Inside the store, the air-conditioning was already on full blast in anticipation of the coming heat. Lena walked past the coffee machine and grabbed herself a Coke. As she paid, she had the vague feeling that she knew the woman working behind the counter, probably from high school, but neither one of them was particularly interested in starting up a conversation. Lena dropped her extra pennies into the cup and headed back out the way she had come.
She stood on the sidewalk, waiting for the traffic to clear. The motel was directly across the street, and she saw that some creative vandals had broken the lights in the sign so that at night ‘Home Sweet Home’ would turn into, ‘Ho eet me.’ What else had the vandals done to the motel? Were they the ones who had scratched the red X in front of Lena ‘s door? The mark was bothering her. She wondered how long it had been there and if someone was trying to send her a message. Whatever it meant, she wasn’t getting it. Still, she looked around as she waited for a truck to pass, her skin tingling, her gut telling her that she was being watched.
As casually as she could, Lena glanced over her shoulder. The woman behind the counter at the convenience store was staring out the window.
Candy, Lena suddenly remembered. That was her name. They had called her ‘Corny’ because someone had said that she walked like she had a corncob stuck up her butt.
There were times that Lena thought she wouldn’t take all the money in the world to be back in high school.
The traffic cleared and she popped open the Coke as she started to cross the street, wondering how in the hell Hank’s shitty bar had managed to help put Sibyl through college and bail out Lena more times than she wanted to admit. The Hut was a three o’clock bar, the kind where everyone started to look good around three in the morning. Desperation hovered like a black cloud over the place, and she suppressed a shiver as she got closer to the building.
The bar didn’t even have a sign out front; everybody knew what it was. The roof was thatched on
the front, but what looked like a case of mange had set in around fifteen years ago and Hank hadn’t bothered to fix it. Tiki torches with orange and red lightbulbs banked the front door, which was painted to look as if it had been fashioned from grass. The exterior walls were decorated in a similar theme, but the paint was so faded you couldn’t tell what you were looking at unless someone gave you a clue. There were windows all along the front, but they had been painted black so long ago that they had taken on the appearance of rotten wood.
The yellow ATF tape across the door was the only thing that looked new. Hank hadn’t told her the bar had been closed. There were only two reasons to explain the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms paying a visit to the Hut: either Hank had been caught selling liquor to underage patrons or he’d been caught dealing drugs.
Lena tried the door, but it was locked. She put her hand on top of the jamb and felt for the spare, but it wasn’t in its usual place.
She gave up and walked around the side of the building. She didn’t need to get inside the bar anyway. Hank’s office, which bore a closer resemblance to an outhouse, was tucked behind the bar on the edge of a slow-running stream.
Lena tried the shed door just in case, but it was locked, too. Hank must have locked it himself; there was no sign of ATF tape on the shack. The federal boys probably hadn’t bothered to get a warrant for the shed. The drug trafficking going on inside the bar would’ve been enough to make the headlines.
She put down her can of Coke and pushed her hands against the small window tucked high on the creek side, but it would not budge. A rock helped, and the untempered glass shattered into a million pieces, some of it falling into the open mouth of her soda can. Lena found a stick and used it to knock away the broken glass. Still, she didn’t like the idea of climbing blind through the window. What’s more, it was high up, probably too high to get to without a ladder. She had done stupider things, but at the moment, Lena was hard-pressed to remember what.
Out of frustration, she kicked the wall, mad at herself and this idiotic situation. The board made a hollow sound, and she kicked it harder until the wood splintered. A few more kicks created a nice hole in the shack. She cringed as she reached in and pulled out the pink insulation, sneezing from the dust, wondering if she was inhaling asbestos. There were black flakes of mold and excrement from animals that she didn’t want to think about, but she pulled out enough fiberglass to expose the backside of the paneling that lined the inside office. She used her foot again, kicking out the plywood, which made a cracking sound as it pulled away from the rusted penny nails holding it to the studs.
A few minutes later, Lena was inside Hank’s office.
She brushed off her jeans as she looked around, trying to find the light switch. She pushed away a spiderweb, then realized that it was actually the cord for the overhead light. Lena tugged the string and the bare bulb flickered on, then made a loud pop as it blew.
Lena cursed again. She had a flashlight in her car, but she didn’t want to go back and get it.
Instead, she used the light coming in through the broken window to look for the spare bulbs Hank always kept in his desk. He had wired the office himself using a hundred-foot extension cord he’d snaked through a piece of metal pipe and plugged in at the bar. This was not the first time the light had blown. She found the pack of bulbs in the bottom drawer and changed the light, trying not to think about what her hands might find in the dark. Her feet crunched on the broken glass as she twisted the bulb, the socket making a dry, crackling sound as she tried to get the right angle. Finally, the light came on and the sudden heat from the bulb made her jerk back her hand.
She wasn’t just being paranoid. Hank had almost electrocuted himself a couple of times trying to change the bulb.
Lena looked around the airless room, which was wallpapered with posters from beer and liquor companies. Half-naked women stared back at her, most of them fellating bottles they held in their hands. White cartons stuffed with paperwork that dated back to the bar’s grand opening were stacked against the back wall, leaving about ten square feet for a desk and two chairs. Piles of receipts were in shoeboxes scattered around the desk.
Six years ago, Lena had sat in one of those stupid plastic chairs across from Hank, drinking so much Jack Daniel’s that she made herself sick, as she tried to work up the courage to tell him that Sibyl was dead.
Was that when he had started using again? Had the news that his beloved girl, his favorite niece, was dead, been what had finally thrown him over the edge?
Or had it started six months ago when Hank had taken Lena to the abortion-clinic? He had stood outside the building, chain-smoking cigarettes, listening to angry protestors with their disgusting signs screaming about hell and damnation, condemning Lena and everybody else in the clinic to hell for their sins.
Had she done this to him? Had Lena ‘s actions helped put the needle back in his arm?
The guy with the red swastika had helped, too -she was certain of it. Lena had to find the man, to figure out who he was working for. Guys like that were muscle. There was a brain somewhere, and once Lena found that brain, she would burn his fucking house down with him inside.
Lena sat in Hank’s chair, the springs squeaking like an old barn door. The top drawer to his desk was locked, and she took her folding knife out of her back pocket and flicked open the blade from the white pearl handle. The lock jimmied open easily enough. In the drawer, she found Hank’s business checkbook, a couple of free coupons to Harrah’s casino up in the mountains, and his spare set of keys to the bar. The larger drawers contained files that seemed mostly to do with the running of the business. Liquor distributors, payroll, taxes, and insurance. She flipped back through the checkbook and saw the last balance was dated three weeks ago. At the time, he had around six thousand dollars in the bank.
What date had the bar been closed down? She would have to find out from the sheriff’s office. She wondered if that old fart Al Pfeiffer was still running the show and had to smile at the thought of going into his office, flashing her gold shield in the fucker’s face. Pfeiffer had a neat trick where he pulled over young girls for speeding and frisked them to within an inch of their ovaries. He had pulled over Lena once and taken a few liberties before she had figured out what was going on and slammed her knee into his groin. Pfeiffer had thrown her into jail without charging her or giving her a phone call. She had sat in the cell for six hours before Hank had come down to the station to file a missing persons report.
His face. God, she could still see Hank’s face. There was this split second when he saw her coming out of the jail when his eyes filled with tears and his mouth opened, letting out this yelp-like sound when he realized that she was okay. Just as quickly, his mouth had closed into an angry frown, and he had cuffed her on the back of the head, asking her what the hell she was doing getting herself into trouble, who the hell she thought she was sassing the police. He hadn’t wanted to hear her story. Pfeiffer was one of his AA buddies and Hank thanked the man for not formally charging her.
Still, his face…
Lena had seen that same transformation so many times now that she’d come to think of Hank in almost schizophrenic terms. One second, the loving guardian who would do anything for her, the next second the angry disciplinarian threatening to beat her to within an inch of her life.
And now the drug addict – back to that old role again, waiting for the curtain to finally come down.
She put her elbows on the desk and dropped her head into her hands. The shack was like a kiln, and she felt sweat rolling down her back and into the waist of her jeans. Still, she sat there, heat engulfing her body, the water in the creek a constant murmur as she thought about Hank, the way he had looked in the shower, the hard words he had used when he told her to leave.
There had to be an explanation for his disintegration. Did the bar’s closing send him into a spiral? Was that what had finally pushed him back into his old ways? Lena looked around the cramped office, trying to put herself in Hank’s mind. He had no love for this place. He had always seen the Hut as a way to make money and nothing else. There was almost a perverse pleasure he got from being a recovering alcoholic and having the strength to be around liquor all day without imbibing. Had it been a crutch all these years?
She pushed herself back from the desk, her shoe sliding on a piece of paper. Lena reached down to pick it up, her hand freezing midair as she stared at the light blue notepaper on the concrete floor. The handwriting was a perfect cursive, the kind they used to teach in school back when it mattered. The words were easy to read from this distance, but still, she picked up the paper and sat back in the chair so she could study it. She had to read through the page two more times before the words started to make sense.
Lena rummaged through the desk, looking for the rest of the letter. She moved the shoeboxes and found three more pages underneath, then a few more that had fallen behind the desk. When she put them together, Lena found that there was not just one but three letters, all dated within the last two months. She read through them, feeling like she was reading someone’s diary. The notes were banal in parts, listing details of shopping for groceries and picking up the kids after school. Some of it was intensely personal, the kinds of things you shared only with a close friend.
Finished, Lena pressed her palm flat against the stack of letters, fingers splayed out, as if she could divine their true meaning.
How had she been so blind?
TUESDAY AFTERNOON
EIGHT
Al Pfeiffer lived as far from Elawah County as you could get and still be in the state of Georgia. Dug Rut was a border town on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp, which meant that the trip would take Jeffrey and Sara into a primitive wetland known mostly for its alligators and mosquitoes, both of which could kill a man. In high school, Jeffrey and two of his friends had planned to take a few weeks during their summer vacation and explore the swamp, but that was the same year that
Deliverance
came out, and even though the movie was filmed in the north Georgia mountains, it was enough to turn any man off the idea of canoeing.
Still, Jeffrey remembered a little bit about the wetlands from his reading. He knew that the headwaters of the Suwannee and the Saint Marys rivers were located in the swamp, each eventually draining to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, respectively. Hundreds of endangered birds and mammals resided in the protected wildlife refuge and the plant life was of the sort you would expect to see in a science-fiction film. The place was as cut off as it was remote, and families tended to live and die there without seeing the rest of the world. Back in the early 1900s, there were folks living in the swamp who still had not yet heard that the Civil War was over. Not much changed in their lives when they got the news.
The ride down was a quiet one. Sara hadn’t had much to say when Jeffrey got back to the motel. Oddly, she had cleaned the bathroom, something she seldom did at home unless she was pissed at Jeffrey or knew that her mother was coming over. She had actually seemed proud about bringing a shine to the crappy fixtures. For Jeffrey’s part, he had stared at the tub while he was taking a leak, fighting the urge to redirect the stream and mess up Sara’s handiwork. If he’d wanted a wife who took pleasure out of cleaning a toilet, he would’ve married his high school sweetheart back in Alabama.
Sara had listened politely as Jeffrey had relayed the details he’d gotten from Nick about the Brotherhood, the meth business running up the eastern seaboard, the possibility that Elawah might be a stop along the cartel’s railroad. She’d nodded, but not offered her opinion on anything. She hadn’t asked him what he’d hoped to accomplish by talking to Al Pfeiffer or how any of this tied in to Lena. Part of him had hoped she would. Jeffrey wasn’t sure how to answer those questions himself. Talking it out with Sara might have helped him understand.