Above the Waterfall (6 page)

She's sedated, so she may not say much. It was damn close, Les. She'd be dead if your neighbor hadn't happened by.
That's what Dr. Washburn had told me outside Sarah's room. Her eyes had opened when I entered but at first she seemed not to recognize me. Then Sarah had raised a hand that slowly curled inward before settling back on the sheet.
I guess neither of us got what we wanted,
she had said and closed her eyes again.

After Sarah had left the hospital, she'd gone to Hickory to live with her mother. Two months passed before we'd seen each other again. That afternoon, her mother stayed in the back of the house while Sarah and I talked in the front room. Sarah told me a doctor in Hickory had put her on a different antidepressant. “It was like a light coming on inside my head,” she'd said. “I don't feel giddy or even happy, Les, just some hope. Maybe I'll be okay, but I can't know that for sure.” I'd told Sarah how glad I was that she felt better. I told her I didn't want us to divorce, but she shook her head. No, she'd said. A divorce was best for both of us.

Sarah had walked me to the front door. She'd opened the door, then kissed my cheek. I'd smelled her perfume, her shampoo, felt her small ringless hand on my shoulder.

“What I said to you,” I told her, putting my arms around her. “You know I didn't mean it.”

“I know,” Sarah had said softly, then just as softly freed herself from my embrace.

When I'd stepped out onto the porch, Sarah had closed the door slowly, tenderly.

Dragonflies
was the word Hopkins used, but my grandparents called them what was believed:
snake doctors
. This one stream-hovering, its sun-saddled back greenshimmering, wings blurring like whitewater to still the piped body. I open my notebook to the NEW POEMS section and write

I imagine the insect about to settle on the snake's wounded flesh.

           
Minister whose idling cross-shadow blessed

           
even before wings stilled and the virid touch

Nothing else comes so I set the notebook beside me. What else is here? I listen. This section of stream purls and riffles amid small stones. What word might be made for what I hear? I pick up the notebook again, turn to a back page. First, I write
petrichor
and its definition.

           
petrichor: the smell of first raindrops on long-dry land.

Then

           
petrichord
:
the sound of water sliding over smooth stone.

I close the notebook and follow the stream to the bridge. In the pool's tailrace, a misplaced glinting. I peel off boots and socks, roll my pants. The stream's cold rises, each step a grainy give of sand. I lift a drink can, pour out the water. The sun at my back casts my shadow upstream. It touches the before of what I feel passing, like a memory of something that hasn't yet happened.

At the courthouse, Jarvis handed the baby over to social services. He took Greer and Robin Lindsey downstairs to the jail, all the while Greer whining about a lawyer. I put the suits in the biohazard container and the respirators in the storage room, told Ruby to call Carly and check on Barry, then left for Greene's Café to get a sandwich and drink to go. As I came down the courthouse steps, Ben Lindsey pulled into the side lot. He got out of his pickup slowly, more like a man in his eighties than early fifties. Ben shut the driver's door the same way, the door not cleanly locking. He didn't bother to reclose it.

“Martha wouldn't come with me,” Ben said. “That girl's own mother has given up on her, says the Robin we knew is dead and gone and ain't coming back. Her own
mother thinking that way, Les, and I wish to God that I could too but I can't.”

What was a man to say to that, especially one like me who'd never had a child? I told Ben that Robin was inside. He nodded and went on, taking each courthouse step slow as a man walking toward a noose.

In a county this rural, everyone's connected, if not by blood, then in some other way. In the worst times, the county was like a huge web. The spider stirred and many linked strands vibrated. When I entered the café the room got real quiet, which meant people already knew. A few conversations started back up, but they were soft, words exchanged about the weather or fishing, the sorts of things people spoke of when other things couldn't be.

But there are some who love nothing more than other people's misery. Bobbi Moffitt left her table, came over to where I waited by the cash register.

“It's a terrible thing, isn't it,” she said. “Not for that girl but for Ben and Martha. They are such fine folks, Sheriff. I just don't know how they're able to go on after what that child has put them through. Of course, I've always been of a mind they didn't discipline her enough.”

“Can you hurry up with that sandwich,” I asked Lloyd, who nodded and went into the kitchen.

“Honestly, that girl was allowed to run wild. As
much as I hate to say it, I knew something like this was bound to happen. I'm sure you did too.”

No one else in the room spoke now, no sound but the click of the ceiling fan's chain.

“I'm just concerned for them is all,” Bobbi Moffitt said, and returned to her table.

I'd planned to eat in the office, but instead I walked to the park and sat at a picnic table, one no one else was near.

Spend a long period of time alone, especially if you're someone who's never been that social to begin with, and you find yourself craving solitude. After my divorce, I quit going by Burrell's Taproom after work and ate almost all of my meals at home or behind a closed office door. People in town accepted the change, maybe because they knew what had happened, not just the divorce but Sarah's overdose, or maybe because, after a while, folks in small towns quit noticing or caring about a person's eccentricities. You could walk around town with black scuba fins on your feet and a tiara on your head and people would soon quit caring or noticing. Like my painting watercolors, the inwardness was seen as a bit peculiar, but I was still a good sheriff.

It was my sisters who'd tried to draw me out after the divorce. They both lived in Alabama and offered to pay for my flights if I'd come visit, but I'd been curt enough that they'd quit offering, or calling. After a year, I went out
on a few dates, but most times I couldn't wait to get back home and be alone. There had been, and sometimes still were, days I turned my head or crossed the street to avoid talking to someone. Even to acknowledge them with a nod drained me.

Accomplices.

When I returned to the office, my phone was blinking. I recognized the number as Jink Hampton's. He'd left no message but he didn't need to. The call itself was the message—he had his monthly “tithe,” as he called it, and was ready for me to pick it up.

But before driving out to Jink's place, I called Becky. It was good to hear her voice, so good in fact that I told her so. She asked about the raid, and I told her it went no worse than we'd expected. I left it at that and asked how Gerald was.

“I'm doing what Dr. Washburn told me, making sure the scrapes stay disinfected. What that guard did,” Becky said, her voice beginning to tremble. “What could have happened . . .”

“It
was
wrong,” I said, “but Gerald shouldn't have been at the waterfall or the resort. I know he's used to things being different, but it is Tucker's property. You've got to make Gerald understand that. You're the only person he's going to listen to.”

“I know,” Becky said.

“Listen,” I said, “if you have a free minute, can you see if C.J. Gant's SUV is in the resort's lot? It's the light blue one. Tucker was really ticked off at him yesterday. I don't think he'd do anything like fire C.J., but I want to be sure.”

“It will be fifteen minutes before I can,” Becky said. “I'll call you back when I know.”

“I'll be driving so call me on my cell phone,” I said. “Thanks.”

“I'm glad you're okay,” Becky said softly. “I worried about you.”

“I'm fine.”

I told Ruby I'd be out of the office for the rest of the day.

“What about Barry?” she asked. “I can't get an answer at his house or on his cell.”

“I'll try him tonight,” I said.

As I drove out to Jink Hampton's place, I told myself again that Harold Tucker wouldn't fire C.J., even if the resort did need to lay off some people. It came down to loyalty, many years of it. My cell phone buzzed.

“His SUV is in the parking lot,” Becky said.

“Thanks,” I said. “We're still on for lunch Friday, right?”

“As long as Gerald is okay,” Becky said.

It had been in ninth grade when Mr. Ketner, the principal, announced during homeroom that my water
color had been chosen to represent our school in a statewide competition. Eric Dalton, who'd failed ninth grade twice, turned to his buddies on the back row.
That's almost as faggy as writing poetry,
he'd said. His buddies laughed loudly, in part because Eric was not just the biggest ninth-grader but the meanest. When the rest of the class turned to look at him, Eric stared back.
What I said was funny, wasn't it?
he challenged. C.J. was on the front row. Not even a laugh was necessary, just a smile and he'd be, maybe for the first time in his life, on the other side of the taunts, invited into the safety of the herd. When the laughs rippled to the front row, C.J. didn't even smile, and he didn't look at me. He turned to the front of the room and waited for the teacher to restore order.

Four months later he would save my life.

Jink Hampton raised dope but he also bred Plott hounds. When I got to his house, he led me inside the pen, picked up a pup from a new litter. It had the right brindled coloring and the rambunctiousness that usually predicted an adult that would be tireless on the trail.

“You in the market for a good bear dog?” Jink asked. “Since you're retiring you'll be needing a hobby, won't you?”

“I'm thinking more along the lines of a garden.”

Jink smiled.

“I've got some good Early Misty seeds if you want them.”

“I think I'll stick to corn and tomatoes, maybe some squash,” I said. “Any helicopters flown around here this week?”

“Nah,” Jink answered. “I heard they been flying over government land though.”

“You know they'll spread out since it's harvest time.”

“I know,” Jink said, and grimaced as he took a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet. “I reckon this will help buy you another window.”

“Maybe so,” I said, and stuffed the bill in my pocket.

Jink set the pup down and came out of the pen.

“How is your cabin coming along?” Jink asked. “I reckon I ought to know since I'm financing it.”

“The well is in and the road graded and graveled. They started the foundation. After I leave here I'm going by to check.”

“Well, it's a pretty piece of land.”

“It is,” I said.

For a few moments we watched the pups play tug-of-war with a strip of cowhide.

“I don't guess you have an idea who Darby Ramsey might buy meth from?” I asked.

“You know I don't have any truck with meth, or Oxy either.”

“I do know that,” I said, “just thought you might have heard something.”

“No, but I heard about Gerald's tussle yesterday. You didn't law him, did you?”

“No.”

“Good, I wouldn't want trouble for that old man. Me and his boy William was tight as tree bark growing up. I never had a better friend then nor now. Hard to believe Darby comes from the same stock, ain't it?”

“It is.”

“I know you're not supposed to go back on your word,” Jink said, “especially when you give it to your sister on her deathbed, but damned if I'd let Darby inherit anything I left behind. You know he'll spend every dime of it on drugs.”

“I do,” I said, and took the car keys from my pocket. “Anyway, you got a fine litter there.”

“They should be, but dogs are like people. No matter how good the bloodline, they can still turn out sorry.”

We walked over to my car.

“So this is the last time between me and you,” Jink said.

“This is it.”

“What about Jarvis Crowe? Do I have the same arrangement with him?”

“I don't know,” I said. “That's between you and Jarvis.”

“You ever talked to him about it?”

“I haven't, but you and I both know he's wise to what's going on. If he wants it to continue he'll drop by.”

“Hell, Les, what if he ‘drops by' just to arrest my ass?”

“Like I said, you boys will have to work it out.”

“All right,” Jink said, extending his hand. “Have a good retirement.”