Lena banged her fist on the front door of her sister’s house. She was about to go back to her car and get her spare set of keys when Nan Thomas opened the door.
Nan was shorter than Lena and about ten pounds heavier. Her short mousy brown hair and thick glasses made her resemble the prototypical librarian that she was.
Nan’s eyes were swollen and puffy, fresh tears still streaking down her cheeks. She held a balled-up piece of tissue in her hand.
Lena said, “I guess you heard.”
Nan turned, walking back into the house, leaving the door open for Lena. The two women had never gotten along. Except for the fact that Nan Thomas was Sibyl’s lover, Lena would not have said two words to her.
The house was a bungalow built in the 1920s. Much of the original architecture had been left in place, from the hardwood floors to the simple molding lining the doorways. The front door opened into a large living room with a fireplace at one end and the dining room at the other. Off this was the kitchen. Two small bedrooms and a bath finished the simple plan.
Lena walked purposefully down the hallway. She opened the first door on the right, entering the bedroom that had been turned into Sibyl’s study. The room was neat and orderly, mostly by necessity. Sibyl was blind, things had to be put in their place or she would not be able to find them. Braille books were stacked neatly on the shelves. Magazines, also in Braille, were lined up on the coffee table in front of an old futon. A computer sat on the desk lining the far wall. Lena was turning it on when Nan walked into the room.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I need to go through her things.”
“Why?” Nan asked, going over to the desk. She put her hand over the keyboard, as if she could stop Lena.
“I need to see if anything was strange, if anyone was following her.”
“You think you’ll find it in here?” Nan demanded, picking up the keyboard. “She only used this for school. You don’t even understand the voice recognition software.”
Lena grabbed the keyboard back. “I’ll figure it out.”
“No, you won’t,” Nan countered. “This is my house, too.”
Lena put her hands on her hips, walking toward the center of the room. She spotted a stack of papers beside an old Braille typewriter. Lena picked them up, turning to Nan. “What’s this?”
Nan ran over, grabbing the papers. “It’s her diary.”
“Can you read it?”
“It’s her personal diary,” Nan repeated, aghast. “These are her private thoughts.”
Lena chewed her bottom lip, trying for a softer tactic. That she had never liked Nan Thomas was not exactly a secret in this house. “You can read Braille, right?”
“Some.”
“You need to tell me what this says, Nan. Somebody killed her.” Lena tapped the pages. “Maybe she was being followed. Maybe she was scared of something and didn’t want to tell us.”
Nan turned away, her head tilted down toward the pages. She ran her fingers along the top line of dots, but Lena could tell she wasn’t reading it. For some reason, Lena got the impression she was touching the pages because Sibyl had, as if she could absorb some sense of Sibyl rather than just words.
Nan said, “She always went to the diner on Mondays. It was her time out to do something on her own.”
“I know.”
“We were supposed to make burritos tonight.” Nan stacked the papers against the desk. “Do what you need to do,” she said. “I’ll be in the living room.”
Lena waited for her to leave, then continued the task at hand. Nan was right about the computer. Lena did not know how to use the software, and Sibyl had only used it for school. Sibyl dictated into the computer what she needed, and her teaching assistant made sure copies were made.
The second bedroom was slightly larger than the first. Lena stood in the doorway, taking in the neatly made bed. A stuffed Pooh bear was tucked between the pillows. Pooh was old, balding in places. Sibyl had rarely been without him throughout her childhood, and throwing him away had seemed like heresy. Lena leaned against the door, getting a mental flash of Sibyl as a child, standing with the Pooh bear. Lena closed her eyes, letting the memory overwhelm her. There wasn’t much Lena wanted to remember about her childhood, but a particular day stuck out. A few months after the accident that had blinded Sibyl, they were in the backyard, Lena pushing her sister on the swing. Sibyl held Pooh tight to her chest, her head thrown back as she felt the breeze, a huge smile on her face as she relished this simple pleasure. There was such a trust there, Sibyl getting on the swing, trusting Lena not to push her too hard or too high. Lena had felt a responsibility. Her chest swelled from it, and she kept pushing Sibyl until her arms had ached.
Lena rubbed her eyes, shutting the bedroom door. She went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. Other than Sibyl’s usual vitamins and herbs, the cabinet was empty. Lena opened the closet, rummaging past the toilet paper and tampons, hair gel and hand towels. What she was looking for, Lena did not know. Sibyl didn’t hide things. She would be the last person to be able to find them if she did.
“Sibby,” Lena breathed, turning back to the mirror on the medicine cabinet. Seeing Sibyl, not herself. Lena spoke to her reflection, whispering, “Tell me something. Please.”
She closed her eyes, trying to navigate the space as Sibyl would. The room was small, and Lena could touch both walls with her hands as she stood in the center. She opened her eyes with a weary sigh. There was nothing there.
Back in the living room, Nan Thomas sat on the couch. She held Sibyl’s diary in her lap, not looking up when Lena came in. “I read the last few days’ worth of stuff,” she said, her tone flat. “Nothing out of place. She was worried about a kid at school who was flunking.”
“A guy?”
Nan shook her head. “Female. A freshman.”
Lena leaned her hand against the wall. “Did you have any workmen in or out in the last month?”
“No.”
“Same mailman delivering to the house? No UPS or FedEx?”
“Nobody new. This is Grant County, Lee.”
Lena bristled at the familiar name. She tried to bite back her anger. “She didn’t say she felt like she was being followed or anything?”
“No, not at all. She was perfectly normal.” Nan clutched the papers to her chest. “Her classes were fine. We were fine.” A slight smile came to her lips. “We were supposed to take a day trip to Eufalla this weekend.”
Lena took her car keys out of her pocket. “Right,” she quipped. “I guess if anything comes up you should call me.”
“Lee—”
Lena held up her hand. “Don’t.”
Nan acknowledged the warning with a frown. “I’ll call you if I think of anything.”
By midnight, Lena was finishing off her third bottle of Rolling Rock, driving across the Grant County line outside of Madison. She contemplated throwing the empty out the car window but stopped herself at the last minute. She laughed at her twisted sense of morality; she would drive under the influence but she would not litter. The line had to be drawn somewhere.
Angela Norton, Lena’s mother, grew up watching her brother Hank dig himself deeper and deeper into a bottomless pit of alcohol and drug abuse. Hank had told Lena that her mother had been adamantly against alcohol. When Angela married Calvin Adams, her only rule of the house was that he not go out drinking with his fellow policemen. Cal was known to slip out now and then, but for the most part, he honored his wife’s wishes. Three months into his marriage, he was making a routine traffic stop along a dirt road outside of Reece, Georgia, when the driver pulled a gun on him. Shot twice in the head, Calvin Adams died before his body hit the ground.
At twenty-three, Angela was hardly prepared to be a widow. When she passed out at her husband’s funeral, her family chalked it up to nerves. Four weeks of morning sickness later, a doctor finally gave her the diagnosis. She was pregnant.
As her condition progressed, Angela became more despondent. She wasn’t a happy woman to begin with. Life in Reece was not easy, and the Norton family had seen its share of hardship. Hank Norton was known for his volatile temper and was considered to be the kind of mean drunk you didn’t want to run into in a dark alley. At her older brother’s knee, Angela had learned not to put up much of a fight. Two weeks after giving birth to twin baby girls, Angela Adams succumbed to an infection. She was twenty-four years old. Hank Norton was the only relative willing to take in her two girls.
To hear Hank tell the story, Sibyl and Lena had turned his life around. The day he took them home was the day he stopped abusing his body. He claimed to have found God through their presence and to this day said he could recall minute by minute what it was like to hold Lena and Sibyl for the first time.
In truth, Hank only stopped shooting up speed when the girls came to live with him. He did not stop drinking until much later. The girls were eight when it happened. A bad day at work had sent Hank on a binge. When he ran out of liquor, he decided to drive instead of walk to the store. His car didn’t even make it to the street. Sibyl and Lena were playing ball out in the front yard. Lena still didn’t know what had been going through Sibyl’s mind as she chased the ball into the driveway. The car had struck her from the side, the steel bumper slamming into her temple as she bent to retrieve the ball.
County services had been called in, but nothing came of the investigation. The closest hospital was a forty-minute drive from Reece. Hank had plenty of time to sober up and give a convincing story. Lena could still recall being in the car with him, watching his mouth work as he figured out the story in his mind. At the time, eight-year-old Lena was not quite sure what had happened, and when the police interviewed her she had supported Hank’s story.
Sometimes Lena still had dreams about the accident, and in these dreams Sibyl’s body bounced against the ground much as the ball had. That Hank had allegedly not touched another drop of alcohol since then was of no consequence to Lena. The damage had been done.
Lena opened another bottle of beer, removing both hands from the wheel to twist off the cap. She took a long pull, grimacing at the taste. Alcohol had never appealed to her. Lena hated being out of control, hated the dizzy sensation and the numbness. Getting drunk was something for the weak, a crutch for people who were not strong enough to live their own lives, to stand on their own two feet. Drinking was running away from something. Lena took another swig of beer, thinking there was no better time than the present for all of these things.
The Celica fishtailed as she took the turn off the exit too hard. Lena corrected the wheel with one hand, holding tight to the bottle with the other. A hard right at the top of the exit took her to the Reece Stop ’n’ Save. The store inside was dark. Like most businesses in town, the gas station closed at ten. Though, if memory served, a walk around the building would reveal a group of teenagers drinking, smoking cigarettes, and doing things their parents did not want to know about. Lena and Sibyl had walked to this store many a dark night, sneaking out of the house under Hank’s none-too-watchful eye.
Scooping up the empty bottles, Lena got out of the car. She stumbled, her foot catching on the door. A bottle slipped out of her hands and busted on the concrete. Cursing, she kicked the shards away from her tires, walking toward the trash can. Lena stared at her reflection in the store’s plate glass windows as she tossed her empties. For a second, it was like looking at Sibyl. She reached over to the glass, touching her lips, her eyes.
“Jesus.” Lena sighed. This was one of the many reasons she did not like to drink. She was turning into a basket case.
Music blared from the bar across the street. Hank considered it a test of will that he owned a bar but never imbibed. The Hut looked like its name, with a southern twist. The roof was thatched only until it mattered, then a rusted tin lined the pitched surface. Tiki torches with orange and red lightbulbs instead of flames stood on either side of the entrance, and the door was painted to look like it had been fashioned from grass. Paint peeled from the walls, but for the most part you could still make out the bamboo design.
Drunk as she was, Lena had the sense to look both ways before she crossed the street. Her feet were about ten seconds behind her body, and she held her hands out to her sides for balance as she walked across the gravel parking lot. Of the fifty or so vehicles in the lot, about forty were pickup trucks. This being the new South, instead of gun racks they sported chrome runners and gold striping along their sides. The other cars were Jeeps and four-wheel drives. Nascar numbers were painted onto the back windshields. Hank’s cream-colored 1983 Mercedes was the only sedan in the lot.
The Hut reeked of cigarette smoke, and Lena had to take a few shallow breaths so she wouldn’t choke. Her eyes burned as she walked over to the bar. Not much had changed in the last twenty or so years. The floor was still sticky from beer and crunchy from peanut shells. To the left were booths that probably had more DNA material in them than the FBI lab at Quantico. To the right was a long bar fashioned from fifty-gallon barrels and heart of pine. A stage was on the far wall, the rest rooms for men and women on either side. In the middle of the bar was what Hank called a dance floor. Most nights, it was packed back to front with men and women in various stages of drunken arousal. The Hut was a two-thirty bar, meaning everybody looked good at two-thirty in the morning.
Hank was nowhere to be seen, but Lena knew he wouldn’t be far on amateur night. Every other Monday, patrons of the Hut were invited to stand onstage and embarrass themselves in front of the rest of the town. Lena shuddered as she thought about it. Reece made Heartsdale look like a bustling metropolis. Except for the tire factory, most of the men in this room would have left a long time ago. As it was, they were content to drink themselves to death and pretend they were happy.
Lena slid onto the first vacant stool she could find. The country song on the jukebox had a pounding bass, and she leaned her elbows on the bar, cupping her hands over her ears so that she could hear herself think.
She felt a bump on her arm and looked up in time to see Webster’s definition of a hick sitting down beside her. His face was sunburned from his neck to about an inch from his hairline where he had obviously been working outside wearing a baseball hat. His shirt was starched within an inch of its life, and the cuffs were tight around his thick wrists. The jukebox stopped abruptly, and Lena worked her jaw, trying to make her ears pop so she didn’t feel like she was in a tunnel.
Her gentleman neighbor bumped her arm again, smiling, saying, “Hey, lady.”
Lena rolled her eyes, catching the bartender’s eye. “JD on the rocks,” she ordered.
“That’n’s on me,” the man said, slapping down a ten-dollar bill. When he spoke, his words slurred together like a wrecked train, and Lena realized he was a lot drunker than she planned ever to be.
The man gave her a sloppy smile. “You know, sugar, I’d love to get biblical with you.”
She leaned over, close to his ear. “If I ever find out you have, I’ll cut your balls off with my car keys.”
He opened his mouth to reply but was jerked off the barstool before he could get a word out. Hank stood there with the man’s shirt collar in his hand, then shoved him into the crowd. The look he fixed Lena with was just as hard as the one she imagined was on her own face.
Lena had never liked her uncle. Unlike Sibyl, she wasn’t the forgiving type. Even when Lena drove Sibyl to Reece for visits, Lena spent most of her time in the car or sitting on the front porch steps, keys in her hand, ready to go as soon as Sibyl walked out the front door.
Despite the fact that Hank Norton had injected speed into his veins for the better part of his twenties and thirties, he was not an idiot. Lena showing up on Hank’s proverbial doorstep in the middle of the night could only mean one thing.
Their eyes were still locked as music started to blare again, shaking the walls, sending a vibration from the floor up the bar stool. She saw rather than heard what Hank was asking when he said, “Where’s Sibyl?”
Tucked behind the bar, more like an outhouse than a place of business, Hank’s office was a small wooden box with a tin roof. A lightbulb hung from a frayed electrical wire that had probably been installed by the WPA. Posters from beer and liquor companies served as wallpaper. White cartons filled with liquor were stacked against the back wall, leaving about ten square feet for a desk with two chairs on either side. Surrounding these were piles of boxes stuffed with receipts that Hank had accumulated from running the bar over the years. A stream running behind the shack kept mold and moisture in the air. Lena imagined Hank liked working in this dark, dank place, passing his days in an environment more suitable for a tongue.
“I see you’ve redecorated,” Lena said, setting her glass on top of one of the boxes. She could not tell if she wasn’t drunk anymore or if she was too drunk to notice.
Hank gave the glass a cursory glance, then looked back at Lena. “You don’t drink.”
She held up the glass in a toast. “To the late bloomer.”
Hank sat back in his office chair, his hands clasped in front of his stomach. He was tall and skinny, with skin that tended to flake in the winter. Despite the fact that his father was Spanish, Hank’s appearance more closely resembled his mother’s, a pasty woman who was as sour as her complexion. In her mind, Lena had always thought it appropriate that Hank bore a close resemblance to an albino snake.
He asked, “What brings you to these parts?”
“Just dropping by,” she managed around the glass. The whiskey was bitter in her mouth. She kept an eye on Hank as she finished the drink and banged the empty glass back down on the box. Lena did not know what was stopping her. For years she had waited to get the upper hand with Hank Norton. This was her time to hurt him as much as he had hurt Sibyl.
“You started snortin’ coke, too, or have you been crying?”
Lena wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What do you think?”
Hank stared at her, working his hands back and forth. This was more than a nervous habit, Lena knew. Speed injected into the veins of his hands had given Hank arthritis at an early age. Since most of the veins in his arms had calcified from the powdered additive used to cut the drug, there wasn’t much circulation there, either. His hands were cold as ice most days and a constant source of pain.
The rubbing stopped abruptly. “Let’s get it over with, Lee. I’ve got the show to put on.”
Lena tried to open her mouth, but nothing came out. Part of her was angered by his flippant attitude, which had marked their relationship from the very beginning. Part of her did not know how to tell him. As much as Lena hated her uncle, he was a human being. Hank had doted on Sibyl. In high school, Lena could not take her sister everywhere, and Sibyl had spent a lot of time home with Hank. There was an undeniable bond there, and as much as Lena wanted to hurt her uncle, she felt herself holding back. Lena had loved Sibyl, Sibyl had loved Hank.
Hank picked up a ballpoint pen, turning it head over end on the desk several times before he finally asked, “What’s wrong, Lee? Need some money?”
If only it were that simple, Lena thought.
“Car broke down?”
She shook her head slowly side to side.
“It’s Sibyl,” he stated, his voice catching in his throat.
When Lena did not answer, he nodded slowly to himself, putting his hands together, as if to pray. “She’s sick?” he asked, his voice indicating he expected the worst. With this one sentence, he showed more emotion than Lena had ever seen him express in a lifetime of knowing her uncle. She looked at him closely as if for the first time. His pale skin was blotched with those red dots pasty men get on their faces as they age. His hair, silver for as long as she could recall, was dulled with yellow under the sixty-watt bulb. His Hawaiian shirt was rumpled, which was not his style, and his hands tremored slightly as he fidgeted with them.
Lena did it the same way Jeffrey Tolliver had. “She went to the diner in the middle of town,” she began. “You know the one across from the dress shop?”
A slight nod was all he gave.
“She walked there from the house,” Lena continued. “She did it every week, just to be able to do something on her own.”
Hank clasped his hands together in front of his face, touching the sides of his index fingers to his forehead.
“So, uhm.” Lena picked up the glass, needing something to do. She sucked what little liquor was left off the ice cubes, then continued. “She went to the bathroom, and somebody killed her.”
There was little sound in the tiny office. Grasshoppers chirped outside. Gurgling came from the stream. A distant throbbing came from the bar.
Without preamble, Hank turned around, picking through the boxes, asking, “What’ve you had to drink tonight?”
Lena was surprised by his question, though she shouldn’t have been. Despite his AA brainwashing, Hank Norton was a master at avoiding the unpleasant. His need to escape was what had brought Hank to drugs and alcohol in the first place. “Beer in the car,” she said, playing along, glad for once that he did not want the gory details. “JD here.”
He paused, his hand around a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. “Beer before liquor, never sicker,” he warned, his voice catching on the last part.
Lena held out her glass, rattling the ice for attention. She watched Hank as he poured the drink, not surprised when he licked his lips.
“How’s work treating you?” Hank asked, his voice tinny in the shack. His lower lip trembled slightly. His expression was one of total grief, in direct opposition to the words coming from his mouth. He said, “Doing okay?”
Lena nodded. She felt as if she were smack in the middle of a car accident. She finally understood the meaning of the word surreal. Nothing seemed concrete in this tiny space. The glass in her hand felt dull. Hank was miles away. She was in a dream.
Lena tried to snap herself out of it, downing her drink quickly. The alcohol hit the back of her throat like fire, burning and solid, as if she had swallowed hot asphalt.
Hank watched the glass, not Lena, as she did this.
This was all she needed. She said, “Sibyl’s dead, Hank.”
Tears came to his eyes without warning, and all that Lena could think was that he looked so very, very old. It was like watching a flower wilt. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his nose.
Lena repeated the words much as Jeffrey Tolliver had earlier this evening. “She’s dead.”
His voice wavered as he asked, “Are you sure?”
Lena nodded quickly up and down. “I saw her.” Then, “Somebody cut her up pretty bad.”
His mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. He kept his eyes even with Lena’s the way he used to do when he was trying to catch her in a lie. He finally looked away, mumbling, “That doesn’t make sense.”
She could have reached out and patted his old hand, maybe tried to comfort him, but she didn’t. Lena felt frozen in her chair. Instead of thinking of Sibyl, which had been her mind’s initial reaction, she concentrated on Hank, on his wet lips, his eyes, the hairs growing out of his nose.
“Oh, Sibby.” He sighed, wiping his eyes. Lena watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. He reached for the bottle, resting his hand on the neck. Without asking, he unscrewed the cap and poured Lena another drink. This time, the dark liquid nearly touched the rim.
More time passed, then Hank blew his nose loudly, patting at his eyes with the handkerchief. “I can’t see anyone trying to kill her.” His hands shook even more as he folded the handkerchief over and over. “Doesn’t make sense,” he mumbled. “You, I could understand.”
“Thanks a lot.”
This was sufficient enough to spark Hank’s irritation. “I mean because of the job you do. Now get that damn chip off your shoulder.”
Lena did not comment. This was a familiar order.
He put his palms down on the desk, fixing Lena with a stare. “Where were you when this happened?”
Lena tossed back the drink, not feeling the burn so much this time. When she returned the glass to the desk, Hank was still staring at her.
She mumbled, “Macon.”
“Was it some sort of hate crime, then?”
Lena reached over, picking up the bottle. “I don’t know. Maybe.” The whiskey gurgled in the bottle as she poured. “Maybe he picked her because she was gay. Maybe he picked her because she was blind.” Lena gave a sideways glance, catching his pained reaction to this. She decided to expound upon her speculation. “Rapists tend to pick women they think they can control, Hank. She was an easy target.”
“So, this all comes back to me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He grabbed the bottle. “Right,” he snapped, dropping the half-empty bottle back into its box. His tone was angry now, back to the nuts and bolts. Like Lena, Hank was never comfortable with the emotional side of things. Sibyl had often said the main reason Hank and Lena never got along was that they were too much alike. Sitting there with Hank, absorbing his grief and anger as it filled the tiny shed, Lena realized that Sibyl was right. She was looking at herself in twenty years, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Hank asked, “Have you talked to Nan?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ve got to plan the service,” he said, picking up the pen and drawing a box on his desk calendar. At the top he wrote the word FUNERAL in all caps. “Is there somebody in Grant you think would do a good job?” He waited for her response, then added, “I mean, most of her friends were there.”
“What?” Lena asked, the glass paused at her lips. “What are you talking about?”
“Lee, we’ve got to make arrangements. We’ve got to take care of Sibby.”
Lena finished the drink. When she looked at Hank, his features were blurred. As a matter of fact, the whole room was blurred. She had the sensation of being on a roller coaster, and her stomach reacted accordingly. Lena put her hand to her mouth, fighting the urge to be sick.
Hank had probably seen her expression many times before, most likely in the mirror. He was beside her, holding a trash can under her chin, just as she lost the battle.