Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2) (4 page)

“Just calm down. I don’t blame you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I put my hand on her shoulder and tried to pull her toward me.

“You’re not getting it. Or maybe I’m not explaining it right. But I’m not worried about whether or not you blame me. What I’m worried about is what my mom said.” Alex pointed to a pair of suitcases, a garment bag and a little matching duffle bag on the ground by the Jeep’s passenger-side door.

“What did your mom say, exactly?”

“That you are the only one who can protect me from Odelia Lewis and her dirty, evil ways.”

I put my hands up and tried to wave her off. The superstitious bullshit annoyed me more now than ever. “Alex, I’m not sure—”

She cut me off. “My mom said I have to stay with you.”

TWO

Billy Lewis was a thorn—nothing more, nothing less. I could yank him from my heel and smash him any time I wanted. But he wasn’t a murderer. We went to high school together before he went down to live with his grandpap, Charlie, so I knew him the best out of the whole bunch. He was a poacher, a thief, and a low-level weed dealer, but he wasn’t a murderer. Murder was more his grandpap’s style. Billy had once bragged about stealing a bunch of medical equipment from the clinic in Elkins before burning it down. In my mind he wasn’t as much evil as bad. A delinquent. Not the devil. Yet.

Billy Lewis and his kin represented the cold I’d catch if I ever went back home. Growing up, I thought every family had an enemy who stole shit from their property, who burned barns down and raised the kind of hell that kept your parents up at night worrying. Stealing livestock and poaching was everyday stuff for the Lewises. Family traditions passed down like making apple butter and bailing hay for me and Janie and Katy and Ben. Kid stuff. And the Lewises got worse the older they got.

My dad talked about them the same way he’d talk about cancer or Nazis. Billy’s uncle Len was a professional prison snitch. He was serving time for knocking off a bunch of Walgreens for pseudoephedrine to make meth. Before that he got caught stealing hillbilly heroin from the VA in Clarksburg. Billy’s cousin, Curtis, paid for police protection for his meth lab from money he made dealing at high school football games. Billy’s grandfather, Charlie Lewis, once stabbed a guy with a screwdriver for making eyes at his wife in a supermarket.

But my folks never said more to me and Janie than they had to. Everything I knew about the Lewises, I overheard. Growing up, they were the only boogeymen I ever feared.

These mountains, for so many years were like a prison. Even though a world existed beyond these ridges, I never quite knew how to get there. Things like hunting season, buckwheat cakes, and ginseng had been written into my DNA.

So I guess I couldn’t blame myself for letting the idea of revenge root itself in my mind. It was as much a part of me as my bones and skin.

A slight scrape gave way to the fluid embrace of the river as the little rubber raft left the put-in beach. With nothing but water beneath us, we floated across the frictionless green river. The water’s surface swirled with the effects of the uneven underwater topography. A leaf falling into the river couldn’t be certain if it would end up upstream or downstream from where it landed.

Sunrise hadn’t woken me up this morning. Thinking about Billy Lewis dropping Jane into a frigid river kept me awake all night. The sheriff told us she slipped on ice while jogging out by Deckers Creek. He believed she slid down the bank.

I didn’t buy it for a second, even back in January. Their apartment was way up on the other side of Ruby Hospital. Alex said when they jogged, they ran to the stadium and then up to Star City or out past the Mileground. But back in January I’d been able to suppress my suspicion because of the way the rest of my family gave into it. I felt like I owed it to Jane to keep my head.

We ferried across the current below Ohiopyle Falls then allowed the flow to carry us back to the trip. Mike Duff was telling the rafters about eddying out. He loved this part of the job—the BS and the bad jokes. Stuff like, “These are paddles, not oars. Oars stand on street corners and give you syphilis for money.”

Alex tugged on the straps of her lifejacket, like it was still too loose, and said, “I slept better last night than I have in months. It feels like nobody will ever find me here.”

I felt real bad for bringing her on the river with me and making her sleep in the back of the Jeep. She was used to her beach house and shopping trips to Pittsburgh with her mom. But there was no way I could take her back to the guide house and risk her getting tetanus or cooties or worse. And I didn’t know how else to protect her. We talked a lot last night and I got her to relax a little when I told her we could go back to West Virginia after Memorial Day, even if the thought of going home made me a little sick.

Changing the subject, I said, “What were your plans for this summer?”

“Well, I had an internship in Charleston for a wind energy lobby. But this semester wasn’t very kind to me. And besides, my dad thinks getting involved with anything that isn’t coal in West Virginia is a bad career move.” She didn’t look at me when she spoke. “I’m the first one in my family to go to college, so I guess I have to finish no matter what. My daddy ain’t going to be too happy if I don’t go back in the fall.”

She caught her slipped ‘ain’t’ and shook her head for another go. “
Isn’t
going to be happy. Might have to miss the beach this year and everything. My dad and his brothers have a big house right in Nag’s Head and they have a bonfire every night and beer and all kinds of food like barbeque pork and blue crabs and biscuits. But my mom says that might not happen this year and I should try to get used to the idea that things need to blow over. Like it’s already cancelled, no matter what. So I’m trying to accept the idea that this spring, and now this summer, never happened. I hope fall can be a do-over. You going back?”

I watched the rafts spin and bounce through Entrance, keeping an eye on boats stuck on rocks, hoping they’d be able to get their asses off by the time we got down there. This was usually where I’d put a pinch of Copenhagen in my lip. “Seems kind of pointless to pursue school, you know? Talk about do-overs. At this rate I’ll be twenty-five when I graduate.”

I looked downstream for a long time. “I guess I should’ve been using this time to find out what really happened, or if it’s even possible to find out instead of hiding out up here like a rabbit. And, I guess if I do find there is somebody to blame, well, it’s my duty to retaliate.”

She looked at me, her eyes reflecting the chicory-blue sky. “Sorry for bringing it up.”

“Alex,” I said, “Billy Lewis. What if he did do it? Then I’m a fool for not reacting. And a damn coward.”

“Listen to me. You’ve been able to stay here and go on with your life. Don’t let your mind run away with this. I loved Janie like a sister. She wouldn’t want this. She saw your lives getting better, not worse, you know?” She put her other hand on top of mine. “You have friends and a life here, right?”

“Well, somebody has to do something. Morally? Like it’s ‘part of the code’ or some shit?” I felt trapped on the raft, which until now, I’d been enjoying.

“Well, revenge backfires, so you’d better think about what you want to do.”

Her words knocked a little wind out of me.

“Just wait, okay? There will be a better time. I’ll have to talk to my daddy. Maybe he can help. If you want to file a civil suit he has guys who can advise you on how to proceed. But this redneck stuff never ends well. That family is crazy. My daddy said I was not to get close to a single one of them. He told me a story, from back when he was first dating my mom, that Charlie Lewis and his brothers drove to Florida for a wedding they hadn’t been invited to. He beat up the groom, then left. Drove down and back non-stop to prove a point, so you need to think before you do anything.”

“That’s fine.” And I knew I should’ve kept my mouth shut, but my mind still wasn’t super clear. After a long pause I said, “Just out of curiosity, how long were you thinking you’d need to hide out?”

She closed her eyes.

“Sorry. Alex…” I put my hand on her knee. “That didn’t come out how I meant it.”

“It’s okay. But since you asked, I’m going to stay for as long as it’s not safe to go back.” She put her sunglasses on and stared at me. I couldn’t quite tell if she was angry or not, so I paddled.

So many times I’d guided this stretch of whitewater, face to the sun without a care in the world. The soft rubber, heated in the afternoon light felt so good against the bare skin on my legs. Cloudless skies and a glassy calm reflected it all heavenward. Trees towered over their reflected twins, helping me feel like I was a part of something much larger.

From a raft on this river my problems were distant. I rarely thought of them when I guided. I knew nothing of politics or current events when I paddled. Nothing of pop culture or gossip. I was an island adrift in a stream of calm, and outside forces couldn’t affect me. A universe, albeit a small one, existed between these two mountains.

Experiencing the river through Alex made me love it that much more. She focused on the next few yards, always trying to be aware of rocks and waves, always listening for my next command. A drop over a small ledge knocked her over toward me. I steadied her. She tucked her sunglasses into her life jacket, her honey-blond hair relaxed on her brown shoulders. Her blue eyes scanned the banks, taking in the rocks and birds and laurel. I told her how Cucumber Falls was named for all the copperheads there because copperheads are supposed to smell like cucumber. She laughed as we spun into eddies and she squealed when frigid water splashed onto her arms and down her back. I smiled as she took in the chaotic bliss of my river.

We kept our distance from the group, floating what was left of the Loop with ease. I taught her about J-strokes and the difference between waves and hydraulics. I told her stories about Duff and Smurf and Bo and Rich and Chaz, about my first time on the Cheat.

In the long stretch of flat water that came between Railroad and Dimple, I thought, for the first time, it might be possible to accept what happened to Jane was an accident. I looked at Alex, and thought, maybe it would be okay to love her.

But optimism, I knew, was ephemeral, like a long, slow drag from a joint. A little burn as I held it in my lungs, a little cough as I let it out.
A few hours with your head buzzing, your hands unable to hold the strings down, your feet unable to take you away from the cold place that hurt so badly to remember, even if it hurt worse to forget
.

I figured anything I’d ever have with Alex would always exist in the shadow of Janie. So I inhaled, and tried to let in the green that would push the cold out.

The green of these mountains in my lungs smelled like an old friend, one who wouldn’t tell lies to you. One who understood. One who knew pain didn’t go away just because you wanted it to. And when I exhaled, only the sweet scent of smoke, and a dry mouth, remained. But the scent was enough to rekindle the memory.

Green in the hills above. Green in the water below Green in my lungs.

A little green in Alex’s eyes when she smiles.

Reflected in each was something different. In the water I saw faces and bones, my past written in fossiliferous hieroglyphs scattered among the rocks and hellbenders— the giant salamanders that have watched these mountains change for over three- hundred million years. They saw dinosaurs and mammoths come and go. I didn’t see myself outliving them either. In the green hills all around me I saw my present. I’d allowed these green hills to become my prison, my holding cell. I feared they would never let me leave. So I looked at Alex. In her, I saw a green glimmer of hope.

Her green gave me a chance to move away from the black of revenge.

So I closed my eyes and reclined on the raft and joked with Alex and let the river carry us down to Dimple. I let the river make my decision. It had been around a hell of a lot longer than me.

“What’s this about?” Alex nudged me when she saw the rafts pulled into a big eddy on the left.

Duff and Smurf tossed me their throw bags as we drifted toward them. Every inch of rope mattered here. We lined up to run Dimple Rock Rapid first. I sat up, clipped the ropes onto a D-ring with a carabiner. I checked the straps on my life jacket, and gestured for Alex to do the same. Even though I’d been down this river five hundred times, at least, my heart beat a little faster right about here on every single trip.

“This is Dimple.” I pointed at the big rock sleeping in the shade on a submerged ledge just downstream and to the left. Sunlight rarely fell onto the rock. It was cool and dark all day long. “Some of the river washes around and some goes beneath it. This is the big one today. It is undercut and dangerous. Basically, there’s a room beneath the rock. A boat flips and you have to start counting heads to make sure they all pop up. This is the real thing, right here. Ropes, radios… No slacking or somebody’s going to get hurt. Just don’t stop paddling until I say, okay? But when I say stop you have to stop. That’s about it. Easy, right?”

I dropped my paddle into the current, jammed my foot beneath the cross tube and leaned out over the river to pull the raft into position. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Duff pulling into the current behind me.