Southern Cross (2 page)

“He’s
good,” she said.

“He
knows you’re here with me?”

“It
was his idea.” Of course it was. “I mean—not totally his idea,” she amended. “I
mentioned it; he said I should come without him.”

I
looked out the window at the landscape passing by. “He’s a bigger man than I
am,” I said. She turned to face me, her green eyes darkening with her mood.
“Not that I’d be dumb enough to try and stop you. But if we were together,
there’s no way in hell I’d suggest you head off on a road trip with some other
guy.”

“He
trusts me.”

I
turned to look at her. Her jaw was hard, her anger plain. I smiled. “How
evolved of him.”

<><><> 

About
an hour and a half from our destination, Solomon pointed out a road sign for Smithfield U. that featured two penguins in sunglasses and baseball hats.

“Why
are penguins the mascot for a Kentucky college?” she asked.

“It’s
Kentucky,” I said. “Logic doesn’t always play a big role in things. It’s part
of the charm.” 

“Good
to know.”

We’d
just passed the campus when Solomon caught me looking in the rearview mirror.
She turned around in her seat.

“Did
you see someone back there?” she asked. The edge of panic in her voice was new.
I knew it wasn’t unwarranted given our recent experiences, but that didn’t mean
I had to like it. 

“No,”
I lied. A dark blue sedan had been keeping pace with us since we’d left the
airport. I wasn’t really concerned until I realized the car was still behind us
after we hit I-69 and the Purchase Parkway. It could still be coincidence, I
reasoned: plenty of people could be making the trek from Louisville to the
westernmost corner of the state on an overcast Tuesday in March.

Solomon
straightened in her seat, frowning. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said.

“Yeah,
right,” she said. “Me, too. I mean—seriously. What are the chances we get
knocked off the road and hunted down by a crazed serial killer twice in one
year?”

“Not
great,” I said.

“Exactly,”
she agreed. She didn’t sound convinced.

Outside,
new leaves were just budding on a wall of trees lining the road on either side:
oaks and ash, maple and poplar and sycamore. I turned on the radio and tuned it
to 89.9, smiling at the voice that scraped through our speakers.

“Weather
today in Justice looks gray with a healthy side of rain, so stay on in and keep
those toes by the fire. Crazy Jake Dooley’s here ‘til nightfall—we got records
to spin and memories to make. Now y’all turn up the noise and stay close.”

Crazy
Jake faded out and Lightnin’ Hopkins faded in. Jake sounded like scorched
gravel, but he had a mind for music and an endless supply of classic records
that kept me entertained through three long years married to Ashley Durham.

“What
was that?” Solomon asked.

“That,”
I said, “was Crazy Jake Dooley. He broadcasts out of Justice, but he’s kind of
a cult figure in Kentucky. If you’re going to Justice, I want to make sure you
get the full experience. Jake’s part of the immersion.”

I
turned up the music and refrained from checking the rearview mirror again.
Solomon settled in, her feet tapping, for the rest of the journey.

It
was just past one in the afternoon when we got where we were going. The sun had
vanished behind a blanket of thick, menacing grey clouds, and the temperature
had dropped a good fifteen degrees since Louisville. I tried not to view that
as a sign of impending doom, but considering Solomon and my luck in the past,
it was hard to write it off completely.

Justice
is a one-streetlight town on the Mississippi that was booming up until the
1970s, when levees rerouted the river. Since then, the population has held
steady at about 1,500, with the bulk of those people working in neighboring
towns. Visitors are greeted by a sign that reads simply JUSTICE FIRST as they
cross the town line. Just beyond that was a sign that hadn’t been there when
I’d left five years before, however.

“
‘Hell is real.’ ”  Solomon read the flaming orange letters aloud. “Or at least
it is according to Reverend Jesup T. Barnel. Well, there you go. One
theological debate ended.”

Ten
feet later, a second sign appeared. “ ‘Repent all ye sinners. The fire awaits,’
”  Solomon read. Her voice was light enough, but she was doing the
knee-bouncing thing that usually means she’s either nervous or she has to pee.
When it’s the former, the knee-bouncing is accompanied by an endless,
one-sided, rambling dialogue, which is how I knew this was anxiety and not just
an overactive bladder.

After
another ten feet, the largest sign of all appeared—ten feet high, maybe twelve
across. On it was a picture of an overweight, elderly white man with a white
beard and a cowboy hat.

“There’s
a tent meeting tomorrow night,” Solomon said. “In which Reverend Barnel will
purportedly ‘Set the clock ticking: forty-eight hours ‘til the End is Come.’ ” 
She looked at me speculatively. “Look at that—we made it just in time for
Armageddon.”

“Of
course we did,” I said dryly. “This is you and me we’re talking about.”

“Good
point.” She shook her head as we approached the center of town. “So, this is
Justice. I can’t believe you lived here for three years. It’s not really how I
imagined it.”

“What
were you thinking?”

She
had to think about that for a minute. “Kind of a cross between Dodge and that
town in Footloose.”

“Actually,”
I said after some thought, “you’re not that far off.”

The
town of Justice consists of a main stretch of boarded-up storefronts and a few
diehards still managing to hang on, despite Walmart’s chokehold on the local
economy: the Justice Qwik E Mart, True Value Hardware, and Martin Feed &
Grain. Across the way, you’ll find the historic Justice City Hall, built in
1862, flanked on one side by the local police station, and on the other by WKRO
Radio and the old Twin Cinemas movie theater.

It
took five minutes to leave Justice proper behind. From there, I took River Road past churches and shacks, For Sale signs posted at every third house or so, and
then turned onto a pitted dirt road shrouded by old oak trees. We trekked through
a mile of mud and deep ruts until Wyatt’s house came into view. The sky
darkened further as I pulled in behind a twin-cab 4x4 parked in the driveway.

Dogs
barked. Einstein barked back at them. Roosters crowed. Three goats and a donkey
eyed us curiously from behind wire fencing off to our right. I stopped the car,
but made no move to get out.

“You
all right?” Solomon asked.

It
was an excellent question. I only wished I had a good answer. “Not at all. But
what are you gonna do, right?”

She
took my hand in hers—carefully, like she was taking hold of a live wire. Her
hand was cool and dry, soft and strong. Her eyes met mine, a frown tipping the
corners of her mouth. “I really am here,” she said. “Whatever you need. It’s
what we do, right?”

We
stayed that way for a minute or more before she let go. It had gotten too warm
in the car. Too close. I thought again of her body against mine; the way her
lips had tasted, the words she’d whispered.
Don’t let go, okay? Not until
you have to.

“We
should go in,” she said.

I
didn’t disagree.

The
house was busting at the seams with every relative they’d ever had, and then
some. Danny had never been much for family anyway, and now to have everyone
here carrying on about how much they loved his daddy and what a good man Wyatt
Durham had been and how he was probably setting at Jesus’s right hand right
then… it just got to be too much, is all.

He
went back out, careful to wait ‘til Rick—his twin brother, the
good
son—and
Ida, the baby of the family, were out of the way. He cruised past the grove of
birches and the horse barn and the creek, ignoring the howl of the dogs and the
threat of rain.
Just keep moving
, he kept saying to himself. He was
seventeen now: too old to cry; too young to go off and get blisterin’ drunk
like his college buddies. Well… at least, not right now, with his family
around. Maybe later.

Instead,
he kept going ‘til he reached the old tree house his daddy built him and Rick
when they was just kids. He climbed the rickety wooden rungs nailed into the
trunk of a solid old oak, pushed open the trapdoor, and went on in.

You
hadn’t oughta leave your mama alone on a day like today
, he imagined his daddy saying. Danny pulled a joint from
his back pocket and fetched a lighter from a cubby hole built into the
treehouse. He sat back, knees just about to his chin to make room in the
cramped space, and leaned his back up against the rough bark.
You got a lot
of nerve, boy, smokin’ dope today.

“Quiet,
old man,” Danny growled. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. His
throat hurt, a lump in there he hadn’t been able to get rid of since his mama
broke the news.

A
branch snapped somewhere below. Danny opened his eyes. The weed was already
taking hold, taking the edge off just enough.

“That
you, Ida?” he hollered down. “I thought you was off somewhere.”

“Don’t
get your panties in a bunch,” a girl’s voice called up to him. He smiled,
relief washing over him like warm summer rain. “It’s just me.”

Half
a minute later, Casey Clinton poked her head up through the hatch. Casey played
bass in Danny’s band. She was a couple years younger than him, about a head
shorter, and she was about the only person he could talk to these days about…
well, anything, really. Music, family, life, school… he could say anything to
Casey. It didn’t hurt that she was the prettiest girl in the sophomore
class—not that there was anything going on between them, of course.

She
pulled herself up through the hatch and settled across from him. He passed her
the joint.

“They
lookin’ for me over at the house?” he asked.

“Nah.
I had to scoot, though, in case your mama saw me.”

Danny’s
mother hated Casey—said she come from trash and was all about devil music.
They’d fought about it too much over the years; now, Casey just kept her head
down whenever his mama was around.

“What
about Rick?” he asked.

“He
saw me, but he won’t say anything.”

“You
sure about that? If he thinks it’ll earn him more points with Mama…”

Casey
took a good long drag and held the smoke in before she passed the joint back to
him, shaking her head. “You oughta go easy on him—he ain’t so bad as you make
him out to be. What’s he ever done to you?”

“Nothin’,”
he said. “The kid just bothers me is all.”

It
came out sulky. It felt like most of his life he’d been standing off on the
sidelines doing his own thing while his brother couldn’t take a leak without
their mama wanting to throw a parade. Rick was the highest ranked high school
tennis player in the state. He got the lead in all the school plays and only
dated girls their folks liked and already knew where he was headed to college,
when Danny wasn’t even sure he’d graduate.

Casey
bumped her leg against his and he jolted back to the here and now. “How’re you
doin’, anyway?” she asked.

He
shrugged.

“After
Mama died, I didn’t feel much like talking for a couple months,” she said.
“Everybody was always on me, though: ‘You gotta talk about your feelings.’
Thought I’d go crazy, everybody hounding me so much.”

Danny
nodded. “They want me to go see Ms. Guilford. Like talking to the guidance
counselor’s gonna help anything. I been dodging her so far, but I don’t know
how much longer I can do it.”

“Just
get it over with,” Casey said. “Make up some shit about dealin’ with your
feelings, maybe talk about a dream, and she’ll get off your back. Otherwise,
you’ll just spend the rest of the year on the run.”

“Okay,”
he agreed. Casey’s mother died in a car accident a couple years back. This
whole thing was old hat for her.

Another
branch cracked down below—this one right under the treehouse.

“Dangit,
Ida, leave me be for two seconds, would you?” Danny hollered down.

Casey
poked her head down the hatch. “There ain’t a soul down there. Weed’s makin’
you paranoid.”

Danny
shook his head, his shaggy hair flopping in his eyes. For the first time, he
felt a little clutch of fear. Casey kept her leg against his, jostling it a
little like she knew he needed the reminder: they were okay.

“Your
uncle comin’ in today?” she asked.

He
nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I hear, anyway. Should be around anytime now. You’ll
like Diggs—he knows music like you wouldn’t believe. And he’s been everywhere.
Done just about everything.”

“He’s
a looker, too,” Casey said. She blushed when he looked at her. “You showed me
them pictures, remember? You’ve talked about him enough—I reckon it’ll be good,
meetin’ the man behind the myth.”

They
got quiet for a little bit after that, the outside of her leg warm against the
outside of his. Danny pocketed the roach when they were done smoking, but he
wasn’t ready to go yet. He felt that fear come at him again.

“You
think they’re gonna find who did it?” he asked Casey. He didn’t have to explain
what he meant.

She
shrugged, looking sad. Casey always liked her daddy—Danny used to be a little
jealous of the two of them, the way she took to talking to him whenever she had
troubles.

“I
still don’t know why anybody’d want to go after a man like Dr. Durham,” she
said. “He was just about the nicest man I ever met.”

But
you know why, don’t you, boy?
Danny
imagined his daddy saying. Clear as you please, he pictured Wyatt Durham
sitting across from him in the treehouse. A wrinkle in his forehead, eyes
sadder’n a hound dog on his worst day.
You know there’s only one reason
anybody ever would’a wanted me dead,
his daddy said evenly.
And that’s
you.