shape than the house.

I pulled off the road into the overgrown grass of what passed for the front yard.

“We’re here,” I said.

“What’s it look like?”

I described it to him, taking time to mention the way the woods behind the house seemed to be creeping toward the structure and would likely overtake it in the next year or two if somebody didn’t cut them back. I mentioned the wild roses that bloomed in an irregular pattern on one side of the house and the broken shutter hanging crookedly from a second-floor window.

“What about the barns?” he asked.

“There’s two. The bigger one is red, but it looks like it’s faded to almost pink. It needs a new roof. The door’s open.”

“And the other one?”

“More of a shed, I guess. It’s in decent shape. Not pretty to look at, but it would probably keep you dry in a rainstorm.”

“I want to go in.”

“The house?”

“No, the barn. The smaller one.”

“Why?”

He sighed. “This is where I lived when I worked at the school. Harden arranged for me to stay with his sister, a woman named Leah Duncan. Her husband was a farmer in the area, and one of the all-time assholes you would ever want to meet. They lived here with their three children. All girls. The youngest two were twins. They were both a little younger than me. One was named Harriet and the other was Savanna.”

“You lived in the barn?”

“That’s right. The smaller one.”

I killed the engine and we got out of the truck. I grabbed Rufus’s shoulder and turned him until he was facing the smaller barn. “Straight line,” I said. “Clear path.”

He nodded. “Sorry about earlier.”

“Why? You were right. Just because I’m miserable doesn’t mean I shouldn’t help others.”

“I’m miserable too,” he said.

“I’m beginning to sense that. Do you want to elaborate?”

“I think I’m about to.” And that was all he said on the matter until we came to the smaller barn.

“Is it locked?” he asked.

“We’ll find out.” I reached for the sliding doors and pulled one of them to the right. It felt stuck. Not locked. “Give me a hand,” I said, and guided him to the door. Together we pulled it open. When it slid back, a sweet, old smell rushed out as if it had been waiting to escape all of these years. Without waiting on me, Rufus stepped inside the old structure. He stood there in the half-light, inhaling deeply. His face changed then. Instead of gaunt and worried, it expanded with something like light. But the light was soon dimmed by deep furrows forming above his black shades. Lines of sorrow, I thought as he began to speak.