County Line (28 page)

“I’ll bring you some water.”

She didn’t want to see anyone. But her desires couldn’t be less relevant. She went to the door, pushed it open.

Mrs. Parmelee stood at the window. She turned when the door opened and for a moment she gazed across the room. “Oh, honey, are you all right?”

Ruby Jane couldn’t hold back her tears any longer.

- 32 -

Stormy Night, August 1988

Jimmie looked at the weapon in his hand as if he couldn’t believe something so small and blunt could undo so much.

“Give it to me, Jimmie.”

He offered her the gun without hesitation. She jammed it into her sweatshirt pocket, then circled Dale’s truck to the open door.
Don’t think, don’t look—just another mess to clean up
. The stench of gunpowder almost overwhelmed her, but the presence of his body left her indifferent. All she cared about now was the passage of time. Kids from school often snuck onto the gun club grounds at night to look for clay pigeons and spent shotgun shells while they knocked off pilfered six-packs. Idiots, but idiots who could put Jimmie in jail if they showed up now.

She gazed into the woods.

“Roo? What are you doing?”

“We have to bury him.”

“We can’t do that.” He inched toward her. “Can we?”

“Do you want to go to jail?”

“Jesus, I’m not going to jail—I’m going to
fry
.”

“Not if you do what I tell you.”

“But, Roo—”

“Goddammit, stop whining and help me. We have to get him out of the truck.”

“And take him where?”

“There.” She pointed into the thicket. “We’ll bury him. Then we’ll leave his truck in the Eagles parking lot. If anyone notices it, they’ll think he left it because he was too drunk to drive.”

“Roo, we’ll never get away with this.”

“Should we go ask Bella what she thinks?”

He shut up. Ruby Jane reached into the cab and unlatched the seat belt, then hooked her father under his arms. He stank of scorched metal, cigarettes, and beer. She wrestled the body onto the road beside the pickup. Jimmie let out a squawk when Dale’s lolling head struck the pavement with a sound like a bat whacking a melon.

“How are you doing this?”

The rain lashed at her. Her patience was slipping. “Jimmie,
help me
.”

“How the fuck are you doing this?”

“Get his feet.” She tried to pull Dale off the road, but the rough pavement dragged at his clothes like Velcro. Jimmie didn’t move to help.

“Jimmie!”

“
What
?”

“Grab … his … fucking …
feet
.”

Somehow Jimmie complied. They hoisted Dale across the ditch and through the spindly viburnum at the edge of the thicket. Ten feet into the woods they dropped him in a narrow clearing. Ruby Jane leaned against a tree to catch her breath. She could feel Jimmie staring at her.

“Now what?”

She ignored him, returned to the truck. Jimmie followed, his breathing noisy and ragged. The stink inside the cab was already fading. She found a flashlight in the glove box. It flickered when she shined the light into Jimmie’s face. He blinked and his pupils contracted to points. His pulse jumped in his neck. “Check the truck. We need a shovel, or something to dig with. See what he has.”

“Where are you going?”

“To look for a place.”

“Jesus.”

“You want me to clean this up, you have to do what I say.”

His Adam’s apple wobbled, but he went to the bed of the pickup.

She crossed the ditch and pushed through the brush. The wood was a mix of black maple and horse chestnut, with an occasional shaggy hickory tree. As she made her way under the canopy, rain water dribbled over her. Leaves rustled in the wind. She picked her way through the viny undergrowth, certain each step landed her in poison ivy or raccoon shit. Thorns dragged at her jeans and ripped the exposed skin on the backs of her hands. The soft earth gave beneath her feet. After a dozen steps, the trees closed in, and in another fifty feet the guttering flashlight revealed a shallow depression bordered with swamp rose and filled with last year’s leaves. A night bird loosed a shrill, vibrant cry. She switched off the flashlight. She couldn’t see the lights of Dale’s truck behind her.

This would have to do.

Back at the truck, Jimmie stood twisting the hem of his windbreaker into tight little spikes in his hands.

“What did you find?”

“His tool boxes are in the cab behind the seat.”

“What about a shovel?”

“Yeah. In the back.”

“Get it. Get it all.”

She waited while Jimmie collected everything, then led him back through the trees to the depression. “Drop the tool boxes here.”

“Is this where…?”

“Yes, Jimmie. This is where.”

“I don’t understand how you’re doing this.”

“You’re the one who pulled the trigger.”

For a moment she thought he would start crying. A shudder rose up through her, a dark wall of desperation. The rain battered her neck and shoulders, the cold seared her skin. She ran her numb hand over her face. “You need to deal with the truck.”

“Why?”

“We can’t leave it here.”

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Drive toward the gun club. There’s a turn-out a little ways up on the right. Park and turn the lights off.” She had an odd thought. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone will steal it.”

“No one is going to steal it, Roo.”

“Okay, yeah. Whatever. But if someone does check it out, we want it to look like he left it there on purpose. The turn-out is far enough up no one will notice us down here if they do stop.”

Jimmie hesitated.

“What’s the problem?”

“It’s just—” His lips pulled back from his teeth. “What if I get blood on me?”

She looked at the stretch of pavement between them for the length of a breath. “Jimmie, I cannot tell you how little I care whether you get blood on you.”

He flinched, but then he moved away through the brush. She followed him as far as Dale’s body, listened as the truck door closed and the engine started. The wheels spun in the weeds before gaining traction. The headlights flashed through the leaves and then the truck moved away.

Part of her wished he’d keep driving, never come back. She leaned back against the bole of a maple tree. The only sound was the soft susurration of leaves. The earthy smell of the woods was overlain by a salty musk laced with wet twill. She slipped around the tree. Rough bark dug into her back. She found a knot with her shoulder blades and pressed into it. The sudden sharp pain provided her with a point of focus, something which wasn’t Dale. She leaned her head against the trunk and closed her eyes. The inside of her eyelids were no darker than the woodland around her. Rain drops struck her forehead and cheeks. Her weight settled into the tree. She inhaled, held the breath, let it out. An owl called, the forlorn sound an echo of her own anxiety, followed by the grumble of a vehicle approaching on the road. Not Dale’s pick-up. The engine sounded smoother, the rolling tires higher in pitch. A car. She sank down, indifferent to the cold muck soaking into her jeans. But the glow of the headlights flashed through the viburnum and grew dim. The grumbling engine died away, lost in the tapping of rain. A moment later, she heard a hiss in the darkness.

“Roo … Where are you?” Jimmie staggered toward her through the brush. She flicked on the flashlight. “Someone came.”

“Who?”

“A cop. Nash, I think.” His face was white and his eyes looked ready to pop out of their sockets. “I did like you said. I’d just turned the lights off when I saw him turn off Dechant Road. I crawled across the seat and got out on the passenger side and ran into the woods.”

“Did he see you?”

“I left the keys.”

“Jimmie, did he
see
you?”

“I don’t think so. He slowed down, but didn’t stop.”

“No problem then.”

“We should go.”

“We have to finish this.”

“Roo—”

“Shut up.”

He didn’t speak during the grueling effort to drag Dale’s body through the woods to the depression. Ruby Jane couldn’t manage the flashlight and Dale’s arms at the same time, so they worked in darkness, grunting and stumbling over exposed tree roots and through the thorny scrub. They finally dropped Dale at the edge of the depression near his toolboxes. Ruby Jane didn’t take time to catch her breath. She picked up the shovel and flicked on the light. Jimmie leaned against a tree, hands on his knees. She nudged him with the shovel handle.

“Push the dead leaves to the side. We need to cover the hole with them again when we’re done.”

Jimmie shook his head. “I don’t know how you’re doing this.” But he started moving the matted clot of leaves, first with his feet, then with his hands. If she were to give herself a moment to reflect, she probably wouldn’t understand how she was doing this either. Their only hope was to bury the whole, sick mess. Hide the evidence and pretend it never happened.
He never came home from work. We don’t know what happened to him
. Bella would escape justice, but there was no way to hold her accountable without dragging Jimmie down with her.

Once he’d cleared a spot as long as Dale and half again as wide, she tossed him the flashlight. “I’ll start.” The earth was soft and wet, laced with roots and gravel. She piled dirt at the edge of the clear area, dug until her arms hurt. When she traded the shovel for the flashlight, the grave’s outline had been drawn; the hole was a foot deep. Jimmie took over without comment. The rain continued to fall. The shovel thunked into the soil, the trees whispered. After a while, Jimmie pulled himself out of the hole and gave her the shovel. His face was a mask of fear and pain.

“I’m thirsty.”

“We’re almost done.”

But she closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the shovel handle. Every muscle ached. Her skin was a landscape of wriggling itches, her hands numb. When she opened her eyes again, she found herself looking at Dale, still as a rag in the shadows at the edge of the depression. Jimmie followed her gaze and sucked in air, as if he was noticing the body for the first time. He put his hand to his forehead, a gesture so profoundly Bella that for a moment Ruby Jane thought her mother had come to take his place.

“He stole Grammy’s ring. Mom said he showed it to her.”

A choking ache rose up in her. She’d grieved for her grandmother, still grieved for her. Now she felt that pain again, magnified and made black. Not for the ring, a bauble, but for the legacy. Dale had stolen a link to her past, and for what? A few rounds at the Eagles? When she spoke, her voice was quiet. Defeated. “It was just a ring.”

“But—”

“It doesn’t matter. Toss his shit in the hole.”

“Mom said to bring everything back.”

“Fuck Bella.”

“Roo—”

“Jimmie, we can’t have anything that belongs to him. If the cops find us with the smallest object, his watch, his wallet, even a fucking screwdriver, they can tie us back to this.”

For a long time, he looked down into the hole. She couldn’t guess what he was thinking. Didn’t want to guess what he was thinking. She was too tired to plead with him any more. He shuffled his feet, collapsed against the hickory tree next to him. She almost didn’t notice when he started banging his head against the coarse bark.

She dropped the shovel, stumbled over to him. “Jimmie, stop.” She took his face in her hands and pulled him away from the tree. He resisted for a moment, then sagged. She felt a slick fluid on his skin. He was bleeding. She tried to find the cut, but he winced and pulled her hands down.

“I didn’t know it would be like this.”

“Jimmie, it’s okay.”