Calvin had spent the day clearing a tangled thicket of green briar, stickseed, and honeysuckle to make a tee box at the edge of a cliff so developers could bring potential buyers to see the view and slice golf balls into the valley. There was no cell service anywhere on the jobsite, so he’d been left to his mind all day to think about Darl and Dwayne and Angie while he worked. And as the sun sank low, he finally reached a point of certainty.
From the top of the cedar cliffs, the mountain dropped off one side toward Tilley Creek and the old Speedwell store, off the other side toward Lake Glenville and on south to Walhalla. At this elevation, the trees were bare, every contour and curve of the landscape finding definition in light and shadow, all of the mountains’ secrets exposed by season. Spots of color broke apart the ridges only where cedars and balsams took root, tiny groves forest-green spread like patches of moss.
Hitting the kill switch, he climbed out of the glassed-in cab of the excavator and hopped down to the ground from the muddied steel tracks. The air smelled of turned dirt, and though that was something he’d smelled every day for a long time, the smell had a new meaning. Now the scent brought thoughts of Darl and Carol Brewer, of waking up shivering in the robbed bottom of a grave that could’ve easily become his own. The sun was nearly down, its yellow light tiger-striped by shreds of dark gray cloud. He stared off into the last of the day, dumb to everything but the bullet in his pocket.
On the way home, he stopped along the west fork of the Tuckaseigee where the Thorpe Powerhouse stood as it had since the early 1940s: an oddly tall, square building with cathedral-like windows stretching up its brick facade. A wide gravel lot spread at its side and Calvin slid in to check if she’d texted. This was the closest place to the jobsite for any sort of cell signal, but even here it was only enough for texts. He’d made a habit of stopping here each night on his way home. The phone dinged and Calvin opened his messages to a string of unanswered texts: The first said she was going grocery shopping and asked if he wanted anything, the next said she’d picked up some ice cream and was planning to make pork chops for dinner, and the last was a string of yellow-faced emojis blowing kisses and hearts. He texted back, “Headed your way. Pork chops sound great,” hit send, and tossed the phone into the passenger seat of his truck before pulling back onto the road.
The two-lane hugged a silted stretch of river backed, sluggish and deep, behind a tall dam, then ran farther north past a trailer, a cabin, a few farms, and on through the Tuckasegee Straight. The truck was low on fuel, and when the warning light came on, Calvin realized he wouldn’t get home without stopping, so he swung into Jimmy’s Mini Mart to pump a few gallons of diesel.
When he climbed back into the cab, his cell phone was lit with a message that read, “Call me.” He didn’t think anything of it when he dialed, figured Angie might need him to run by the store. But when he heard the sound of Dwayne Brewer’s voice, all of the feeling left his body.
“You know, I was starting to think you wasn’t going to call.”
That voice was unmistakable. Calvin’s hands shook and his heart beat violently. He opened his mouth to speak, but there were no words. The air snagged in his throat like he’d had the wind knocked out.
“You hear me don’t you? Calvin?”
He dropped the phone onto the floorboard and scrambled to pick it up. “I’m here,” he said when he got the phone back to his ear. “I’m here.”
“And where do we go from here?”
The question struck him. Calvin found it so strange the way Dwayne talked, always this self-righteous tone to what he said, like he was trying to teach you something. “If you lay a finger on her head I swear to God I will hunt you down and—”
“You might want to think about how you’re talking to me.”
“I swear to you, I’m going to—”
“Don’t start talking stupid now,” Dwayne cut him off. “I’ve got something I need you to do for me, and the way I figure, you owe it.”
“What?” Calvin yelled. “What do you want?”
“I thought me and you might get together and talk about that.”
“Tell me.”
“No, I think it’d be best if we get together,” Dwayne said. “I never was much on talking on the phone. I prefer to look a man in his eyes when I’m talking to him.”
“I want to talk to her.”
“What you’re going to do is meet me up there where y’all are clearing all that land. You’re going to meet me there at ten o’clock this evening and we’re going to get all this straightened out. That’s what you’re going to do.”
Calvin wondered how he knew about the jobsite, wondered how many days Dwayne Brewer had followed him.
“But you start talking crazy again, you go doing something crazy, Calvin, and I think you know how this is going to end. You know good and well what I’m capable of.”
Calvin watched vacuous and unblinking through the windshield, thinking of how he’d woken curled beside her that morning. “Angie.”
“Ten o’clock.”
He could hear his own breaths as static on the line.
“Calvin, I want you to say it. I want you to tell me what you’re going to do.”
“Ten o’clock,” he said. “I’ll meet you there at ten o’clock.”
“That’s right,” Dwayne said. “You meet me there and we’ll get this squared away. We’ll get this behind us and we’ll get back to our lives.”
“Okay,” Calvin said, and the line went dead.
Up the road, a rail-thin coonhound crossed in front of a car. The driver slammed on brakes and blared the horn, but Calvin didn’t hear a sound. He stared through the dusty glass and the world before him appeared as flat and unmoving as a painting. It wasn’t like people said, it wasn’t that time stood still, but rather that his mind raced at such an unfathomable pace that the world turned sluggish.
There was a ringing in Calvin’s ears and his head felt like it was floating, like his body had up and vanished and left nothing outside his mind. Questions fell like pieces of a hillside breaking away. All of it came onto him at once until his mind was entirely taken. A landslide of thought gave way with nothing to slow it. There was no bottom to stop its fall.