The Deuce and a Quarter hissed across damp gravel and rambled over rippled road so that Dwayne bounced around in the driver’s seat like he was riding a horse. The road cut hard through a thicket of laurel that camouflaged the cliff face to the right, the left side dropping to a staircased creek that shaped the mountain now as it had for thousands of years before.
The gravel road hugged the hips of mountains, cutting back and forth along switchbacks to rise. In the years since the economy tanked and big money pulled out of the county, the private road had failed above a steep descent into the river. Erosion had bloodied the Tuckaseigee’s west fork for weeks. The homesites once cleared for potential buyers were grown over with stickseed and saplings.
But now there was the promise of new money. Fix the roads, clear the lots, cut the golf course, slap up a billboard or two of some PGA star endorsing the place, and a drove of half-wits would pile north from Florida in Lexuses and Mercedes and Land Rovers to scope out second and third homes like a mass exodus of sun-stroked cattle. Those born here hated them. They cussed them at the grocery store and when their morning and evening commutes doubled because the leaf lookers drove twenty miles per hour up a mountain slated for forty-five. They cussed them under their breath and smiled to their faces because they had to, all the while wanting deep down to pull out a sodbuster and cut out their sunburned guts. But most of those born here made livings off of their fat pockets, and so in that way the relationship was symbiotic.
A sign showing off an architectural sketch of the future clubhouse framed with painted four-by-fours and an eve braided with cut laurel stood off the road to the right. Dwayne steered onto a gravel path that opened to an expansive clearing carved flat into the swale. The clouds were low so that the night’s fog made it hard to see the trees at the edges. A plain of red clay stretched in all directions like a dried lake bottom.
Calvin Hooper stood there in dark slacks, a stained T-shirt, and a heavy duck canvas coat. He raised a lever-action rifle to his shoulder and came straight into the headlights, stepping sideways as the Buick neared until he was aimed at Dwayne’s ear through the side glass. Dwayne rolled down the window like he was about to order food at a drive-thru, hung his arm casually down the door outside. He wore an olive-green thermal shirt, the box-weave tight on his chest and arms. His face was shaved close, but the hair was dark enough that even shaved it left a shadow that rose high on his cheeks.
“Get the fuck out of the car,” Calvin snarled with his chin set out in anger and his brow low over his eyes.
Dwayne killed the engine and cut the lights. “This is probably the closest you’ve ever come to killing somebody, ain’t it?”
“I said, get the fuck out of the car.”
Dwayne smiled, paying no attention to the gun or the prospect of dying. He stared deep into Calvin’s eyes because that’s where the truth lay. “See, that’s what most people never understand. You get deep enough and that feeling’s buried inside everything that’s ever had a heart that beats.”
“Shut the fuck up, and get out of the car.” Calvin kept lowering his aim just a hair and jerking it back up like he was scared to lose sight of Dwayne even for an instant.
“Take the Sylva Seven, or, shit, take what that Broom boy did to Doug Dietz a few years back. Cut the soles off a man’s feet and made him walk to his own grave.” Dwayne shook his head and examined the Buick emblem on the steering wheel. He rubbed his thumb over the raised vinyl. “Now, some folks couldn’t imagine what’d bring a man to do something like that. But you tell them about Doug molesting that little girl, and that’s all it took for plenty of folks, God-fearing Bible thumpers, to swear Doug Dietz got off easy. I heard an old lady say they should’ve run a pike pole right up his ass like a skewer. The crazy thing, she wasn’t just saying it. She meant it. She’d have stood right there and watched them do it. And the thing they’re all too blind to see is that one’s no different than another.”
“I’m not fucking around, Dwayne. Get out of the car.”
“What I’m saying is that it’s easy to take the high road so long as there aren’t any stakes. But the minute you’ve got something to lose, a man’ll do all sorts of things.” Dwayne grabbed a pack of smokes off the passenger seat, slipped a filter between his lips, and mashed the car’s lighter into the dash. In a moment, the lighter popped and Dwayne lifted the orange glow to his cigarette, took a drag, and exhaled a thin cloud of smoke into the space between them. “The only problem with what you’re doing right now is that you ain’t seen my cards.”
“I’m the one with the gun, Dwayne.”
“Life ain’t the kind of thing you want to go all-in on one hand, Calvin.” Dwayne opened the door and stepped out. Calvin backed away a few steps, the gun still high on his shoulder. He stared down the length of the barrel with both eyes open. “It’s a whole lot smarter to bet a little at a time, see what a man’s got in his hand before you go sliding all your chips into the middle.” Dwayne strolled toward Calvin’s truck.
“Don’t go no farther, Dwayne! I mean it!”
Dwayne strutted unconcernedly toward Calvin’s pickup.
“One more step and I’ll blow your head off!”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what’d this truck set you back?” He took a drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke down his chest.
“What’d you say?”
“I asked how much this truck cost. You look like you’re doing pretty good for yourself, you know? Nice truck, big job, everything’s lining up for you. I can see what a girl like her might see in a man like you. If a man’s willing to sell his soul, he can have about anything in this world, can’t he? I reckon that’s what this is, ain’t it? Selling your soul?” Dwayne opened his arms to the cleared land around him, at what used to be the top of a mountain.
“Shut the fuck up, Dwayne!” Calvin came forward until the gun was a foot from Dwayne Brewer’s mouth. “Why don’t you just shut—”
Those next words were cut off as Dwayne Brewer shoved the barrel of the rifle toward the ground, pulled his pistol from his waistline, and jammed it into Calvin’s temple. With his grip tight on the rifle, Dwayne turned Calvin like they were dancing and rammed him hard into the front bumper of the truck. Calvin’s back arched with the weight of Dwayne pressing down on him, the pistol still crammed against the side of his head, and chest to chest Dwayne leaned forward till his lips were flush against Calvin’s ear. “I was getting awful tired of you pointing that gun at me. So you’re going to listen now, and I’m going to help you see things a little clearer than how you’re seeing them.” Dwayne eased away. “Let go of that gun and we’ll talk like men instead of a couple kids playing cowboy and Indian.”
Calvin nodded his head and let go. Pushing back, Dwayne held the lever action rifle down by his leg and holstered the pistol in the back of his pants.
The two men stood there catching their breaths in the fog.
“What this boils down to is what you’ve got to lose, Calvin, and that ought to be real clear right about now or else the two of us wouldn’t be standing here. Stakes,” Dwayne said. “When a man’s got something to lose, that changes things. You find something a man loves more than himself and you can get him to do about anything in this world. Now you’re going to do something for me. You do it and everything’s going to be fine. But if you go any other route, Calvin, you do anything else at all, and I think you know how this is going to end. You know good and well what I’m capable of.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“You’re going to kill Michael Stillwell.”
“Kill Stillwell? What are you talking about?”
“He’s breathing down our necks. A man stares at something long enough and eventually he’ll start to see it for what it is.”
“I won’t do that.”
“Of course you will, Calvin.” Dwayne smiled with great amusement. “You were going to kill me just a minute ago for what’s at stake, and it’s the same thing on the line now. You don’t do it and I’ll put a bullet in that woman of yours like I was shooting squirrels. What happened to Darl Moody ought to tell you that I’m nothing if not a man of my word.”
“He’s a goddamn detective. This county will be crawling with law if something happens to one of theirs. And even if I did, Dwayne. Even if I did kill him, what then? You think all this is going to go away? You think there won’t be another comes in right after him?”
“For most the folks wearing that badge, it’s a paycheck. You do what you can to keep from getting filled up with bullet holes. You put in your thirty years and you retire. There’re crusaders and there’re folks punching a time clock. I’d say it’s about a fifty-fifty chance whether the next one cares like Stillwell does, and that’s a chance I’m willing to take. Besides, this’ll make that department forget all about what happened to Darl Moody, now won’t it? They’ll be so busy looking for you they won’t even see me slip out of here.”
“I won’t do it.”
“You call me when it’s done.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“No, I’m seeing things quite clearly,” Dwayne said. “I’m going to give you three days to get it done, and if it hasn’t happened by then I’m coming and taking everything you love. I’ll burn your whole goddamn world to the ground in the blink of an eye.”
Calvin was silenced.
“That’s what you took from me.”
Dwayne slipped past Calvin and stood by the back tire. He worked the lever until all six rounds were scattered about the ground, then gently placed the rifle into the bed of the truck. When he returned to the front bumper he stood there and looked hard into Calvin Hooper’s eyes.
“You know, what you’ve done to this mountain is worse than anything I’ve ever done in my life,” he said. “Any given day any man can kill somebody, but this . . . this right here.” He opened his arms and spun a circle to the cleared land surrounding them. “You’ve spit in the face of God.” Dwayne stepped closer until there were only inches between them, him having to bow his head to meet Calvin’s eyes. He raised his hand and patted Calvin on the cheek, then left his hand flat against his face so he could feel Calvin’s beard prickly against his palm. “I don’t see how you sleep at night.”
Calvin swatted Dwayne’s hand away. “You’re out of your fucking mind!”
Dwayne smiled and strolled away. “Three days,” he said without turning.
He climbed into the car and cranked the engine to life. The headlights flashed Calvin Hooper and he shaded his eyes, unwilling to face what was on him right then. Soon enough he would learn he was capable, and whether it was wickedness or love was no easy question. Deep enough down, every living thing was exactly the same. What will it took resided in every heart that beat.