Halfway up the hillside Julie Dietz spun around and pressed so close to Thad’s chest that he was sure she was going to kiss him. He was about to try when she raised one finger to his mouth, bit her bottom lip, and slid her other hand down the front of his jeans.
“You sure you’ve got enough for all of us?” Julie asked.
“There’s plenty,” Thad said. He could feel all the blood leaving his head and pumping down to where she held him.
“Show it to me,” Julie said, tightening her grip around him.
“It’s in the car.” Thad smiled, but Julie just squinted her eyes and shook her head.
“You better not be playing with me.”
“I ain’t playing with you at all.”
“Exactly how much y’all got?” Julie prodded.
Thad’s mind started to go places it had not gone in some time, and for a second or two he almost forgot where he was and what he was doing. “We need to get on up that hill,” he said. “You grab that friend of yours and you’ll see exactly what we’ve got.”
Julie smiled like she knew she had him, pulled her hand back out of his pants, and the two of them made their way up the hillside out of the woods onto a scraggly strip of yard to the trailer. When they reached the small square of decking boards and stood in the porch light, Thad breathed against her ear. “Hurry up in there. I ain’t waiting much longer.”
Julie grabbed Thad’s hand and leaned back until he was the only thing keeping her from falling. She laughed and let go, opened the door, and went inside, and Thad turned his back against the trailer. He had his head to the side, ear pressed against the metal so that he could hear the muffled television and Julie’s voice.
That night in Wilmington Thad told Aiden about was the last time a woman had touched him. That had been almost six years before. Thinking back on it, Thad knew that even that night was a fluke. Maybe the girl had been looking to get back at her old man or maybe she just wanted to fuck, but she walked into the bar that night looking for someone to take back to her bed and there hadn’t been but three men in the whole place to choose from. One was Chaz Johnson, who had a birthmark that painted half his face purple, and she wouldn’t hardly look at him. Todd Cunningham, a farm boy from Alabama with muscles that carved shadows into his shirt, would have probably been her first choice, but he was head down on the table, drooling out of the corner of his mouth. That left Thad, and so he went home with her, and though it hadn’t been all that good and she passed out sometime in the middle, she was the one he thought about the whole time he was gone. There were nights he wondered if she remembered him, and other nights that he just didn’t care.
Julie came outside and introduced Thad to her friend. Her name was Meredith, and she pulled the door shut as she stepped onto the narrow porch. She whipped a long braided ponytail that hung down her back like rope across her shoulder. A loose T-shirt hung over her like a nightgown and almost covered the ragged pair of cotton boxers she wore for shorts. Her legs were welted with mosquito bites, maybe fleabites, maybe just scabs, but whatever it was speckled her shins with dark pocks. Looking her over, Thad wished he’d just told Julie to hop in the car when he had the chance. But it was too late to turn back so he just led them down the hill.
Meredith smiled at Aiden with a mouthful of tobacco-stained teeth as she slid in beside him on the bench seat, her dimpled thigh nudging against his leg. Thad took the window and Julie climbed onto his lap, and he slammed the door, packing the four of them inside the cab like potted meat. The engine cranked and Aiden hit the headlights and Thad watched as Meredith put her hand on Aiden’s knee and ran her way up his leg. Aiden turned with a look like he just might kill them all, but Thad laughed and gave a lazy wink. He moved his hand under the front of Julie Dietz’s shirt and said, “These girls say they want to party.”
• • •
JULIE DIETZ WAS down to her panties and strutted around the trailer like a lanky crane as soon as they hit the door. She plopped beside Thad onto the stained couch and crossed her legs, stroked her hand along his spine, and flipped her hair out of her face. Loretta Lynn stood by Julie’s ankles and watched her curiously.
Thad slid his license out of his billfold and rolled a dollar bill into a straw, set them side by side on the table in front of him where the revolver lay. He lit a cigarette from his pack and blew a heavy cloud of smoke into the center of the room.
“Let me get one of those,” Meredith said from the edge of a ladder-back chair between the couch and kitchen. She hunched over with her elbows rested on her knees.
Thad shook a cigarette free, just the filter extended from the open end of the pack, and offered it toward her. Meredith snatched the whole pack out of his hand, bit the butt between her teeth, and tilted her head back until the cigarette was free.
“Lighter,” she said, her eyes wide and brow raised, as if even having to ask were some great burden.
An orange Bic was on the table, and Thad threw it like a dart into her shoulder. She sneered and leaned down to retrieve it from the floor, lit her smoke, and tossed the lighter back into his lap without ever saying a word. With his face toward the ceiling, Thad leaned back and rubbed his hands anxiously along his thighs.
The door opened and Aiden stood over the threshold with his right hand balled into a fist outstretched into the room.
“You ain’t coming in?”
Aiden shook his head no, but didn’t speak.
“Well, shit, Aid.” Thad rose from the couch and ashed his cigarette onto the floor, a tiny speck of fire smoldering on the carpet for a second before burning out. He walked over to where Aiden stood and spoke with his cigarette jumping about his mouth. “What gives?”
Aiden looked past Thad to where Julie sat on the couch, then cut his eyes over to Meredith, who was drawing puffs of smoke like she was at a poker table, a long fingernail of ash curving from the end of her cigarette. Aiden still didn’t say a word.
“You girls make yourselves comfortable,” Thad said, looking back into the room as he ushered Aiden onto the porch and pulled the door behind him.
“You got anything to drink in here?” Meredith shouted just before the door shut.
Thad poked his head inside. “There’s water in the sink,” he said, shooing her toward the kitchen.
He and Aiden stood on the porch as Meredith tromped her way across the inside of the trailer. The scratchy drone of crickets hummed everywhere, as if the night were comprised from that sound.
“What’s wrong with you?” Thad asked.
“I think you’ve lost your mind bringing those two down here.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know them two from Adam.”
“What the hell you think’s going to happen?”
“I’ll tell you exactly what might happen. They could rob you blind, or more than likely walk around getting a good look at everything and then talk somebody else into robbing us. They could get picked up for something petty and go telling the law anything to keep from getting pinched.”
“They ain’t going to rat on us.”
“And why the hell not?” Aiden’s voice was suddenly loud, and he clenched his teeth as if to try and keep his voice down so the girls inside wouldn’t hear. “You tell me one good reason why those two in there wouldn’t rat us out to keep themselves out of trouble. Hell, everybody on this shit goes to blabbing before they’re even cuffed up. What makes you think them two’s different?”
Thad didn’t answer.
“All I know is there ain’t anything good coming out of this.”
“You worry too much, Aid.” Thad smirked. “Ain’t nothing going to happen.”
“What about that other girl? What you going to do with her when you’re in there with that scrawny one?”
“What about her?” Thad shook his head and laughed. “I sure ain’t about to roll her around in flour and find the wet spot, Aid. Is that what you think?”
Aiden stood there with a look on his face like he thought Thad was the dumbest person on the face of the earth.
“Ain’t nothing going to happen tonight except for a good time.” Thad held out his hand and waited for Aiden to give up what was clenched in his fist. Thad felt like he could do anything. When he wasn’t high, life seemed fenced in, but on dope, the world opened up. Everything felt good for a little while. He smiled at Aiden and laughed. “Hell, I bet that big girl in there would let you run it right up her pipe chute. No questions asked.”
Aiden didn’t laugh. He just dropped the bag into Thad’s palm.
“You ain’t a lick of fun no more.”
“And you’ve turned into about the dumbest son of a bitch I know,” Aiden said.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you need to grow the fuck up.”
“There ain’t nothing wrong with letting your hair down. All these years you’d have been right there beside me, and now look at what she’s turned you into.” Thad pointed up the hillside to his mother’s house. “She’s done turned you pussy.”
“You’re twenty-four years old and still acting like we’re in tenth grade.”
“That’s exactly right. I’m twenty-four years old.” Thad stood there shaking his head.
Aiden looked at him and Thad thought for a second that Aiden was going to say something, but he didn’t. He just rubbed his forehead and stared at moths that orbited the porch light like dusty planets around some electric sun. Without muttering a sound, Aiden turned and headed down the steps and crossed the yard to the Ranchero. Thad watched him take the book bag filled with guns over his shoulder, the ammo can held by his side as he slammed the lid of the truck box. April’s lights were on up the hill and Aiden headed toward them.
For the life of him, Thad couldn’t understand why Aiden was so worried. Wayne Bryson was dead, but it wasn’t like they had anything to do with it. He and Aiden hadn’t done a thing other than take what would have wound up in an evidence locker when the cops found the body, and that’s chancing some of the scabs right there along Booker Branch wouldn’t have wandered in and made off with it themselves. Dumb luck. Nothing more than dumb luck.
There wasn’t a reason in the world to let Aiden’s mopey ass ruin a good time. There was a bag of dope in his hand, he was already halfway to the moon, and now there was a girl inside who wanted to party. He hadn’t been with a woman in six years, six fucking years. She might just be the best he’d ever had, he thought. Julie Dietz might know things that’d make him forget there’d ever been anyone but her.