The Evening Hour (28 page)

He stood too close to Cole. Wound up with anger and paranoia. It seemed like minutes passed, but was probably only seconds. Something rustled behind them and they both turned quickly, but it was just the breeze.

“Jesus. Let's just chill,” Terry said. “Okay? Let's just take it easy.”

Cole nodded, afraid to speak.

“Good,” Terry said, like he was talking to himself. “Good, that's good. Let's just take it easy.”

The air was cold now, and Cole wished he'd brought a jacket. He glanced at Terry, a scarecrow. His flannel shirt unbuttoned and blowing in the breeze.

“I know what we need,” Terry said, and started over to his truck.

“Wait. What are you doing?”

Terry didn't answer. His footsteps were loud, things crunching under his boots. Cole stiffened. A drumming in his ears. He watched Terry open the passenger door and reach for something. Cole automatically put his hand on the revolver. But when Terry turned, he was holding what looked like a cigarette.

“Got this from a chick I know. This will help chill us out, bro. Like the old days.”

Cole just looked at him. His heart still racing, loud in his ears.

“Don't you want to smoke?” Terry took a plastic lighter out of his pocket. “It'll settle my nerves.”

“I don't know.”

“Jesus, it's just a fucking joint. You can trust me. Okay?” He smiled, but it was forced. “Buddy, I might not see you again.”

“What's that mean?”

“You're leaving, ain't you?”

Cole nodded.

“All right then.”

Terry lit the joint and took a long drag, then handed it to Cole. He felt Terry's eyes on him, but didn't look at him. More stars were visible now, their light drizzling through the tree tops. Cole inhaled. Just weed. It tasted earthy and sweet.

“You all right?” Terry asked.

“Yeah.”

Terry took a long toke. He told Cole he hadn't meant to freak him out.

“I'm fine,” Cole said.

Terry talked in spurts as he exhaled. “Man, everything's so fucked up. I wish I'd never started selling.” The anger was gone from his voice. “I just need to sell this last package. Then I'm gonna get cleaned up. Gonna change.”

Cole didn't reply. Everyone said that, but nobody ever did it. He took the joint again and listened to Terry talk about his fucked-up life. Cole felt hyper-aware of everything around him. The patch of dirt under his feet. The smell of the trees. The cold air on his neck. He didn't know if he was still scared or stoned, or both. Terry talked and talked, and then finally seemed to run out of things to say.

They sat on the tailgate, passed the joint back and forth. The fear didn't disappear completely. It was still inside of Cole, a ball of ice. But at the same time he felt more comfortable. They could have met anywhere, but Terry
wanted
to come back here. Where they spent so much of their time. They could have been seventeen again. Almost. It was quiet between them now, and he remembered that sometimes Terry could be quiet. He would get sad about his dead father, and Cole would think about his absent mother, and they would smoke and not say much because they knew what the other was thinking.

“Man, I miss this. Just chilling out,” Terry said. “I just feel like I'm always running. You know?”

The joint burned down to nothing. Cole had not been stoned in a long time; he wondered if he was now. He heard crickets, the trill of a katydid. “Yeah, I know.”

Terry stretched out on his back. Like he finally felt at ease. “Man, I feel old. It seems like forever ago that we was kids. Sneaking around, hiding from your granddaddy. He scared the shit out of me.”

Cole looked up at a sliver of sky. “Sometimes I miss being scared by him.”

“Hell, I think you still are.”

The day he left his granddaddy's church, it was an unusually hot spring afternoon, the building sweltering, and church members, about half being the Freeman family, fanning themselves, shouting, Lord, oh yes, thank you Lord. His grandfather had stood at the front, mopping his brow with a handkerchief.

“You think this is hot, it's nothing like the sinner will feel, what Satan's got in store,” he said. “God abominates sin. If you've sinned, you've got to ask for forgiveness.” He'd paused dramatically. “Come Judgment Day, you don't want to be left alone. Do you want to go with Satan, to suffer and burn, or do you want to be with the Lord? That's where I'll be. I'll see you there, in the sweet by-and-by.”

Sweat had dripped down Cole's back and under his arms and he'd stared at the picture of the Last Supper, at the squares of light that shone around the church, trying to find quiet in the noise. There was a long pause. He had looked up. His grandfather set his eyes on him.

“We got a boy with demons. He's got to be saved.”

Suddenly an owl hooted, and Cole jumped.

“Relax, bro. You ain't scared, are you?”

Terry was still stretched out on his back, his arms behind his head and a cigarette between his lips. He hadn't come here to kill Cole, to hurt him. He looked content. Relaxed. Like there was nowhere else to be. Cole looked at him and felt his heart pounding and then he stretched out next to him, the way they used to lay next to each other. Looking up at the sky, talking or not. Nothing to fear. Nowhere else to be. The orange tips of their cigarettes glowed. It was cold. Terry swallowed loudly, but said nothing. They were both so still, so quiet. They used to go camping up on the mountain. How far away the rest of the world had seemed. Back in those days, he would have gone anywhere with Terry Rose. He remembered how it used to be. He remembered what he'd never told anyone, what he'd never forget. Were they fifteen or sixteen? It happened only three or four times. They went camping up on the mountain. They had sleeping bags, they had the woods and the sky and the night animals. It was cold. It was cold and they slept close together. They slept close together and they put their hands on each other and the rest of the world disappeared and it was them and the stars and the ground and the trees and the night animals. It was cold and they held each other close, they pressed their mouths and hands and bodies together. He remembered all of it, the hardness of Terry's lips, the quickness of his hands, the heat of his chest and thighs. How good everything felt. There was no fear, not then. Long ago they'd mixed their blood. They'd held each other.

It was a long time ago. But now they lay side by side. Both tired of running, both tired of feeling stuck. How much did Terry remember? Cole looked at him and the truth was, he saw no trace of the boy he used to be. But Cole moved closer anyway. The fear rose thick on his tongue. There was nothing else to say. It was cold. He was shaking. He closed his eyes and moved over until his head was resting on Terry's chest. Terry said nothing. Did not push Cole away. They held their breaths. Terry's chest was flat and hard, protecting his heart. Cole could hear it, pumping, beating. Then he felt Terry's hand on his shoulder. The touch so light, as if Terry was disappearing into air.

“It's funny how you stop dreaming of things,” Terry said. “Remember how I used to want to be a race car driver? And all the plans we made to get the hell out of here.”

“That's just how things are,” Cole said. “Like you said before, we were kids. But now we're not.”

“Yup, now we're old. Old and used up.” Terry tried to laugh, but his voice was small and thin. It sounded scared, the way he never used to be.

Cole closed his eyes and lay as still as he could with his head on Terry's chest. Terry's hand, light as a cat's paw, stayed on his shoulder. Both of them quiet. Tense and relaxed, safe and scared.

That day his granddaddy had singled him out, the others in the church had shouted and prayed, and Cole had looked desperately around for his grandmother. He could not find her. Nowhere to hide, no one to turn to. His grandfather was coming toward him, God in his eyes. There was no light, no light at all. His grandfather had put his old knotty hands on Cole's face and said in a voice that only Cole could hear, “Your mother give birth to you, but only God will save you. You can be born again.” What was bearing down on Cole was too heavy and he'd suddenly pushed the hands away, then forced his way through the crowd. His grandfather came after him.

“Don't you step out of this church, boy.”

He grabbed Cole by the neck of his shirt and told him to repent. “You walk out of this church, you ain't never coming back.” Cole twisted out of his grandfather's hands. He almost fell, then steadied himself with one hand against the wall. He and his granddaddy stared at each other. Cole's heart was thumping wildly. He took a step toward the door, and this time the old man didn't stop him. Cole couldn't see anything. Couldn't see his grandmother, or anyone he knew. Just saw shadows, and ahead of him, the bright light of the sun. But once he was outside of the church, he suddenly understood what he'd done, and he started running down the dirt road, through the forest to the swimming hole where Terry Rose would be waiting.

Now he sat up. He was still shaking: his hands, his legs, his whole body. “I gotta go,” he said, and scrambled over the side of the truck.

“Wait, Cole.” Terry jumped down. “Will you show up with the money?”

“Man—”

“I won't ask you for anything else. Come to the Eagle at midnight. Come with the money, and I'll get us what we need. I'll be able to sell it fast, don't worry about that. And when you leave this shit-hole, you'll be a richer man.”

Cole said nothing. Terry said, “Please.”

For the second time tonight, Terry put his hand on Cole's shoulder, and then moved it over until he was cupping the back of Cole's neck. A touch of affection, a touch of trust. Terry leaned in close. Cole looked him in the eyes. It was like it used to be. He did not feel afraid.

“Terry Rose, don't fuck me over,” he said.

A few minutes later, after Cole agreed to show up, Terry was driving away, music blaring, tearing up little trees as he went.

Cole stood alone in the woods. Swore at himself. Then he walked back to the creek, stepping around little gullies, piles of rock. He stood in the dark. It used to look clear, sunlit. On that day, he'd come running down the path, breathless, and Terry was there, sitting on the bank, drinking a beer.

“You get saved?” he joked.

Then he saw Cole's tears and asked him what was wrong.

“We got to go now,” Cole said. “We can't wait, we got to go.”

Terry had put his arm around him, led him over to a mossy patch under a weeping willow. Cole, gulping breath, explained that he'd walked out of the church. He'd run away from his grandfather. Terry said everything was going to be all right and Cole believed him, thinking this was it, they would go. They were a month away from graduation and now they were going to leave; everything they'd been talking about was here in this moment: they were going to go to the ocean, get the hell out of Dove Creek. But then Terry, his arm still around Cole, said there was something he'd been wanting to tell him. He sat there with his arm around Cole and said that Kathy was pregnant.

“We're gonna get married.” He smiled at Cole. “You see what I mean? I can't go anywhere. Things are different now.”

Cole felt as if little needles were pressing into the back of his neck. The air smelled of chemicals, no sounds of birds or night insects. How much money could he make. What did he stand to lose. He stared intently, as if the swimming hole could give him the answer. The gun felt slippery in his hard. He held it away from him and then let it go. It sank into the black toxic water. He hesitated, then did the same thing with the last of the Oxy. He wanted nothing on him. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and stood there and watched the sinking. The sludge would rise up and eat them all. He recalled the words of Moses: “I
am
not eloquent … but I
am
slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.” And then the Lord promised him that Aaron his brother would be there for him: “I know that he can speak well.” He promised Moses, “I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth.” God was with both of them, brothers. But Cole and Terry were not really brothers. He remembered what Charlotte had told him; he'd not forgotten, even with his head rested on Terry's chest, listening to his beating heart, Cole knew the truth: Terry Rose would not go down, and he especially would not go down alone.

When he got back to the house, his grandmother and mother were watching
Law and Order
, eating popcorn. He sat between them on the sofa and watched two cops run down a busy street in New York. He asked what had happened, and his grandmother told him that a store owner had been shot and they thought the killing was linked to the mob.

“I don't know who would want to live there,” she said.

On commercial break he told them he would leave early in the morning. His grandmother looked frightened, but did not try to talk him out of it. The show came back on and they did not talk about him going, but it was there, weighing on them, in their movements, their quietness. Then his grandmother said she could not keep her eyes open any longer. She told Cole to make sure he woke her in the morning.

Cole packed very little. A pair of boots, jeans, T-shirts, underwear. An old sleeping bag, a couple of blankets, a jacket. Pictures of his family, pictures of Charlotte and Lacy and Sara Jean and Terry Rose. His granddaddy's King James. It was all he really owned. When he was finished, he slid the money out from under the mattress and divided it into three piles. He took the smallest pile for himself, then put the other two into separate manila envelopes and he wrote names on them with a marker. He did not feel satisfied. It felt like something was missing, a nagging feeling. So he added more money to the pile in his hands. He thought about Terry Rose, talking so fast and desperately, his hand on the back of Cole's neck, Terry leaning in close.