The fluorescent light of the southern diner didn’t stand a chance against the bright afternoon sun that flooded the Waffle House through the huge plate-glass windows. The light warmed everything it touched, the laminated menus, the coffee cups and spoons, the napkin caddie, the black and white checkerboard tile in the table, and Dane’s skin. It felt good on his face. He’d taken off his hat, put the keys to his rental car inside it, and set it next to him on the booth. It had taken a few months for Ned to be completely exonerated of all charges for the death of Tom Clifford, and this was the first time Dane had seen him in weeks. He sat with Lydia, the back of her hand absently rubbing his leg, at the table across from Dane.
“I like the haircut,” Dane said. Ned pushed nonexistent bangs back over his ear.
“I don’t think I’ve seen it that short since fifth grade.”
“The lawyer said it would play better in court,” Lydia said, and ran her hand over Ned’s ear. He pulled away slightly and his face showed the disdain he held for his new clean-cut look. “It will also help with the foster-family application we’re filling out to get custody of William,” Lydia said. “I don’t know, Dane. They ask a lot of questions about Ned’s past, and we’re not married. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do it.”
Dane reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card. “I’ve been thinking about that. Call this woman. She’s a friend and she may be able to help.” He slid Clementine Richland’s card across the table and Lydia took it. She looked at it briefly and then put it in her purse. They sat in silence as Dane sipped his coffee and Ned let his get cold. Lydia took another stab at conversation.
“I’m sorry to hear about Misty, Dane.”
“Don’t be. She had every right to leave. She deserves better, anyway.”
Ned shook his head and broke his silence. He was angry, too—and hurt. Dane understood that as well. Ned leaned across the table and spoke softer than normal.
“I’m not okay with this, Dane. I mean, look at you. You’re skinny as a rail and you look like shit, and what? I’m supposed to do nothing?”
Dane had dropped a lot of weight. It was the cancer chewing him up from the inside. He knew he looked bad but he felt good. Today was a good day. He laced his fingers together and sat his hands on the sun-warmed table.
“You’re doing something right now, Ned. Your being here is what I need.”
“Fuck that.” Ned’s voice got louder and Lydia rubbed his leg harder to soothe him back down. He lowered his voice again. “How am I supposed to let you walk out that door, knowing I’m never going to see you again? How can you ask that of me—of us. It’s bullshit.”
“It’s part of the deal, Ned. We talked about this.”
“The deal ain’t fair, man.”
“Life ain’t fair, brother. But it is what it is. I’m a loose end. O’Barr has nothing to fear from the two of you. He doesn’t even see y’all as real people, but me? I’m a cop who can bend the ear of bigger cops. I can destroy the man. He knows it. This—this is a better way.”
Ned leaned back. “And what about Velasquez? Isn’t she a loose end, too?”
“Rose can take care of herself. Worst case scenario, my way gives her an out, too. Someone to pin any blowback on, if she needs to.”
Ned flared up again. “No one is pinning shit on you, Dane. I won’t—”
“Ned,” Lydia said sternly, in order to calm him down. He did. He took a sip of his cold coffee and pushed it away. “I just don’t see how you expect me to just let this happen.”
“Ned, listen to me. You’re my brother. That isn’t going to change. But you aren’t letting anything happen. This is my decision. I’m a grown man. This is my call. And it’s the only way I know of to protect Lydia.”
Both Lydia and Ned looked confused. Dane leaned back in his seat. “What? C’mon, y’all. I’m a detective, remember? Ned, you were tested for GSR. It was negative. But more importantly, I know you. You can’t shoot for shit. Never could. You couldn’t hit the side of a barn with birdshot. But I was willing to believe what you told me until…” Dane caught Lydia’s eyes, and her face was stone strong. “Until I saw you shoot that big bastard at the Farm. You’ve been training. It was easy to see. The way you were standing. The way you held the gun. The aim from that distance. Not too many people I know could’ve pulled off that shot. I know Ned here couldn’t. And Tom was shot center mast—twice—by someone who could shoot.”
“It’s not what—”
Dane waved a hand to keep Ned from spinning another pointless lie. “Ned, it’s okay. I understand why you protected her. I understand why you did it, Lydia. Y’all have to live with what happened. My role in this is to make sure you two are never found out. That’s why this has to be handled my way.”
Ned said nothing. His eyes were wet but he held it together. A few uncomfortable minutes later they heard a horn blare outside and they all turned and looked out the window. Dane smiled wide when he saw his father’s old Ford truck ease into the parking lot. It was completely restored and painted thunderbird blue. The damn thing looked as if it had just been wheeled off the showroom floor. Ned sank his head to his chest as Keith Bell opened the driver’s-side door of the classic pickup and stepped out into the lot. He waved. Lydia picked up a yellow slip of paper from the table and offered to pay the check while the boys talked outside. Ned stood up and helped Dane out of the booth, although he didn’t need it. Dane grabbed his hat, now warm from the flood of Georgia sun, and sat it low on his head. Ned held the door and the two of them walked out to meet Keith.
“I cannot believe you got her looking this good,” Dane said. Keith scratched at himself under a black I, Zombie T-shirt and gave Dane a half smile before meeting Ned’s angry eyes. He immediately looked back at the truck. “She runs even better than she looks,” he said. “It took me a while and I maxed out one of Dad’s credit cards finding the parts, but she’s as good as new, if not better.”
Dane walked around the truck dragging a hand over the fresh paint, with a genuine ear-to-ear smile, flooded with memories of his father, of childhood rides over back roads, and Gwen, and steamed windows. It was hard to believe this was the same vehicle that had taken such a pummeling at the Farm just a few months back. Dane hugged Keith and for the first time he realized how frail he’d become. He felt like a paper doll in the arms of his muscular friend. He whispered in Keith’s ear. “And the other thing?”
Keith nodded and tightened his grip on Dane. “Yeah, Dane, it’s in the glove box.” They stayed that way, locked in their embrace until Dane let go and thanked him. Keith just nodded again. Dane turned to Ned, who was now standing with Lydia, and he held out his hand. Ned looked at it for a couple seconds before taking it and pulling Dane in for another short brotherly hug. Ned let go quickly and ran both hands back over his new haircut. Dane handed the rental-car keys to Lydia and asked her if she would still handle bringing it back to town for him. She gripped the keys in her hand and lurched at him. She held him so tight he thought he might snap in half. She was openly crying now, but Dane held her there until she regained control. When he let her go, she couldn’t look at him. She turned and walked to the rented Celica, hit the key fob, and unlocked the door.
Dane raised an imaginary shot glass. “Here’s to swimmin’ with bowlegged women, boys.” No one laughed. Keith handed him the keys to the truck. Ned and Keith both remained silent when Dane got in and cranked the engine. They moved back and out of the way as he dropped the shifter into reverse and than punched it into first. He didn’t look back at his friends although he knew they were there watching him go. Instead he pointed his father’s truck toward the highway and disappeared into the afternoon.
Lydia backed the rented Celica out of its parking space a minute later and pulled up next to Ned. She asked him if he was okay. He mumbled something she couldn’t understand. He wasn’t okay. But he had to be. The two men watched the Celica leave the lot next and stood there in the sun.
“Nice haircut, Ned.”
“Fuck you, Keith.”
Dane rolled his window down and reached for the stereo when Gwen stopped him. She put her hand on his. Her fingers were long and delicate like a piano player’s—the diamond in her wedding ring shiny in the sun. “Are you sure this is what you want?” she said. He looked over at her sitting on the passenger side in that yellow dress he loved. Her molasses-and-honey hair streaming out the window. Her high cheekbones accenting a look of concern. Dane ignored the question. “You look amazing, Mrs. Kirby.”
“Well, of course I do, Mr. Kirby.” She removed her hand from his and he clicked on the stereo. He turned the dial and the red needle behind the glass searched for a signal through the static. Steve Miller began to blare through the speakers—that big old jet airliner. Dane drove and sang along and listened to Gwen’s tonally challenged voice wisp in and out of every song to play, one after another. It was one of the most beautiful sounds he’d ever heard. Every now and then he took his eye off the road and soaked her in. “I love you, woman,” he said before he took a random exit. She smiled that smile that broke him and owned him at the same time. “I know,” she said.
Dane wheeled the truck to a stop at the end of the off ramp and turned left. He saw the black Chevy Tahoe in the rearview follow him onto the exit and he shook his head. He’d seen the truck a few times. August’s people were either getting sloppy these days or just didn’t care anymore. Dane looked around. He’d never been to this part of Fannin before, so he just drove the two-lane blacktop for a few hours, watching as the needle on the gas gauge dropped. Overhead, crisscrossing turkey vultures flew in patterns and moved with a hive-mind fluid grace. The greens and browns and golds of the trees blurred and swirled, and Dane held one arm out the window, forever trying to catch the wind. He passed over bridges and over waterways that were too low to catch any good fish in and drove slowly through small communities with wooden stop signs, antique stores, and old men at picnic tables. He waved. Most of them waved back. When he saw the wide-open field of wildflowers and saw grass coming up on his right, he slowed the truck and pulled over to the red clay shoulder. Gwen would’ve made them stop here if she were alive. This would be as good a place as any. He turned off the engine and ran his fingers over the soft fabric of the empty bench seat. Of course Gwen was gone now. She wouldn’t be here to see this. She would be a million miles away from here with Joy, singing out of tune. Anywhere but here, not now, not for this.
Dane opened the glove box and took out a blue envelope. He removed the title to the truck and used a BIC pen to sign over ownership to Jackson Gordon. He addressed the envelope to Jenn Gordon and wrote a short note. For the coolest kid I know, when he’s ready. He signed his name with a flourish and returned the envelope to the glove box.
Next he removed the Colt revolver Keith had left for him. Dane’s Redhawk had been confiscated during the federal investigation of the Farm and was never given back, so Keith had procured a proper and untraceable replacement. He held the gun and let the heft of it fill both hands. After a time, he laid the gun in his lap, reached back inside the glove box, and removed a pack of Camel Blues and a Zippo lighter that Keith had also left there at Dane’s request. That’s when he saw the postcard. It looked old and yellowed, so he didn’t think it was part of Keith’s care package. No, this was something else. This had been in here a while—for years. This was from Gwen.
It was one of her surprise notes. Like the ones she’d put in his lunch or left taped to the bathroom mirror in the mornings when she was alive. He didn’t know how he’d missed it after all this time. Maybe Keith found it under the seat or something when he’d had it cleaned out and just tucked it in here. Maybe he’d left it in here instead of throwing it out, thinking it mattered in some way. Dane slid it out of the glove box and read the poem printed there. Pablo something was the author and the gist of it was typical Gwen, Roman numerals, stars, and lines about love that Dane almost never understood. But this time he didn’t have to understand the words. He just needed to understand the timing. He read it over and over, flipped it over and over in his shaking hands, and then for the first time in months—since the bathroom fight with Misty a few months ago—he cried. He laughed and cried again until it became a combination of both.
After a while, he tucked the postcard in his shirt pocket and peeled the cellophane off the pack of smokes. He pulled one out, lit it up, and tossed the pack and lighter onto the seat of the old Ford. Dane let the cigarette hang from his lips as he popped the cylinder on the revolver and inspected the load. He flipped it back into place, took a long drag of Turkish tobacco, and got out of the truck. He waved at the black Tahoe looming just over the hill behind the main road. He held the Colt across his forehead to block the sun from his eyes as he waited to see if it would move. The black SUV only simmered and blurred in the heat like a distant mirage, and Dane began to wonder if it was even real or if it was just a figment of his sickness. At this point in the game, he didn’t care.
So, after giving the truck the bird and waving his cell phone at the occupants, he lowered the gun and walked toward the field, feeling the sun on his face and the tall grass whip at his shins and knees. The gun was heavy and so the idea of weight occurred to him—weight and strength. He’d carried so much of it—so much weight for so long—he’d felt defined by it. Defined by the strength it took to bear the load. Now, despite the heavy gun in his hand, standing in that open field, Dane felt weightless, like a floating ash from a long-extinguished fire, and there he realized that the real burden he’d been bearing hadn’t been carrying the weight on his back, but finding the strength to set it down—to let it go.
He’d smoked the cigarette down to the filter, pinched it out, and tucked the yellow cotton nub in his pocket. He dropped to his knees and pressed the gun into the soft flesh under his jaw and looked straight forward. He waited, his thumb frozen on the hammer, his body frozen in time, before finally dropping the gun in the grass by his knees. He waited a little longer for the inevitable, for the sound of someone behind him. He knew he’d hear it eventually, and finally it came, along with the pressure of another gun being pressed into the back of his head. Dane didn’t flinch or try to look back.
“We were over there waiting. We thought you were going to off yourself out here and save us all the trouble.”
“Sorry to let you down.”
“Yeah, well,” the unfamiliar voice behind Dane said. “O’Barr is done waiting, too.”
Dane stayed facing forward, still and calm. His voice was relaxed. “Can you at least listen to something before you pull the trigger?”
The gunman hesitated but didn’t seem to be in any rush. “And what would that be?”
Dane slowly moved his hand to his pocket. He felt the gun barrel on his skull press in tighter. “Take it easy,” he said. “I’m just getting out my phone.”
“Slow and easy,” the voice said.
Dane eased his cell phone out of his pocket, swiped it open, and tapped the voice memo app. He held it up backwards for the gunman to hear. The recording of August O’Barr accepting the million-dollar bribe along with Dane’s story of the events at the farm rang out over the field. After a minute or so, he felt the pressure of the gun at his head ease up and he lowered the phone. “I have it all. And so do a few other people I trust,” he said. “Every word of the deal I made that your boss wants to renege on now. O’Barr will go down in flames over this.”
The voice behind him took a few beats but answered exactly the way Dane expected him to. “That recording incriminates you, too, Kirby. O’Barr goes down, then so do you.”
Dane shrugged and his shoulders sagged. “You think I give a shit? Look at me. I’m already dead. You idiots oughta know that better than anyone. You’ve been watching me get closer for months. But here’s the thing. I don’t give a damn about me. Like I said, I most likely won’t see the end of the year, but if anything happens to me right now, or to Roselita Velasquez, or to anyone you assholes were staring at back at that diner, or to the boy, William Blackwell—I mean, if any of them even stubs a toe in a way that looks shady, this recording goes viral. It starts showing up on desks everywhere. Starting with the office of Charles Finnegan at the GBI. So yeah, I go down as a collaborating witness in a nice comfy hospital bed, but O’Barr goes down on a big boy named Bubba in a prison cell. How’s that for a retirement plan.”
A full minute of silence followed before one of the two men standing behind Dane made a call to his boss. Dane couldn’t hear the conversation, but he already knew the outcome. The gun came completely off his head. He smiled but still didn’t move. Within a few more minutes, his would-be executioners were gone. He stayed on his knees a while longer before dropping down on his haunches in the grass completely. He didn’t look behind him. He didn’t have to. He knew August had called them off. He stared down at the Colt in the grass and then picked it up. He clicked out the cylinder and let all the slugs fall into the field. He tossed the gun far enough away that he couldn’t see it and picked up his phone from his side where he’d laid it. He scrolled the contacts, found the right name, and tapped the number. It only rang once.
“Dane?”
“Misty?”
“What do you want, Dane?”
Dane could feel his eyes swell up with water again. “Well, for starters, I could use some company.”
“I’m not going to hold your hand while you die, Dane. Told you, I can’t—”
“I meant some company at Dr. McKenzie’s office. I’m scared and I don’t want to go alone.”
Silence flooded the line before Misty finally blurted out, “Dane, where are you? I’ll come and get you right now.”
“How about I meet you there?”
“How long?”
Dane looked around the field. “About an hour?” he said. He could tell she was already crying and asked her to stop. He’d grown so tired of making this woman cry. That stopped today.
“I’m on my way,” she said.
“Okay—and Misty?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry I waited so long.”
“Just get there,” she said through a broken sob, and ended the call.
Dane stared at the phone and then looked up at Gwen. He knew she would be there and he knew she’d have that “I told you so” look on her face. How he loved her face.
“Now was that so hard?” she said.
Dane wiped the tears from his own face. “Yes,” he said. “It was.”
“Well,” Gwen said as she helped him to his feet. “Nothing worth having is easy. And that phone call you just made was the smartest thing you’ve done since the day you married me.” She wiped at his face, too, and helped clear away his tears. “Now, go,” she said. “Go, Dane Kirby. Go—and live.”
Dane nodded and tried to hold on to her hand as she backed away, turned, and disappeared into the sunlight and the wheat and the straw. This time he didn’t close his eyes. He watched her go, maybe for the last time. When he couldn’t make out the shape of her anymore, he looked up. He looked up at the stars he couldn’t see, at the constellations hidden behind the blue. The clouds were thick and white and the sky was as bright as he’d ever seen it. He kept his eyes open for the first time in over a decade. He wanted to see the sky. He needed to see it. He missed it. He took the postcard from his shirt pocket and read it one more time before letting the wind carry it to the ground. It served its purpose. He didn’t need it anymore. He took a deep breath and the air tasted sweet. Maybe the sweetest he’d ever known. He took one last glance at the sky before leaving. “Goddamn,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day.”
LOVE SONNET XVI
I love the piece of earth you are
because in all the planetary prairies
I do not have another star. You repeat
the multiplication of the universe.
Your wide eyes are the light I have
of the vanquished constellations,
your skin pulses like the roads
the meteor follows in the rain.
Of so much moon were your hips to me,
of all the sun your deep mouth and its delight,
of so much burning light like honey in the shade
your heart burnt by long red rays,
and this is how I follow your fire—kissing you,
small and planetary, dove and geography.
—Pablo Neruda