Thirty Miles South Of Dry County (3 page)

I wondered what difference goin’ with Dick and Sven might have made to whatever way things was gonna turn out.

And I wondered what I were gonna to do if they didn’t come back.

The answer was obvious, a fool notion, but one I knew deep in my bones I were gonna have to see through if the dawn came and there were still no sign of my friends. My only friends.

I’d have to go after them.

The idea terrified me more than the thought of dyin’, assuming they wasn’t one and the same.

* * *

You’re probably too young to know what I mean, but when you get to be my age, you get yourself a series of rituals. You stop takin’ every day for granted. Any breath might be your last, so you set your day up in such a fashion that you can find your way from one end of it to the other without gettin’ lost. At best, if offers some stability when everythin’ else seems like it’s tugged free of its moorin’s.

When I woke the next mornin’, I got up, knees achin’ from the unexpected strain of the day before, took a quick bath (though I’d already taken one the night before to rid myself of the vine-and-liquor stench), then went to the phone.

I dialed Sven’s number, listened to the harsh siren of the disconnected signal, hung up and dialed again. Told myself it were no surprise he weren’t answerin’, as I only had the store number, and last time I’d seen that phone it had been off the hook with the listenin’ end of the receiver pokin’ out from beneath a spool of vines.

So I tried Dick’s number. This time, there were a tone, and when it rung out, I had no excuse. Dick were always home this time of day. Always. But, I told myself, it were possible he got home late and stayed at Sven’s house. It would have been a first, but it were better than the other thoughts that kept spinnin’ ‘round my skull.

I stood there for a time, phone in hand and beepin’ in my ear like the electrical pulse I could feel playin’ with my nerves, before I replaced the receiver and went outside to get the mornin’ paper. As always, our paperboy Ghosty Hopkins—so called because he were white as a sheet and seldom seen—had left it tucked under a rock just inside my rickety garden fence, and I felt a peculiar sense of relief. Despite all that had happened, I think if I’d come out and the paper had been somewhere other than its normal place, or worse, not there at all, I might have dropped to my knees and wept. But Ghosty’s universe had not been knocked off kilter, and so mine, for now, could continue as normal. At least until I were forced to get in my car and drive right off the edge of it.

I bent over, wincin’ at the ache in my back, snatched up the paper in its little cheap plastic sleeve, and carried it back to the house. My thin gravel driveway made a sound like bones crunchin’ under my feet. Beside the house, my old faithful Volvo sat quietly, in no hurry at all to ferry me to a town famed for its high volume of fatal car accidents.

Then I were inside, and away from a sun that had offered little heat despite the season. I brewed some coffee, hands tremblin’ so bad the spoon made a sound like an alarm as I tried to add sugar, then carefully carried the cup to the table.

The headline on the front page of the newspaper would make a city boy like you laugh till you’re hoarse. You got gangs and drug wars, industrial explosions and murders by the second. Here we get the occasional drunk-driver or maybe a Friday night fistfight at Logan’s Lounge. That mornin’ the main news were about a missin’ Black Labrador named Moses. The owner, church pianist and general busybody June Wheeler, were offerin’ a hundred bucks for its return. The paper said she were “very distraught.” I figured, just like her husband done some years before, the dog had probably just gotten tired of listenin’ to June and took off.

I read on, casually turnin’ pages, well aware I were doin’ it just to delay what I knew had to be done, and stretchin’ time in the hope that the phone would ring and Dick’d be on the other end of it tellin’ me I wouldn’t believe the night they’d had
,
and that I were gonna regret not taggin’ along.

But the phone didn’t ring, and nobody came to the door, and my kitchen were quiet ‘cept for the slow tockin’ of the clock and the whispery sound of a scared old man turnin’ pages.

* * *

There was vines on the car. Almost not enough to notice, but after eighteen years of lookin’ at that Volvo each and every day, even if I were all but done drivin’ the thing, I felt more than saw when somethin’ weren’t right, just like Sven had when he’d walked into his dark old store.

They was on the tires, all around three of the four rims like garlands, and splayed across the hubs in a spidery way, like they was holdin’ on for dear life. That were almost enough to send me back inside, where I’d bolt the door, pull the shades and sit in front of a TV that hadn’t worked since the previous Christmas, just like I did every night when Milestone started its ugly moanin’. Sit there with my fingers stuck in my ears and my eyes shut, waitin’ for the world to decide it were tired of bein’ ugly and strange and frightenin’.

I hadn’t driven to Sven’s, so the Volvo hadn’t been anywhere near the kudzu. Which meant that there weren’t no way the vines could have attached themselves to the tires like that. I took this as a message, Milestone or Kirkland’s way of lettin’ me know this was how things were gonna be now that two of the three of us had started somethin’. A way of tellin’ me this were all real, and gonna happen whether I wanted it to or not, just in case I were entertainin’ any fool notions to the contrary.

I stood there deliberatin’, quite happy to be delayed even further, before I cursed and stormed over to the car, double-checkin’ the handle, the doorframe, and the interior of the vehicle for vines before I eased myself inside. As I started the engine, I had visions of strands of that accursed vine shootin’ out from under the seat and burrowin’ into my mouth and down my throat, chokin’ me where I sat. The image were strong enough to fill my nose with a leafy smell and I quickly rolled down the window and spat.

The engine finally coughed to life and I reversed out of my yard, my heart leapin’ in my chest hard enough to hurt and make my hands vibrate with every painful beat. I weren’t feelin’ brave. I ain’t no hero. Never have been. Ain’t never been in a fight or broken a bone, or saved anyone in a way that should’ve made the papers. I’ve had a quiet life, steerin’ clear of trouble and the people who seem bound to cause it. I’ve been careful, is what I’m sayin’, and though I wouldn’t call myself a coward, I ain’t big on reckless courage neither, specially not if the only reward might be a bad death. So my mouth were dry as desert sand and my palms so wet they kept slippin’ off the wheel as I started out on the road to Milestone.

* * *

It started to rain, and for the first time in thirty years I wished my car radio worked, if only to break the silence. But it didn’t, and there were a busted cassette—Dean Martin, I think—stuck in the deck with brown ribbons of the tape spillin’ out like guts, so that were no good either. Fiddlin’ with the knob got me nothin’ but static, so I quit and drummed my fingers on the steerin’ wheel instead. The rain were light, but enough to draw steam from the hot road. Made it look like ghosts was rising up and wavin’ their arms at me to stop. Despite feelin’ like they had the right idea, I just kept on goin’. Decided the guilt would be worse in whatever time I had left if I just turned my back on my friends, the only people who’d kept me from goin’ stir crazy in this no-place we chose to call our home.

Milestone were about fifteen miles from my house. Not a big stretch by any means, and it felt even shorter that day. Every now and again I’d hit a bump or a pothole and would swear a half mile of road rushed under the car as that goddamned town reeled me in like a fish on a line.

And then, in what seemed only a matter of minutes of tryin’ to keep myself from turnin’ right around and drivin’ like hell back the way I’d come, I reached the town border and brought the car to a stop.

My guts was like water sloshin’ around inside me.

At the side of the road were a sign that had once read MILESTONE in nice respectable script, white on blue. In the years since, someone had spray painted it to read:

There Are

No Miracles in

MILESTONE

I stared hard at that sign for a while. The orange spray painted letterin’ had dripped down over MILESTONE, makin’ it look infected. I wondered what had become of whoever had added those words, and what mad turnin’ of their world might have driven them to it in the first place. The paint had been almost completely worn away from the black pole holdin’ up the sign and there was deep grooves in the metal, as if someone had hitched a chain to it and tried to yank it loose. Considerin’ the way it leaned toward the road, I figured that might not have been too far from the truth. Maybe someone were tryin’ to keep people from findin’ the place, though anyone determined enough to get there probably would.

Trash of every kind had gathered at the opposite side of the road—plastic bags, tin cans, newspapers, bottles—and were pinned against an enormous granite boulder tattooed with words scratched into the surface, most of it names and dates. I didn’t spend much time readin’ the hundreds of scratches in that boulder, but as I started the engine back up and let the car roll forward, I saw enough. Looked like a roadside memorial, the kind you see in a place in the road where tragedy ain’t rare.

* * *

The road got worse after the sign, and I bounced around inside my Volvo as if some big creature had my car in its claw and were tryin’ to shake me loose of it. In some places the roads was no better than mountain roads, the kind where the government don’t send crews to fix ‘em because they figure no one’s dumb enough to use ‘em in the first place. I weren’t confident my old vehicle were gonna make it. The fenders kept sparkin’ and screechin’ as the car dipped and bucked and the springs seemed about to give out at any moment. Didn’t surprise me none when I come across old abandoned autos at the sides of the road, their tires flat or missin’, the metal bent and twisted, the glass gone, doors hangin’ open, paint faded, hoods bent or rose up, grass and weeds twistin’ up into their insides as the land claimed ‘em. Looked like a junkyard.

Or a graveyard.

Eventually the windin’ roads led clear of the wrecks—after I’d counted about two dozen, includin’ two police cruisers—and Milestone itself swung into view, sprawled out under a gray cloud that seemed tethered to the borders by strings of fog. I stopped, not because I felt like inspectin’ it better before I headed down the small hill and onto what I took to be Main Street, but because there were one last wreck parked at an angle so that its front end were out on the road, its back end sunk down into the ditch. It weren’t obstructin’ the road enough that I couldn’t squeeze past it, but that weren’t the issue.

I switched off the engine and stepped out into the rain, which felt more like a fine mist now, and made my way over to Sven’s Volkswagen.

Like the other abandoned vehicles I’d seen, the doors of the Volkswagen was open, which I took to mean the people inside had been alive after the accident, and they’d gotten out. Or someone had opened the doors and
helped
them out, though it were hard to think of their rescuers bein’ anythin’ but hostile considerin’ what I knew of this town and Sven’s reasons for comin’ here. More likely they’d been forced off the road and taken. I tried not to picture that—it seemed a little melodramatic—but the image came anyway. I saw Sven, still fumin’, come out swingin’, teeth grit, ready to beat shit out of anyone even remotely connected to what had been done to his store. And I saw Dick, emergin’ more slowly, a picture of concern, hands and voice raised, hopin’ to calm the violence from a situation that had already embraced it. I saw them overcome, defeated, Sven hauled away, probably unconscious, and Dick bein’ persuaded to tag along or face the consequences.

But then what?

I shook my head and went to inspect the vehicle. The hood were cold, which weren’t unexpected. Even if the accident, or ambush, or whatever it were that forced Sven to skid off the road had been a recent event, the rain would have cooled the vehicle down a piece, makin’ it hard to tell how long the Volkswagen had been sittin’ there. The metal were crumpled up like an accordion, the grille and fender stove in as if the car had hit a tree, or a pole, but there were nothing but empty fields around me, the other wrecks gleaming dully in the distance like train cars tumbled off a rail. The windshield had starred from the impact but had stayed intact. All the tires was flat as pancakes. The inside looked chaotic, but this weren’t nothin’ out of the ordinary. According to Sven, he liked tidiness—a claim meant to explain his harassment of Janice Farrier when she didn’t keep the liquor store spick and span—but from the looks of his car, that were a bunch of horseshit. I’d never seen it look less than an explosion in a candy factory. Sven had a sweet tooth, you see, so there was always wrappers everywhere and old gum and such stuck to the floor. Add to that the fact that he smoked like a chimney and treated the back seat like a closet for old clothes he weren’t never gonna wear again, and you can understand why we was always reluctant to accept a ride with him.

If only Dick had remembered that when he’d hopped into the car the day before. Wherever he were at that moment, I figured he probably had gum on his shoes and a Milk Dud stuck to the seat of his pants.

I stepped back from the car, relieved that there weren’t blood all over the place. It allowed me to hope that my friends was still alive. But I still had a problem, and a pretty big one, somethin’ that had been naggin’ at me all the way there: