No. Hold it up now.
I grabbed it, but my arms were shaking and the tears were starting to come. Don’t make me shoot him, please.
Stop whining and listen.
Please.
Stop it.
He pushed the gun to the right a little, pointing to the tall grass by the trees. I caught sight of something furry, something crouching in the grass, inching forward. Then two eyes and a long snout and pointed ears.
You see that?
What is it?
Doesn’t matter. It’s hungry and it sees a hot meal.
Take it back. You shoot it.
No, aim and pull the trigger.
Please, I don’t want to.
You want to see that little pup in the jaws of that coyote?
No, but you shoot.
He let go of the gun and the barrel dipped.
My heart raced as I looked at the pup waddling toward the grass, hopping like it was playing at a park. He’s headed right for it!
Then aim and shoot.
What if I hit the pup?
Aim and shoot, June Bug.
I pulled the gun up and couldn’t see the coyote in the grass anymore. Then his strong hands were underneath mine and he was behind me, his breath on my shoulder, his face down near mine. I saw a flash of fur as the animal sprang from the grass. His finger squeezed mine on the trigger, and then again, and there were two cracking sounds.
Dirt kicked up in front of the coyote, and he stopped dead in his tracks and glanced at us. And then he fell, twitching for a moment before lying still. Just a piece of fur in the grass. The little pup barked at it as he ran toward us, looking back, stopping, and barking some more.
You killed him, I said. I just wanted to scare him away.
Some things you have to kill. Some things you don’t mess with or they’ll kill you.
The pup ran back to us, his tongue hanging out, scrambling over the big rocks. He crawled into my lap and I hugged him close. Daddy got up and walked back to the RV and I followed him with the pup in my arms, the little thing squirming and licking and kicking.
Just as I was about to put him down, I looked back at the valley and saw the coyote. His head was up and he was grinning, if you can believe that, and saying something. The whispers drifted over the barren land, carried by the wind, and I strained to hear them but I couldn’t. And then he laid his head back down in the grass and never moved again as far as I know.
16
Sheriff Hadley Preston had just arrived home to fried chicken, biscuits, and coleslaw when his cell phone buzzed. He hated carrying the thing and most of the time wanted to roll down the window and toss it out. As far as he was concerned, cell phones had been invented by wives to keep track of their men.
“Just let it go,” his wife, Macel, said. Her eyes were pinpoints in the kitchen’s bright light. The skin around her eyes was wrinkled and cracked with age. “You’ve been working too hard. Let it go and eat something.”
Macel Preston was a good woman. Stocky and short with a few streaks of black hair still showing through the gray, a strong and jutting chin. She looked built for some athletic pursuit, and their life together had seemed to him a marathon of trouble. Trouble with their daughter, trouble with the job, trouble with the family as their parents grew older. She had suggested they move his parents in with them when their health had failed. Shortly after they were gone, her mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and she moved in for the last six years of her life.
When asked how they were able to stay together so long, Preston gave his wife the credit. “She’s a patient and forgiving woman,” he would say, and that was the truth. Forgiving to a fault. He had heard secondhand how she had stood in the midst of the little church on Wednesday nights and asked the congregation to pray for his salvation.
But she was not the goody-two-shoes type to go around with her nose in the air thinking she was better than everybody else and you had to believe like her or you’d burn forever. It was more of a quiet and gentleness that spoke so loud he could hardly stand it at times. It’s one thing to preach, and it’s another to know every jot and tittle of the Word and be able to argue a Jehovah’s Witness under the table and still love people you don’t agree with.
Preston had watched her care for a son of one of her church friends who’d gotten mixed up in an alternative lifestyle. The mother had him on the prayer chain and detailed his wayward life, the gay bars and multiple lovers, until he moved home, his body ravaged by disease. He needed round-the-clock care toward the end, and though the people at her church abhorred that lifestyle, Macel had gone to the house every day for months and cared for him like he was her own. She talked to him about God’s love and forgiveness and the open arms of Jesus until the boy’s death. At the funeral it was hard to tell which one was the mother because Macel’s tears flowed freely. It was hard to argue with a faith like that. Hard, but not impossible because Preston did every chance he got.
He opened his shirt pocket and pulled the silver vibrating thing out and checked the screen. He expected it to be Mike, but a different number popped up. “Preston.”
Nothing on the other end. Just noise of a TV in the background.
“Hello?”
A crackling voice began, wheezing and rattling with emphysema. His deputy had talked with Walker’s mother, who had no more information. He couldn’t imagine who this was.
“I know where that boy is. The one you’re looking for.”
“How’d you get this number?”
“Your deputy. What’s that got to do with it?”
Preston shook his head. “All right. Where is he?”
“I heard a car rumble past here last night.”
“Where is ‘here’?”
He listened a few moments, first reaching for a pen, then closing his eyes and following the directions in his head. He knew exactly where the place was. He’d been there in his childhood.
“You know where I’m talking about?” the rattling voice said.
“Yeah, I got it.”
“I can’t give you an address because there ain’t one.”
“Thank you.”
“You giving any kind of reward if you find him?” The caller pronounced the word
reeward
like Preston had heard it all his life.
“Yeah, your
ree
ward is knowing you did the right thing telling me where that scumbag is.”
He flipped the phone shut and pushed back from the table, looking at the chicken. Macel had made it flakier than the Colonel and the slaw was homemade, with just the right amount of mayonnaise so that it didn’t run all over the plate and soak into the biscuits.
“You don’t have to go,” she said. “You can at least stay and eat a piece of chicken. Or have Mike look into it.”
“If I start in, I won’t be able to stop. Your chicken does things to a man he can’t explain.”
Macel smiled as he stood and walked around the table. She sat there staring at her plate.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “Can you keep it warm for me?”
“I’ll put the slaw in the oven.”
He chuckled and rubbed her back. When she got peeved at him, her humor turned sarcastic—the one chink in her spiritual armor. “I’ll be back in a bit. You wait up.”
She didn’t move for a moment, but when he lingered behind her, she turned, her eyes saggy and pained. “I’ve been thinking about that little girl,” she said. “You think this guy did something to her?”
“I’m not sure what I think anymore. And I’m not sure it matters. The dead float to the surface eventually, and it’s the same with the truth. That’s all I’m looking to know.”
“If he did have something to do with it, he’ll be like a cornered rat. You won’t be able to bring him out alive.”
“Which is maybe why he ran. But he might have just been scared by the whole thing. Don’t worry—”
“I am worried. You’re not as young as you used to be.”
“It usually happens that way when you have more than fifty birthdays.”
“Hadley, I’m serious. You ought to call in backup to bring this fellow in. Then you can figure out what he did with her.” She turned back to the table and fidgeted, looking like that old man in the picture on the wall with the loaf of bread and his hands outstretched and praying. “I don’t want to lose you,” she said in a little girl voice.
“You’re not going to lose me. Now stop worrying. We’ve been through this a thousand times and it’s never bothered you.”
“I had a dream last night.”
“I have to go.”
“I was at your funeral. And everybody was saying what a good man you were.”
“Well, there’s good news.” He bent down and kissed her forehead. “It’s going to be all right. We’ll bring him in and figure out what happened. Something’s not fitting and I want to find out what it is.”
“If you don’t think he’s guilty, why can’t it wait?”
“I didn’t say he’s not guilty. I said things aren’t adding up. He knows more than he’s telling us. And he ran. You can’t abide that.”
“What if he has a gun? He may be guilty of something else you don’t even know about.”
“If he is, I’ll find it out and deal with it. Now I have to—”
“I don’t want to lose you to some no-account.”
Preston reached for the door and opened it. “I thought you believed everybody has worth in God’s eyes.”
“They do, but that doesn’t mean they have a right to kill my husband. They can have their worth behind bars.”
He put his hat on and stepped onto the front porch. “Just keep the slaw warm, and I’ll be back before the pie’s done.”
In the cruiser Preston watched her through the window as she spread her hand across the tablecloth, ridding it of wrinkles. When he backed out of the driveway, he could still see her raking the slaw from his plate and putting the chicken in the oven.
Sheriff Preston met Mike at the parking lot of the Dairy Queen on Route 60. Mike climbed into the cruiser with a hundred questions, asking who it was who called and what they said and where they were going.
Preston scanned the parking lot and streets, ignoring the questions. “Any of those reporters follow you?”
“No, sir, I made sure.”
“You talk to anybody?”
“No, sir, not even the wife.”
He drove into the night without speaking, running the scenario through his head, windows open. Preston hated using the air conditioner. He made a few turns to make sure no one was following them, then headed east on Route 60 until they hit Dogwood, passing the old elementary school.
His family had lived here in his childhood, before moving west of Huntington. His father had brought him to the redbrick building on the left when he was little. His dad called it the Feed Store, though it said
Dogwood Farm Implement Company
on the front. It was a place with a thousand smells of freshly ground corn and molasses and sweet hay and new machinery. His father always let him get a bottle of pop from the refrigerator and a candy bar, and as they passed where the building used to stand, now replaced by a tiny strip mall with a place to have your nails done and a dry cleaners, he could almost taste the Zagnut bar and Mountain Dew, a sweet communion of the past.
The memories came back, flooding like a dam bursting above an unsuspecting town. The kindergartner who was killed at the elementary school crosswalk. The young girl who was with him when he broke away from her grasp. Another scene of flames and people standing around a house engulfed and the screams of a mother whose children were inside. And watching an old dog run down the side of a hill to chase a car, only to see the car slow and then go on. His own dog lying there in the road, lifeless, tongue lolling.
“You think he might be armed?” Mike said.
“I think he might be drunk, and if he has a gun, he’ll probably shoot at anything. We’re going to talk to him, not try and rush him. You got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
They drove into the gathering darkness, their faces illumined by the dashboard light. When they passed a Country Kitchen, Mike shifted in his seat. “You ever eaten at that place? I had some of the best fried chicken in my life, and you can get as much fish or meat loaf or shrimp or whatever you want.”
“Is that how you keep that youthful physique?” Preston said. The kid was nothing but skin and bones and probably had to dance around in the shower to get wet.
“I’ll be honest, Sheriff. I’ve always been able to eat anything I wanted and as much as I wanted. My daddy said I had the metabolism of a tree squirrel.”
“I suspect he was right.”
“My wife, she can’t eat a thing without having to think about it. Walks around looking at herself in the mirror, turning this way and that, wondering where that banana split’s gonna show up.”
“She’s a pretty little thing,” Preston said. “I hope you tell her that.”
Mike furrowed his brow and sat back. “She knows I love her.”
“How?” Preston slowed and turned onto a smaller road that led into the hills.
“I tell her she’s pretty and all. She knows.”
“Just a little advice. You think she knows what’s going on in your head. But unless you tell her, she’s always wondering.”
“How’d you come by that?” Mike said.
“Just go home and ask her after this is over.”
“Ask her what?”
Preston slowed and swerved left when he saw two deer heading for the road. Mike put up his hand, pointing his index finger at one as if pulling the trigger.
“Ask your wife if you could do anything to let her know you love her more. See what she says.”
“You think I don’t love her enough?”
“Didn’t say that. That’s not the question. Question is, does she know it? If a woman doesn’t know she’s loved, she’s always asking the question.”
Mike mulled it over a moment as they hit a dirt road and slowed. “So how do you do it? How do you tell your wife you love her?”
Preston turned off the headlights and pulled the car to the side of the road, turning the key. The moon was high overhead and peeking through the clouds, casting a white glow on the trees that seemed to hover over the road. “Didn’t say I did. Just said I know she needs it.”
Mike laughed and they sat there, the engine clicking as it cooled. Crickets and a million night sounds filled the air, and Preston heard the trickle of a creek nearby.
“If I’m right, the shack is on the right about a hundred yards. If you cross the creek and go up the ridge right here behind that big oak, you should be able to angle over and come out behind it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to head up the road and walk to the front door and raise a ruckus, like there are about five hundred of us. When he bolts out the back door, you’ll be right there.” Preston looked at him. “And that’s what I want you to do, wait until he runs. You got it?”
“What if he starts shooting?”
“Then we got us another problem, don’t we?”
“I suppose so. You want to maintain radio silence?”
Preston nodded. The kid always wanted to make it sound like they were on some military mission, but he could tell it was just nerves. “Yeah, turn your radio off. I’ll watch for you. When you’re in position, give a couple of blips on your flashlight.”
17
I woke up to the sound of air brakes and a fluorescent shining through the skylight and knew we were at a gas station. There are some things you just know after living on the road, like when you’re going over a bridge or when you’ll be driving through the night. Plus, I smelled oil and gas.
The first thing I thought when I realized we were at a gas station was that I needed to tell my dad (even though I knew he wasn’t my real dad) about the dream. I couldn’t shake it out of my head, kind of like the time I got lice and we had to shave my hair off way down to the skin and wash everything in the RV and even toss out my old mattress. At the time we were living near a family that had set up next to us, and I’d go over there and play with the little girl whose name I can’t remember. She had this pretty kitchen set with all these pots and pans, and we’d pretend we were cooking meals for our husbands. I took a nap over there with the girl shortly before I had to get my head shaved, and maybe that’s why we moved on so fast.
There was a siren in the distance getting louder and louder, and then I could even see some red and blue flashing in the skylight before it turned onto the interstate and sped away and then I lost it in the night sounds and the talking and laughing of the truckers.
A gas station late at night has to be one of the loneliest places on the planet. You can get any kind of soda pop you want and all the cherry turnovers or slushies or hot dogs, but the people who work there have the saddest eyes and it always smells like smoke to me. I usually don’t like going inside at that time of day because it feels creepy, but sometimes you just have to go to the bathroom and that’s when my dad goes with me.
When I go to sleep, Dad likes to turn on the radio and drive into the night. One time this doctor lady who gives out advice to anybody who calls said that your parents aren’t necessarily the people who gave birth to you. She said something like, “Anybody can be a sperm donor or give birth to a child, but it takes love to make you a mommy or daddy.” I don’t know what a sperm donor is, but I think she was saying it’s the people who love and care for you who count the most. So maybe that’s why I still want to call him my dad instead of something else.
I slid to the side of my bed and started to open the curtain, but just when I did, there was a noise—the door opening. I thought it had to be my dad, but instead there was a man and woman whispering.
“This is perfect,” the guy said. “Got a big bed in the back.”
“It’s a dump,” the woman said.
“It’ll get us out of here.”
I stayed real quiet, trying not to breathe or move. My dad made the curtain so I could have some privacy. It’s only a piece of cloth, but every time I pull it I feel like I’m in my own little world. I had pulled the curtain before I went to sleep, but I could just barely see through the middle and look at the two as they stood there. The light from outside lit up the back of the RV so I saw their faces in the shadows. The guy was big with cutoff sleeves and he had tattoos on his arms, though I couldn’t see what they were. He had a short haircut and tattered jeans. The backpack he had strung over his shoulder looked pretty heavy, and he put it down by the bathroom door with a thud and got something out.
The girl was scrawny-looking, like she had been the runt of the litter. I could see her cheekbones sticking out, and her arms were thin and tiny. She had hair that was as wild as a tangle of chickweed, and I wondered if she had ever heard of a hairbrush. Made me feel kind of sad for her because I thought she could be really pretty if she took a bath and maybe got a haircut.
She had this suitcase she was carrying, and it looked like it weighed as much as she did. They both were nervous about something. In fact, he pulled the blinds in the back and tried to cover all the windows.
“I think that’s him,” the girl whispered, pointing to the front of the RV.
“Get in the back,” the guy said, and from the drawl and gruff sound of his voice and the way she scampered away, it seemed he was a mean guy used to having people do what he said.
The door opened and the RV dipped as my dad got in. The little buzzer sounded as he put the key in and he started it. There’s a sound to a big engine like this that’s the best thing in the world, I guess because I’ve heard it not be able to start.
The guy below hunkered down trying not to be seen. I wanted to shout out to Dad, but I was afraid that might not be the best thing for us. In the end it didn’t matter because Dad noticed the fellow back there and the guy held up what was in his hand.
“Put it in drive and pull out of here and you won’t get hurt,” the fellow said.
We just sat there and I figured Dad was thinking about me. The girl walked up behind the big guy, and I guess I moved because she glanced up and pulled the curtain back.
“Lookee what we have here,” she cooed.
“June Bug?” Dad said.
“I’m okay,” I yelled.
The big fellow stood and I saw he had a gun. Then I heard another siren and it was closing fast.
“You don’t get this thing on the road, it’ll be the end of your daughter. Drive.”
Dad shifted the RV into gear and moved forward, going around some of the big rigs parked at the truck stop.
“Just head toward the interstate and go west,” the man said.
“June Bug, you come down here,” my dad said.
“Nope,” the guy said. He grabbed my arm and pulled me down so fast that I thought I was on some ride at Six Flags, and the next thing I knew we were all on the floor because Dad jerked the RV to one side.
The guy pointed the gun at me. “You try that again and this June Bug gets squashed, you understand?” He said it like he meant it, and there was a dull sound to his voice like he wouldn’t care if he had to pull the trigger any more than somebody asked him if he wanted ketchup or mustard on his hamburger. His eyes were the meanest things I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of mean things. His tattoos ran from the back of his hand all the way up his arm to his neck. It was some snakelike thing, and right at the top it said
Angel of Death.
“Ow, you’re hurting me!” I looked at the scrawny girl, but she wasn’t doing anything to help.
“I got no problem offing this girl,” the guy said.
“Let her come up here beside me, and we’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
The guy spoke through clenched teeth. “You don’t get it, do you?” He pointed the gun at Dad this time. “You either drive now or she’s in the ditch.”
I was able to sit up enough to see my dad’s eyes in the rearview. He always said there was really no reason to have the mirror because you can’t see out the back except for a sliver if the shades aren’t pulled down. But at the moment I was glad it was there.
“You okay?” Dad said to me.
I nodded and tried to get up, but the guy pushed me back on the bench and this time the scrawny girl sat down beside me and put her arm around my shoulder.
“Drive,” the mean guy said.
“But that’s not the way we’re headed,” I said. “We just came from there.”
The police car racing toward us turned onto the interstate. The woman leaned back, and it felt like she was trembling as it passed.
“It’s all right,” Dad said to me. He had a tone of voice when he was talking to me and another when he was talking to other people. “We’ll take these two wherever they want to go, and then we’ll be on our way.”
The mean guy snickered, which I didn’t think was very nice, but I guess you can’t expect much from such people. Dad put the RV in gear and pulled out. We had to cross a bridge to get over the interstate, and I closed my eyes and started singing.
“Shut up,” the guy said.
I stopped singing and started humming.
The woman pulled me closer. “What is it?”
“We’re going over a bridge. I get scared, so I sing a song and it helps.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” the guy mumbled.
“Why are you scared of bridges?” the woman said.
“I don’t know. I’m afraid of falling in the water.”
“There’s no water down there,” the guy said.
“Doesn’t matter. I still have to sing.” I felt my breath getting shorter and I started to pant, this big knot starting in my chest that made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.
“You go ahead and sing then,” the woman said.
And I did.
Another police car passed on the interstate below us and Dad turned left, finally getting off the bridge. We headed west, the way we had come, and I wondered if we’d ever make it to Dogwood.
That’s when I noticed the funny smell. It wasn’t just the cigarette smoke; it was like they hadn’t had a bath in years. I thought maybe they were carrying something dead in that backpack. I wasn’t about to ask. You might think that her putting an arm around me was a good thing, but when you can’t breathe because of the panic and the smells, well, you can see I was in a bad position.
I pulled away and said, “I need to go back to bed.”
“Stay right where you are,” the mean guy said. He flicked the gun toward me like he was ordering a dog to stay in its kennel.
The guy opened the refrigerator, but there was nothing inside except some water bottles and cans of pork and beans and fruit cocktail. I told him the generator hadn’t worked for a long time and he just grunted. He grabbed a bag of potato chips from inside one of the cupboards and munched on those.
“Where you two headed?” I said. I figured talking with them might be a good idea as long as I didn’t ask the wrong question, but from the look on the man’s face, that was what I had done.
“Shut your piehole.”
I looked at the woman, and she looked down at me with eyes that had big red lines through the whites. “What’s in the bag?” I whispered.
She frowned. “Nothing you need to know about.” She put a finger to her lips. “Just be quiet.”
They say there’s a peace that passes all understanding, and that it’s available to anybody who wants it. I believe in Jesus and I know he lives in my heart, but right then I didn’t have any peace because I thought the guy would rather shoot us than look at us. Sometimes having Jesus in your heart makes you feel good all over, like you know there’s somebody who loves you no matter what, but it was hard to focus on that.
“Watch your speed, Jimmie Johnson,” the mean guy said to my dad. He smirked like he had said the funniest thing ever. “We don’t want them pulling you over and me having to shoot the lot of you.”
I was trying hard to think of something good, and I remembered when I’d first become a Christian. We were down in Florida at this RV park that wasn’t far from a big church and the signs said Vacation Bible School. Some people came by handing out invitations. One man had this hat with mesh netting that hung down, like you see on an African safari. One of the older women oohed and aahed over the Little Mermaid dress I was wearing and said I should ask my mama if I could come. She didn’t know I didn’t have one, but I didn’t let that bother me.
I showed my dad the invite and he wadded it up and was going to toss it, but then I started to bawling and he said, “We don’t even know what kind of church this is.”
I said, “I don’t care what kind it is. I want to go. It starts tomorrow, and they said it doesn’t cost anything.”
The next morning he walked me there, and it seemed this wasn’t something easy for him. We’d been in little country churches out in the boonies before, but this was a big church with big windows and a new parking lot. The lady at the front desk was dressed in a safari outfit too. That was the theme of the week, and they even brought in a real elephant one day which I couldn’t hardly believe. Dad gave the lady my information and said we were staying at the campground.
Instead of being escorted out because we weren’t as well off as everybody else, the lady made me this real nice name tag that said
June
on it, and she gave me a brand-new shirt with a giraffe on the front. I put it on over my other shirt because the air-conditioning was turned up so high it felt like they could have invited penguins for supper. She pinned the name tag on and told my dad where I needed to go, and then I was off in a river of kids to the south wing of the church.
My dad stopped at the big doors, and a lady took my hand and led me down the hallway. I looked back and waved, and when the class started I saw him through the window walking back to the campground, staring at the ground. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him because he had to spend the next three hours alone, and I couldn’t imagine what he was going to do with himself.
But I didn’t let that keep me from having fun because they taught us some songs and had us do motions with hands and feet. It was funny watching the grown-ups because you don’t expect it. I still remember a couple of the songs, and if anybody asked I could sing them, but nobody does.
It was the end of the second day, after they’d gone through the stuff about God making all the animals and that Jesus was the one who created everything and actually came to earth and lived a perfect life so he could be punished for our sins. I didn’t understand it at first because it didn’t make sense that somebody who was perfect should have to die for somebody else who wasn’t. But the more I listened, the more something inside felt like it was being stirred up—like that natural peanut butter that has all the oily stuff on top and doesn’t taste good until you mix it. My dad and I had read Bible stories at bedtime before, but this made it all real. Everybody had done bad things, and instead of turning his back on us and just blowing the whole planet up, God sent his Son to make a way back.