Day One (17 page)

In the parking lot, he caught sight of an older man climbing out of a Suburban. A good omen. Big, expensive truck, fellow coming
rather than going. The way he saw it, the universe was in a giving mood again. Dude like that would have some money in his pocket. Big Ed tacked toward him, not planning anything specific, just some variation on Vegas. As he got closer, he opened his mouth. “Hey, fella—”

The old guy stopped. He wore jeans and battered cowboy boots, a tan shirt and a baseball cap. Early thirties, maybe. Ed moved toward him. The hot, still air thrummed against his eardrums. In his mind, he was thinking he needed to say something, ask for directions. Wasn’t that how it worked? But he was too drunk, and still whipped from his night with the girls. He raised his hands, a lurching B-movie Frankenstein. The old guy stepped inside his reach and threw a fist hard as a hammer into Big Ed’s gut. His breath rushed out of him and he plopped backward onto his ass. For a moment he looked up at the old guy, then dropped his chin and puked into his lap.

The fellow backed away from the acrid spatter. “What the hell you think you’re up to, boy?”

“I’m sorry. I got, I mean ...” His stomach was rolling over in the aftermath of his expulsion. Hard to talk.

“You broke?”

Big Ed nodded, ran the back of one hand across his chin.

“Okay. Not too smart, are you?”

“I graduate college.”

“You do, huh. Let me guess: football scholarship.”

Big Ed nodded. The motion threatened to bring up more vomit, and he leaned to one side.

“Tell you what, kid. Let’s get you inside, get you cleaned up. Then maybe we can figure out what to do with you.”

“You gonna call the cop?”

“Which one?”

“Huh?”

The old guy laughed, then hooked a hand under one of Big Ed’s arms. “You gotta help me out, big boy. I’m not used to hauling the whole goddamn hog all by myself.” The last thing Big Ed remembered was walking across the parking lot toward the hotel.

He awoke in bed, in his own room. The fellow he’d failed to rob sat in a chair near the window, looking out at the brown rise of the Sierra Nevada to the west. When Big Ed stirred, the man turned and looked at him.

“Morning there, big guy.”

“Morning?” Big Ed ran his hand over his face. The inside of his mouth tasted like a sock left at the bottom of the laundry bin.

“You slept all the way through. You were seriously fucked up.” The man grinned. “How do you feel?”

Like someone was cracking two stones together between his ears. “Been better, I guess.”

“I’ll bet.”

Ed threw his legs over the edge of the bed and his stomach lurched. He was wearing a pair of unfamiliar boxer shorts. He wondered what happened to his own underwear. “What’s going on here?”

“Son, it’s like this. I figure you owe me, so I’ve got a proposition for you.”

“A proposition.”

“You’re gonna come do for me.”

“I don’t care what you think was gonna happen in that parking lot. I ain’t sucking your dick.”

The old man kept grinning. “Ain’t like that. I’m offering you a job, big boy. Come back with me, I’ll get you all set up. You know Givern Valley?”

“Never heard of it.”

“You and everyone else. No matter. Southeast Klamath County, tucked away, which has its advantages. And when you get stir crazy,
K-Falls is just an hour down the road. What do you say? I can use a big fellow like you.”

“You don’t know nothing about me.”

“Sure I do. I done some checking while you were sawing logs and belching swamp gas. Linebacker in college, washed out of the pros before they had a chance to learn your name. You’re strong, you’re quick, but you’re stupid. Strong and quick I can use, and stupid I figure I can train out of you.”

Big Ed couldn’t decide whether to get angry or curl up and go back to sleep. He didn’t like being called stupid, but it wasn’t something he hadn’t heard before. He needed to piss, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to attempt upright travel. He wasn’t ready to answer this crazy old fuck from Butthumper, Oregon either. Then the old fellow said something that got his attention.

“I understand you spent some time with a group of young ladies. Good time had by all, if expensive.”

“How the hell you know all this shit?”

“I make friends easy. You can be one of my friends too. I’ll help you out, help you find the missies what walked off with all your cash.”

“And in exchange I work for you.”

“We take care of each other, that’s the way I see it.”

“And if I say no?”

The fellow turned over his hands. “Your choice. You’ll have to figure out how to pay the balance on your room, though I don’t figure you’ll get the chance to attempt another robbery since I already talked to hotel security about you. You walk out of here with me, you won’t have any trouble. You walk out alone ...”

“Jesus.”

“Close enough for your purposes, but you can call me Hiram.”

“What am I supposed to be doing for you?”

“Whatever I tell you to do.” The old man stared at him across the room, lips curled into a grin but his eyes dark and hard. “Son, you and me, we gonna have one helluva party.”

Ten Years Upstream

M
ore than anything else, what Ellie most remembered from the night she surrendered to Stuart for the first time was the smell of mud and beer vomit, and the sound of the Southern-Pacific filling in the gaps between revving tractor engines. All familiar scents and sensations, every tractor pull the same: tooth-rattling racket, sickening clouds of exhaust, flying mud clots observed with open-mouthed expectation by breathless males captivated by noise and horsepower. The tractors themselves would never pull a cultivator or combine. Rob and Brett had once tossed Ellie into the manure lagoon after they caught her sitting in the saddle of their ‘47 John Deere Model M, restored and adored for the Classic Combined division. They claimed she’d scuffed the opalescent green paint.

Fortunately for Ellie, most of the meets featured more than just tractors dragging a variable weight sled across a field. Food stalls and vendor booths inevitably sprang up between the bleachers and the parking area, sometimes a plywood platform where one of a half dozen local country bands might perform—assuming they could be heard over the din. When the family piled out of the pickup at each event, Ellie would immediately flee the frenzy of sound and
churned turf, get a funnel cake or ice cream and occupy herself with the displays of quilts, hand-thrown pottery and Klamath tribal baskets. At the larger competitions, held a couple times a year at Little Liver Dragway and as thick with Westbank townies as country folk, Luellen might make an appearance. But most of the meets were small, less carnival than church picnic with a diesel ambience.

The Victory Chapel Harvest Power Pull came round each September. Fund raiser, Rally Day kick-off for Sunday School, chance for gear heads to show off for the first time after the long summer lay off. The event was held in the field adjacent to the church. Luellen refused to come to Victory Chapel events, which left Ellie on her own to roam among the coagulating scents of fried dough and grilled sausage. Myra followed—mother’s orders—but half a step behind and sullen.

Ellie ignored her as they moved from booth to booth. She looked at myrtle wood puzzle boxes, leather-bound journals, beeswax candles, glass bead earrings their mother would never let them wear.

Before long, Myra folded her arms across her chest. “I want to go watch the pull.”

“Mom said I’m not supposed to leave you alone.”

“This is church, Lizzie. We’re not alone.”

“A tractor pull is not church.”

“Everyone from church is here. We parked in the church parking lot.”

Ellie looked up at the darkening sky. The first stars were just appearing. The shadows beyond the tents and bleachers would be deep enough to hide whatever Myra had in mind. “You just want to go get felt up by your boyfriend.”

“You’re disgusting. I’m telling Mom.”

“Go ahead. I’ll tell her how you gave Trent a pair of your dirty underwear.”

“Bitch.”

Ellie smiled as Myra disappeared into the crowd gathered at the entrance to the beer tent. A while later, she saw a cluster of red sparks under the dark eaves at the back of the church and knew that’s where Myra had ended up, smoking with a clot of middle school friends, Trent Adams among them. Within a year, Myra would have her accident—that’s what everyone called it, the accident. As if dragging a razor across your inner thighs because your boyfriend dumped you the day after he popped your cherry was mere mishap.

Ellie could tell by the sound of the engines out in the field that the Amateur class was done, the Classic Modified finishing up. Super Modified would be next—big, souped-up machines that could haul the sixty-thousand-pound sled the distance. For these tractors, it wasn’t a question of how far, but how fast. For Ellie, it was only a question of how loud. A lot of the stalls were starting to shut down as folks headed for the bleachers. The Supers always drew the big crowd. Ellie headed in the opposite direction.

She made her way past the last line of stalls and into the darkness beyond the event lights. Fall had started to assert itself, and the evening was cool but not uncomfortable. As she moved further from the action, the grinding sound of the engines grew less obtrusive. Ellie could hear the crickets between pulls. She threw her head back. The lights behind her washed out all but the brightest stars, so she continued down the sloping church lawn toward the road. She liked the sensation of the turf springing back against the bottom of her shoes with each step.

A dozen paces ahead, a figure materialized out of the dark shrubs between the lawn and the parking lot, joined quickly by a second. Ellie stopped.

“Well, if it isn’t Lizzie Kern.”

She recognized the voice. Quentin Quinn, a senior, two years older than Ellie. Older brother of the idiot whose finger Ellie had
bitten off. He held a plastic cup in one hand. She knew the boy with him as well. Nate Lewis, also from school. Nate didn’t say anything. Waiting to see what Quentin would do, maybe.

“What do you want?”

“Like you don’t know.” He pointed his middle finger across the cup’s mouth at her. “You fucked up my brother.”

Ellie suppressed a sigh. “That was a long time ago.” She should have gone to watch the Supers.

“Fuck a long time ago, you stupid cow.”

Nate smacked Quentin on the shoulder. “You crack me up, man.”

Quentin grinned. Backlight from the bleachers gleamed on his long, densely packed teeth, a row of sugar corn kernels. He raised his cup, a mock toast, then tossed off its contents in a gulp and threw the cup at her feet. She caught a whiff of beer, likely filched from the beer tent.

“What do you got to say for yourself, psycho?” She’d wandered too far away from the crowd. Too far to run. The church was closer, thirty paces to her left. Probably locked; the windows were all dark. She was alone with Quentin and his stooge beneath the stars. She might yell, but who would hear over the roar of the tractors in the field? Myra and her boyfriend smoking under the eaves at the back of the church? They’d just laugh, if they even noticed.

A band tightened across her stomach. Fear? Anger? She wasn’t sure. Part of her wondered what Quentin and Nate would do if she showed them a little bit of the crazy she’d displayed the day she bit George’s finger off. But they were bigger, older, stronger. Drunk. She drew a breath. She wasn’t sure she had enough crazy in her for two.

“I said I was sorry.”

“Talk don’t grow his finger back.”

Ellie knew George Quinn now treated the missing digit as a badge of honor, waving his middle stub at opportune moments in a play for sympathy or to elicit squeals from girls on the bus. People
called him Hilarious George. He even came to the house with Brett from time to time, usually when Ellie wasn’t there. Quentin wasn’t here for his brother. She took a step back and started to turn, but he lunged forward and grabbed her forearm.

“Not so fast, psycho.”

“Let go of me.”

“Maybe I want a bite of something first.” She could hear the beer in his humorless laugh. She tried to wriggle free, but Quentin only tightened his grip.

“We all know what George wanted, don’t we, psycho?”

All that pudding ...

“Please, stop—”

His free hand hooked under her armpit, pulled her back toward him. His breath smelled like half-digested bread. Off in the darkness, Nate slapped his hands together and huffed, a breathy singsong of anticipation. The sound filled her with a sudden terror, as if she’d only in that moment come to understand what they intended to do to her. Quentin thrust his forearm up under her chin, forcing her teeth together. His free hand slapped across her chest, kneaded her breasts like he was softening up a ball of clay. In the distance, Ellie heard the urgent shriek of a Super blasting across the field, followed by the cheers of spectators. “Nate, help me hold her down, man.”

“How about you let her go instead, asshole?”

Not Nate’s voice. Ellie twisted. Stuart Spaneker strode down the lawn out of the darkness. The bleacher lights were at his back so she couldn’t see his face. But his posture and stature were familiar, as was his shaggy head, even in silhouette. She’d spent much of spring and all of summer avoiding him after the note in health class.