Halfway up the dirt road something held Calvin Hooper like chains. He couldn’t take another step, couldn’t will himself to move, even when he told himself, It has to be this way.
For the last hour, he’d stood on Moody Bridge mesmerized by the river. Moonlight made scales of the surface so that the water looked like a black snake basking in the valley’s night. The revolver was tucked inside his coat and he tried to imagine what it would feel like to kill a man. It was one thing to end a life by accident, and not all that far a stretch to do the same in a moment of rage. Either could happen in the blink of an eye. But to do so knowingly, to roll it around in your mind and answer the questions of how you’d do it, when and where, now that was another matter altogether.
Calvin turned and looked toward the highway. Just south on 107 sat the Tuckasegee Trading Post, its red tin roof lit by a streetlamp at the corner of the narrow parking lot. Staring at something so familiar, he was struck by the ordinariness of it, how ordinary all of it had been. Five weeks ago he was no different from any other man in this county. Work, church, and family. That was it. Same as anyone else, just as plain as apple pie. But all it took was a phone call to rip the rug right out from under his whole life. One decision and now here he stood.
What was happening hadn’t fully sunk in yet. Part of it was shock. It was that suddenly-staring-at-your-house-in-smoking-ashes kind of feeling that left Calvin in a sort of stupor. But the bigger part was that he wasn’t ready to bear the blame. The devil drew the line between the selfless and the selfish so that often a man could not tell on which side he stood. Since the beginning, he’d told himself this was about Angie and how much he loved her. This was about a willingness to do whatever it took to keep her safe, to keep from losing her. There were some things worth dying for and some things worth killing for and some things that could make a man do all sorts of things he never knew he was capable of until the time came to do them. On the ride here, he’d been certain he loved her that much. But over the past few minutes he’d learned that killing a man was no easy thing.
There’d been so many nights standing by bonfires in empty pastures, empty beer cans littered at their feet, Calvin and Darl the only ones who hadn’t turned in. During drunken conversations they swore they’d do anything for the other. One might be in a row with somebody, and the other might say, “I’ll kill him,” and they’d both get fired up and then they’d laugh. The thing was, they weren’t just saying it. They meant it. They loved each other enough that they meant every word. But deep down no one ever really believes it’s going to come to that. You say it like another way of saying I love you. You don’t ever truly believe you’re going to have to lay down your life.
Calvin walked to the other side of the bridge and gazed upriver. Off to the right he could see rolling hills in the distance, the moonlight teal against the grass. Along the road on the other side of the river, cut cornstalks stubbled a narrow strip of dirt. There was little doubt in his mind that Dwayne Brewer would do exactly what he said. Like I was shooting squirrels. That thoughtless. That easy.
“He’s going to kill her,” Calvin said under his breath. He said it again and those words spoken blew coals to flame and all of it came onto him then, a barrage of emotion—sadness and mourning and guilt and anger—and he leaned forward with his face afire and wept with an uncontrollable madness, his hands gripping the concrete parapet.
Right then, his mind was awash with memory. He thought about the first time he met Angie, how she’d laughed at him when he asked for her number, how she told him he needed to go home and take a shower, maybe think of cleaning himself up a little if he was going to come into a restaurant and hit on a waitress. She was working at O’Malley’s then and he’d thought she was one of the college girls, thought she was older than she was, no clue aside from her accent that she was local. He remembered the first time he kissed her and how she’d been wearing something on her lips, how it left his mouth tingling and cool like peppermint. He remembered how hesitant she’d been to sleep with him, how long it had taken, and how he woke up early that next morning, the sun coming up outside, and he looked at her there asleep and he knew that she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He knew that there were some things on this earth that carried the fingerprints of God on their skin like clay carries the prints of the potter. Those eyes. Those gorgeous green eyes. He could see his entire life in them. He could hear her laugh. He could feel her body spooned against him while she slept, his arm wrapped over her and tucked between her breasts. He could smell her hair as he dipped his nose into it and inhaled and closed his eyes dancing between reality and dream, one no different from the other in that moment. All of that memory came onto him as he clenched tight to the bridge and he heaved forward and emptied himself into the river below. Staring down, the water disappeared under the bridge and that movement made him feel like he was swaying, a vertigo-type dizziness rocking his knees. He panted for air, spittle hanging from his bottom lip.
For so long Calvin had been terrified of what would happen if he told the truth. All he’d had to do was walk out of those woods. All he’d had to do was go to the sheriff and come clean. Thinking about what he’d covered up, he could see how selfish it all was, that none of it had a goddamn thing in the world to do with Angie or keeping her safe, that up until then every decision he’d made had been about himself. Every decision had been about keeping himself out of trouble. If he loved her, he would’ve done anything in the world to protect her, even if that meant giving his own life away.
That feeling in the pit of his stomach evolved into a sort of resolve. It was almost midnight when he marched off the bridge and he knew now what he had to do. He stopped at his pickup, opened the driver’s-side door, and sat inside, looking at that photograph of Angie while he smoked a cigarette down to ashes. The revolver lay across his lap and he rubbed the blued cylinder with his thumb like he was polishing silverware. After he finished his cigarette, he slammed the door, and headed down the road to the brick house where Stillwell lived.
The light was on in the front room. The unmarked patrol car sat in the drive. Calvin stepped across a ditch and walked through the yard, dew on the grass slicking the soles of his boots. He came up the steps onto the porch and as he reached to knock on the door he understood that this was it, that there could be no turning back from here. In a moment, the porch light flicked on, the lock unlatched, and there he stood.
Stillwell was barefoot with a ratty Smoky Mountain High Booster Club T-shirt and a pair of dark basketball shorts with white stripes down the seams. There was a look of confusion in his eyes, his lips flat and his jaw clenched. Looking at him, Calvin could see the boy he’d grown up with, all those years having filled the saddlebags under his eyes. Still, it was the same man. The same kid he’d fought with on the practice field over a girl. The same kid who ran off gung ho after 9/11 their senior year in high school and joined the Marines. The same man who came home and took a job and went to work like all the rest of them because even when they left they always came back, these mountains always calling them home. They were all tied together in that way and Calvin hoped that was enough.
“Calvin?” he said.
“There’s something I’m about to tell you and I need you to trust me, Michael. I need you to listen.”