Joe (29 page)

In front of the house the pines thinned away to scrub oak and bushes and sandy soil with scattered rocks. He looked back again and stepped off the trail, sighting on a big den tree where he’d seen coons leave in the evenings and return in the mornings, regular as bankers checking in and out of their offices. The woods were hot and dry and the leaves were noisy underfoot. He slowed down and stepped more carefully, as if he were stalking something. He had his first hangover and his head was not feeling good.

There was a creekbed that was nearly dry in the bottom of the hollow and he stepped across that and looked up at the coon den. A young one regarded him from his hole high in the tree, just his head poked out, then withdrew his face and was seen no more. The boy stood beside the tree, scanning the woods around him. He was tired from his night but he thought of the girl constantly, every second, never stopping. He had begun to feel a feeling for her that he could not describe even to himself.

When he had stood there for a minute or so, his eye picked out a small gray rock on a little hillside where pines had fallen long years ago and nature had weathered them down to their hard skeletal hearts. The rock lay among these lengths of prime kindling, and he walked over and knelt down beside it, looking back once to line up the den tree with his position. There was an old pay envelope in his pocket, and he pulled it out and put all the money in it except for one twenty-dollar bill. On both knees he scanned the woods around him, his eyes moving slowly, searching, noting particular
trees and the clumps of honeysuckle and the matted nests of briers and the downed timber, listening for any sound there might be, but hearing nothing. When he had satisfied himself that he was alone, he carefully rolled the rock over and put the money beneath it and replaced it exactly as it had been for who knew how many years. There was a sudden feeling of eyes on him and he jerked his head up, both hands on the rock, but there was nothing, only the silent woods and the birds flitting through the tree limbs, the brief rattle of an Indian hen on a dead and acoustic trunk. His heart grieved with worry over the money, but the quiet woods lulled him with trust. He got up and moved away from the rock, careful not to disturb the leaves, and sighted back on it once more when he got to the den tree.

The rock sat in a bright patch of sunshine, streaked with pale veins and bearing small growths of velvety green moss. The sound of his steps receded through the woods and diminished, faded, was gone. The wind blew gently and the shadows wavered over the ground. The fallen pines lay around the rock, the woods warm, airy with light, flushed with sunshine.

After a time another noise appeared, a hushed step, a careful approach. The noise grew louder, a slow crunching of leaves underfoot, stealthy, heard only by one. A foot stopped beside the rock, an overall-clad knee came down to rest. A gnarled and shaking hand spread out over the rough warm face of the rock, trying to hold its secret there deep in the snakey woods.

The new pickup sat idling at the curb in front of the liquor store, and he came out of the door with three fifths of whiskey in his arms and got in it. He liked the way the new truck smelled. It had a V-8 with an automatic and the salesman had talked him into getting one with air conditioning. He was glad of it now. He rolled the window up and turned the air on. He had owned it for about an hour.

There was a new cooler in the floorboard with a case of Pabst iced down in it, and he shoved the top aside and got one out and put the top back on. The gas gauge was sitting close to empty but he figured he could make it to London Hill.

He met a sheriff’s deputy not a mile out of town and looked in the rearview mirror to see if the deputy would hit his brakes. He did, briefly.

“Fuck you, sumbitch,” he said, and turned his beer up. The truck had a good radio and he found a country music station and turned the volume up. George Jones was singing “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” He sang along with George, at peace with the
world. After another mile or two the black car appeared far down the road behind him, trailing him slowly.

“You motherfucker,” he said. He watched it for a while and saw that it was slowly gaining. The blue lights were not flashing. He sped up a little, eyeing the gas gauge, muttering under his breath. He went into a curve, and once he got out of sight of the deputy’s car and crested the hill, he drove onto another blacktop road that intersected Old Six, Camp Lake Stephens Road, pulling the wheel hard to the right and sliding the whiskey bottles across the seat. He mashed hard on the gas and drove to a small driveway about a hundred yards down the road and turned around. He sat there for thirty seconds and then roared back down the blacktop road. He pulled up to the highway and turned to the right again, then pulled out and took another drink of his beer.

He caught sight of the cruiser again within three more miles. The car in front of him slowed and he eased up behind it. He could see the deputy looking back at him through the rearview mirror. Joe waved to him but he wouldn’t wave back.

He followed him down the road for another mile and the cruiser sped up and pulled off. It went out of sight up the highway around a curve. When he went past Manley Franklin’s old store four miles later, it was pulled up on the other side of the building, facing the road, and it sped out after him, the blue lights flashing.

“I figured that shit,” he said. He put on his blinker and pulled over on the shoulder and waited while the car eased up behind him. He dropped the empty beer bottle in the floor and lit a cigarette. The deputy took his time getting out. Joe rolled the window down and sat there.

The deputy walked up beside him, and he was a new man Joe didn’t know, a stranger behind shiny sunglasses.

“Nice truck,” the deputy said.

“Thanks.”

“Noticed you ain’t got a tag on it. You just get it?”

“About five minutes ago. I do something wrong?”

“Not that I know of.”

“What’d you pull me over for then?”

The deputy rubbed his chin. He rested the knuckles of one hand on the butt of his gun. The leather holster creaked like a new saddle.

“How much have you drank?”

“I ain’t drank nothing but one beer. I got three bottles of whiskey right here if you’d like to examine them.”

“They told me you were a smartass.”

“Who told you?”

“You think that was funny a while ago, trying to outrun me?”

“I wasn’t trying to outrun you. I got off the highway and took a piss. Ain’t no law against that, is it?”

He was a young man, with thin arms. The widest part of him was the belt and the gun around his waist. Joe pulled the gearshift down into drive and stepped on the brake.

“If you’re through shootin the shit I’m ready to leave.”

“I ain’t through talking to you.”

“I think you are.”

He pulled off and left him standing there, reached in the cooler and got another beer. He watched through the rearview mirror as the deputy got back in his car and killed the blue lights. The car
had not moved from beside the road by the time he lost it from view, and he didn’t think about it or look back any more. Randy Travis was singing a song of love and heartbreak on the radio, and he was much more interested in that.

He pulled in at John’s store and got out, took the gas cap off and locked the premium nozzle open so that it flowed slowly into the tank. He carried one of the fifths inside the store.

“Hey, John,” he called.

He turned at a noise beside the door and the storekeeper was standing out there with his hand on the screen, looking at the pickup. He stepped inside, shaking his head.

“How about loaning me about ten thousand this afternoon?” he said.

Joe set the whiskey on the counter and pulled a wad of bills from his pocket, thumbing through them for a twenty. He pulled one out and put it beside the whiskey.

“I think I got a good deal on that one, John.”

“It’s pretty.”

“Thanks.”

“I like that color.”

“I looked at a red one I started to get but I liked that one better. Come on and get in and we’ll go for a ride.”

He was just kidding, but the old man looked at his watch and said: “By God, I don’t guess there’s no reason I can’t.”

“Well hell, good, come on. Wait a minute.”

He went out the door and released the lock on the nozzle and finished filling the tank, twenty dollars even. When he stepped back inside, the old man had put his money inside a bank bag and
was holding his pistol and a couple of cigars taken from a box on the counter, and was standing there with another cigar in his mouth and the whiskey in his pocket.

“Twenty even, John.”

The storekeeper nodded and said, “Let’s hurry up and get out of here before somebody comes by.”

“You taking that pistol with you?”

“Hell yes. I got about sixty thousand dollars in here.”

“Damn. You got another gun I can borrow?”

“This one’ll do.”

Joe held the screen door open for him, then opened the door of the truck so he could pile his things on the seat. John Coleman walked back to the store on nimble feet, wearing socks and sandals. He locked the door and slammed it shut and started out to the truck but went back and unlocked it and reached in and cut off the power to the gas pumps and then locked it again. A car came down the road, slowing down hurriedly, swinging in.

“It never fails,” he said, from where he stood beside the truck just about to climb in. He lifted the lid on the cooler and looked inside. “Lord have mercy, boy,” he said. He looked up at Joe. “Let’s go. Quick.”

They got in and Joe pulled the shift down into drive.

“You don’t want to wait on this guy?”

“Hell naw, don’t wait on him.”

But the driver of the car had already gotten out and was walking over to the truck. He had long black hair, a dirty T-shirt, and very greasy hands. He wiped his nose and leaned in the window of the
truck. Joe noticed how close his hands were getting to the upholstery of his nice new nice-smelling truck.

“Mr. Coleman? How bout opening up for me?” he said. He shook his head and looked around inside the truck.

“I’m going somewhere,” John said. “I’ll be back after while.”

“You ready, John?” Joe said.

“Yeah,” John said. “I’m ready.”

“I need to get a few things, Mr. Coleman,” the man said, but Joe let off the brake and the truck moved. The man grabbed the outside mirror, printed the chrome with grease, and said, “Now wait a minute.”

Joe put the brake on and shoved the shift into park.

“Let’s go, Joe,” the old man said. “Hell, he don’t want to do nothing but charge something.” He bent over and reached inside the cooler for a beer, and Joe saw something cross the black-haired man’s face at the sight of the back of John Coleman’s head.

“You better get them greasy goddamn fingers off my truck, boy,” Joe said.

He acted as if he didn’t even hear that, just kept holding onto the mirror and looking at John.

“All I want’s five dollars worth of gas, Mr. Coleman. My wife told me she’d get paid next week, I promise you.”

John Coleman leaned back in the seat and twisted off the top and turned the bottle of beer straight up in the middle of London Hill and took a good hit. He opened a bottle of the whiskey on the seat and did it the same way, then wiped his mouth. He didn’t look at the man outside the truck when he spoke.

“You done promised me about twenty times. You ain’t paid me nothing in three months and you just wasting your breath. Let’s go, Joe.”

The greasy hands went to the inside of the door as if to hold them from leaving, and Joe opened his door and walked around the back and right up to him.

“You get them hands off my truck.”

The guy turned to him, looked him up and down.

“Fuck you,” he said. “Who in the fuck are you?”

Joe didn’t hit him but one time. The pickup wheels spun sand and gravel on him where he lay in front of the pumps.

They rode and drank. Joe sucked a cut knuckle and wished for his dog to lick it. John Coleman agreed that it would help.

“That boy,” he said. “I’ve done him ever favor I could. Some folks you can’t do nothing with. Just sorry. God knows I’ve done plenty of drinking and stuff in my time, but I be damn if I ever tried to cheat anybody out of any money.”

It was late afternoon by then and they had the windows rolled down, the music turned down so they could talk. It surprised Joe that John Coleman would hear a song he recognized and, once in a while, turn the radio up, then turn it back down when the song was over. There were horses in pastures and hawks with their wings folded sitting high in the trees. One redtail hunted low over an overgrown field they passed, the land fallow, thick with cockleburs. It floated along, turning, rising, passing again, wings flapping for a thermal.

“I’m glad they protected them hawks,” John said.