Country Hardball (14 page)

The man with the shotgun stepped her way.

“Get your ass down on the ground, bitch.”

Hank started to say something, but Ruby stood from the couch, holding the afghan tight in her hand. “The hell I will.”

The three men looked at her.

“What?”

“I done beat cancer,” she said, “and I swear to God I ain’t getting down on the ground for nobody.”

The gunmen looked at each other, then back at Ruby.

The sun painted light onto the rug in front of her feet, as flecks of dust danced in a river to the window, every speck visible, sparkling, like your first glimpse of snow. The dust, caught for a moment, before the sun goes away and the dust settles, moving by books, by afghans, by the top edge of a picture frame, from room to room in the darkness.

When the man with the pistol moved from Hank to Ruby, Hank uncoiled, putting his shoulder into the man’s gun.

A thin, piercing sound as a shot exploded into the wall. The man with the shotgun turned back, but the gun barrels hit the other man in the shoulder and two blasts discharged pellets into a cabinet of family photos. The Sears family photo of the Daltons in front. Hank in his funeral suit. Ruby with a fresh perm. Billy and Chet, standing as tall as they could. A decade old. A lifetime ago.

Hank fought for the pistol, managed to put another shot into the wall. The men ran out the way they’d come, gravel spraying as they tore off. Hank and Ruby in the living room, holding each other.

He held his left hand open for her. “Got my gun back.”

“That’s your gun?”

“Yeah.”

He set it on the cabinet top, winced as he moved.

“What’s wrong?”

He put his left hand on his right collarbone. “Think I broke my shoulder.”

• • •

Hank Dalton pulled his truck into his son’s driveway, cut the engine. He squeezed the steering wheel. Let go. Squeezed again.

He had spent the early afternoon listening to the ball game, Justin Womack getting in the game because the regular second baseman had pulled a hammy running out a grounder. Justin had gotten an RBI double in the eighth to tie the game, then scored the winning run on a wild pitch.

“Did you hear that?” Hank asked Ruby.

“Very nice.”

“You weren’t paying attention?”

“Sure,” she said, looking up from her crossword. “Sure. That was amazing.”

“Really?”

“Okay. I didn’t hear it,” she
. h grinned. “What was it?”

He told her, taking three times as long to tell it as it had taken to play out.

“Justin. He’s Chet’s age, right?”

“Year older.” The year between Chet and Billy.

As Hank stood from his car, looking at his son’s little house, he replayed parts of the game in his head, still trying to put good thoughts on top of bad ones.

It wasn’t much of a driveway. Enough for a car and a half, maybe. He started to close the door with his slinged arm, shoulder stinging. Sneered, used the other arm. The old house was so close to the road, when something fell off, it’d as likely flop right into the road as anywhere, he figured, walking through the side yard, heading around back. He stood at the foot of the steps, plywood on milk crates, looking around the back yard, littered with lawn mowers, metal chairs, truck tires.

He walked through the back, caught the screen door before it could slam shut, eased it closed. He touched the bottoms of his boots to the rug, dried the dampness. Then walked through the mudroom into the kitchen, past the brown jugs on the floor, the burners on the counter, the empty drugstore boxes.

The house was empty, except for loose CDs, ash-topped beer cans, a bong as long as a baseball bat, and the boy sleeping on the yard-sale couch. He looked at what was left of the boy, skin tight over points of bone. A sprawling, dull tattoo on his chest, never finished. Maybe it was supposed to have been a dragon. Or smoke.

He stood over the boy, watching him sleep. There was a time he was faster than the Womack boy. Stronger than his own older brother. The promise. The absolute, complete hope.

Once, when he was a high school sophomore, the boy had one-hopped a throw from the wall in right field, nailing what would have been the tying run from third. They’d gone to state after that, Hank and Ruby driving to every game, setting up lawn chairs early, bringing food and drinks from the store, making sure the whole team was all right. And that championship game, when even Billy had skipped class to see Chet play, everyone standing for the last three innings. Everyone storming the field after the boy’s walk-off solo shot in the eleventh. So much promise. So close to home.

And then the hunting accident, like an earthquake. Or fire. Like a flood that sweeps over everything, soaking ruin into everything, until years later even the box of family photographs you’d thought was tucked away safe in the attic still reeks of mildew.

Hank kicked the couch to wake the boy. Then again.

The boy wiped his nose with his forearm. “C’mon. The hell?” He saw his father, reached for a shirt that wasn’t there. “Dad.” He blinked, shook his head. Started to cough up something, then swallowed it.

“Afternoon,” Hank said.

Chet looked around. “You can’t just come in my house while I’m sleeping. What are you doing here?” He slid up to sit on the couch, looking around the room, trying to see where things lay.

Hank turned his back on the boy, walked around the room. “Came to check on you. Make sure you were safe.”

“Safe?” Chet scratched the back of head. “Yeah. Wait. Why wouldn’t I be safe?”

“Been a lot of break-ins around here,” Hank said. “I notice here you got a nice big-screen TV now. Work going all r
roan Hight?”

“Uh, yeah. Work’s fine.”

“Where you working?”

“Oh, you know.”

Hank turned to face his son. “No. I don’t know.”

“Around.”

“That right? And what are you doing?”

“You know, this and that.”

“Yeah. I know about this and that. Must pay well.”

“I’m doing all right.”

Hank reached for the Colt from inside his sling. He pointed the pistol at the TV. “What is that? Forty-six inches?”

“Hey, hey. Careful, man.”

“The TV? Forty-six inches?” Hank shook the pistol toward the TV again.

“Forty-two I think. Hell. Be careful.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry for your loss,” he whispered. Hands in his pants pockets, he slid his thumbs into his fists, squeezed until his knuckles ached. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

The man in front of him turned around, lifted his glasses to his forehead. “What was that?”

“Nothing. Sorry.” Rusty swallowed, felt his Adam’s apple jump, tight against his collar, against the clip of his tie.

The man turned away as Jake slid in next to him, punched him in the shoulder. “Dude, ’sup?”

Rusty didn’t turn. He looked at the back of the man in front of him, the white edge of the man’s shirt collar, a knife-edge standing a quarter inch above his jacket collar. Over the man’s shoulder, Rusty saw the line snaking through the hall, imagined it as it turned between the pews, to the front of the sanctuary where Staci McMahen’s family stood, squeezing hugs into cries.

The church was quiet now, a dull murmur, after the deputies escorted F. T. Pribble out.

“Is that …?” a woman had asked when Pribble walked in from the parking lot. Rusty had been in line long enough that a dozen people were behind him when Deputy McWilliams walked Pribble back outside.

“I understand,” Rusty had heard him say. “I just come to pay my respects, say I was sorry for what my family done.”

When the deputy walked back into the church, everyone in line turned forward, watching the back of the person ahead of them.

Someone said, “Lot of nerve.”

Jake leaned in to Rusty’s face, shaking Rusty from the whispers. “Bet they ain’t got this many people when you die.”

“Shh,” Rusty said.

“Hey, kid,” said a man two or three people behind them. Rusty turned, saw a man he recognized but didn’t know. “You can’t cut. Back of the line.”

Jake looked at the man for a few seconds. “See you after,” he said to Rusty. Then he turned, walked away.

Rusty let him go, then stood on his toes, trying to count the people ahead of him, measure the time in handshakes, in hugs. He turned to the woman behind him, a woman his mother knew. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

When she nodded, he walked toward the front of the line, to where it turned through the double doors, cross handles bungeed to the railing, and counted again, in clumps of ten. There’s four, then five, six. Maybe a dozen, fifteen groups of ten lined up, waiting to be sorry for their loss. Rusty wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, then pulled the handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the damp from his cheeks. People come for the show. People coming into church like they always do. Put on a tie. Act like you’re friends with everyone.

How many of these people even knew Staci? Rusty saw Debbie. Tina. Loriella. A girl whose name he didn’t know. How many knew who she really was? Talked with her about anything real? Shared something with her. How many of these people had any right to be there at all?

He walked back to the woman, told her again that he’d be right back, then walked outside the church.

Rusty leaned against the brick wall, under the canopy they’d built a few years before for rainy-day drop-offs. He watched as cars pulled into the parking lot, circled through the trucks and suburbans, then pulled back onto the road and into the Methodists’ parking lot across the street. All the people who came in all the cars. Why Staci? Why not one of them? Rusty saw a man in the front row, sitting in a station wagon, head leaned back, hands on the steering wheel, patting time to a song Rusty couldn’t hear. A few spots away, F. T. Pribble sat on his tailgate, legs dangling, pants legs creeping up against bone-white legs.

• • •

Rusty s
iaan Haw a man in a tan suit walk up the sidewalk from the back of the church. The wind was blowing a little, pine needles falling into the road as the man walked.

“Afternoon, son,” the man said, tipping his straw hat to Rusty. “You look lost.”

Rusty turned behind him, wondered why the man was talking to him. “No, sir. Just had to get some air or whatever.”

The man nodded. “Mind if I sit with you for a bit?”

“Free country, I guess.”

The man sat down on the curb. “Name’s Obadiah Roberson. Everybody calls me Brother Obie, though.”

“I’m Rusty. That’s what everybody calls me.”

“Well, Rusty, I expect there’s a big turnout today.”

“Yes, sir. Guess so.”

“You family? Friend?”

“I go to school with Staci. Went to school, I mean.”

The old man looked off at the needles blowing down from the trees, dark-tipped clumps spiraling down, propeller-like into the gravel.

“She was a good person,” Brother Obie said.

“How do you know that?” Rusty blurted out. “You didn’t know her. I don’t even know who you are.”

“I hadn’t seen the family in a decade, but they’re good people.”

Rusty squinted, then cocked his head and nodded. “Hey, I remember you. You used to be the preacher here.”

“Not for a while.”

“You quit?”

“The Lord has use of me elsewhere.”

“Wish he had use for me elsewhere,” Rusty said.

“And why is that?”

“Look around, man. This place sucks.”

“All God’s world,” Brother Obie said.

“And where was God when Staci needed Him?”

Brother Obie didn’t say anything.

“I mean,” Rusty said, “I been thinking, right? The Lord works in mysterious ways. The Lord never gives you more than you can handle. My mom’s been saying that for the past week, and now you go how it’s God’s world. Well, if it’s his world, how about a miracle now and then, right?”

“A miracle?”

A car pulled up beside the two of them. Ken Moody rolled down his windows. “You fellas okay? Need a lift?” They shook their heads and he waved, drove on.

“How about it?” Rusty asked. “How come God couldn’t save her?”

“What would you have the Almighty do, son?”

“I don’t know. Walk on water. Raise the dead. How come God only did stuff like that in the Bible? Why can’t he help people now?”

“You think the Lord doesn’t help people now?”

“He didn’t help Staci, did he? Nobody did. Nobody ever helps anybody around here.”

Brother Obie reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a pac
A4 hadckk of cigarettes. Took one and offered the pack to Rusty. Rusty shook his head. Obie lit one, put the pack back into his jacket. “You mention walking on water. So you’re familiar with the story?”

“Yeah. They’re all out on the boat and Jesus walks on the water and they all freak out.”

“Like a magic trick?”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“You know, in the Gospel of Thomas, right after Jesus walks on the water and heals a leper, he saws Mary Magdalene in half.”

Rusty laughed. “I think you might be making that up.”

“That’s why the Council of Trent voted that one out of the canon. Pope Paul the Third hated magicians.”

“You’re nuts.”

“But they left the lion pulling the rabbit out of the hat in Revelations. That’s just good, clean fun.”

“All right. Now I know you’re making it up.”

“How do you know that?”

“Rabbit out of a hat? Sawing a lady in half?”

“Is that crazier than walking on the water? Getting wine from a pitcher of water? Feeding thousands of people with a couple of fish?”

“You telling me the Bible is made up?”

“No, son. Just that you’re reading it wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“You asked me why didn’t God do what you wanted.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did. You wanted him to, what did you say, ‘save’ Staci McMahen. You wanted that, and you asked why God didn’t do what you wanted.”

“I didn’t mean he should save her because of me. I meant he should save her because, you know, because of her. A good person. Like why would God let that happen to her? To Staci?”

“Let me tell you about Jesus walking on the water, Rusty.”

“I know the story already.”