Dogwood (25 page)

The baby had a mind of his own, like a lot of kids, but this one was a tiger even in the womb. He moved around like a linebacker in search of a quarterback, and Lynda was up with the sun scrubbing and shining anything she could get her hands on. My mother said it was a “nesting phase,” and I needed to give her space. She was right. A little comment, just some offhanded thing that didn’t mean anything before, now set Lynda off and sent her on a downward spiral, so I tried to be careful with my words.

We’d moved into our house the week before, and that night my old army buddy Ernie was due. He showed up with his third wife, and they didn’t seem to mind the boxes and furniture. The two of them even rolled up their sleeves and helped unpack.

Outside I broke out a bottle of white wine—Lynda looked like she was dying to try some but didn’t dare with the baby only a month away—to go with our Pizza Hut order. We laughed and talked until it was almost dark, and Lynda went inside to freshen up.

An old Camaro I’d never seen before passed, and I didn’t think much about it. Probably some kids horsing around at the end of the road. It was either that or going to Dairy Queen. My beeper
went off and I called the station. It was Eddie, asking if I would come in for a couple of hours. He had something going on. I told him I had guests from out of town, but he said in his Eddie way that I should get my rear downtown now or I’d be sorry.

I told Ernie I had to go to work. I changed back into my uniform, which wasn’t clean, but I wasn’t going to tell anybody.

“Hang on,” Ernie said as I was heading out. “Got something for you in the trunk. Almost forgot.”

There was no “back way” home, but I waited until dark to return. I figured Mama would be worried and that Carson had called and spun things his way. It didn’t matter anymore. I’d made up my mind to leave and stop fighting it. I was still committed to Karin, but there had to be a better way to reach her. Maybe it would take leaving and giving her space. I didn’t know. But what I was doing wasn’t working; that was for sure.

I had rounded the corner and could see our house when a gray blur zoomed out of a driveway straight at me. I instinctively swerved left off the road into a row of rosebushes so thick the truck rolled onto its side, then bounced back far enough for me to crawl out the window. I was in a tangle of briars and sticks as the car pulled beside me.

“Get in the car, Hatfield!” someone shouted. I didn’t recognize the voice.

I continued climbing through the thorns and was trying to get my shirt and pants free when I heard the gun click. It was the deputy. “Get back here now or your mama’s gonna see your brains all over that field.”

I fell into Richard’s arms, weeping. He’s not the type uncomfortable with a woman’s tears, and for that I’m grateful. You can do a lot worse than that in a husband.

I rested in his office and tried to pull memories from the accident. My mind was like a quilt with missing patches. I heard a commotion outside.

My mother walked in. “Karin?”

That started the tears again and we embraced. She looked into my eyes, repeating my name. “Oh, Karin.”

My father was at the door, his hands shoved into his pockets, watching from the sidelines.

“I can’t remember some things,” I managed. “The morning of the accident. Do you remember?”

Her face turned stern, and she looked at Richard. “Has
he
been here?”

“Not today,” Richard said. “I talked with him earlier, though, and that seems to have brought up some things with Karin that she can’t remember.”

“It’s fuzzy,” I said. “I know that Will brought me home that morning. He must have.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Mother, tell me,” I pleaded.

Richard gave her a look I had never seen before, and it seemed to compel her.

“I wasn’t up yet,” my mother whispered. “Your father was about to go to work.”

“Dad?” I said.

My father whispered something to Richard.

“Dad, talk to me!”

“He parked in front of the house and carried you inside,” my father said.

“Carried me? Why?”

“You were sleeping. Unconscious, I guess. You’d had a lot to drink.”

“The wine,” I said, my heart racing, the room spinning. “I took it from your cabinet. I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t done that, this whole thing—”

“Don’t,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “It’s all right now. That was a long time ago.”

Something stung my arm.
A bee,
I thought. I tried to pull away, but my mother’s arms were around me. “The onion, Mom,” I said, already groggy. “Get the onion. It takes all the poison out.”

“It was our fault,” my mother said. “We never should have let you go with him.”

Something felt off-kilter, as if the floor had tilted and the lights were strangely close to my head. “Ruthie. I need to talk with Ruthie.”

Then the lights went out.

The lyrics to “Take Me Home, Country Roads” were on my mind, but these had become less familiar and weren’t leading home to the place where I belonged. I’d been pushed inside an old Camaro, slamming the back of my head into the doorjamb. Something wet and sticky, like hot motor oil, ran down my neck.

They drove me to the bend at the top of Benedict Road, one of them with a gun pointed at my head from the front seat. I reached back and grabbed a handful of blood, then wiped it on the seat. Maybe a crime scene investigator would find my DNA someday and put the case together. But the way things were going, I wasn’t hopeful.

“What do you guys want?” I said.

“Shut up, Hatfield,” the driver said. I recognized the voice of the deputy, Wes. The guy with the gun was wearing a mullet.

A mullet,
I thought.
I just got out of prison and even I know better than to wear a mullet.

The passenger clicked a two-way radio.

Someone said, “Go ahead.”

The guy laughed like Elmer Fudd. “We got him. His truck is off in the bushes. You can say he came home drunk or something.”

“Just go the back way like we planned,” someone said. “I’ll meet you up there.”

“All right, we’ll be there in a few. Out.”

Benedict Road snakes up the hill at a serious angle; then the road curves right and keeps going all the way to the meth house at the end. Instead of bearing right, Wes turned left onto an old, rutted logging path. Decades ago gas drillers had left a trail surprisingly smooth. There was still mud from the rains, and we slid sideways into the hill a few times but finally made it to the top of the ridge.

“Know where you are?” Wes said.

I kept quiet but I knew exactly. My father and I had walked every square inch of this place when I was a kid. I knew it like I knew my cell at Clarkston. The cracks in the wall. The leaky toilet.

A barbed wire fence cut across a field, and beyond the tree line was our property. Once we hit the ridge we simply went through a thicket and we were at the top of the hill where my new house stood. What there was of it.

Not my house anymore,
I thought.

The two got out, both holding guns. I waited for a chance to run, but they looked like they wanted me to. Looking for a reason to shoot.

“What do you want with me?” I said.

“You’ll see,” Elmer Fudd said. “Just walk. Thataway.”

They never got close enough for me to make a move on them. They pointed toward the ridge and we walked for twenty minutes, finally reaching my handiwork. Wood was piled high by the side of the house, and the framing made me proud. It looked professional.

A haze hung over the two mounds and extended to the valley, but I could make out the lights of cars as they zigzagged their way through town.

“Right pretty up here,” Elmer said. “Shame you’ll never get to finish this house.” He pulled out his two-way. “Okay, we’re at the house. And bring some of them zip things.”

“10-4.”

A plan began to gel in my mind as I sat. I had hidden tools in a loose pile of sawdust in case someone came along. It had been more the product of my time in Clarkston than anything else. I started picking briars from my hands as if I was uninterested in getting away, willing to let whatever happened happen. But I was searching with my toe, digging in the sawdust for something I knew was there.

“Who you guys hooked up with?” I said. “My brother?”

Elmer lit up a smoke. “Didn’t know you had one.”

They both turned their backs, and I reached down and pulled out the box cutter and put it behind me.

“Don’t make us shoot you to shut you up,” Elmer said. “We’ll do it too.”

I lifted my hands. “Just trying to make conversation.”

I opened the box cutter with my thumbnail, working the screw out behind my back, and pulled out one of the razor blades. It wasn’t much, but it would be a weapon if I could get close. There was no question these people weren’t going to let me get off this hill alive.

Two sets of headlights rounded the curve on Benedict Road and drove to the lower house. After a few minutes, one car headed up the gravel driveway I’d built and parked near us. I thought about running; then I saw the lights on top of the cruiser and Eddie stepped out. He cursed at them for not at least tying my hands or feet together.

“He’s no dummy,” Elmer said. “If he’d have taken off, I’d have emptied this in his back quick as a wink.”

Eddie gave Elmer a pair of plastic cuffs.

I fiddled with the razor blade in my back pocket, wondering
if this was the best time to use it. When Eddie turned his full attention to me, I shoved it far enough into the pocket that Elmer wouldn’t see it.

I kept my hands as far apart as I could as Elmer put the strips around my wrists and I heard the familiar zip.

“Put another one around the post and hook him to it,” Eddie said.

Elmer did, and it gave me what I hoped was enough room to get the blade out.

“Guess you’re wondering why we brought you here,” Eddie said.

“We?” I said. “This your undercover team?”

Eddie nodded to Elmer, and he kicked me in the stomach. I would have dropped the razor blade, and I was glad I hadn’t retrieved it.

“Heard from a friend that you went to talk to Mrs. Spurlock a while back. You have a nice chat?”

I groaned, unable to breathe.

“What did you two talk about?”

When I regained my breath, I said, “Elvis was my friend. Wanted to see if she needed help finding him.”

Eddie bobbed his head. “Good. I also heard she gave you a letter from him. Addressed to you.”

I tried not to, but I froze and they could tell.

Elmer leaned close, pork rinds on his breath. “Doris Jean said you took it with you, but we can’t find it anywhere.”

The ransacked house
.

When I didn’t answer, Wes took a turn at kicking me, and I thought I heard something crack above my stomach.

“Should have put a bullet in your head a long time ago, Hatfield,” Eddie said. “Would have saved this town a lot of misery.” He slid a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and lit one. He blew the smoke in my direction. Secondhand smoke was the least of my worries.

As a child I had always fancied myself as the hero. I had watched enough episodes of
The Wild Wild West
to know that at the most impossible moment James West could get out of anything, save the beautiful woman, the president, and the shipment of gold. Carson and I pretended we were James West and Artemus Gordon, but he never let me be James.

On Sunday nights during church I had stared at the ceiling, wondering what would happen if robbers broke in to steal the offering (as if robbers would want the measly tithes we were able to offer). Or my fourth-grade class—when armed men took my teacher hostage, what would I do? I went through a thousand scenarios, always coming out the hero. But now I was in the most remote place on our farm without a prayer, or much of one.

“All right, let’s try it again,” Eddie said. “What was in the letter?”

I stared at him. “Is that what this is about? Elvis?”

Eddie exhaled more smoke and walked back to his car. A radio clicked, and he paused for effect. “Yeah, we’re having some problems up here getting the info we need. Go ahead in the house and wake her up.”

“Wait,” I said.

“Wup, hold on,” Eddie said into the radio. “We might have a breakthrough.”

I shifted against the pole. “It wasn’t a letter to me. It was a will. Mrs. Spurlock thought it was to me because it had ‘Will’ on the envelope, but it was basically him giving stuff away if anything happened to him.”

“What did it say about the money?” Eddie said.

“What money? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He picked up the microphone again and clicked. “False alarm, Randy. Go on in.”

“I’m telling you the truth!” I said. “It didn’t say anything about money.”

“Hey, Randy,” Eddie said, “make her scream real loud so we can hear it back here.”

“Okay!” I yelled. “Call him off. My mother doesn’t know anything about this.”

“Sorry, Will. She’s in it as thick as you are. Poor old thing down there. She’ll be bawlin’ and tied to a chair before you know it. Randy will keep her company, but he gets an itchy trigger finger.” Eddie straddled the pile of lumber. “We did find something the other day though. Looked like a 20-gauge shotgun. Probably used it with your daddy up in these woods.”

I struggled against the plastic strips, making it look good.

“Here’s the way I figure it,” Eddie continued, spitting into the sawdust near me. “The pressure of coming back here, having people hate your guts, your mother always on your back to get a job. Then you finally land some gainful employment and they take it away. All your hard work here means nothing when the land’s gone. And then you find out your brother betrayed you and let ’em take it without a fight.” He looked at Elmer. “Bring me the sack in the backseat.”

Elmer obeyed and handed Eddie a bottle of Jack Daniels. He opened it, took a swig, then held it out over my head. “Open up, now.”

I shook my head, but he poured it down my shirt. The other two held my head back and forced my mouth open with a stick while Eddie poured some in. I spit most of it out, but when I started choking, I swallowed some.

“Never seen anybody so anxious not to get drunk,” Elmer mused.

“You see what happens when you drink and drive?” Eddie said. “That truck of yours is down there in the rosebushes. They’ll find it in the morning, along with your mother’s body, a victim of circumstance.” He broke the stick in half. “Wait a minute.
We’ll
find it. Your mama just happened to be there when you snapped.”

“A real shame,” Wes said.

“I’ll bet the TV truck will be out here and everything,” Elmer said.

“So you eased your mother’s suffering, you came up here and made a little bonfire out of your project, and then you stuck the gun in your mouth and pulled the trigger.”

“Nobody who knows me will believe that.”

Eddie laughed. “Nobody knows you, Will. The people who did don’t want you around here. You don’t have any friends. Elvis was the last of the bunch committed to you. Plus, Randy down there writes a great suicide note.”

Wes and Elmer laughed.

“You royally trashed your life, Will—you know that? You got nothing left. Only makes sense you’d come back here, get upset, and finish what you started.”

“Okay, so if you’re going to kill me, why should I tell you what was in the letter?”

“Friends, we have had a breakthrough,” Eddie said, sounding like an old-time preacher. He slapped me on the back and sat close. “That Jack Daniels must have done the trick. Old Will here has finally figured out we mean business. And that’s a good question. Shows your mind is still working, even under duress. You must have learned a thing or two in Clarkston.”

“What do you want?” I said.

“I figure you’re the only person on this planet who knows the location of Elvis’s stash. He was your friend. He must have told you something.”

“I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Not true. He visited you up in Clarkston. Don’t lie to me.”

“You know they monitor everything we say up there. I meant back here. How do you know he’s not hiding out somewhere with this stash you’re talking about?”

The others laughed and Eddie looked at the stars. Elmer started
a fire in the pit behind us, and I heard something clink on the rocks that surrounded it. Eddie worked with whatever it was, kicking up sparks. “Oh, we know he’s not out there. We actually know exactly where Elvis is right now, and he’s gonna stay there. A long time.”

“What did you do?”

“Let’s just say he became intimately acquainted with the Mud River and a couple of cinder blocks.”

My heart fell, and I was overcome not with fear but with grief for my friend. Things began to clear in my mind, and I steeled myself against the evil surrounding me. “Why didn’t you get the information about his stash before this all happened? That would have saved a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it?”

“He wouldn’t talk. We tried being nice to him, promising him things, but when it came down to it, it was his high tolerance for pain that got him. I guess it was all that scar tissue. He made it hard on us.”

I was struck with what a small and twisted world Eddie had constructed for himself. He had taken one of God’s most beautiful creations—innocent and guileless—and he was thinking of how hard Elvis had made it on him. “Where’d it happen?”

“We shouldn’t get too specific,” Eddie said. “You know, in case you want to take my offer.”

“Go ahead.”

“You tell us where he put it, and we let you and your mama live. You pack your stuff up tonight and never set foot in town again.”

I knew Eddie would never keep his promise. He had told me too much. I tried to make him think I believed him. “What about the money for the farm? Fair market value is what it said on the notice.”

“The town will make out a check in your brother’s name. He’s the executor. You can work it out with him. I’ll make sure you get it.”

I could only imagine what my mother was going through at this moment. She was frightened by the slightest possibility of danger, and if I was right, Randy had a black mask on and was ordering her to stop whimpering. “All right, but I want to make sure my mother is okay. I want to talk with her.”