Read Kings of the Earth: A Novel Online
Authors: Jon Clinch
Tags: #Fiction - General, #Brothers, #Family Life, #General, #Literary, #American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, #Fiction, #Rural families
Donna
W
HEN THEY BROUGHT
her brother in, she was waiting under the portico where the ambulances pull up. Emergency had called the third-floor nurses’ station and she’d dropped everything and come right down, skipping the balky elevator at that end of the building and taking the stairs two at a time and tearing down the hall and reaching the portico before he did. The troopers hadn’t called an ambulance. Del Graham just drove him straight over from the barracks in his patrol car, like a member of the family using his own vehicle. It was only a mile or two. Audie sat in the back with Preston. Actually he lay on his side with his head on Preston’s lap. His teeth were chattering as if he were freezing to death in that bright, hot patrol car and he was saying something over and over again that nobody could make out. Not even Preston. Chapman had returned to his office to see about other things.
They didn’t admit him overnight, but they may as well have for as long as it took. Preston went with Graham to get his car and came back. He sat in the waiting room reading a Syracuse paper that was more than a week old and a Hollywood gossip magazine that was a lot older than that, wondering with every page he turned how many kinds of contagion he might be picking up on his hands. He didn’t recognize a single soul in the gossip magazine and it made him feel old and out of touch. All those celebrities were just regular people to him. After he was finished he stood up and went over to check out the vending machines. It was going on one o’clock and he hadn’t had any lunch yet and he didn’t feel like finding the cafeteria because who knew when they’d be done with Audie. A package of Cheez Doodles caught his eye but before he put in any money he remembered the time he’d spent with the newspaper and the magazine and he went to the men’s room to wash his hands. He came back and got the Cheez Doodles and ate them, then folded up the package and tucked it into his shirt pocket rather than get up. He paged through a cooking magazine and used it to brush orange cheese dust from his trousers and he saw there on his lap the greasy imprint of Audie’s old head from the ride over. He sighed.
When Donna came out from the back and found him in the waiting room, half asleep with the cooking magazine in his fist and a little trace of orange powder staining his lower lip, she ran over with a panicky look that said,
Not twice in one day
.
“Hey,” he said, rousing himself. “How’s Audie?”
She said never mind Audie, Audie was going to be all right, how was he?
“I’m fine, fine. I rode your brother down to the barracks, and I thought I’d ride him home when he’s ready.”
“I didn’t know. I thought you’d—”
“I didn’t think he ought to go in the patrol car.”
“Right. That was kind of you.”
“I guess. It didn’t do him much good.”
“We do what we can,” she said. “Those brothers of mine.”
Preston blinked and put down the magazine and rubbed at a little orange stain he’d found on his shirt front, making it worse.
“They’re putting him on a sedative,” she said. “He’s going to be fine, but it’ll be a while.”
“Because—”
“Because it always is. Everything takes forever. You know hospitals.”
“I know this one pretty good. I’ve read everything there is to look at around here except the VD flyers. I had enough of them in the army.”
Donna smiled and stood there for a minute, and then she sat down in the chair next to Preston’s. She leaned in close and lowered her voice. “Tell me,” she said. “What did they ask him?”
“Nothing special. Background stuff. The usual, I guess.”
She slumped forward a little with her hands folded on her lap, shaking her head. “It doesn’t take much, does it?”
“No,” said Preston. “It doesn’t take much.”
Audie
I
WOKE UP
in the bed and all the lights were on and Donna was in the chair. I don’t think those lights ever do go off. Donna wasn’t there to be a nurse, so a different nurse came in and sat me up by pushing on a button and the bed moved. Donna smiled to see me come up. She said they were going to let me go home and I asked how long they’d had me to start with and she said not too long. The doctor came in to sign papers. He asked me how I felt and I said I’d feel better once I got out of the hospital and Donna said something to him and he laughed like he didn’t really mean it. They had me in a dress made out of blue paper and it made a noise when he touched it. He asked me if I’d mind him taking a look at my backside before he let me go. I said I didn’t have any trouble with my backside that I knew of but go on ahead and Donna said go on ahead and he sat me up straight and pulled at the paper dress. He said oh my he’d never seen anything like that in all his years. That rooster tattoo I got way back. He said had I ever got any medical care for that and I said I never got any medical care for anything until this very day. This was the first time and everybody must have done a pretty good job because I felt all right. He stood there clucking at it until he let me go and I got my clothes on and Donna brought me home. I was glad to be out of that dress. It was late and Creed had the milking done and I felt bad about that but he said it was all right. I didn’t need to worry. That was what he said.
Tom
“H
ENRI GIVE ME A CALL
yesterday,” Nick said.
Tom put down his beer and reached over for some Chex Mix. He got a handful and picked through it to filter out the tasteless bagel bits and those hard little dried peas with the horseradish powder that they put in there to make you thirsty. He didn’t say anything.
Nick went on. “He told me all about the new setup. He had an idea I might not know about it and he was right.”
“What new setup?” Crunching the Chex Mix.
“You know.”
“Maybe I don’t know.”
“The deal he cut with you and your old man. Him selling our stuff up there. Us buying more of his stuff for down here.”
“Oh,” said Tom, going for some more Chex Mix.
“That
setup.”
“How come I had to hear about it from Henri?”
“I was getting around to telling you.”
“When?”
“When I figured out how to do it so you wouldn’t feel stupid for not thinking of it yourself.”
“I don’t feel stupid. I feel got around.”
“I’m sorry.”
Nick waved for the bartender’s attention and tapped on the side of his glass for a refill. “I told you we go way back. Me and Henri.”
“I know that. I remember.”
“You can’t keep secrets from old Nick.”
“I know. That’s why I was going to tell you any minute now.”
“Especially if the secret means more work for me.”
“More work, more money. I don’t see the problem.” Picking through the Chex Mix.
“It ain’t balanced. It ain’t fair like it used to be. You got a cigarette?”
Tom gave him one and lit him a match. “Sure it’s balanced. Everybody gets paid for what he does.”
“I already don’t get paid as much as you. And now I bet I’m gonna get less.”
“You don’t grow the stuff, and you don’t process it, and you don’t cut the big deals with the Canuck.”
“I used to. With Henri, I mean.”
“Things change.”
“Now look,” said Nick. He pointed at the bowl, which by now held pretty much nothing but wasabi peas and bagel bits and dust. “That right there is exactly what I’m talking about.”
“What.”
“That’s the kind of person you are.”
“I don’t—”
“The kind of person only thinks of himself. No concern for the next guy.”
“Oh come off it.”
“Shit.” Nick stubbed out his cigarette. “Here I am getting the short end of the stick, and it used to be my stick.”
“Now come on.”
“Remember that? It used to be my fucking stick.”
“It’s still your stick.”
“Sure it is.”
“It’s both of our stick. Except it’s bigger now. There’s more stick to go around.”
“You can’t prove that by me.” He looked down at the bar and then looked up again, square at Tom. “Ever heard of dancing with what brung you?”
“I’m not much for dancing.”
“Like hell you’re not. Henri said you danced just fine up there in Montreal. He said your daddy danced even better than you.”
DeAlton
S
O DROP HIM
. Cut him off.
Guys like that are a dime a dozen. The sooner you learn that, the better you’ll do in this life.
I know, I know, but I don’t care. He can’t possibly have a line on every damned pot smoker in the county. Nobody ever gave him sole rights to that information. Nobody ever gave him this territory on an exclusive basis. You didn’t. I sure as hell didn’t.
There’s ways to find out. Use your head. It won’t be a big deal.
You cut him off and get him out of the picture and the sooner you do it the better.
So what if he does? I assure you that Henri isn’t going to start selling through the both of us. Who’s got the money? You tell me that. Who’s got the money?
That’s right, we’ve got the money. Henri’s a businessman and he’s going to go with the people who’ve got the money. He can’t afford to be sentimental. And he’s sure as hell no idiot.
If you won’t cut him off I will.
That’s right. He’s just a little fish and I’ll throw him back myself if you won’t.
On second thought, no. You do it. Consider it part of growing up.
Donna
O
N HIS WAY HOME
for lunch, Graham saw Donna’s car turn up the dirt lane. He thought that with her as a buffer it might not be out of line to swing by, see how Audie was doing. So he touched the brakes and made the turn, switching on the air-conditioning and rolling up his windows rather than let the patrol car fill up with the dust that her car had raised.
He found them in the house. The temperature had gone up to well over ninety-five and the humidity was higher than that and there wasn’t much air moving. The windows were open and the gray lace curtain poked through one of them like a tongue and hung listless against the gray sill and the gray clapboards. He didn’t knock because they saw him on the porch and Donna opened the door. She was in her hospital greens and she hadn’t sat down yet and she never sat down the whole time he was there. He figured he knew why.
Creed was the first to speak. “You want one of them hamburgers, you go on help yourself.” Looking at Graham but pointing at an open sack that Donna had brought up from McDonald’s in town. “We already had our lunch and they won’t keep too good.” Donna looked frustrated. Graham said thank you but he was due to make up a Rotary meeting out at the Homestead, so he couldn’t stay long. Creed advised him to have the chicken and biscuits and he said he just might if they had it.
Audie had his mouth full of burger regardless of what he’d had to eat already, and he grinned at him around it.
“I just came out to see how you were doing,” Graham said.
Audie made some response through the burger and Creed said his brother was doing just fine now that he had two lunches in him. The one they already had and the second one their sister brought.
Donna asked if he was here with more questions for Audie and he told her no. He didn’t have any questions for Audie other than how he’d been doing since they’d let him out of the hospital. “That’s all through,” he said. He put out his hand to Audie and Audie took it. “I’m glad to see you’re doing all right.” He gave Audie’s hand a good hard squeeze and Audie squeezed back as if it were a competition and Graham extracted himself. Then he stepped toward the door.
Donna followed him and opened it and said as they stepped out, “He’s still on medication right now. A sedative.”
“I wondered. It wasn’t my business to ask.” He drew breath and looked back through the rusty screen at the two brothers making ready to come back out. “It seems to be doing him good.”
“I think he has another day or two on it. We’ll see.”
Graham lifted his damp shirt away from his skin. He looked around the porch and took note of the ashtray on the arm of the overstuffed chair that Vernon had always favored. There were some twists of something probably not quite tobacco in it still and he asked about them, pointing. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“I thought you didn’t come here to ask questions.”
“I didn’t. I just—”
“My brother had cancer. Marijuana gave him some comfort.”
“You know where he got it?”
“I’d tell you he grew it himself if you’d let it drop.”
“Is that so?”
“As far as anybody ever told me. They grow a lot of things around here.”
“Then I’ll let it drop,” said Graham.
“Creed used to run a still up there in the woods,” she said. “A little bit of marijuana isn’t that big a reach.”
“No,” said Graham. “I guess it isn’t. Like I said, I’ll let it drop. No harm done.” Then he tipped his flat-brimmed hat and left.
Del
I
WOULD HAVE LET IT GO
. I meant to. Not just because of what the sister said, but because those two old men had endured enough. They’d endured enough and they were going to have to endure more before it was over, so there was no sense adding to it now. Another individual might have pursued it regardless and I might have been that other individual under different circumstances, but not under these.
Imagine me showing up at their doorstep with a search warrant.
You could say I’d let myself feel overly sympathetic toward those two. That’s been suggested before, and it’ll be suggested again, but I don’t believe it’s entirely true. I was perfectly prepared to come out and make the arrest when the time came. When Ben Wilson made his decision or the grand jury sent down a charge or however it shaped up. I’m not rationalizing. Another man might lie to himself and say he didn’t want a bunch of drug charges confusing the larger issue, when all he really wanted was to give those two a break. But that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying plainly that I didn’t want those two old men to suffer over this on top of everything else. When it wasn’t the least bit necessary and no one on earth would be served by it.
I’d said my good-byes to the sister and I was getting into my car when Creed and Audie came out of the barn. Audie was saying something to his brother, and whatever it was it made them both laugh. They were very happy right then. They caught sight of me and Audie said something else to Creed and Creed passed it on. He said they were about to take the tractor and go up to the creek that lay just beyond the property line and get their feet wet for a while. They’d cooled off that way on hot afternoons ever since they were boys. He asked if I might like to come along. The sun was straight overhead and I was wringing wet so I said yes, yes I would.
Creed drove, and you would have thought Audie was on a carnival ride down at the beach. To take that much pleasure from such a simple thing is most definitely a gift, although I suppose it’s the kind of gift that’s more or less forced on some people for lack of an alternative.
We rode up through the pasture and came to a wire gate, and Audie jumped off and opened it. We went through and he closed it again and we rode along an overgrown tractor path that must have been left over from their father’s day, right along the edge of a little copse of trees that started near the family graveyard and went on for a good while. The shade felt nice and the moving air felt even better. It was along that tractor path, well past the graveyard, that I realized I had a problem. Out there among the trees were thirty, maybe forty mature marijuana plants that I could see from the tractor. That amounts to a major crop, more than those old men could use if they lived a million years. And from the way they tooled past on the tractor, they had no idea of its value.
It put me in mind of that nephew of theirs, the one with the attitude. I wondered what his mother knew, if she knew anything. I figured I had some work to do.
We kept going and we got to the creek and Creed parked the tractor with the front wheels right in the water. We put our feet in for twenty minutes or so, and even though my heart wasn’t entirely in it at that point and my mind was going a million miles an hour I must say that it was lovely. Very cool and refreshing. Sometimes when I’m having a rough patch at work, I catch myself being envious of anyone who can finish off his lunch hour that way. But not too envious. Not entirely.