Authors: Jamie Kornegay
“Okay,” he said. “Listen, if something happens and I disappear . . .” He held her at arm's length and studied her.
“What?”
“The lake house.”
She nodded without understanding. He kissed her long on the mouth, and she relented, and then he shut the Bronco's rear gate and climbed behind the wheel and cranked it and left her in a cloud of dust.
She and Jacob drove home in silence. She was too consumed with thoughts to interrogate Jacob or to comfort him. She thought about calling Shoals and telling him to leave Jay alone. This was retribution, she knew, or outright insanity. She could tell him that she loved her husband but he wasn't well. Or she could swear her own revenge, maybe threaten to call the sheriff, file a harassment suit. She had the phone out, her thoughts racing, but it wasn't something to negotiate with Jacob sitting right there.
She looked in the rearview mirror and thought she saw the Bronco barreling down on her, but it was just some impatient 4Runner that shot around her and disappeared over the lolling hills.
Jacob was red-eyed and silent beside her. She asked him, “What happened to the man in the woods? Did he just leave?”
He looked at her with sad eyes that pleaded not to make him tell, but she coerced him softly and finally he said he didn't see them leave together,
but they were both gone for a long time. It seemed like forever. And later he heard a gunshot far off in the distance and after a while his dad came back with blood on his face.
She checked the rearview mirror, tried to show no emotion. She couldn't comprehend it all, and in the place of that understanding came panic. She thought of all the news dramas about husbands who crack, come home and murder their children and spouses before turning the gun on themselves. What if he came back and bound them, doused the shitbox in gasoline and sent them all up in flames to make a statement? Was he capable of it? Or what if Shoals returned, his pride wounded to the point of sadomasochism or some other violent perversion? What about the parking lot thugs, the rabid basement creatures? Ever since reading
In Cold Blood
in high school, she was terrified of random evil, the world flipping inside out to reveal a glimpse of hell. There were pockets everywhere waiting to be reversed.
Just then her guts began to hiss and twist. The fruit had soured in her belly and been lit afire by the tequila. She was growing weary, short of breath, close to sudden unmanageable grief. Her eyes misted, and she held it all back until she could no longer even see the road for being underwater. The curves came quicker and darker. The wheels caught the shoulder and the car shuddered. Jacob squealed and so did the brakes.
They fishtailed to the side and stopped dead in a dust cloud, and she poured out of the car and ran for the thick waist-high ditch weeds, where she barfed unmercifully, followed by a jag of sobbing. It lasted only a moment. The tickle of puffy grains in her ear reminded her of Jacob. She wiped her mouth and turned back to the car. He was staring stonily out at her, his face melting into a violent sunset through the half-reflected car door glass. It was Jay the boy, who hadn't a clue what to do with so much love.
41
By the time Shoals reached the reservoir, the sky was bruised from a storm head clobbering the west. He should have gone straight to Tockawah Bottom but wanted to swing by the cabin and pick up his old friend Luther, a short-barrel twelve-gauge with a pistol grip and a nasty spread. When he pulled into the driveway, he was surprised to find the sheriff's squad car already there. This was out of place. The sheriff wasn't one to pay social calls.
The front door was open a sliver. He walked in cautiously, looked around for anything out of place. Nothing was disturbed. From the living room he could see out the sliding glass door to the back porch, where his uncle watched the lake from a rocking chair, stroking Suzie-Q beside him. Something wasn't right. His uncle cast a soft glance backward when he stepped through the sliding door. Suzie jumped up to be petted.
“Hey there, Uncle Bud,” said Shoals. “What's up?”
“Hope you don't mind me waiting here, but we need to talk,” the sheriff said.
“Everything all right.” He said it certain, willing it to be so.
“Have a seat.”
Shoals sat down on a stump he used for a footrest. He didn't like the feel of this. Hadn't he imagined this scenario before? He braced for the worst, some sudden tragedy.
God, I'll do anything if you let it not be Mama
, he bargained.
“Danny, we've got a problem,” his uncle said.
“Tell me what's going on.”
“It's that Spiller girl and all of that mess with the video camera. It aint going away, Danny.”
Shoals huffed in relief. “Uncle Bud, I told you, all that's been taken care of. Jim Tom said I'm not liable. It's not going to court. She's gonna keep her mouth shut.”
“Danny, you know as well as I that she aint keeping her mouth shut. And it's just a matter of time before that big old husband of hers finds you out alone somewhere.”
“If it comes to that, I can take care of myself.”
“Well, that aint what I'm so worried about. It's the fallout from this. We're spending more time than we ought to trying to keep a lid on it. It's not the first time we've had to cover up some of your hanky-panky.”
“Well what do you want me to do?”
The sheriff pulled a brochure from his coat pocket and passed it to Danny. A glossy trifold with photos of flowers and patios, lakes and trees.
“Garden Walk? What is this?”
His uncle sat there a moment, his mouth tight. “It's a treatment facility outside Tuscaloosa. I think you need to check yourself in, Danny. It's time to face facts. You've got a serious problem.”
He didn't drink that much. Just for a good time and not that often in public.
“Walk in my kitchen right now and tell me how many liquor bottles I have,” he demanded.
“It's not for that.”
“You want me to go to Alabama for sex rehab?”
“Compulsive behavior therapy. I think you should, yes.”
“All due respect, Uncle Bud, but that's the stupidest damn shit I've ever heard. I'm not a sex addict! So I like a little nooky now and again. Since when is that a cause for treatment? Me and half the world are on a damn near constant hunt for it.”
“Danny, it's affecting your work. It's affecting my work. It's affecting the way we conduct business in our office. It's affecting the citizens of Bayard
County. How does it look when people catch wind there's a deputy on my squad trying to peep on their wife or sister getting out of the shower? And not only that, videotaping it for who knows what purpose. How safe do you think that makes them feel?”
Shoals was wide-eyed and indefensible.
“You sure got a lot of videotapes in there around your TV. What would I find if I went in and stuck one in that tape player?”
“Hunting shows! Movies and stuff. Go look for yourself.”
“All right,” said the sheriff and stood up.
Shoals jumped up and nearly threw a block. “Hold on now, Uncle Bud. Let me just get this straight. Do you think I'm some kind of pervert or something?”
“That's not for me to judge. But I think you need help. I think this is affecting your work and your life in a bad way, and I want to help you get straight. You do me no good like this.”
“So what happens if I don't agree?”
“Then you don't come back to work.”
“So that's it then? I'm fired?”
“I'll hold your position, Danny. You go down to Garden Walk, you run your therapy, it's a six-week deal. You perform your follow-up treatments, take whatever medication they prescribe, and show me you're better, and bam, you're back on the job.”
“Medication? What do they give you, saltpeter or something?”
“I have no living idea. I'm no medical professional. I do know they're supposed to be one of the best programs in the Southeast. They say you can even study tai chi as part of your therapy.”
“Tai chi? What does that have to do with sex?”
“Hell, Danny, I don't know. Something to do with focus, I reckon.”
Shoals turned his back to his uncle and stared out at the water. This couldn't have come at a worse time, here on the cusp of proving himself a valiant law officer. Does Mize get off scot-free while Shoals is penned up, simply for scratching an itch?
He recalled stories from one boy who'd been in sex rehab. They made him dip his hands in blue dye every night before bed and checked his dick in the morning to make sure he hadn't been massaging it all night. This guy said the treatment did nothing but taught him how to climax without touch, just his own dirty thoughts.
More than anything, it was humiliating. This wasn't what Danny Shoals was about. He would become a joke, a laughingstock. He would lose his edge as a law officer, not to speak of his persuasion as a man. You don't clip an eagle's wings. This was madness, a death sentence.
“Does Mama know about this?”
The sheriff winced. “She does.”
“You told Mama? When?”
“I haven't spoken a word about it to her, but she heard it somewhere. That's what I'm telling you, Danny. The word is out.”
This was the most crushing guilt of all. No wonder she wouldn't take his calls. She must think she raised a degenerate sex fiend. “Who else knows? You didn't come up with this on your own.”
“I discussed it with your aunt.”
“And?”
“And Jenny.” His cousin was the same age as him. They were close growing up, sometimes too close. “She helped us find the facility. It was her idea in a way.”
She
would
be the architect. She lived in Atlanta now and was invested in all sorts of new-age crackerjack. Expressing her feelings and therapy were all part of her way, and now she'd decided everyone needed to confess. He imagined she was getting back at him for their teenage dalliance. Nothing major, just a little peekaboo, a little rubbing and tugging. They were such beautiful children.
“She helped me understand that it's an illness, and that it can be cured,” said the sheriff.
“An illness? It's a primal instinct!”
Shoals couldn't believe what was happening to him. Everyone would de
spise him now. Everyone would mistrust him. You couldn't just fuck up quietly anymore in this world. Too many stood to gain from a public takedown. Mistakes were rebuilt twice as high in hindsight so they could all stand around and congratulate themselves when the whole mess came clattering down.
The only way he could see through this was getting Mize. Time was wasting. He needed to get a quick grip on this situation, to win his uncle's pity and then earn his respect. If he could make an arrest, things might cool down for him. Then he could take some time off, maybe go out West to the mountains and fish, clear his head a bit. That little Delta respite had definitely rubbed out a few kinks.
“Okay,” he said, taking his seat on the stump, burying his head in his hands. “Okay, Uncle Bud. You've got me. I understand what I need to do.”
The sheriff nodded. He preferred it this way. Quiet, simple duty rather than a lot of bluster and emotion.
“I'm on my way to something. I feel like I've got a grip on this Boyers disappearance. A little piece that won't flush. Let me go see about this, and then I'll turn my stuff over and go wherever I need to.”
“What do you have?”
“This Mize fella out in Tockawah Bottom. He's hiding something.”
“Does Bynum know about this?”
Shoals nodded. “I was just with Bynum. He gave me the green light.”
The sheriff looked skeptical. “Need any help?”
“No sir. I'll be in to see you first thing in the morning.”
“All right, Danny. Just keep your head up and your you-know-what in your britches, you hear me?”
“I sure do, Uncle. Thanks for believing in me.”
“We love you, Danny. I know this is embarrassing, but in six months it'll all be water under the bridge.”
Shoals felt a sob deep down trying to shimmy free. He threw his arms around his uncle for old times' sake, but the sheriff flinched at physical love. He went cold and stiff, like maybe he thought his nephew was trying to throw
a hunch on him.
After his uncle left, Shoals pulled out a garbage bag and scooped up all his videos, locked them in the gun cabinet, and grabbed Luther and a box of shells. He drove toward Silage Town, and when he got within service range he called his mother. She didn't pick up, but he left her a message, told her she didn't need to be afraid to answer, that there was nothing wrong with him, that he'd been caught in a moment of weakness was all. He was only sorry that she had to imagine it or feel responsible in any way, and that at his uncle's insistence he would be getting help. He was still her son after all, he said, and he still loved her more than any other woman.
42
Why had he confessed to a crime when it was only an accident? Well, maybe it was because he felt that everything he'd doneâfrom burning the body and using the ashes for fertilizer to shooting the dog and tripping up the man who then blew his own head off, not to mention bringing his family out here and starving their needsâmaybe it all added up to something like murder. There was no jury to decide this, only something he supposed. It was an equation without logic, or else the logic of nature, which he hardly understood.
He'd spent the afternoon studying what he'd done and what there was still to do, whether to report it as an accident and take his chances with the law, or to ignore it, take the family and go, and hope no one came upon the scene until spring at the earliest, when the mowers found the stripped skeleton in the pasture. The repeated phone calls from the deputy cast doubt over these alternatives. Shoals would have another search party trampling the woods if his calls continued to go unanswered, and when they discovered the body, the inconsistencies would mount up quickâthe missing cell phone, the deceased's dirt-filled mouth, Jay's bare footprints all over the scene.
No, he had to get rid of this body too, if he ever hoped to make it back to town and earn his family's forgiveness. He had to bury everything out here, the worst of himself and his deeds, both purposeful and accidental, and so he resolved to turn it all under, give it back to the land and let her take her muddy justice.
He brought a couple of contractor-grade plastic trash bags, along with various other supplies, flapped one open and rolled the woodsman's corpse in
side, fastened it with a knot, and stuffed the bag inside one of the blue plastic drums from the house. Lying there beneath the man, indented in the earth, were the missing shells. Jay pocketed them and inspected the ground around the body, which was saturated with black blood. He used a spade to scoop up a few wedges of incriminating earth, tossed them in the barrel, placed the woodsman's crutches and shotgun inside, along with the spent casing he found in the leaves, and sealed the lid. He gave the barrel a shove and rolled it over the jagged terrain, the body thumping around inside like a mound of heavy towels in a clothes dryer.
When he got to the river, Jay stopped to catch his breath. The afternoon sky had become choked with clouds, and the air was thick in anticipation of rain. He was too far upriver from where he needed to be, but he'd made preparations for this. There was no time left for mistakes and improvisation.
He removed the barrel lid and pulled out the body bag and the gun and the crutches and then rolled the drum down to the river to dump the dirt clods and wash out the blood. He dragged the plastic bag and the woodsman's things down to the bank and covered them with brush and tied the victim's bandanna to the branch of a fallen tree so he would see it from the river.
He sealed the empty drum and rolled it back through the woods to the staging area, the same riverside spot where he'd murdered the stranger's dog nearly a month ago and where he'd also stashed three more of these fifty-five-gallon blue barrels. He'd brought along as well an eight-foot bamboo pole from the pile of salvage wood he'd been collecting for frames and supports. The piece was sturdy and possessed a nice ridged grip. He used it to pry the old washed-up picnic table from the sand and dry mud near the bank.
He dragged the table legs up from the shore to firm, level terrain and lashed together the four plastic drums, which all fit squarely beneath the picnic table and would act like pontoons for his fledgling rivercraft. He shoved the raft down to the shore, flipped it over into the water, and scrambled aboard with the help of the bamboo pole, stepping first onto the bench seat and finally atop the table itself. It made a hilarious and improbable craft, its
decking two feet off the water. It required strict balance to steady the constant wobble, and he felt like a drunkard dancing on a tabletop. The threat of toppling over was ever present, but with a little practice he found his equilibrium and gave the picnic raft a gentle shove into the current with the pole.
Due to the vessel's height, Jay lost a good two feet of pole, but if he didn't drift too far into the middle of the river, he should have enough length to nudge the floor. He spent several anxious moments getting a feel for the raft. He started out at an awkward side-to-side crawl but quickly learned it was better to push from the back, careful not to thrust too deep into the river bottom lest the mud snatch the pole away from him. Soon he let the pole glide in the river, using it like a rudder, and found the bamboo and water would perform the work.
The current was mild, and before long he was nudging himself along as if it were just a pleasant outing. For a moment he felt positively free and adventuresome, like old Huck Finn, whistling his way downriver to recover the dead man he'd stashed in a trash bag along the shore. When he came within sight of the bandanna tied to the fallen branch, he briefly considered shoving on, just bypassing the whole gruesome task, let the river take him where it may. But unlike Huck, he wouldn't be able to hide for long. He doubted the world still held so many wide-open spaces or even nooks and crannies where one might disappear.
He guided the table to shore, moored it to a stump, and jumped into the brush. He uncovered the body bag and got plenty wet wrestling it onto the raft. He tossed the crutches on board and fished a couple of shells from his pocket and loaded the shotgun and slung it over his shoulder. He climbed aboard precariously and moved his new cargo toward the front and middle as a counterweight. When everything was settled and it seemed like the table wouldn't flip, he set himself and turned the skiff around and began to punt his way upstream.
The return trip was not nearly so idyllic, pushing against the flow with twice the weight aboard while racing the thunderhead that advanced from
the north. If that storm let its entire payload go, they would be washed awayâgun, barrels, picnic table, corpse, and all.
By the time he climbed back upriver to the wallow, Jay was exhausted. He poled over to the bank and tied on to a drooping birch branch, shimmied across a limb and climbed to shore. He found his clothes where he'd left them, but that was not what he'd come for. He passed through the thicket and explored the clearing until he found Chipper's mangled body. He collected the dog and scoured the ground until he found the shell casing.
Back on the raft, he took a reverent moment to commit the pup to the river. It reminded him of what was at stake. No matter how cracked the plan seemed, it had to be executed.
A light steady rain was falling now. The current had picked up. Soon he saw the bridge in the distance and redoubled his efforts, pushing himself along as color drained from the sky. Just when he'd grown confident maneuvering the raft, it was nearly time to cross the river. As he ventured near the middle, his pole was dipping lower and lower, threatening to crawl right out of his grip. There was no guarantee there would be a bottom to touch if he drifted too deep. Without control, he'd be no better than riding a piece of driftwood.
He poled his way past the little sandy washout where Hatcher had introduced Jay to his coconspirator. No sign of the brute now. He pushed onward, scoping the shore. Maybe the beast had found dinner already. What then? There was no backup plan. He'd bet the farm on this roll.
He passed into view from the road and was relieved to find no bridge fishers overhead. The rain was a mild deterrent and the rest was luck. Under the bridge the light disappeared, giving him a preview of the darkness he would soon encounter as the day slipped completely away. Water sluicing off the bridge made an echoing cascade. Even his heavy breathing reverberated off the concrete. The air filled with a deep groan, like a crypt opening. He wasn't sure if it was the raft straining or the bridge shifting or the gator lurking around the piers.
Jay punted a short way past the bridge, scoping out the banks of the river
before he decided to head back the way he came. To turn the raft around he ventured a crossing into deeper water. He lost the bottom and clutched his pole tight while the rig drifted free. He leaned left and right, throwing his weight, searching for control of the vessel. The raft behaved at first, catching the accelerating current and moving him toward the opposite shore, but as he passed back under the bridge, an eddy near the piers snagged the craft and whipped it around. He repositioned himself, stumbling over the bagged corpse, which switched places with him at the stern. He caught traction with his pole off the port side and tried to slow the raft while pulling it to shore. It was working until he lost his footing and slid backward, causing the bow to rise. The raft nearly flipped backward. Jay scrambled forward on his knees, alternately guiding and braking with the pole. He heaved the trash bag forward to reassume his place at the rear while maintaining control and balance as the rain lashed down in cold, razor-edged drops.
That's when he felt the nudge. Something brushed against his pole. He mistook it for a log before it came again from the opposite direction, whacking the barrels. The craft shuddered and spun. He saw the ripple of stony black skin crest the surface of the water, which was churning with the weight of rain, and he watched it pass in front of the raft. He swatted it with the pole to confirm, and the creature doubled back and snapped the pole to splinters in its spring-trap jaws.
Without his pole, the picnic-table raft picked up speed and asserted its own trajectory. He lost the beast in the rain, and then came a wallop from behind. It was pushing him ashore to beach and feast. They careened straight toward a tangle of limbs and brush on the bank. He knelt down and untwisted the knot of plastic and dumped the woodsman's corpse onto the deck. He wrapped the shotgun in the garbage plastic to keep it dry for his last stand.
When they capsized, everything went black. Jay felt himself in the river and the slap of the heavy wood as the table landed on top of him. He cradled the plastic-wrapped gun and offered the corpse out ahead of him. Water passed over him and then released him, and he held his breath until he felt a violent tug and his hands were empty. He took up the weapon
and stood. Froth flew in his eyes and it was impossible to discern from the splashing whether it was mud or flesh. He heard grunting and thrashing but saw nothing. He flailed backward onto a slick tongue of land and into the claws of vegetation at the river's edge, scrambling away deep into the belly of night.