Lucky Strikes (25 page)

I restacked the sheets, set them in my lap. Sat there waiting—for what I couldn't tell you.

“Don't mind saying, Melia, it took me a coon's age to gather all these. Had to call in a passel of favors, grease a whole mess of county clerks' palms. And this here's just the Atlantic seaboard. Give me another month or two, I bet I find a trail all the way to California.” Harley Blevins's finger stroked the rim of his Scotch glass. “Lordy, it makes a body shiver. To think Walnut Ridge has had such a vicious and hardened criminal living in its midst all this time. It's a wonder we all didn't get ourselves kilt.”

From a ways off come a packet of sounds. A lawn mower. A mourning dove. Some fool cricket rubbing its legs together.

Harley Blevins took the pictures off my lap, stuck them back in their kraft envelope. “If I recall,” he said, fishing a watch out of his coat pocket, “the Warren County Courthouse is just a twenty-minute drive from here. I am a hundred percent sure that Miss Wand over there at the juvenile court would be most interested in this here dossier. Her boss, too. Did I ever tell you Judge Barnswell's an old buddy of mine? Me and him play poker near once a week. He ain't got much knack for the game, but to keep things friendly, I forgive him his debts from time to time. For which he is most grateful.”

Once more he leaned back in his chair, laced his hands behind his head. Looked out through those damask drapes.

“I reckon you gotta decide,” he said. “What's more important to you? That make-believe family of yours or that good-for-nothing gas station. Reckon you can't save both.”

 

Chapter

TWENTY-SIX

Hiram was in the middle of his afternoon nap when I got back. His head against the wall, his feet on the counter. Hanging there in that perfect suspension. All these weeks, I'd never once seen him fall. His eyes quivered open. With a light rasp, he rocked himself into a sitting position.

“Everything okay with Chester?”

“Sure.”

“Did he say he wants his wife back?”

“Why would he say that?”

“'Cause she's been here all morning.”

My head made a little swing round the store.

“In the house,” he explained. “With your sister.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I was making a joke, Amelia.”

“'Course.”

He squinted at me. Then he set to wiping the counter. “If you're hungry, there's some soft-shell pecans in the back aisle. Only about four weeks old.”

“I ain't hungry.”

Stuck for something to do, I picked up a broom and started sweeping by the door.

“You don't have to do that,” he said.

But I liked it, honestly, the whisper of the straw on the oak floors.

“I reckon it's time we took a little vacation,” I said.

He stopped wiping the hardware cabinet and looked at me.

“Well, you know,” I said, “we got but the one week before Janey and Earle gotta go back to school. I reckon we could, you know, close up shop and—I don't know, drive round. Hell, look at the ocean, I ain't never been to the ocean. It can't hurt a body to get out now and again.”

“And then come back,” he said.

“Well, sure. Of course come back.”

He give his rag a couple of shakes.

“I mean, ain't you ready for a breather?” I said. “Setting behind that counter day after day?”

“Can't say I am. This is the best job I ever had.”

“Oh, come on,” I said, jabbing at him with the broom. “Better than playing in
Julius Caesar
? Or writing for the pictures? Selling ladies' hats?”

“Thousand times better.”

“Aw, you could do a damn sight better than this old dump. We all could.”

I wasn't looking at him, but he was sure looking at me.

“Dear God,” he said. “That bastard is breaking you down, isn't he?”

“No, he ain't.”

I leaned the broom against the wall. Real careful, like it might break.

“We keep saying no,” I said, “there's no telling where it'll end.”

“And where's it gonna end if we say yes? You think he'll quit with us? No, ma'am, he'll pull the same stunt a few months down the road. Some other family, and they'll say yes, too, and before long, he'll have his boot on every neck for a hundred miles around.” Scowling, he jammed the rag back into his apron pocket. “Probably end up in Congress by the time he's done. You want to know what that Blevins fella is? He's an animal. Thinks all he has to do is piss on something to make it his. Well, he can piss on us all he likes, but this place isn't his.
We
aren't his.”

Oh,
I thought,
but we are
.

Once more, my head flooded with the
other
Hiram—that slack, rubbery, dead-eyed face.…

“Now, if all you want is a few days off,” he was saying, “we could drive on out to Canaan Valley. But we've got to be back for Labor Day weekend 'cause that's prime business time. And, oh boy, do we need to start laying in for the leaf change. Do you know tourist numbers peak in the first two weeks of October? Think of all the cameras we could sell. Road maps, trail guides, compasses. I bet we'd even find takers for lederhosen.…”

I didn't feel unkind slipping out the door. He weren't talking to me no more.

For a little while, I stood out front, watching the cars pass by. Then I went into the house. Janey was asleep, and Mina Gallagher was in her usual chair, the bag of yarn by her feet. Only the knitting needles was nowhere to be seen, and in her lap was one of the cheesiest, trashiest movie magazines it has ever been Hiram Watts's pleasure to sell. I could even see the headlines over her shoulder.

Claudette Colbert's Mother Speaks Out.… Robert Donat's Most Private Sorrow.… How Loretta Young Guards Her Beauty Complexion.…

Mina's own complexion got a little rouge-y when she saw me. “I was just on my way home,” she said, jumping to her feet.

She was about a yard from the door when I thought to call after her. “Mrs. Gallagher?”

She spun her head round real slow.

“I just wanted to thank you,” I said.

“Oh.”

Silence.

“I heated up some oxtail soup,” she said. “For when she wakes up.”

“Okay.”

“Also, it occurs to me you might start calling me Mina.”

“Okay.”

Then she was gone.

Her chair was still warm, though. I set there for a good stretch. The old skin had mostly peeled itself off Janey's face, and the new skin was thin and veined and papery.

“Is it Sunday?” she said, out of the blue.

“Naw, it's Thursday.”

“Thursday night?”

“Afternoon.”

“How come you ain't working?”

“Don't much feel like it.”

“Oh.”

“There's some soup if you want.”

She yawned. “Ain't hungry.”

We set for a while.

“Listen,” I said. “I got a math problem.”

“Shoot,” she said, pushing herself up on her elbows.

“It's a minusing problem. Like, say we was to minus this one thing. Do we end up with less than if we minused this other thing? That kind of problem.”

“I suppose it depends what you're minusing.”

“Well, just for example, say we let go the station but we … get to keep Daddy Hiram. What would that leave us with?”

“Compared to what?”

“Well … keeping the station and … letting Daddy Hiram go.”

“Where's he going?”

“Damn it, girl, nowhere. It's just a what-if.”

She set all the way up now, stretched her legs in front of her.

“Let's see,” she said. “We let go the station, it's kinda like losing the last piece of Mama. On the other hand, Mama was always saying blood's the most important thing in the world. So if she was here right now, she'd be telling us to hold on to Daddy Hiram. 'Cause think about it. Mama's the reason he come in the first place.”

I nodded. Frowned down at the floor.

“Listen, Janey. I gotta tell you something.”

It felt like I had scarlet fever myself, that's how hot my face was.

“Mama ain't the reason that Daddy Hiram's here, okay? I mean, Daddy Hiram ain't—he ain't even really—”

“Melia, shut up.”

I looked up at her. “Sorry?”

“You must be dumb as dirt if you think you're telling me something I don't already know.”

Next thing I knew, I was sitting on the edge of the bed. Couldn't even remember how I got there.

“But you was just talking about Hiram being blood,” I said.

“Well, heck, I didn't think you'd get so hung up on a
word
. If you want to know, he's better than blood, he's
sent
.”

I stared at her. “And just who do you think sent him?”

“I got to spell out everything for you, don't I? Mama, that's who.”

Well, I searched her face, looking for patches of fever.

“Like from heaven or something?”

“Oh, for—Melia, she had a
plan
—a plan we didn't know about. And the plan was Daddy Hiram.”

I knew then the child was off her nut.

Hiram weren't nobody's plan, he was a chain of accidents. A coal truck happened to catch some gravel as it turned right onto Totten. It happened to spit Hiram out its back. His body happened to block our pump. He happened to mention Shakespeare. If any one of those things
hadn't
happened, then none of it would've happened, and Hiram wouldn't be setting in that store right now, wondering how he was gonna scrounge up lederhosen.

“Sometimes,” said Janey, “I theorize she wrote him a letter. Or sent him a Western Union. Or maybe it all come from praying.”

“Mama praying…”

“Oh, I know it ain't like her. All I can think is she done it when we wasn't looking.”

Your daddy. He's …

He's what?

And just like that, my head filled in the sentence.
He's coming.

This whole while, I'd been thinking she was gonna give me a name. It never once crossed my mind that all she really wanted to say was he's on his way. Melia, he'll be here. Any day now.

Oh, maybe if she'd had more words, she'd have told me how unpromising he'd look right off and maybe there'd have been a little warning about the criminal history; that would've been useful. Then again, maybe Mama didn't know herself. Maybe all she was riding in those last few seconds was a feeling.

Well, there I was, setting next to Janey, and nothing had changed and everything had. I don't know that I'm much closer now to pinning down the feeling of it. But imagine the coldest day of the year and you're out in it, shivering in the sleet and snow, wind knifing down from the mountains. You couldn't be a grain colder and still be drawing breath. And that's when it hits you. You ain't cold at all. Ol' Man January, he can do his damnedest and it don't matter, 'cause you're wrapped against him and always have been. And never knew.

I stood up from the bed, real slow.

“If Hiram asks, tell him I had to go back into town.”

I weren't about to go through Harley Blevins's front door again. No, this time I went all the way round to the back. By now, it was raining, and the rain was dripping like syrup from the sleeves of my uniform as I watched Harley Blevins's office window blink through the fog.

A single light was blazing, and the outline of the great man himself was stamped on the drapes. I knocked on the glass—three times, hard and short. Listened to the scrape of the chair. Saw a pair of hands flatten like frogs against the pane. A second later, the window was open.

“First thing you should know,” I said. “We ain't no good-for-nothing gas station. We're kicking your ass every day of the year. And we ain't no make-believe family, neither. We're the real deal, and ain't no Miss Wand nor Judge Barnswell nor Harley
Blevins
gonna change that.”

I could feel a single tear burning the bottom of one eye.

“So do your worst. Do your
worst
, you devil. You ain't getting our family, and you sure ain't getting our station. 'Cause that ain't in the plan.”

He closed the window and turned away.

 

Chapter

TWENTY-SEVEN

Next morning, a little after eleven, a man come walking down the road. Tall and lean in a flannel shirt and dungarees, with what looked like a rucksack thrown over his shoulder. I was getting ready to throw a couple pennies at him when I noticed something familiar in the slant of his shoulders.

Dudley.

“Lost your ride?” I called.

He didn't answer, just grabbed me by the hand. Before I knew it, we was circling round to the back of the store. He didn't have no loving in view this time, 'cause once we was out of sight of the road, he flung down his rucksack. That's when I realized it were a shotgun case. With two double-barrels poking out.

“What the hell,” I said.

“Shut up,” he said, “and listen. That feller who threw the brick through your window? The one got his arm chewed up?”

“'Course.”

“That was Tom Goggins.”

“Who is?”

“A handyman, does odd jobs for my uncle. The other day, I seen he had these bandages all up and down his arm, and I asked him what happened, he said he got bit by a skunk.” Dudley looked at me. “That weren't no skunk, Melia. Now, old Tom, he ain't a bad sort, but he's down on his luck, like a lot of folks, and he ain't too particular about the work he takes on.” Dudley paused. “It was him put the bullets in your house, Melia. He didn't have no choice, he said my uncle had him over some kinda barrel, only he wouldn't say what.”