5

I spent the rest of Tuesday morning and early afternoon cleaning the house, first the kitchen and then the two bedrooms in back, before finishing with the den, while I listened to Willie Nelson singing about blue skies and cowboys. Before moving back to these mountains, I’d been a poor housekeeper, preferring to go as long as possible until a visit from a friend became imminent. Only then would I do a mad cleaning, and generally it was just as bad a few days later. But here, in the mountains, I felt an obligation to keep things presentable. As Ronnie had so succinctly pointed out this morning, I didn’t own the place. Which was one reason to take a little care, but far from the only reason. Another was that Mary did own it, and she’d insisted I stay there and absolutely refused to take any rent. The third, and most compelling reason had to do with the previous owner.

Her name was Arnette Lacey, and besides being one of the hardest-working women I’d ever known (which was why I felt a duty to continue her tradition of housekeeping), she was also—by far—the kindest and most empathetic one too. When things went bad between me and my father after the snake bit me, Arnette took me in. She also single-handedly showed me what it meant to care for another person unreservedly, without any hope of getting something in return. It wasn’t long before I started calling her Granny. I lived with her for nearly three years before leaving in the middle of a windy autumn night with nothing but a change of underwear, an extra shirt, and the Bible my mother had given me a few years earlier. The shirt made it as far as Denver, Colorado, before I lost it somewhere in Rocky Mountain National Park while skinny-dipping with a girl I’d met earlier that morning. The underwear wore thin a few years later near Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan, and it was one of many items of clothing I simply left in the apartment I shared with three small-time drug dealers. I still had the Bible. It was tucked beneath the bed where I slept now, Granny’s old bed. Despite still having it, I’d gotten very little use out of it. I kept it in memory of my mother because, like my brother Lester and me, she’d been a victim too. Unlike Lester and me, she was an adult and should have been able to fight back, or at least she should have made an attempt. She never did, and that was one of the reasons I only kept it and never opened it. Any book that my mother used to guide her life couldn’t have much to say to me.

Or was I being too harsh? Sometimes I thought I was. Sometimes I thought about it lying under the bed, in the dark space, collecting dust, and wondered if there was some great insight or wisdom inside it that I sorely lacked.

Ironically, the person who’d come the closest to making me pick that book up was Granny. She’d been a believer, but her faith was nothing like the one I’d grown up with. Hers was a faith based on love and not judgment, acceptance and not rejection. They say Jesus saves. I wasn’t sure about that. What I did know was that Arnette Lacey had saved me. And that was why I cared about keeping the house clean.

When I finished the den and sat down to eat a sandwich in the kitchen, I heard the familiar rumble of Ronnie’s truck.

“Shit,” I said around a mouthful of pimento cheese. I finished up, fed Goose, and holstered my 9mm. It was September and still too hot for it, but I pulled on my blue jean jacket to keep the gun hidden and then sat outside to wait on him.

He beeped twice at the top of the gravel drive, and I walked over. He grinned at me and cut the stereo up when I got inside. The music was fast and ragged. A woman screamed her lungs out. Ronnie drummed on the steering wheel and bobbed his head with each thunderous beat. I reached out and cut the volume all the way down.

“Well, Jesus, Earl. I would have turned it down. Wasn’t no call to be rude.”

“I need to know what we’re doing. And don’t think about not telling me. If I’m going to help you, I have to know.”

He held his hands out, as if fending off an attack. “Easy there, tiger. I’m going to tell you. Shit. Impatient. You know you can trust me, buddy. We’re kindred spirits, you and me. Brothers until the end.”

“Cut the shit. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

“Okay, so you may not know, but I’m a businessman. I’ve—”

“Forget it. I’m not getting involved in a drug deal.”

“Now, that really hurts. You just like to take that proverbial knife and stick it in, don’t you, Earl? I’m not a drug dealer. I run a siding business.”

“Siding business?”

“That’s right. Well, it’s not the typical kind of siding business. It’s based on something I invented. It’s weather-resistant siding.”

“You didn’t invent that.”

“Sure I did. I mean, I guess if you’re going to get technical about it, there’s some others out there that claim to be weatherproof, but mine really is. And for cheap too.”

“Okay, even if I were to believe you, what’s this got to do with me?”

“I’ve got an investor who owes me some money. They promised to invest and then reneged. I’ve got the contract and everything, but they know I won’t take them to court because of my priors and whatnot. So, I need to go pick up the money myself.”

“And I’m going along to…?”

“As. You’re going along as an insurance policy. I think it should be easy, but there’s this fellow named Lane Jefferson, and if he’s there, he’ll make trouble. But if I’ve got a PI with me, an armed PI—you are packing, right?”

I nodded.

“Good, then it’ll be easy.”

“And that’s all it is?”

“Yep.” He cranked the truck.

It sounded like there was definitely some potential for trouble, but considering who I was with, I figured it could have easily been worse.

*   *   *

We were halfway down the mountain when Ronnie turned the music down again and offered me a cigarette.

“I don’t smoke.”

“Color me surprised. I always took you for a smoker.”

I shrugged. Honestly, I had no desire to engage in any more conversation with Ronnie than was necessary.

“You know when I started smoking?”

I shook my head.

“I was eight. Daddy had just got out on parole. I’d been staying with my granddaddy. You remember Old Billy, don’t you?”

I didn’t answer. He knew very well I remembered his grandfather. He’d been my father’s best friend and most trusted advisor for most of his life.

“Anyway, Grandpa told Daddy he couldn’t come inside the house until he promised to clean up his ways. I think he might have even wanted him to confess his sins before the Lord or some such bullshit. ’Course the only thing my daddy and his daddy ever had in common was their mule-headedness, and Daddy told Grandpa he’d be fucked before he confessed anything.” Ronnie took a drag off his cigarette and laughed at the memory. “Well, as you can imagine, that didn’t sit too well with Grandpa, and he took to swinging at Daddy right there on the porch. Pummeling him. Straight up beatdown. Daddy was as stubborn as Grandpa, but not half as tough.”

“Your grandfather was a vile man,” I said.

He laughed again. “You got that right. Anyway, my little sister, Wanda, she flipped out, went to crying her head off. I didn’t blame her much. She hadn’t seen her daddy in a good five years, she couldn’t have been more than eight at the time. Top of that, Grandpa had been giving us straight hell about getting our hearts and minds right with God—you know the drill.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know that drill.”

“Sure you do. My grandpa and your daddy were like two peas in a pod. Sort of like me and you.”

I shook my head. “In the end, your grandfather and my father hated each other.”

“What’s that prove? Those two men hated everything, Earl. Don’t you know that was their real power? It was why they held sway over so many people for so long. People want to be loved, not hated. And those two knew just how to hold that love back and when to give up a little bit to draw people in. And then once they had you, they’d pull it right back again, so that it was like a drug you had to have another hit off of.”

He was right about all of this. I didn’t like it, though, not just because it brought to mind so many bad memories but also because it only helped to strengthen the bond between the two of us. I’d let him charm me once before, and that had caused me to foolishly trust him with the biggest secret of my life.

“I thought this was about how you started smoking,” I said.

“Oh, I’m getting there. Damn, patience, Earl, patience.”

I said nothing, keeping my eyes focused on the winding road ahead. We were about to turn onto 52, and it occurred to me I didn’t really know exactly where we were going.

“So, you got to picture this, Earl. Grandpa, sleeves rolled up on that starched white shirt he wore every day of his life, fists clenched, face red as a damned tomato, just screaming scripture at my daddy. Daddy’s laid out on the front porch, bleeding from his nose, his mouth, his goddamn ears for all I know. Then you got Wanda crying like she’s trying to wake up the dead. Me? I’m standing in the doorway with a lighter and a pack of cigarettes I stole from Herschel Knott. I’d been trying to be good, Earl. Grandpa had warned me about smoking. Said it was a devil’s habit. Said it wasn’t for someone trying to find the Lord. But I’d seen some of the older guys doing it, and I was ready to get older. I couldn’t wait to get older, you hear what I’m saying, Earl? So, fuck. What do you think I did?”

“Smoked those cigarettes.”

He slapped the steering wheel. “Damned right I did. And you know what else?”

“What?”

“I liked it. Sure, I coughed a little and felt some queasy, but I liked how when I ran off to the woods to do it by myself, I felt like a man. I felt like it took me away from the other shit. You ever have something like that?”

I leaned back in my seat. I didn’t want to answer him. Or at least part of me didn’t want to answer him. Another part of me wanted to talk because, like it or not, he did understand.

Before I could say anything, he sat on the horn. A small deer had run out into the road in front of us. It froze when it heard the horn, but Ronnie swerved quickly to avoid hitting it.

“What I wouldn’t give for my hunting rifle right about now,” he said, and the spell was broken. I closed my mouth and didn’t speak again until I saw the cornfield.

*   *   *

It was about a twenty-minute drive around the Fingers, which was where Ronnie and I lived, to the narrow strip of flat land people called Corn Valley. Corn Valley was nestled in between the Fingers and Summer Mountain to the north. There wasn’t much out here but trailer parks and flood plains. And corn, of course. Hell, there was a lot of that.

Eventually, we came to an old county road that looked to be used mostly by logging trucks. Ronnie turned right onto it. The road wound down through the valley, parting some woods and coming out into an open, sunny area, the cornfield on our left and scrub pines on our right.

In the distance, I saw the Blackclaw River.

“This here is Skull Keep,” Ronnie said. “You ever been out this way?” He slowed the truck just as I saw the big farmhouse up ahead on the left.

“Can’t say that I have. What kind of name is Skull Keep?”

He shrugged. “It’s more of a nickname than anything else. This is unincorporated land. It’s owned by that rich bastard over there.” He pointed to the house on our left. “Lane Jefferson. He’s fucked in the head. And”—Ronnie leaned forward, squinting at the house—“he’s not home. Hot damn.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Means you can stay in the truck. Keep an eye out. If you see a sawed-off piece of shit with crazy fucking eyes drive up, stall his ass.”

“Stall his ass?”

“Keep him outside.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

Ronnie pulled into the gravel drive and killed the engine. “You’ll figure it out.”

Before I could reply, he jumped out of the truck and slammed the door. I watched him jog up to the house and try the door. It was unlocked. He turned back to me, waved, and went inside.