The Evening Hour (3 page)

“Who the fuck is in my house?”

Cole ran into something with a sharp edge and yelled out. Reese's laughter broke through the shadows.

“It's me,” Cole said, massaging his thigh. “What's wrong with the light?”

“Turn on the one by the chair.”

Cole stumbled around until his hand touched a slender floor lamp. A dim yellow light fell over the room, and Cole blinked. It looked the way it usually did, Ruthie's antiquated furniture (pale rose sofa, old-fashioned table lamps) mixed in with what Reese and his friends left behind (overfilled ashtrays, crumpled cigarette packs, empty bottles of Jack Daniel's).

“This place is wrecked.”

“Had a few guests last night. Fuckin' slobs.”

Reese was sprawled on the sofa with a flimsy throw over his lap. His thick dark hair was matted and slept-on, and there were heavy rings under his eyes.

“What were you doing in the dark?”

“Trying to sleep. What in the hell do you think I was doing? Just settin' here thinking?”

“You want me to go?”

“I'm up now.” He rubbed his eyes. “I hope to Jesus you got a cigarette for me, blondie.”

Cole lit two, handed one to Reese. “Got any beer?”

“Should be some left.”

In the short time it took Cole to walk into the kitchen and back, Reese had already dozed off. His T-shirt hung off him, a couple of sizes too big. Too much speed, Cole thought. He removed the lit cigarette from Reese's hand. A jagged scar zipped across his cheek, a souvenir from jail, and his nose was permanently crooked after being broken so many times. Still, he was not ugly. High cheekbones like an Indian, pale blue eyes. He was thirty-six, but could pass for twenty-six.

The cat had nosed open a box of old pizza and ate quickly, tugging on the cold, rubbery cheese. A kitchen timer beeped, and Reese opened his eyes. “Time for Ruthie's medicine.”

“How is she?”

“Still dying.”

Ruthie Roberts, a childless widow, had taken in Reese after his parents and little brother were killed in a car crash. Rumor had it that eight-year-old Reese had crawled out of the burning hunk of metal without a scratch, and that Ruthie was the only one in Dove Creek who wanted him. But it wasn't anything that Reese talked about.

“What are you going to do with her?”

“Same thing I've been doing. I ain't sticking her in no hospital, and I'm sure as hell not putting her in that dump where you work.” Reese hitched up his jeans. “If any riffraff shows up, don't let their asses in.”

He sauntered across the room to the shared door that led to Ruthie's side. By now Cole was used to Reese's queeny walk, but the first time he saw it, he'd been shocked, his face hot with shame, or maybe fear. He'd never seen a man move like that before. Cole still didn't care for Reese's homo ways, but usually now, whenever he saw him swing his hips or flick a wrist, he looked the other way, his mouth no longer filling with disgust. Still, it was difficult to understand, a fairy living in Dove Creek. How he did not get himself killed.

He'd been hearing about Reese Campbell for a long time, but didn't meet him until a couple of years ago at a party. Cole knew it was him by the web of tattoos that wound over his arms and hands—it was well known that Reese had been locked up several times and that with each release, he'd come out with more ink and more meanness. Later in the night, while Cole was fishing a beer out of a tub of ice, Reese had come up behind him.

“Hey handsome.”

Cole had quickly turned, clutching the beer to his chest like a bouquet. Reese grinned. “You're a nervous Nelly.”

He told Cole he was looking to get high. At the time, Cole had been dabbling in pot, selling to a few high school students, a couple of old hippies. When Cole named his price, Reese said, “I'll give you half that.”

“For an ounce?” Cole had scoffed. “No way.”

Reese had stared at him, still grinning, but as he stepped toward Cole, the grin vanished. Cole had backed up and stumbled against the tub, melted ice sloshing all over his shoes.

“All right, all right,” he'd said, the stutter rising like a fever.

Then Reese had suddenly laughed, startling Cole.

“I was just fucking with you, son.”

Since that night, Cole had watched Reese pull the same act with others, tough country boys moving out of the way for his sashaying sissy hips. Sometimes it backfired, especially when he was high. He'd get too brave, too mouthy. Flirting or spilling secrets about which rednecks had followed him out to the bushes, wanting what their wives wouldn't give them. On more than one occasion, Cole had shown up to find Reese bloodied and busted up. Though Reese had friends all over Dove Creek—roughnecks who hated queers but partied with him—they would never call Reese one of their own.

Now he tossed Cole a prescription bottle. “I got a couple of 'scripts filled. One for Ruthie, one for you.”

Cole read the label. “Hundred and sixty milligrams.”

“Terminal cancer. You're getting the cream of the crop, son.”

Cole handed over the envelope of cash. He had started dealing as a way to help pay his grandparents' medical bills, but now he felt like he could not stop. It was the same with the stealing. He'd palmed a couple of wedding rings, a little cash, from the old people for no reason at all, other than for a quick thrill. But now it was a part of him. Who he'd become, or who'd he'd always been.

“God bless the pillheads,” Reese said.

“Amen,” Cole echoed.

He paid Reese more than he did the old people, but this was fair since it was Reese who had actually pointed out what a gold mine Cole was working in. Reese used to deal coke, but now was too scared of getting sent back to the pen; he said he did not care about the money anymore, as long as could keep Ruthie medicated and himself well stoned. He taught Cole how much the pills went for on the street, told him who was looking to buy.

“You look like you haven't slept in days.”

“It's been a while.” Reese yawned. “You ought to think about changing your line of products. You'd make a hell of a lot more with meth.”

“I only sell what's doctor-prescribed and FDA-approved.”

“For fuck's sake,” Reese said, rolling his eyes.

Cole did not try to explain that he actually liked the old people, and that he did not want to be mixing up chemicals and dealing with paranoid tweakers. Explaining all of that was like explaining why he didn't use drugs in the first place. “You're about the only dealer I know who doesn't use,” Reese had pointed out before. “I find that strange, son.” Cole had tried just about everything, but he liked reading about the drugs more than he liked taking them. Learning about their components, side effects, dosages. His mind retained the information easily, the way it did with scripture.

They cracked open beers and clinked the cans together, though they did not say what they were toasting to. Reese turned on the stereo and Johnny Cash confessed that he had fallen into a burning ring of fire. They talked about people they knew, who'd been busted and who was getting divorced and who'd been laid off.

Reese asked after Charlotte.

“She's all right.”

“Better keep an eye on that one. I expect she's got a little taste for her own kind.”

Cole had heard it before. When Charlotte returned to Dove Creek, a swarm of rumors followed her, including that she'd been a stripper at a lesbian club up in Cleveland. Cole didn't pry. Charlotte said what she liked best about him was that he knew how to keep his trap shut. She told him that she had worked in a tattoo shop and played drums in a band, and he didn't ask questions.

“She ain't no bulldyke.”

Reese looked at him like he was slow in the head. “There's more than one kind.”

“She likes what I give her,” Cole said testily. It was like this every time. He didn't know what he was doing here, drinking beer with an ex-con faggot, who as sure as they were sitting here would one day fall into his own burning ring of fire.

“All right, simmer down.” Reese lit another cigarette. “What else is going on? Your granddaddy still living at home?”

“For now. The family is itching to put him in the nursing home. I don't think my grandma wants to, but she won't stand up to them.” He hesitated. “I wonder if I'm doing him wrong, if I should move in and take care of him all the time, like you do Ruthie.”

“That's a bad idea.”

“How come?”

“Ruthie ain't a mean old preacher. Anyway, you better be moving them out of there instead of you moving in.”

“What for?”

“Before that coal company blasts y'all out.”

“Hell, you'd think nobody ever mined coal before in West Virginia, the way everybody's carrying on.”

“Well, from what they say … You better go 'fore you catch cancer or something.”

“I think this'll do me in first,” Cole said, indicating the cigarette.

“Let me tell you something. I see the way Ruthie's doing, and I don't ever want to go like that. Remember that for me. If I don't go quick and easy, you shoot me dead. All right?”

“Please. I ain't going to jail for your ass,” Cole quipped. Reese waited a beat, then burst into his loud, horsy laugh. Cole grinned uneasily. He could never predict how Reese would react, that was the thing. Couldn't figure out which of them held the power. With everyone else Cole did business with, there was no confusion, no uncertainty: they wanted something from him, and he gave it to them. It wasn't a bad thing, what he did. People needed him, counted on him. He gave them what they asked for. He made this life for himself. It was his.

Chapter 3

Cole carried two coffees into the bedroom, one with milk and three spoonfuls of sugar, one black and unsweetened, and set the mugs on the plastic milk crate next to the bed. He pushed open the window, heard the trilling of field sparrows. Charlotte was sleeping, tangled up in the sheets. He leaned over her and lightly traced her tattoos, the eagle feather on her shoulder, moving down along her pale arm where a thin snake slithered, around to her stomach, where a lightning cloud twitched. Though she descended from the Scots-Irish like just about everyone else around here, Charlotte liked to think she was connected to the old Indian ways.

She blinked.

“Morning,” he said.

She brightened when she saw the coffee and held the mug in both hands like a little kid. “That's a nice thing to wake up to.”

“It's about all I can do. I don't have much else.”

“Cigarettes and coffee, that's all I need.”

Last night, she'd shown up around two a.m., doped up and wanting to get laid, still wearing her Walmart vest. Now she looked like she wasn't exactly sure how she'd ended up here.

“What time is it?”

“Almost eleven.”

“Let's spend the day in bed.”

“Can't. I'm going to my grandma's for dinner.”

“Saturday dinner?”

“Nobody could go tomorrow. Anyway, it's nothing big. It's just that my cousin's gonna be there. You want to come?”

Charlotte just looked at him. “Please. I've heard enough about Preacher Clyde Freeman to know a girl like me isn't welcome.”

“Oh, he don't say much now. He's too far gone for that.”

But she said that she was going to call in to work instead, to see if she could pick up any extra hours. “I been fighting them tooth and nail to get twenty hours a week. Terry Rose is talking to them for me.”

“He's got that much pull?”

She looked at Cole like she'd just remembered something.

“What?”

“Last night Terry was asking where he could score. I told him you could hook him up.”

“What did you tell him that for?”

“Why not? That's what you do.”

“You don't need to be telling everybody.”

“It's just Terry Rose.”

“I ain't selling to him.”

“Why not?”

“I just ain't.”

“I'd like to know what happened between you two.”

“Nothing happened. I just don't trust him, that's all. I'm not selling him anything.”

“Okay, whatever.”

“Is that who you got high with last night?”

“Jealous?” She stared at him, smoke rising around her face, the sheets bunched up around her legs. Her bare breasts were small and pink.

“I just don't want to see you get hooked,” he said, walking off to the shower.

He stood for a few seconds under the icy spray and then adjusted the knobs until the water steamed. He did not like the idea of Charlotte getting high with Terry Rose. He'd thought that Terry was living the straight life, with wife and kid. But what did he know? He still couldn't even believe that Terry was back. One time, when they were sixteen or seventeen, they'd gone to a party in the woods, and Charlotte was there, hanging on to Terry, laughing loudly at his jokes. Cole was quiet, watching; Terry would tell a girl anything she wanted to hear. The next morning, he called to say that Charlotte Carson was a sweet piece of ass. He said maybe Cole could get with her next, he'd set them up. Or maybe they could take her together. But like most things with Terry, it was all talk. Back then, Charlotte had never even looked Cole's way.

After he slipped on jeans and a T-shirt, Cole made the bed with the sheets pulled tight, hospital corners, the way he did at the old folks' home. He straightened his room and tossed yesterday's clothes into the laundry basket. Then he walked through the trailer, drying his head with a towel. None of his relationships ever lasted more than a few weeks, and he'd never expected this one to.

“Charlotte, where you at?”

He found her around back.

She took a long drag on her cigarette. Cole sat next to her in the grass. They stared at the trees, the folds of hills. It was impossible to see out across the land. Nothing was flat. You could only look up. Patches of sky.

“I don't know why you stay here. It's just one big wasteland.”

“It don't look like a wasteland to me.”

“But you know it is.” She sighed. “I don't know why I came back. I've got to get out of here.”

“That's what you keep saying.”

“Back to Cleveland. Or maybe New York City. One of my friends in Ohio moved to Brooklyn. She said I could stay with her.”

He tried to imagine her outside of these mountains and valleys, outside of this state. All he knew of big cities was what he saw on TV: sparkling skyscrapers where queers and rich people lived, or housing projects overrun by foreigners and gangs. This was all he knew, all he'd really ever known. There was a time, after high school, that he'd tried to leave. He'd lived in the state capital for a few months and hated everything about it, the strangers, the noise, the buildings pressing in from all sides. He felt cut off from the land and from himself. He came back here, feeling like he'd failed, and the old man had met him at the door. “You come back to get saved?” he asked. But Cole just wanted his mother's land. His grandfather practically spat at him: “I ain't stopping you.” When he was a little kid, Cole used to dream of running away with his mother, and then later, he and Terry made plans to bust out of here, until one spring day all of that burned up in Cole's hands.

He stretched out on the ground, and Charlotte lay down next to him.

“You could come with me.”

“What?”

“You've got money. Then I wouldn't have to wait. We could go now. We could get us a nice little apartment.”

“I like it here.”

“It's a wasteland.”

“Yeah, you said that.”

“There's another world out there.”

Cole closed his eyes. The sun was so bright that he could see the orange flesh of his eyelids. He smelled the grass and dirt. He felt her stand up, the shadow of her falling over him like a cape, then she was walking away and he did not call her back. He could stay here all afternoon, just him and the land. She slammed the car door, and then he heard the rattle of the engine. She was gone. He still didn't open his eyes. He used to hunt, fish. When he was a kid he and his grandfather would hike up the mountain, digging ginseng roots, picking mushrooms. His grandfather used to go up there to get closer to God. Fasting, praying. When he'd come back down, his face would be shining with love. The times that he took Cole with him, he was unusually soft-spoken and kind. They sat next to each other in the rising light of the sun, and his grandfather told him that God was all things good. Cole hadn't been up there in a long time. The mining site now sprawled across some of those places where he used to hike and hunt. The sludge dam too. But he couldn't see any of that from here. There was one time that he had started to go up to get a closer look, but the forest floor was so cracked and eroded that he stopped halfway, didn't want to see anymore.

He pulled the bed out about a foot from the wall so he could reach the safe that was bolted to the floor. He ran the combination and popped it open. Warren's fifties, the ticking wristwatch, and a few stray Percocet. A bottle of OxyContin. More pills divided into plastic baggies. Pictures, a strand of pearls, an emerald ring, stacks of greenbacks. Although he deposited his measly work check into a bank account, whatever else he earned he squirreled away like the old folks who'd lived through the Depression and hid their money all over until they eventually forgot about it, people like Warren Fletcher, who didn't trust banks and thought that old socks would keep their money safe. Cole counted out six hundred bucks and slipped the bills into an envelope.

Then he walked up to his grandparents', his boots clacking along the cracked dirt road. From the high weeds, a rabbit peered at him, its eyes so placid and deep, they looked to be without color. The animal twitched, scampered away. Cole stopped at the footbridge to finish his cigarette and gazed at his grandparents' clapboard house. It used to be bright yellow, but now it was dull and dreary, the color of dried cornhusk. The paint was peeling away, and the front porch sagged on one side. But the tall sugar maples and pignuts were blooming, little buds like eyes, and the daffodils leaned toward the sun. Maybe he should turn around. He'd thought that only his cousin Kay and aunt Naomi were coming over, but Rebecca and Larry's truck was here too. He glanced at the shallow creek, the strange silvery sheen. There were no fish in it anymore. He wondered if anyone had seen him. Could he just walk away?

But his grandmother was counting on him, and it had been a while since he'd seen anyone else in the family.

She was in the kitchen, laying out slices of Colby cheese on a plate. A basket of sandwich buns. Country ham. A large bowl of yellow potato salad. “I thought you weren't going to turn this into a big deal,” Cole said.

“It's not much. Just sandwiches.”

“Where is everyone?”

“In there with Clyde, I think.”

“Larry and Rebecca are here too?”

“Just Rebecca.” She added, “Esther was supposed to come, but she's sick with a cough-cold.”

Cole glanced behind him. “Here.” He withdrew the envelope from his back pocket.

“You sure?” she asked, then took it and hid it away somewhere inside her dress just as his aunts walked in.

“Would you look at that hair,” said Naomi.

“I've never seen a Freeman with hair like that,” added Rebecca, the oldest of the sisters. She was only in her fifties, but sometimes looked as old as his grandmother, her flat pancake face etched with worry lines.

Naomi patted her own disheveled mane. “I kind of would like to try going blond myself.”

“You'd have more fun,” Cole said.

She laughed, gave him a hug. Naomi had always been his favorite aunt. The one closest to his mother, she had tried to look out for him when he was a kid, whereas Rebecca was overly stern and Aunt Esther was too busy taking care of her brood to pay attention to Cole. The aunts didn't hold strictly to the old ways, like their father did, and occasionally Cole would sneak over to Naomi's to watch reruns of
The A-Team
or
MacGyver.

Each of his aunts had between three and nine kids, giving Cole a heap of cousins, and now several of them had babies of their own. He was the odd one, without parents, siblings, or offspring.

Four daughters, no sons. Cole's grandfather had named the first three after women in the Bible, but his grandmother had picked out the name for Cole's mother. It was one of the few times she stood up to her husband. And maybe feeling defeated that he'd been given yet another girl, he relented, allowed his youngest to be called a secular name.
Ruby.
The color of blood. A jewel hidden deep in the earth in foreign parts of the world. Cole's grandmother had taken the name from a country song that she heard on the radio, listening when her husband wasn't home.

“I reckon it's time to eat,” she said. “Go get your granddad, Cole.”

His grandfather was in the recliner. Next to him on the floor sat Kay, reading a book. She wore her hair in a ponytail, and her face, dotted with freckles, looked serious and still. She was Naomi's youngest, and the only one of his cousins that he truly felt close to. In the fall she would be the first in the family to go to college.

“Hey girl.”

“Long time no see.” She grinned. “You go out drinking last night? You look like you tied one on.”

“For your information, I stayed in. Reading.” He winked. “Help me with Granddaddy?”

She looked at him skeptically. “What do we have to do?”

“Get him up.” Cole leaned over his grandfather. “It's time to eat, Granddaddy. Grandma wants you in the kitchen.” The old man stared. “Come on, now.” Cole held him by the arm and motioned for Kay to get the other one, and they helped him stand. Once he was up, he shook his arms free and walked, baby steps, into the kitchen.

Cole felt relieved that none of his uncles or other cousins had shown up. When he was younger, they had big Sunday dinners and crowds of kids were always around, and even then, he felt like an outsider. Though his cousins lived on the same land that he did, he was, in a way, his grandfather's child, the weird kid who didn't play sports, who rattled off Bible verses.

They crowded around the Formica table, and Cole sat between Kay and his grandfather.

“Cole, you say the prayer,” his grandmother instructed.

This was tradition; the man of the house said the blessing. But this was not Cole. He looked at his grandfather. His mouth hung open like a child waiting to be fed. Then his eyebrows knitted together, and he glared at Cole. His grandfather wouldn't speak, but he still held the scripture inside of him, as hard and brittle as bone.

“No, I'm not good at it. You say it.”

His grandmother sighed. “Now, Cole—”

“I'll do it,” Kay spoke up. “Granddaddy's just going to have to suffer and listen to a woman.”

Their grandmother didn't argue. They bowed their heads and Kay said a quick prayer, and then they passed the food and filled their plates. Cole wondered how many times he had sat here at this table, in this very spot. Night after night, the heavy King James opened before him and his granddaddy pacing behind him. Cole would turn the thin pages, and when he got to the right place, he'd lick his lips and try to recite without stuttering. His grandfather taught him early on what to fear. Once a soul fell into outer darkness, there was no hope. No light, no peace.

Sometimes he would call out a passage to be recited from memory. That came easy for Cole, and his granddaddy, occasionally pleased, called him a quick study. It was the speaking that gave him trouble. The lessons went on for at least an hour, and the later it got, the worse his stuttering. Finally, his grandmother would remind his grandfather that Cole had schoolwork, and so he would let him go, although Clyde Freeman didn't think much of book learning. Cole didn't either. Instead, he'd go to his room and hide under the covers and look at the postcards from his mother, the faraway and foreign places.