Over the past week Raymond Mathis had had a lot of time to think. Rather than head out of town to someplace unfamiliar, he’d opted to stay at Leah Green’s while everything played out. Dead men couldn’t go waltzing around town, and until the feds made their move that’s exactly what he was. There wasn’t anything to do at her house but loaf around drinking coffee and reading books, which was fine except he’d never been cut out for idle. After the first day he was restless, and the longer he tried to sit still, the more the thoughts and memories went to tumbling around his head.
That was part of why he always tried to keep busy. Get out in the garden, go walk the woods, work on the truck, mow the grass at the church, do whatever you had to do to keep your mind from wandering into the shadows. Whether it was remembering his wife or blaming himself for what happened to Ricky, Ray’s mind had plenty of hooks in him, plenty of chains to drag him down into the dark. The past few days, though, it was something else entirely.
The DEA hadn’t provided a timeline, and if Leah knew what was going on she’d kept a tight lid on the details. In the end, of course, things could’ve been worse. Tommy Two-Ton was loving every minute. She lay around most the day on a little bed Leah’d fixed her in the corner out of old throw pillows and chased the chickens around the yard every time Ray opened the door. Between the table scraps and treats Leah gave her, that old hound was having the time of her life.
Ray was sitting at the kitchen table with his back against the wall, finishing a pot of coffee and reading the end of his coyote book, when Leah pulled up behind the house. Tommy Two-Ton hobbled over to the door and waited patiently with her tail sweeping back and forth across the hardwood.
The door swung open and almost took the dog’s nose off, and Leah rushed into the kitchen like supper was burning. She didn’t have on her typical uniform, but a pair of olive drab cargo pants and a black fitted T-shirt with the sheriff’s office insignia printed on the left. There was a bandage taped to one of her elbows and as Ray looked her over he realized her clothes were stained like she’d been rolling around in the grass.
“What in the world’s got into you?”
“You not watching the news?”
“No, I was reading a book.”
“Well, turn on the news!”
“What for?”
Leah rushed through the kitchen and by the time Ray followed her into the den she had the television on with the volume up so loud it drove Tommy out of the room. Channel 13 was just coming back from commercial with the six o’clock news. The lead story was the Clinton campaign participating in a Wisconsin recount, a ten-second sound bite of the president-elect declaring the whole thing a scam by a “pack of sore losers.” The country wasn’t a month out from the election and Ray already wanted to huck himself off the side of Mount Rushmore or pack his bags and move.
“Hell, I don’t want to listen to that old peckerhead, Leah. I was doing just fine in there in the kitchen.”
“Just hold your horses.”
Ray hooked his thumbs into his pockets and the next story brought breaking news out of Cherokee.
“This is it! This is it right here.” She mashed at the remote and cranked the volume full blast.
A group of uniformed officers and men in suits were gathered behind a pile of drugs stacked into a pyramid. There was a black sheet draped over the table that the drugs were on, the seal of the Eastern Band displayed prominently on the sheet with its seven-pointed star representing the seven clans. The headline at the bottom of the screen read $1.5M TOTAL MARKS LARGEST DRUG BUST IN WNC HISTORY.
“You seeing this?”
“Yeah, I see it.”
“One point five million dollars, Raymond. One point five million.”
According to the reporter, there were twenty kilos of heroin valued at seventy thousand dollars per, and ten pounds of methamphetamine that would fetch ten grand apiece. Thirteen raids had netted thirty-two arrests, including a handful of high-ranking local officials whose names had yet to be released.
The story was just breaking and the details were unclear, but what was stacked up on that table needed little explanation. The reporter claimed they’d have developments at eleven, and the segment broke away to a story that had been going on for months where a community outside of Asheville couldn’t drink the water out of their taps because coal ash ponds had poisoned the ground.
“Hold out your hand,” Leah said.
“What for?”
“Just do it.”
Ray held his hand out in front of him.
“Close your eyes.”
He did as he was asked and felt her place something heavy in his palm.
“All right, open them.”
Ray looked down at what she’d given him. “A rock.”
“That’s not just any old rock. There’s a story behind it and a reason I’m giving it to you.”
“All right.”
“So you heard them say they pulled in resources from five counties? Well, they used our tac team and I was part of one of the raids. Now, guess where we went.”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“We rode back into the head of Big Cove and kicked down the door of that house. Walter Freeman, Ray. I put that greasy-headed sucker in cuffs myself.”
“No shit,” Ray said. He studied the muddied chunk of milk quartz that was about the size of a baseball. “So what in the world’s this rock got to do with any of that?”
“All right, so when they go in the front door they’ve got me and another deputy behind the house, and soon as they make entry that back door slaps open and here he comes running off the porch just as fast as his feet will take him. We’re drawn down on him screaming for him to get on the ground and he hits the woods running wide open.”
Leah had this way of talking when she got excited like her mouth was filling up with spit so that she had to suck back every sentence or two to keep from drowning.
“I take off after him and right about the time he reaches where the mountain starts climbing he gets tripped up in a bunch of dog hobble and I get my hands on one of his ankles. I wrestle him down and we’re rolling around for a minute or two and I’m trying to get my Taser off my belt and he climbs on top of me and starts snatching for my service weapon. He’s got me pinned on my back and I can hear the other deputy coming but I’m running my hands all through the leaves trying to find something to hit him with and I feel this rock laying there. I grabbed ahold of that rock and I brained that son of a bitch right in the side of the head. He slouched off to the side and I flogged him good one more time, caught him right above his lips. That sucker spit blood like I’d knocked out every tooth in his head. Couldn’t even answer questions. Couldn’t do nothing but nod.”
“You all right?” Ray gestured toward the bandage on her elbow.
“Oh, hell, I’m fine. Just scraped up my arm’s all. Didn’t even take stitches.”
Ray shook his head and chuckled. “Damned if you’re not your old man made twice over.”
“Think so?”
“Both just as crazy as bedbugs.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do.” Ray tossed the rock up in the air and caught it in his fist. He wanted to tell her he was sorry for everything that happened, and that he was proud of her for everything she’d done and what she’d become, but he never had been the type to say those kinds of things, and as he started to speak the words stumbled through his teeth like drunks out of a bar. “I . . . I want you to know . . . I guess what I’m trying to say is . . .”
“You don’t got to say it.” Leah put her hand on his shoulder and Ray pulled her into his chest. She tugged on his beard. “Don’t go getting sappy on me, old man.”
Ray grunted and shook his head. He hated that about himself, that he was so willing to tell people exactly what he thought right up to the moment it came to tell them the things that mattered most. He could show someone he loved them, but he’d always had trouble saying the words.
“I guess this means me and Tommy can head on home here in the next little bit.”
“You sick of me already?”
“No, it ain’t that. I just want to get on home. Besides, if you spoil that dog much more she’s liable to come trotting down 107 and shack up here for good.”
“That’d be fine.”
“I don’t think your chickens would take too kindly to that.”
“Those chickens don’t take too kindly to anything.”
Ray walked back into the kitchen and Tommy Two-Ton pawed at the door. He grabbed his coat off the chair and shoved the book he’d been reading into his back pocket like a billfold.
“You sure pack light, old man.”
“And never once wanted for nothing.”
Outside, the chickens were scratching about the yard and Tommy Two-Ton chased them in zigzags until they were cooped and clucking. Feathers floated down like fat flakes of snow and settled on the yellowed grass.
“I guess me and Tommy are going to need a ride to the house.”
“I guess you are.”
Ray looked off at what was left of the sun and pulled his cigars from the chest pocket of his overalls. He didn’t yet know what to make of anything that had happened, but he was satisfied in believing the worst of it was behind him now.