Proverbs 11:19. “
As righteousness leads to life, so he that pursues evil pursues it to his own death.”
When a good man dies he not only goes to heaven, drawn thither by the natural forces of spiritual gravity, by the approval of God and angels, but when a good man dies he goes to heaven by the common consent of every intelligent creature in the world. When a bad man dies he not only goes to hell, drawn thither by the natural forces of spiritual gravity, not only by the approval of God and His angels, but when a bad man dies he goes to hell by the common consent of every man in the world.
âReverend Sam P. Jones,
visiting preacher, Church of Christ Returning, 1885
Albert stepped into mavericks first
, with Bobby on his heels. Since that day by the bridge, Albert managed to run into Bobby six or seven times as the kid walked home from school. He was always alone, except for one instance, when Bobby had been with a group of jocks who clearly only tolerated the skinny, sunken-chest boy. On that occasion Albert passed on by with only a toot of the truck horn. The other times they'd gone for a drive, talking about Bobby's family, mostly. He said his little sister was a prissy pain in the ass. According to Bobby, neither of his parents gave a shit what he did as long as he didn't get into trouble. There was trouble in the Evanses' marriage, apparently, but Bobby wouldn't elaborate. Albert didn't push. There was no rush. And today was a big day. Today he'd get the kid his first beer in a real bar.
Maverick's was a long roomâthe ancient, battered wooden bar on one side, with a mirror behind it, and a few tables on the other. In the murky light beyond that lurked a row of booths, tall backed, favoured spot of those wanting to do a little quiet business in private. A cigarette-burned pool table and a few stools were tucked into an alcove off the bar. Stevie Ray Vaughn's guitar moaned from the speakers mounted on the walls. A small television sat on a shelf behind the bar, turned to a boxing match. The floor was blotchy with various stains, some darker than others and if you looked in the corners you would find piles of dust, ash, hair and mouse turds dating back to the late eighteen hundreds when the place first opened. A window stood on either side of the padded vinyl door, and the bent venetian blinds permitted only slats of mote-strewn light. The room was empty at four o'clock in the afternoon, before the shift workers from the paint factory and the county crews came in for their wind-down Rolling Rock just after five. Finn the bartender was the only guy in the place, filling plastic bowls with peanuts and pretzels. The air reeked of old beer and last night's cigarettes. Finn was a man with a permanent frown and deep pouches under his pale eyes, characteristics gained from too many late nights and too many disappointments concerning the nature of man. When he saw Albert come through the door he nodded, as though expecting him, and then he saw Bobby.
“He can't come in here, Erskine,” he said.
“You want what you want, or not?” Albert slid a paper bag across the bar, which Finn quickly grabbed and tucked into some crevice below the bar. Albert took the bills Finn handed him, counting them before he put them in the pocket of his decrepit leather jacket. “Where are your manners, Finn? Don't you even say thank you?”
“I'm eternally grateful, but like I said,” the bartender pointed at Bobby, who still stood by the door, “he can't come in here.”
“Don't be like that, now, Finn. He's eighteen,” said Albert, while Bobby rocked back and forth on his heels, his hands deep in the pockets of his army surplus jacket.
Finn snorted. “Even if that were true, it doesn't mean shit, now does it, since the legal age is twenty-one?”
“Kid can have a fucking soda, can't he?” said Albert.
“Sure he can. Take him over to Gus's Corner,” Finn said, naming the diner a few doors down the street.
“I can't get a beer in Gus's. Come on, man, don't be a hard ass. It's not like he's the first underage guy ever been in here, now is it?”
“This isn't the fucking Olive Garden. Who is he? He's not one of your cousins.” Finn looked Bobby over. “Aren't youâ”
“You're worried about too many Erskines in one place? Is that it?”
“I don't care, man, let's go,” said Bobby.
“Don't make a fucking federal case, Erskine.”
“Me? That's rich. I just come in with the kid to get a fucking beer.”
“Sit at the back. You see a uniform walk through that door you get the fuck out like your ass was on fire. Clear?”
Albert clapped Bobby on the back. “You're a real prince, Finn, a real prince. Bring us a Bud and a cola. And bring some peanuts and a pack of chips.”
Albert and Bobby sat in a split-leather booth at the back, near the bathroom fumes of piss, the under-note of vomit and whiff of rotting garbage from the alley. Bobby faced Albert, where he couldn't be seen from the door. Finn put the beer bottle, with a glass upturned on top of it, and another glass of cola on the bar, next to a bowl of nuts and a plastic package of chips.
“Come and get it,” he said, and turned back to the two men knocking the crap out of each other on the television.
Albert stared at his back for a minute, willing him to turn around. “Fucktard,” he said under his breath, and then fished in his pocket for a couple of bills. “Go get it, Bobby.”
When he'd fetched their food and drink, Albert pushed aside the cola and poured half his beer into the glass. “Here,” he said.
“You sure it's okay?” said Bobby, looking around the corner of the booth in Finn's direction.
“Drink the goddam beer,” said Albert.
“Why are you pissed off at me?”
“I'm not pissed off at you. Fucking Finn. He expects me to show up here every week with his weed, special delivery, like I'm a fucking UPS guy, and I do, man, I do. I am reliable, a dependable businessman. And then I get attitude. What the fuck's that about?”
“Maybe he's just having a day.”
“Maybe we're all just having a day.” Albert scowled into his beer.
The fact was, it was bad at the compound. The Others, what with their new enterprise, were getting more customers than the bootleg used to bring in. What did they do, have a newsletter or something? How did people know? All these wild-eyed, scraggle-toothed, skin-rotting tweakers willing to do pretty much anything for a fix. The Uncles were picking out some of the prettier girls, getting them to trade sex for meth. One of the side effects of meth was an increased sex drive, along with the paranoia and compulsive behaviourâthe hour after hour of going through the complicated rituals of cooking the drug, driving across the state looking for pharmacies where they could get cold medicine without being noticed. Yeah, they were all having a day.
“So, you like, sell dope?” Bobby kept his voice very low, leaning forward.
Albert leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, staring at Bobby until Bobby dropped his eyes and sat back as well.
“Maybe,” said Albert.
“Maybe I want to buy some,” Bobby said.
Albert laughed so loud Finn turned and looked at him. “Jesus, kid, you are something else, you know that? What do you want to buy? Crank? Hillbilly heroin? Tootsies? Casper? How much? You got the cash, little brother?”
“I don't know. A couple of joints maybe.”
“Hell, I'll
give
you a couple of joints. Between friends, right?”
“Yeah?”
Albert leaned forward and grabbed Bobby's upper arm.
“Hey,” Bobby said, trying to pull away.
“Listen, I ever catch you doing crank or oxy or any of that other shit, I'll break you in half, you got that?” Albert's face was close to Bobby's and he could smell the cigarettes on the teenager's breath. “I sell a little grass, home grown, and that's all I sell. Fucking slammers and bulb babies are a blight. Zombies, man, that's all they are.”
“I don't do that stuff.”
The boy's eyes darted sideways and downwards, and Albert could see the confusion. There was a little bead of sweat on his upper lip, on that soft little fuzz the kid probably shaved hoping it would grow in thicker. He likely didn't even have pubic hair yet.
“Come on, man. Honest,” Bobby said. “Let go of my fucking arm.”
Albert smiled and patted the side of the boy's soft face. “You're a good kid, I know that. It's just that I care about you, okay? I don't want to see you fucking up your life. There's things a man can do, and things a man can't. It's like a code, right?”
Bobby rubbed his arm. “A code?”
“Yeah, a code,” said Albert, warming to the subject. He liked giving Bobby Evans little lectures, liked the way the boy listened, soaking it all in and not interrupting like the kids up at the compound did. They had no respect. Then again, who could blame them? That was the mountain. This was here and the two were not the same in any way. He shook a cigarette out of his pack, lit it and inhaled the smoke deep, enjoyed the slight light-headedness from that first hit. “You know what a code is, right? Okay, so it's like every man has to develop his own personal code of conduct. He has to decide how he's going to be, what he's willing to do and what he's not, and he can't break that code, can't let anybody make him break that code, or he's not a man. You get that?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Bobby chewed at his thumbnail.
“Don't fucking do that. You look like a fucktard.”
“Sorry.”
“So, what's your code going to be, young Bobby?”
“I don't know, what's yours?”
“Well, I could tell you, but you have to come up with your own. You can't adopt another man's code.” How could he possibly explain his code? How he'd built it slap by slap, bruise by bruise? You don't let yourself sleep in your own fucking vomit. You don't shack up with a woman who tosses her used sanitary napkins in the stove. You keep your secrets to yourself and you keep your weaknesses a secret and your hurts a secret and your dreams you bury double deep. He'd had that list by the time he was ten. “You think about it,” Albert said, and he wanted another drink more than anything all of a sudden.
The door opened and four men came in, wearing the city-issue overalls of road crew workers. They were laughing. Finn greeted them warmly, shook hands with each.
“Drink up. I'm getting another beer,” said Albert. “And then I'll tell you how to grow some killer weed, if you're interested, that is. You interested?”
“Yeah,” said Bobby, and he smiled that goofy smile and picked at a pimple on his chin. The kid was full of bad habits.
When he came back, Albert launched into a long sermon on the way to increase the THC content of marijuana plants using a growth changer called colchicine. “You soak the seeds in this solution, right? Maybe some of the seeds die, maybe most of them, but the ones who survive will be fucking superweed. It's all about the number of females,” he said, “But then ain't it always?” And he chuckled, and the kid chuckled with him, as though he knew exactly what Albert meant.
It was long gone dark when Albert drove back into the compound and he passed a car as he did. A car he recognized. The good Dr. Hawthorne.
“Fuck,” said Albert to no one in particular.
When he got to the cabin Toots and Joe were squatting in the shadows by the forsythia bush.
“What's going on?” he said.
“Jill,” said Toots.
“What about her?”
“She got knocked up again.”
“That why Hawthorne was here?”
“Yeah. She's bleeding some, though,” said Joe. “I saw it.”
“Where is she?”
“At her place. Jack's with her.”
“She have to go to the hospital?”
Toots shrugged. “I don't think so. But she sure is crying.”
Albert unlocked the cabin door and got a bottle of whiskey from his trunk. “Take this over to her, Toots, but don't let the rest of 'em see you, yeah?”
“Okay,” the little girl reached out for it and Albert noticed there was a burn on her arm.
“Where'd you get that?”
She pulled her sleeve down and shrugged, saying nothing.
“Yeah, all right. Just make sure Hawthorne didn't give her any painkillers before she drinks that, all right?” He took her upper arm firmly. “Make sure, Toots.”
“Hawthorne didn't give her no painkillers,” she said. “He never does.”
It was one of those brilliant first days
of true spring when the world heaved itself out of the long silver somnolence of winter. The temperature soared, and the air carried the fragrance of honeysuckle, crab apple and cherry blossoms. The clouds in the blue sky fairly sparkled and the promise of green was a joyful aura around the trees. Dorothy had closed up the shop for an hour at lunch, and gone for a long walk by the river. Everyone, it seemed, had the same idea and what she had anticipated would be a solitary meander turned out to be a stop-and-chat with half the town. Her mood was so buoyant, nearly giddy, in fact, that she didn't even feel this as an imposition.
Hello. How are you? Isn't it splendid? Oh, yes, a wonderful day. No, there won't be many more like this. Take advantage of it.
She wore a black sweater-jacket over her blouse. The warmth on the back of her neck, below the line of her short-cut grey hair, was delicious. She slowly rolled her head from side to side. Because she'd guessed it would be muddy, she had on her old green Wellington boots, the perfect thing for puddles and muck and tromping about the moors, and between greetings she imagined that was exactly where she wasâout on the moors of Yorkshire or Wales, perhaps, somewhere Dylan Thomas-y, full of windy boys and a bit . . .
By the time she turned back up River Road her cheeks were rosy and her eyes bright. She felt all was well with the world. There was no particular reason to dash back to the store. Why not take one last zip around the block? She set off up Main Street, and along Spring Street to Spruce, Spruce to Moore, past the Jefferson High School, where some of the windows were open. The teacher's voice carried and she could just make out the word “algebra,” and smiled, pitying children struggling to pay attention to that sort of thing on a day like this.
She thought about Ivy, who would be in her classes at the middle school around the corner. Ivy had taken to dropping in to the store three, sometimes four, afternoons a week. She would look in the window and then tap on the glass door, always waiting for an invitation to come in, as though the store were not a public place. She never stayed too longâno more than an hourâand always helped. Although it surprised Dorothy to admit it, she had begun to look forward to these brief visits. The girl was bright, and helpful, and clearly at odds with something. There seemed to be trouble between her parents, a topic Dorothy did not particularly want to discuss. It smacked of gossip and seemed prurient. But clearly the girl wasn't getting much attention at home. Dorothy was sure the visits wouldn't lastâIvy would become bored spending time with an old lady eventuallyâbut it was oddly pleasant for the moment.
She turned down Spruce, and was passing the Italian Garden Pizzeria when she became aware of something on the edge of her senses. Laughter. Yes, it was familiar laughter that drew her attention, coming from the passageway between the Pizzeria and Pretty-as-a-Picture Dress Shop. A voice. Two voices. One raised in inquiry. That laugh again.
Dorothy stopped and turned toward the sound. The alley was darker, shielded as it was by buildings on either sideâa pocket of shadow, smelling of pizza ovens and refuse. A figure at the endâno twoâhunkered down by a dumpster, one smaller than the other. The glint of something, a flame . . .
“Who is that?” the sound of her voice surprised her. How authoritative she sounded. “Who's there?”
The smaller figure skittered. Startled and no doubt guilty. Stood. Dorothy, sun-blind, could make out no features. “I said, who is that? What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” The larger figure still crouched, bestial, in the corner. The acrid scent of burning wafted. The figure, clearly a man, raised something to his lips. A bottle.
“Do you want me to call the police? Come out here this instant.” She should go into the dress shop. Have Doris Heaney call Carl. But on what complaint?
“We're not bothering you.” She must be only a silhouette to them, with the sun behind her, but perhaps not.
“Albert . . .” The other one spoke at last. “Maybe we should go.”
“Albert who? You are very rude, whoever you are. Is that Albert Erskine? Albert?”
“Shit.” It was said quietly, almost as though he didn't want her to hear. The figure stood and he was tall, much taller than the other. He drank from the bottle again and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
“Albert Erskine, do not be absurd. Come out here.”
“Mrs. Carlisle?”
“Yes, it's Dorothy Carlisle, and who is that with you?”
Her eyes adjusted to the shadows. Someone smaller, frailer. Whereas Albert was a collection of muscled slabs, thick and layered, the other was all knots of bone and angles. The small one, no more than a boy, put his head toward Albert and said something. Albert shrugged and the boy walked toward Dorothy. His gait was jerky and uneven. She fought the impulse to back away. As he neared, she saw it was Bobby Evans, Ivy's brother, his eyes downcast on his big sneakered feet, his shoulders held up tight, hands in pockets.
“Hi, Mrs. Carlisle,” he said. Another laugh from Albert. And that smell. It might be marijuana. Something else though, in that smoke.
“Are you lighting fires? You should be in school, young man,” Dorothy said to Bobby. “I've a mind to tell your father.” What on earth was going on in that family? Wasn't anyone paying attention to the children at all? She would have a little chat with Tom Evans when she next saw him.
Albert walked toward her slowly and as he did, he slipped the bottle inside his battered leather jacket. He stopped directly in front of her, forcing her to look up at him. He had grown a goatee since last she'd seen him. It accentuated the hollow cheeks, the sharp bones. His hair fell over his brows and curled around his ears. Sunlight glittered off the lenses of his silver metal-rimmed sunglasses. He now used his middle finger (she noticed a black line of grime under the nail) to push them up the bridge of his nose.
“Oh, Albert, what are you doing back there?”
“Burning trash. Nothing. Didn't know it was you.” His breath stank of alcohol.
“Albert, listen to me. There has been a break-in at Wilton's. If you don't want people thinking you had something to do with that, it would be prudent not to hang around back alleys, don't you think?”
“I didn't rob Wilton's.” He lowered his chin so she could see his eyes more clearly, his thin eyebrows frowning. “You saying I robbed Wilton's?”
“No. I am not saying that. What I'm saying is if people see you loitering in alleys they will call Carl. I'm sure you don't want to spend a beautiful day like this answering questions at the police station.”
Albert ran his tongue over his lips and smiled in a rather sheepish manner. Dorothy thought, not for the first time, how much she'd like to get him to a dentist. “Naw, you're right,” he said. “You worried about me, Mrs. Carlisle? That it?”
“It's obvious you've been drinking and you are not yourself. I'd hate to think you were giving alcohol, or anything else you shouldn't, to a minor. You and I both know how smart you are. Don't waste it, Albert. How many times have I said that to you?”
“Too many times, maybe,” he mumbled, not meeting her gaze now.
“I should probably say it more. You ought to attend those night classes at the high school. Get your GED. You should never have dropped out of school. It's a waste of a good mind.”
“Give me a break.”
“You're not like . . . well, you have a chance, Albert. I believe that.”
“Not like the rest of the Erskines, huh?” His eyes snapped.
They were so touchy, all the Erskines. Hair-trigger the bunch of them. And maybe Dorothy didn't blame them. “Do you want to tell me what you're doing just now?”
“Nope,” he laughed. “Go see for yourself if you want, but you know what they say about curiosity. Have a nice day, Mrs. Carlisle.” With that he ambled down the street, as though he hadn't a care in the world. Bobby Evans followed him.
Dorothy watched them for a moment and then looked back into the alley. She should just go and call Carl. Let him handle it. That was undoubtedly the sensible thing to do. But she hated to call the police on Albert Erskine, and wasn't completely sure Carl Whitford would care very much. Boys in an alley, one of them truant from school on a beautiful spring day. She knew it was probably misguided, but she had a soft spot for Albert. So much worked against him in this town. She had watched him grow up from a skinny young boy with all those bruises. She'd even called Children's Services once, when his little face had worn the reddened, puffy evidence of a beating, but nothing had come of it. It was the mountain, everyone said. What do you expect? She didn't want to be another one of the people against him. She wanted him to be better; she wanted him to rise up against the odds and break free of his past. If you expected the best of people, wouldn't they struggle to meet those expectations? And if public opinion expected the worst, well, she chose not to be among them.
The smoke in the back of the alley had disappeared now, although the smell lingered. Either she had stopped them from truly setting a fire, or the fire had gone out. It would only take a moment to check and they were, after all, gone. There was no danger now, surely, and probably there never had been any. It was only Albert Erskine and Bobby Evans, for heaven's sake.
It was chilly in the alley, out of the sun. Boxes lay scattered on the ground against the wall of the pizzeria in front of the dumpster. Whatever the boys had burned lay behind the dumpster, past the back entrance of the restaurant. A pile of newspaper, charred around the edges. The fire hadn't caught, then. Just some old papers and cardboard boxes, foolish mischief for which twenty-two-year-old Albert was far too old. But something else, in the pile. Dorothy caught her breath and she dropped her plastic bag of berries and cake. Fur there. Tortoiseshell fur. A cat? It couldn't be they had killed a cat. Oh, Lord.
Curiosity killed the cat.
She couldn't help herself, she bent forward to look more closely and when she did her stomach turned and she jumped back. Maggots in the sunken eyes, the body shrunken, withered. Long dead.
Dorothy turned back to the warm brightness of the sidewalk, abandoning her shopping. There was no sign of Albert. All she wanted to do was go back to her own little shop. Her mind snapped and cracked with questions as she hurried along. They hadn't killed the cat, then. But why try and burn it? It was disgusting. Had they found the carcass there? But then what had they been doing in the alley to begin with? Albert and the Evans boy. It didn't ring true. Albert was at least six years older than Bobby Evans. What would he want with a boy that age?
Dorothy did not believe half the stories she heard about the Erskine clan. The Erskine women, whenever she did see them in town, always looked so haggard and worn, frightened and ashamed of their meagre purchases. For the past twenty years, every few months or so, Dorothy (and William when he was alive) had driven up to North Mountain and the Erskines' compound in the wee hours of the night, waiting until they were sure everyone would be asleep. She left a box of used clothes, powdered milk, children's toys, canned goods, peanut butter, bars of soap and toothpaste, thick socks and mittens and scarves and oatmeal and anything else she thought they might be able to use. Years back, when she overheard one of the teachers mentioning how smart Albert was, and what a shame it was to waste brains on someone like that, she began including booksâ
Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, The Catcher in the Rye.
Dorothy had hoped she was helping, in some way. Not enough. Never enough.
When she arrived at the shop she looked around at the Queen Anne and Windsor chairs, the elegant little Federal and Empire tables, the silver tea-sets and cobalt salt holders and sets of spoonsâall the lovely items of beauty and comfort.
First Ivy and now Bobby. Oh, how she wanted to lay in a bath full of lavender bubbles. She wrote a note in case Ivy came by, saying she had closed up early for a doctor's appointment, and taped it to the door. Then she switched off the lights, locked the door and went home.
As far as she was concerned, this day was over.