KALYN

SPENCE SALVAGE COVERS forty acres. That’s room for cars aplenty, especially if you don’t mind them rubbing elbows, scraping side mirrors against each other.

The 1985 Taurus was impounded when the police pulled the body out of it. I know this. And even if most of the cars have been here for years, ever since the yard closed in ’92, most of them haven’t been here for actual decades.

But it’s so dark, if I squint, these could all be coffin Tauruses.

“Fuck.” I kick a puddle. The mud splashes high enough to fleck on my cheek.

I reamed Gus for not knowing what kind of person his dad was. But lots of people met Rose Poplawski, and most had no clue she was me.

Good thing Dad’s calling tonight. Sure, there were reasons to lie to the press. Maybe there were reasons to take the fall, even. But Dad didn’t just confess to the police; he confessed to us. I can put up with him lying to everyone else, but to Mom and me?

“Fuck.” Another puddle meets my boot. I stop.

Could this be the row? God knows I memorized the crime scene photos. But when your landmarks are cars that have shifted and vanished, well, angles are about as useful as belly buttons. And I hate thinking about angles.

Gus looked worried when he dropped me off. I’ve never seen my home from his angle. This’d be a scary place if you came here after dark, like James Ellis did.

When I reach the prefab, it’s only six p.m. or so. Mom’ll be pissed, because most weekdays I watch Grandma after school. There’s rebelling like a good Spence, and then there’s being a bad granddaughter.

Grandma’s sitting at the kitchen table in semidarkness. The TV’s muted but flashing bright, but she’s facing the other way, still as the dead.

“Grandma?” She tilts her head toward me. “Where’s Mom?”

Grandma tucks a cigarette between her papery lips.

“The hell? Quit that!” I’m a damn hypocrite. I reach for the cig, but Grandma finds the devil’s quicksilver in her blood and whips it away before I can nab it.

“Small joys,” she scolds. “Small joys.”

“Great. I’m the one who’s gonna get my ass roasted for it later. She at work?”

The TV shines white during a commercial, and I finally see what Grandma’s up to. She’s pulled an old shoebox full of yellowed photographs from the shed and overturned it on the table. She’s using one unlucky photo as an ashtray, looks like, burning the face off a stranger.

“What you doin’?”

She takes a long drag and coughs like an engine. This time I’m quick enough to pluck the cigarette away. “You’ll burn the house down.”

“Claire—”

“Caught fire, yeah. So let’s you and me not.” I pull up a chair.

The photos look like a whole lot of nothing. People have familiar Spence faces, but I don’t know my dead relatives. Here are barbecues and fishing trips, men and women posing with their bucks, grinning wide while deer bleed from the mouth.

Grandma’s making piles of different people: there’s Grandpa Ernest, who Mom never even met, because he got pancreatic cancer when Dad was in junior high. There’s a pile for Uncle Rob, who committed suicide by car exhaust. A pile for Dad, too.

“Help me?” Grandma pleads.

I do my best. People like to joke about Spences dating each other, and honestly, I can’t promise they didn’t somewhere down the line because damned if we don’t all have the same nose, same angry eyes, same “I dare you” lines in our foreheads. For all that, there are a lot of smiles here, too. People in blue bell-bottoms, laughing clouds of smoke. Jolly, drunken Christmases in cramped spaces.

What would all these people think of us?

“Grandma, don’t you think it’s about time for bed?” An hour’s passed. I set down a picture of Dad sitting on an old sofa in the yard. A pretty girl leans against his armrest. Both of them are toasting tallboys. They look like kids.

But Grandma is pressing the end of her cigarette into a picture again, this time very deliberately. She’s burning away the face of one of these familiar strangers, and by the time I snatch the photo from her, his face is completely gone.

I can’t tell what kind of person he was, except that he was white and he had a prominent Adam’s apple. He’s wearing a denim jacket, and his arm is looped around a twelve-year-old Dad’s bare, bony shoulders.

If Dad didn’t kill James Ellis, could it have been the work of another Spence?

“Grandma, who is this? Why are you erasing him?” I look down, and she’s blacked out at least five faces. I can’t be certain, but the Adam’s apple tells me it’s the same guy, erased five times. “Who was this? An uncle? A brother?”

But she’s not listening. Instead, she’s eyeing the TV.

When I follow her gaze, I see Dad again, but now it’s his mug shot.

“There’s Gary,” Grandma coos. When she’s not looking, I scoop up all the photos marred by cigarette burns and tuck them into my lap.

A news anchor in a cheap-nails-red blazer fakes a look of concern.

I unmute the TV.

“. . . ​developments of an unexpected nature. Earlier this week, we broke the news that Gary Spence, the thirty-seven-year-old man convicted of the first-degree murder of Samsboro teen James Ellis almost two decades ago, may be exonerated by new DNA evidence.”

The screen switches to footage of a black woman in a pantsuit standing on the steps of a courthouse. A caption scrolling along the screen reads Arlene Atkins, IFA Attorney: “Gary Spence could go free.”

The anchor continues: “Due to pressure from the Innocence Fighters Association, a nonprofit that has successfully exonerated more than thirty people since its inception in 1995, the prosecution is expected to agree to a retrial.”

Arlene Atkins smiles. “Mr. Spence has been wrongfully convicted. If he’s not back in court by Christmas, there’s no justice in Kentucky.”

It’s going to be some phone call in twenty minutes, tell you what.

“Despite the support of IFA advocates, on a local level these developments are cause for controversy.”

Now we’re looking at downtown Samsboro, all the tiny businesses along Main Street. There’s the ice cream place, the cinema, a diner, a real estate office, and a dive bar, too.

“Here in Samsboro, home of the Munch-O Mills cereal factory, the memory of James Ellis’s murder remains painful.”

The camera refocuses on a storefront. Hanging in the window is a large poster picturing younger versions of Gus and his mom, and some pumpkins. Gus is in a wheelchair.

Who’s “innocent”? the poster reads. KEEP SPENCES BEHIND FENCES.

The camera switches to an old man whose nostril hairs tickle his upper lip.

“Andrew Lewis, owner of Lew’s Hardware and former coach of the Samsboro Eagles, has set a precedent for many downtown businesses by protesting the retrial.”

“You go ahead,” Andrew Lewis spits. “You go ahead and ask anybody in town, and they’ll tell you.” He scowls and points at the camera. “They’ll tell you what I’m telling you. That family’s got a reputation. Spence confessed to the murder. And I’m not talking in no police interrogation. In court, on live TV, that monster confessed. Said, ‘Yeah, killed the running back, so what?’ Just because he’s feeling cowardly now doesn’t mean we should set him free. Can James Ellis go free? No. I taught those boys in high school, so I know: Gary Spence is right where he belongs. Spences behind fences!”

I’m reeling, but we’re back at the news desk. “Many citizens have strong opinions about the original trial. We here at WKZ News have received dozens of calls from listeners shocked and, in some cases, disturbed by the news. We would like to hear more from our listeners. Does Gary Spence really deserve the benefit of the doubt?”

It’s a public trial already, I guess. I wonder if Gus is seeing this.