The whiskey pulsed in Joel’s head. He shielded his eyes from the morning light, squinted at his phone through his fingers. A stone formed in his gut. A new message awaited him.
u never tried to understand me. how many years u lived in the city u nver bothered to ask am i ok is everything ok until i had 2 beg u to help its too late joel i never want 2 talk to anyone from that fucking town again. go home. u make mom sad
Fuck all of yesterday’s doubts. Dear God, just let this be Dylan texting him.
Joel typed:
A ticket to NYC. No questions asked. You can stay with me or I’ll get you a place. No one will know. Please Dylan, talk to me.
He rose, paced, couldn’t wait.
Dylan, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I should have done everything and I should have done it more. I know. I know. Please Dylan, please come home.
He didn’t realize he was crying until he saw a tear spatter across the glass of his screen.
I never realized how much I cared.
fuck u joel. go home
He found his mother in the kitchen dressed in her church slacks, powdering her face at the table. She glanced at Joel, at the phone in his hand. “Any word?”
He fumbled for coffee. “No.” Something—maybe paranoia, maybe some strange protective pride—kept him from mentioning the messages, let alone informing the police of them just yet. It persisted, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it: that gnawing suspicion that the person on the other side of these messages wasn’t his brother at all.
“He must have caught a big one.”
“A big what?”
“A fish.” She spoke sharply, softened. “He’s fishing, right?”
Joel said nothing.
Paulette untwisted her lipstick. “You can’t win as a parent, Joel. I hope you remember that.”
“I doubt I’ll ever need to.”
“Your father used to say the same thing.”
Joel put down his coffee. His belligerent father used to say a lot of shitty things, the last of which (before a choked blood vessel burst in his brain) was, “What part of headache don’t you fuckers understand?”
The man hadn’t been missed. The fact that Paulette would mention him at all told Joel plenty about her current state of mind.
“Oh hell, Joel,” Paulette said. “It’s going to be alright, alright? Dylan’s been thrilled all week to see you.”
This didn’t soothe him.
Darren tooted the horn of the truck outside. His mother gathered up her Bible and a little plastic carrier of muffins. Joel, desperate for anything to say, asked, “Did Mrs. Malacek say we’re Methodists now?”
His mother rolled her eyes. “We’ve been Methodists ever since the Baptists took an opinion on my moving Darren into the house without rings on our fingers. I swear to Jesus, Joel, some of those ladies act like God made pussy just to keep yeast in circulation.”
Darren tooted the horn again. She wrapped Joel in a quick hug, kissed his cheek. He felt an anxious heartbeat in her hand. Saw, in the brisk way she twisted on her tall heel, a stubborn effort to fool the world into behaving itself.
“Dylan’s fine,” she said. “And if he ain’t fine, you call me—I got my phone on ring.”
Joel paced the empty house. He studied his brother’s Instagram, spotted faces from the game on Friday, noted the ways the boys either posed in their football pads spreading their fingers into W’s like gang signs (it took him far too long to realize that the W’s stood for “win”) or else leaned against truck beds and lockers with their hands cupped over their crotches, their eyes, broody and vacant, fixed to the camera. So serious, so young. What were the odds, Joel wondered, that Dylan and his friends pulled on this showy angst to conceal a truer turmoil inside?
Joel bounced around Instagram profiles. He settled on Bethany Tanner’s, his brother’s girlfriend, but learned little in studying it. Bethany was the sort of petite, strong-boned blonde darling Joel used to be told he should desire. He detected the glow of money in her impeccable skin and finally realized why her name was so familiar: the Tanner family owned a cattle ranch west of town. If the ranch was still running—which, judging from Bethany’s gleaming Lexus, it was—those cows must be one of the few moneymaking ventures left in Pettis County.
Here Bethany stood with Dylan at the game Friday night, one leg cocked up behind her. Here she was beaming with the other cheerleaders in the high school’s gym. Here she was with Dylan again, the two of them smiling in camouflage, posed in front of a deer stand with hunting rifles in their hands. Sharpest Shot In the West he calls me lol, read the caption. #girlslikegunstoo.
In her most recent picture, posted yesterday, Bethany lay resting against a pile of pillows, a sticker of a cartoon thermometer jutting from her pouting mouth. why does this never happen on school days haha #fever.
Joel wondered what the odds were that Dylan might be resting on a pillow beside her, cropped just out of the frame.
Joel made a lap around the kitchen. Another. He canceled his flight back to New York and emailed his team to tell them he would be in Texas for a few days longer.
He pushed open the door to his brother’s room.
Things inside were remarkably tidy for a boy Dylan’s age. Joel went to the closet, found a shirt on every hanger. He checked the drawers of the dresser and found them full of socks and underwear. His brother was traveling light.
Three posters hung on the wall: a close-up of Peyton Manning; a team photo of the Bison bearing the words STATE SEMIFINALISTS, DALLAS, TX; the back of a white jersey that read #1 CHRIST. The only other note of personality in the room Joel found resting facedown in the drawer of a small oak desk.
It was another photo, this one of a much younger Dylan—in a jersey and pads—smiling with his arm over the shoulder of Luke Evers, the muscled running back Joel had seen arguing with Dylan at the game on Friday night. “They haven’t been the same since Dylan started going out with Bethany Tanner,” Wesley Mores had said.
Joel returned the picture to the drawer, tapped his phone. A response from work, texts from tedious men in Manhattan, but nothing from Dylan. Joel had lost count of how many times he’d called his brother’s number but he called it again now. It was routed immediately to voice mail.
He dug through the other drawers of Dylan’s desk but found little of interest—iPhone charger, pencils, chewing gum. One drawer contained a dusty hunting knife, his brother’s initials written in Sharpie on the sheath. Joel slid the blade free. Long, serrated, perfectly clean, it clearly hadn’t seen use in ages. He returned the knife to the drawer.
He rose from the desk’s chair and crossed the room to check inside Dylan’s bedside table. At first he saw nothing but loose change, an exhausted tube of Lubriderm.
His eye settled on something odd: a gleaming gold Movado wristwatch. Joel held the watch to the light and wondered how Dylan (who, as far as Joel knew, had never worked a day in his life) had bought it. Paulette and Darren weren’t the type to give showy gifts, and even if they were, they could never have afforded a brand this expensive on their modest paychecks.
Very strange.
And then Joel spotted something far more troubling in the nightstand’s drawer. From far in the back he fished out an unlabeled amber vial with a dozen yellow tablets inside.
Joel googled the imprints on the sides of the pills and let out a sigh. They were Oxycodone, a powerful painkiller, and a high dose at that. POTENTIAL FOR RECREATION/ABUSE: SIGNIFICANT, read the pills’ literature.
Joel wondered what the odds were Dylan had been prescribed the pills to help with the aches and pains that must be inevitable in a game as strenuous as football. Not unlikely, but if that had been the case, then why didn’t the bottle bear an official label from a pharmacy?
Something Clark had said last night flitted through Joel’s head: “We’ve got all the usual meth crazies around here.” Oxycodone was a sedative, whereas methamphetamine, he knew, was a stimulant (a stimulant, Joel reminded himself, only a molecule removed from the Adderall currently pulsing in his own brain.)
Different drug classes, different effects, but the sight of the pricey watch waiting so near to these pills put an unpleasant thought in Joel’s mind. A thought that Dylan might be connected to something far more dangerous than the school’s athletic department.
Joel paced the room. He knew he should tell Investigator Mayfield about this discovery, should at least text Clark. Perhaps if he threw the cops a bone they would keep him abreast of the search for Dylan (assuming, of course, they were even searching at all), possibly give him some comforting news.
Joel laughed to himself. Who was he kidding? After what the Pettis County Sheriff’s Department had put him through as a boy, was he really naive enough to think they would be of any use to him now? Any news Joel gave the police would become the gossip of the town. He’d never subject his brother to that sort of pain. Hadn’t he come here to keep Bentley from chewing up yet another troubled boy? No, Joel would do his own digging, and he would keep any discoveries to himself.
Starting with these pills. He carried them into his room and stuffed them in his bag.
South Street resembled an old Western set left to blanch in the sun. Joel counted six businesses still in operation in the splintered wooden storefronts: the First Community Bank (GO #12 T-BAY BASKIN! read the marquee in the window), a CVS Pharmacy, Mr. Jack’s Steaks, Hash and Brown’s Egg House (the large fiberglass chicken suspended above the door in desperate need of a wash), Beauty Sanchez Beauty Parlor and, all but hanging off the butt end of the street, the tall polished windows of Lott’s Hardware.
Joel walked past the last store slowly, hoping he might talk to Mr. Lott—one of the few men who had been decent to Joel in the wake of the scandal—but saw instead a plain, mousy girl standing behind the counter.
When Joel stepped into the store the girl gave him only a curious glance—curious but not unkind—and looked back down at her phone.
“Excuse me,” Joel said, approaching the counter. “I’m Joel Whitley—”
“I know.” The girl finished typing a message, set down her phone, leaned back on her stool. Joel recognized her from the game. She was a cheerleader, and if Joel wasn’t much mistaken he’d seen her posing for photos with KT Staler, Dylan’s friend, in those giddy moments after the town had stormed the field.
“Are you Mr. Lott’s daughter?” Joel asked, though on second glance he saw he didn’t need to ask: she had her father’s brows and her mother’s frown. She wasn’t the prettiest person he’d ever seen—he hated himself for noticing, but the girl certainly had nothing on Bethany Tanner—and judging by her faded clothes and her frizzy heap of hair it was clear her family’s store was far from flush. But Kimbra had a spark in her eye, a slyness. Here was a girl who knew she was made for something more exciting than this.
“Kimbra.” She extended a cool hand across the counter to him. Her handshake was firm. “Dadders is away quail hunting this weekend. Do you need him?”
Joel wasn’t surprised to hear this—he’d never known Mr. and Mrs. Lott to enjoy each other’s company.
“Actually I was hoping to speak to you.” Joel lowered his voice. “You’re dating KT Staler, yes?”
The girl glanced over Joel’s shoulder at the door. A blink and her eyes had gone dark. She said softly, “Is he okay?”
“Why would KT not be okay?”
“I thought maybe Dylan called you.”
“Called me about what?”
“Like an accident or something.”
“He hasn’t called at all. I was wondering when we could expect those guys home today.”
“What’s this about?”
Joel regarded her a moment. “I’m just looking forward to seeing Dylan again.”
The girl didn’t blink. “Aren’t we all?”
Joel stopped by the CVS to ascertain something he’d already guessed: his brother didn’t have a prescription at the pharmacy, and, after a little wheedling (“Are you sure? My mother swears it’s here for him”) discovered that Dylan had never filled a prescription for Oxycodone, or any other medication for that matter.
Joel sat in a creaking wooden booth at Hash and Brown’s Egg House for the better part of an hour, drinking coffee and skimming the pages of the Bentley Beacon. There was a breathless write-up of the game on Friday (DYLAN WHITLEY AND BISON CONTINUE CHARGE...TO STATE FINALS?) and small ads for VOTE MAYOR MALACEK, COUNTY ATTORNEY BOONE, SHERIFF LOPEZ—FOR A CLEAN RECORD.
A waitress came to refill his coffee, but when Joel raised his head to thank her, her eyes widened in recognition. Joel knew that look well. Bethany Tanner had given him one just like it at the game: this waitress was comparing the man in front of her to the boy she had no doubt seen brandishing himself at a camera when she was a girl.
Joel had forgotten just how long this town’s memory could be.
He handed her a twenty and didn’t wait for his change. As he returned to his car, he felt eyes on him from all directions.
He came to a decision. If he wanted to learn what was wrong with his brother he would need a friend in Bentley, someone the place still treated as a local. Clark—Deputy Clark—was out. Paulette was too close to give Joel impartial help. What few buddies he’d hung around with in high school had all distanced themselves after his little scandal.
No, he thought. Not quite all.
“Those boys are fine,” Wesley shouted from the kitchen. “Most of them, I mean. Do you want a beer?”
Joel caught the bright tang of onions striking oil. The size of the house had surprised him: it was an ugly mishmash of tall windows and peaked gables that sat alone at the heart of a new (and apparently abandoned) subdevelopment, its neighbors nothing but bare studs, empty window sockets, drywall swaddled in tattered Tyvek sheeting.
Inside, Wesley had clearly struggled to fill the place. A muted TV rested far enough away from the sofa Joel could hardly read the names of the men in their boxy suits discussing a football game. A little drinks cart rested in a distant corner. A massive iron cross hung above Joel’s head, an outline of the state of Texas inscribed on its heart.
Joel agreed to the beer. “Are you the only person on this block?”
“Only person for miles,” Wesley called. He returned to the living room with two sweating bottles of Corona. “I got this house off the Evers family for a song a few years back. Mrs. Evers got a little carried away with her redevelopment plans and had to unload fast.”
Joel took a long pull of the cold beer. He knew the sort of property developments Wesley was talking about—fat bubbles of speculation slippery with enthusiasm—and had counseled plenty of investors against them in the course of his career.
“This is the same Evers family as Luke, the running back?”
“The very ones. His family owns half the town these days, runs the Chamber of Commerce, such as it is. Did you ever go in the back room of the steak house on South Street? Mr. Evers is like a king in there these days, smoking and talking with the other men, scheming how to get us back in the black. Not that it does him much good at the moment. Football’s the only business still going around here.”
“You don’t say,” Joel said, as casually as he could. “Were any of your kids at the youth group talking about the fight Luke and Dylan had at the game?”
“That’s all for appearances. Those boys have to keep up a rivalry, you know. Your brother stole Luke’s girl back in middle school so now they have parts to play.”
“Luke and Bethany Tanner used to be an item?”
“I think their parents still wish they were. Evers and Tanner would be worth a small fortune if they got together.”
“But instead she chose my family.”
Wesley laughed. “Bethany and Dylan seem like the real deal.”
“She certainly loves the attention. Mind if we lay into something stronger?”
Joel was halfway to the drinks cart by the time Wesley told him to help himself.
Joel plucked a whiskey at random from a thicket of bottles and poured himself a double. He drank it down fast, poured another for himself and Wesley. For a man with a cross in his living room, this youth minister possessed quite an array of booze.
“Does KT Staler ever come to church with my brother?” Joel shouted toward the kitchen.
“You mean Mister Powerball? He’s a cat, he comes and goes. His sister, Savannah, was in your class at school, no?”
“The one who went to jail?” Joel faintly remembered Savannah Staler, a cheerleader rumored to have a hole in her nose from all the powder she snorted.
“The very same. She used to date Jason Ovelle.”
“I saw that guy getting loaded into a cruiser Friday night,” Joel said, with a faint odd blush of nostalgia. Jason had been a bully, and a savage one at that, but Joel had once had quite the locker room crush on him (and on all that he’d once kept, barely concealed, beneath his towel). “What did Jason do at the game to get arrested for?”
“What hasn’t he done? It’s a sadness, how that guy’s turned out. And his buddy Ranger Mason is hardly any better. He lost most of his hand in Afghanistan.”
Now there was a name with no pleasant memories tethered to it. Joel felt his heart shrink, felt a sudden need to pull his mind away from everything the thought of Ranger brought back to him. He opened his phone. He logged on to Grindr, smiled at the number of men who had messaged him since his arrival in town. Just like that, and he was desirable. He was worth something again, whatever Ranger Mason might once have said.
Joel took a sip of his whiskey. With a grin, he had a sudden recollection of Dylan at the field, smiling as the town laid itself at his feet.
They had something in common, the two brothers: they both loved attention from people they never wanted to know.
“My mother says KT and Dylan are very close,” Joel said.
“They are. Dylan was real concerned for KT over the summer. Staler got into some kind of trouble.”
“With drugs?”
Wesley poked his head out of the kitchen. Joel felt him glance at the open phone and quickly concealed it. If Wesley recognized what he saw on the screen, however, he gave no sign of it. “What makes you say that?”
“Dylan and KT went to the coast a few times this summer, no?”
Wesley accepted his drink. “Every few weekends. Your brother isn’t much of a churchgoer either way. Why do you ask?”
Joel almost mentioned something Investigator Mayfield had said yesterday—“The Staler boy hasn’t given Dylan any trouble?”—but caught himself. Just like he had with Kimbra Lott at the hardware store, Joel was leery of giving this man ideas.
Joel realized that Wesley had held his eye all this time. He cleared his throat and rose from the couch. “Can I use your bathroom?”
Wesley blinked. “Straight down the hall.”
On Grindr, a grid of men’s online profiles covered his screen. Most of the profiles, Joel saw, lacked any photo of their owner, which was unsurprising considering this corner of the country. A man’s faceless gray silhouette, the app’s placeholder image to conceal those users too cautious to even hint at their identity, repeated itself twenty times before Joel spotted an actual profile photo. A tight torso was posed in the mirror of an elegant bedroom so softly lit Joel doubted it could be found anywhere in Pettis County; good taste like this didn’t seem to exist outside of cities. This user, he suspected, was using someone else’s photographs.
Whoever they were, they had sent him a message:
omg ur the brother!!
Joel glanced at the man’s profile: no height listed, no weight, no age, no name. Who was this?
Am I? Joel wrote.
The user sent him an emoji with hearts for eyes.
Joel responded:
How old are you?
Joel stepped into a bedroom large enough to house a small plane and found little inside but hideous oak furniture and a sprawling painting of a cattle range.
15...y???
Jesus Christ. Joel tapped BLOCK. The profile vanished from his screen without a sound.
Another cross awaited Joel over the toilet in the master suite’s bathroom. As he relieved himself, he wondered what sort of life he had escaped in his exile from this town.
He almost didn’t feel his watch tremble with a message on his wrist.
It was Dylan.
im sorry, came first. Then, after a pause:
i loved you too.
Why did this bring Joel no comfort? He flushed the toilet, splashed water on his face, fumbled with a branded Bison hand towel—he’d somehow gotten hammered on a glass of whiskey. Or was it three?
call me D. Lets fixx this.
A metallic glint caught his eye on the dresser as he made his way back across the bedroom: a gold medal embossed with a footballer. Joel, drunk as he was, could just make out the words MOST VALUABLE PLAYER on the back.
“I’m still repping,” Wesley said from the bedroom door, nodding at the medal and sounding abashed.
“I didn’t know you were MVP.”
“Oh, you know me.” Wesley stepped close. He took hold of the medal still dangling between Joel’s fingers on its crisp blue ribbon. “Mister Glory Days.”
Something curious happened: Wesley let the motion of grabbing the little gold disk carry him forward, like he’d drunkenly lost his balance, and a moment later his head had come to rest on Joel’s shoulder, his chest against Joel’s chest, his free hand—calloused and dry and very hot—cupped loosely around Joel’s bicep.
Their faces were close. Joel, somehow, always forgot just how shockingly right another man’s body felt against his own, even when it was this unwelcome. He always forgot the heat of another man’s throat.
“We’ve had more of that the last few years.”
Joel’s stomach turned. He stepped away quickly. Wesley gave him a pained pout, smoothed his shirt and tucked the golden medal in his pocket with a chuckle. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Whiskey’s too much of a blessing sometimes. Do you like mayonnaise with your burger?”
“I think I’ve lost my appetite,” Joel replied. He fumbled for his keys, though he knew he shouldn’t be driving with all the booze in his blood. A car wreck would still be better than whatever sad accidents Wesley had in store for him here.
But as he reached the front door, the fog of alcohol lifted long enough for him to notice the obvious.
i loved u too, his brother’s message had read.
Loved. Past tense.