A trail of cupcake wrappers littered the aisles of Food Lion. At the end of the trail, Denny Rattler was hooked into a blood pressure machine by the pharmacy. He was licking purple icing off the last of a dozen, and as the cuff tightened down on his arm all he could think was that he could still eat more.
For the first time in a week, he felt pretty good. The real sickness—the cold sweats, the vomiting, the diarrhea, the cramping, the cravings—was only intense for the first three or four days. But between the nausea and anxiety, he hadn’t been able to keep much down until this morning. It was day eight and Denny could’ve won the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest if those sons of bitches would’ve traded the wieners for Ding Dongs.
The machine released the air out of the cuff with a loud hiss and Denny checked his numbers: 134 over 84. He rubbed his biceps and finished off the cupcake. The chart said borderline hypertension.
He remembered one time he was in the car with a bunch of boys methed out of their gourds who said they had a lead on some tar. They were sitting in the parking lot of the Ingles in Sylva and this fat fuck loudmouth named Woody was convinced his heart was about to explode. Everyone else wanted to finish the bag, but Woody wasn’t so sure he was going to make it. He ran inside the store to check his blood pressure, came back out to the car, and snorted enough crystal to put a satellite into orbit. Denny chuckled and stood up.
Over in the bakery, a white-haired woman with thick glasses and a hairnet was putting out fresh doughnuts. Denny snatched a box off the shelf and started in. He strolled casually for the dairy aisle, figuring some cold milk would help the glaze down his gullet, and with a bottle of 2% in hand he made his way for the door.
He was close enough to getting away that he could feel the sunshine on his face when somebody grabbed him by the arm and that box of doughnuts hit the concrete. He cut his eyes to the side and saw a black uniform and a shiny badge and that was all it took for his arm to jerk away and his legs to start running. There was a Coke machine against the wall about twenty feet from where he started and he was almost to it when the fire came through him. His muscles locked up and he toppled face-first stiff and straight as a felled tree.
The world was suddenly turned on its side and there was this little chubby-faced boy jumping up and down in the parking lot screaming, “He tased him, Ma! He fucking tased him!” Denny felt his shoulders pop as the officer yanked his arms behind his back. His face was scrunched and his cheek was burning where it had smacked the pavement. Everyone outside was staring, holding their buggies like a still-life painting. The cuffs clicked. He felt the metal cold on his wrists. That fast. That fast and the jig was up. Everything had been good just a minute before. A man’s luck sure could turn on a dime.
A large map of the Qualla Boundary covered most of one wall. The room was small and there was a surveillance camera mounted in the corner. Cinder block was painted tan that looked about the color of clay. Denny glanced around the room, leaned back, and slicked his fingers through his greasy hair. He wished they’d hurry up and book him so he could take a shower and wash the stink off. He’d been sleeping at the river park and the Axe body spray he’d used for a bum’s bath at the Food Lion could only mask so much.
While he’d had run-ins with damn near everyone in the department, Denny’d never seen the arresting officer before. The name badge on his uniform said he was a Locust. He looked to be mid-twenties, square-jawed, and wore his hair in a mid-fade shaved low on top. Locust hadn’t said anything since bringing Denny into the room. He just stood in the corner by the window with his arms crossed. A detective named Donnie Owle was doing all the talking, and Denny knew Donnie well. He’d followed the course of Owle’s career from patrol to narcotics. Now he was a full-blown detective.
Anywhere outside of Cherokee, Owle could’ve passed for a white man. He was pale-skinned and had a head that was big around as a basketball. There wasn’t any hair left on top and the fluorescents made a glare of his scalp. A cheap suit fit him loosely and he wore a bolo tie like a tried-and-true idiot.
“Why don’t you tell me what went on over at the campground in Whittier?” Owle asked. He took a sip of coffee from a short Styrofoam cup.
The question caught Denny off guard, because up until then everything he’d been asked about was small potatoes. He tried not to let his surprise show. “I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about. What campground?”
“You can do better than that, Denny. There was a witness saw a piss-colored LeBaron squealing tires out of that parking lot. Now, who do you know drives a car that looks like that? Thing is, I don’t really care one way or another. That’s not even our jurisdiction. I was just asking more as a favor for a friend of mine in Jackson County. I owe him one, I guess you could say.”
Denny’s palms were getting clammy. Ever since it happened, he couldn’t shake the image of that boy sprawled out on the cabin floor, the needle in his neck, his mouth open like a fish. “I don’t even got that car no more.”
“You don’t got it?”
“Ain’t that what I said?” Denny ran the corner of his thumbnail under the fingernail of his middle finger and smeared the grit on his pant leg. “Somebody stole that car a couple weeks ago. I ain’t seen it since.”
“Who stole it?”
“How should I know?”
“You report it?”
“No.”
“And why not? A man’s car gets stolen you’d think he’d call the law. Most folks would probably want to try and get their car back, at least make an insurance claim.”
“Didn’t figure y’all would do me any favors.” He massaged his wrists where the handcuffs had rubbed him raw.
“Why would you think that?”
“Well,” Denny said, but he didn’t finish his sentence.
A call came in on the radio and the young officer in the corner walked out of the room. Now it was just the two of them. Owle scooted his chair around the table so that he was almost sitting beside him.
“We found that car of yours wrapped around a tree about a mile up Bearclaw. Blood all over the place. Not a soul in sight.”
For the first time in the conversation, Denny looked deep into the detective’s eyes. He was trying to decide whether Owle was bullshitting.
“Now, looking at you, Denny, it sure don’t seem like you’ve been in any sort of car wreck recently. Don’t get me wrong, you look like six kinds of shit slung sideways, but you don’t look like you’ve gone headfirst through a windshield.”
Denny’s heart was pounding all of a sudden. He was thinking about that idiot who’d hit him in the head with the pistol and that moonfaced kid who didn’t have the brains God gave a goose. Right then he remembered the way that dead fellow’s feet had looked when he was lying there on that grubby floor, how he was barefoot and the soles of his feet were black and raw from walking.
“All that to say, if you tell me your car was stolen, I’m of a mind to believe that. What I really want to talk about, though, is the Outlet Mall. I was going to see if you might tell me who’s running that place. What’s moving through those trailers? Where’s it coming from? You give me a little bit of information and I can get you out of this petty theft bullshit easy peasy.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Next thing you’re going to tell me you’ve never used drugs in your life, that you’ve never missed church on Sunday, that you’ve got my wife’s name tattooed right straight across your ass.”
“I don’t think my ass is wide enough for a name like that.”
“What was that?”
“I wouldn’t tell you I’ve never used.”
Owle stood up from his chair and leaned forward over the table. He was balanced on his fists like he was about to sink his hands into Denny’s throat.
“How long me and you known each other, now, Owle? Seven, eight years?”
“A long time.”
“And in all that time have you ever known me to be the kind to talk?”
When the detective left, Denny spent the next three hours humming and singing the Johnny Cash San Quentin album from “Big River” to the closing medley. He knew every word to every song, every joke that was told, and had been locked up enough that finding creative ways to fill the time had become second nature. There wasn’t a clock on the wall, but the light was getting yellow outside and he imagined the day was getting on toward evening.
Someone knocked on the door and Denny turned to see a fellow he’d known all his life named Cordell Crowe. When they were younger, Cordell and Denny picked guitar together at church. He’d even dated Denny’s sister in high school, but wound up marrying a Saunooke girl a good bit younger from Mingus Mill. She got pregnant, they got married, and Cordell took a job with the tribal police, working his way up through the department.
Dark-headed and kind-eyed, he had a face that shook when he laughed. He’d never carried that hard demeanor like most who wore a badge and maybe that was why he’d been able to make a career of it. Any blowhard could crack skulls and make arrests, but big busts were built off relationships. With Cordell, a man always knew where he stood, and that type of trust could sometimes get you to slip up and say something you had no intention of saying.
Cordell slapped his hand on Denny’s shoulder and squeezed. “As I live and breathe, it is you, you old bugger. How the hell are you?”
“Been better,” Denny said. “But been a lot worse too.”
“I was sitting out there in my office and could’ve sworn I heard somebody say your name. Had to get up and see if they were talking about the Denny Rattler that used to sneak Thunderbird onto the church bus.”
“One and the same.” Denny chuckled and smiled but he couldn’t look Cordell in the eye. He was embarrassed, the same way he was when he ran into his sister unexpectedly in town, or any of his kin for that matter, anybody who remembered him from before.
Cordell leaned back in a chair across the table and rested his hands on his stomach. “Eating cupcakes.” He closed his eyes, pinched at the meat under his chin, and shook his head in disbelief.
Denny didn’t know what to say.
“Now, to most folks that wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense, some guy strolling around Food Lion shoving sugar in his mouth. But I’ve been at this thing long enough I’d say that sweet tooth is you coming off the dope.”
Denny nodded.
“How long you got?”
“Eight days.”
“Eight days, huh. Think you’ll make it ten?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, I hope so, Denny. I surely do.” Cordell leaned forward and folded his arms on the tabletop. “There’s a whole lot of folks willing to help if you’ll let them. You gone over there to the recovery center?”
“No.”
“You know where it is?”
“No,” Denny said, but he did.
“It’s over there behind the Bureau of Indian Affairs office where the credit union used to be. You know where I’m talking about?”
“I think so.”
“You know they just opened up a halfway house right there in Whittier. They’ll find you a job, put you to work, help you with your recovery. Get you back on your feet.”
“Living in a house full of drunks and addicts, getting babysat, that don’t sound like my cup of tea. I think I’d rather just spend a couple nights here and get it over with.”
“You know they broke ground on Kanvwotiyi this summer,” Cordell said. The word sounded like kah nuh woe tee yee, which translated to “a place where one is healed.” “They think they’ll have that place up and running by next fall. Top of the line. It really is going to be something special.”
“I bet,” Denny said.
Cordell clawed at the back of his head. Denny could tell he was getting frustrated.
“The thing is, Denny, you’ve got more resources at your disposal as a native than any white man in these mountains and you’re still pissing your life away. All these people are. We build a recovery center, nobody comes. We get college paid for, nobody goes. Now, why the hell is that?”
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
“I don’t want you to tell me anything. I want you to do something. Do something for yourself. I want you to get back to building houses, cutting trees, playing music, doing something, anything other than wasting away like you are. I want the same thing everybody that’s ever known you wants. I wouldn’t be sitting here saying it if I didn’t.”
“I know you do.”
“The thing is, you’re going to keep coming in and out of here until you get yourself into something that you can’t get out of. Either that or we’re going to find you dead in some bathroom someplace. That’s the endgame one way or another the way you’re running, and I don’t want to be the one to find you like that. I know damn well your sister don’t.”
Denny was getting a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. A heart could be in the right place and still make a man feel worthless, and it was that worthlessness that most often sent him searching for something fast and easy. That word “fix” was more accurate than most people would ever know. Lately, though, he’d been sinking into a darker place. There’d only ever been one thing faster than the needle and there was no coming back from that ride.
“I went ahead and made a phone call and spoke with the manager up there at Food Lion. What I’m hoping is that you’ll let me ride you over there to that recovery center tomorrow morning. There’s people there I’ve known a long time, Denny. Good people.”
“I think I’ll just do whatever time it is I’ve got to do and be on my way.”
“You don’t have any time.” Cordell scrunched the left side of his face and rubbed the back of his neck. “Like I said, I talked with that manager up there and it’s took care of. I did you a favor and I’m thinking maybe you’ll do me one.”
“I didn’t ask for any favors.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“So does that mean I’m free to go?”
“I guess it does,” Cordell said. “But where exactly you going?”
“Carla’s,” Denny said. “She’ll let me crash with her a few days.”
“How is Carla?”
“Good.”
“She still got that job at the casino?”
“Far as I know,” Denny said. Truth was, he hadn’t talked to his sister in months. After he lost his house, she let him stay with her for a while, but eventually they had a falling-out. Denny had already pawned nearly everything he owned. Down to nothing, he sold a beat-up Epiphone acoustic that had belonged to their uncle. Denny swapped the guitar for a ten-dollar bill that wouldn’t get him through the night and that was what finally pushed Carla over the edge.
There was still some stuff in her garage—clothes, knickknacks, a little 50cc Suzuki scooter that somehow survived the squandering. He hadn’t really meant it when he blurted her name, but the more he thought about it, the more going to Carla’s didn’t sound like such a bad idea. If she’d let him stay, he could get a shower, get into some fresh clothes. A little tinkering and he could even get the moped running.
“I’ve got a little bit of paperwork to finish here in the office and a couple emails to send, but it shouldn’t take long. I can give you a ride over there if you want.”
“Yeah, all right,” Denny said.
Any place with a roof beat sleeping outside.