He retraced his route toward town and checked his phone for news from Clark. No messages, no service. Fifteen minutes earlier, Ranger had refused to say another word. Whatever had motivated him to reveal so much to Joel—spite or revenge against this town or a desire to see justice done for Jason—had run dry as abruptly as it had sprung up. The man had screwed his mouth shut, stared at the television, played with his beer, not even glancing up when Joel had slipped from the shack without saying goodbye.
So where did that leave him? He had gone to Ranger’s to discover one thing: whether KT had been lying and Dylan had been involved in drugs after all. Joel had harbored a long shot theory that perhaps, if Dylan had been murdered because of KT’s involvement with narcotics, then Garrett Mason, KT’s apparent business partner, might have been involved in the murder—that boy with his big bruised fist sure seemed to have plenty to hide. Perhaps, Joel had thought, Garrett Mason might even have been the boy KT had spoken of Dylan traveling to the coast with; it sounded absurd, certainly, but what else did he have to go on?
A rabbit darted across the road. Joel slapped his forehead with his palm. It was right there: KT had told Clark and Joel this morning that Dylan and his boy had gone away on their weekends together. But Garrett had been arrested with KT in Bentley on a weekend that KT and Dylan were both supposed to be out of town.
Joel sighed. Another theory for the scrap pile.
He tapped out a quick note to Clark on his phone, hit Send, wondered if it would ever reach her.
He thought of Dylan, of his brother telling Joel five days before his murder that he couldn’t sleep. Dylan had added that he couldn’t go to the bright lands anymore. And yet had Dylan gone to them regardless, whatever they were, the night he died?
“What we did was nothing compared to the shit that goes on in this town,” Wesley had said.
it’s like i hear this town talking when i sleep.
Broken men and frightened men. A missing shirt, a bloody jacket, a bloody sock. Escort ads and drugs and dick pics, oh my. Bag boys, old boys, golden boys, gone. A hate crime or a love crime. A shallow creek, an iron slab, a pit.
A warning etched with the point of a knife: GET OUT NOW FAG.
He drove until he found cell service and called Clark. The call went to voice mail. For the first time that day, Joel wondered just how powerful this darkness from the pit really was. Had it done something to Clark’s father so it could get her out of town? To get Joel alone, just like this?
Nothing seemed impossible anymore. If Clark’s mom was to be believed then they were dealing with a force a lot older than Bentley or Pettis County or this whole prejudiced country.
“This place is old, Whitley. It has rules.”
Joel googled Corwin Broadlock, the name Ranger had mentioned before abruptly shutting down. His phone’s browser choked and stuttered on the tenuous connection that reached him in the open country.
He was nearly back to town by the time he found the old newspaper article.
STAR PLAYER’S WHEREABOUTS REMAIN
UNKNOWN.
Joel read the story—it was little more than a blurry scan of an old page on the Waco Tribune-Herald’s website—and his heartbeat quickened.
On April 5th, 1976, Corwin Broadlock, the wide-receiver who brought the small town of Bentley such pride in their first championship game, ran away from home without warning. Mr. Broadlock has not been seen since.
The story stated that Broadlock’s parents had received a letter one month after his disappearance, urging them not to worry about his whereabouts. The letter bore a Miami postmark, but no trace of the boy had been found there. Corwin’s parents insisted that the content and tone of the letter sounded nothing like their son but there was little the police could do.
“It’s an absolute shock,” says Mr. Broadlock’s former teammate Grady Mayfield. Close friend Tom Parter adds, “I thought these were the best years of our lives. I can only hope Corwin’s found whatever he needs wherever he went.”
joel im sorry but i cant stay in bentley right now
At the bottom of the article was a faded photo of the full Bentley Bison team and cheer squad, circa 1975. The picture was all orange light and seeping green jerseys. Joel pulled the convertible to the side of the road, pinched his screen to zoom in. He identified Corwin from the names at the bottom of the photo: a very tall boy with a brilliant smile that cut through forty years of deteriorating film stock. Gorgeous. Happy. Just like Dylan. Blond, not brown haired, and taller, sure, but possessing the same persuasive glee, an obvious pleasure with his casual power.
Next to him, arm over Corwin’s shoulder, was a young Coach Parter, hair down to his ears, burly even at eighteen. And smiling from Broadlock’s other side was Mr. Harlan Boone, today’s county attorney, already standing (even as a teenager) with the straighter back of a man deigning to submit to public service. The three boys—Boone and Broadlock and Parter—were clearly tight. They held themselves apart from the rest of the team, a trio of golden boys.
Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch.
Farther down the line of players Joel spotted “former teammate” Grady Mayfield—a man who had told Clark he “hadn’t had dreams like this” since he was in school—giving the camera a thumbs-up. A few players away stood young Keith “I weren’t ever invited in my day either” Grissom, a scowl on his thin lips, already looking mean and permanently disappointed. Among the cheerleaders standing in the photo’s wings, Joel spotted a luminous girl who could have been the Starsha he’d dated ten years ago (if that Starsha had ever bothered with her hair): MARGO DELBARDO, the citation read. Joel marveled at her. What had happened to Clark’s mother to make her the nervous, limpid woman he’d always known growing up?
Joel’s eye fell across a short, scrawny boy with a wispy mustache standing alone at the end of the Bison’s line, so shy he seemed to shrink in front of the camera. TOBY LOTT, the caption read.
Mr. Lott. The friendly cartoon man who had been the sole source of decency to Joel in the wake of the scandal ten years ago. The only man in town who hadn’t flinched at the sight of Joel upon his return. How had Joel never thought to ask Mr. Lott about any of this?
He loaded Google Maps, intending to call the hardware store, but his service had died again. Fuck it. He was only a few miles from Bentley. Joel tapped out another quick message to Clark, dropped his phone between his legs and sped toward town.