South of Shiloh (4 page)

“Keep a lid on it, okay? Where are you?” Mitch asked.

“Coming back from my mom’s, I just dropped the kids off. I’m heading west on 72.”

“I’m coming east. Keep coming past the farm and we’ll touch base at the 604 turnoff.”

“See ya,” Darl said, ending the call.

Mitch shook his head. Darl was getting cold feet, was trying to change his stripes and reinvent himself as a dad.

It’s not that he had avoided Darl after he started riding the Kirby escalator. More like they existed in different circles; Mitch attended First Presbyterian, maintained a membership in the Shiloh Ridge Country Club, worked on his golf game, and got his picture in
Southern Living
. Darl struggled as an entry-level dope dealer in Memphis under his older brother Dwayne’s stern tutelage. Then he met and married an icy-hot confection of brains and glands named Marcy. Together they’d anticipated the crack boom, then doubled up and hit it big in meth. Smart enough to leave when the well-armed and very murderous Mexican gangs moved in, they took their bankroll to Alcorn County and laundered it in land speculation. Darl had a sentimental side, so, out of nostalgia, he’d bought and reopened an abandoned Tennessee honky-tonk just over the state line north of Corinth. Darl was living fairly straight, running XTC, his beer joint, and doing his land deals. On the side he provided a smattering of coke and designer drugs for the recreational use of the local gentry.

Fairly straight, that is, until Mitch took him aside and made known his intention to migrate back to the outlaw side of the family. Mitch found it kinda exciting, rubbing up against his hoodlum kin.

Especially Darl’s wife.

He weighed the cell phone in his palm. What the hell. Go for it. He punched in Darl’s home number.

“It’s you,” said Marcy Leets in her standard bored idle.

“You’re free tonight,” Mitch said.

“Just so happens,” she said.

“I’m thinking of taking one of my walks. Say eleven thirty?”

“Meet you at the end of the block. If I ain’t there, don’t wait.” She ended the call. That was Marcy for you. Always liked to keep you dangling.

Mitch slowed, hit his turn indicator, wheeled right on County 604, then swung left in a U-turn, parked along the side of the road, and switched off his lights. He zipped down the window and fingered a Marlboro Light from the pack in his pocket. Flat fallow soybean fields stretched to either side. You could almost hear the dirt yawn, emerging from its winter rest. He flicked his lighter and thought: Land. Like they say, they ain’t making any more of it.

A few drags into the cigarette, Darl’s gray Ram Charger with its distinctive vanity plate—
OJDIDIT
—turned off 72 and stopped across from Mitch’s truck. Two vehicles pulled off on a country road, pointing opposite directions, one man getting out to talk. Most normal thing in the world.

Baby-faced Darl Leets got out, walking in his brisk, small-footed shuffle. The man was built like a razorback pig—thick in the trunk; short, powerful, hairy arms and legs; moving with a rooting intensity. Mitch really wondered what Marcy saw in him. Had, in fact, asked her on one occasion. Marcy had just rolled over in the motel bed, arched an eyebrow, and told him he sure knew how to wreck a mood.

“Hey,” Darl said, leaning his heavy forearms on the open truck window.

“So, are we on track for tomorrow?” Mitch said.

“It’s confirmed. He’s working security on the blue side,” Darl said. “And I’ll go in and hang the stuff early in the morning, do the measure like you said.” Darl grimaced and ground his teeth. “After I do all that I don’t s’pose there’s any way I could duck this one, huh?”

“You getting cold feet?” Mitch asked slowly.

“Well.” Darl screwed up his lips. “Marcy ain’t real hot for it, know what I mean?”

“Can’t do it without you, Darl,” Mitch said.

“Yeah, I guess. Family reunion time, huh Cuz?” Darl managed a weak grin. He held up a slim half-pint glass bottle. “A toast. Vodka, so’s not to tell on your breath.” He took a swig and handed the bottle to Mitch, who took a small sip for ceremony’s sake. “Keep it,” Darl said. “You gotta unwind a little, huh?”

Mitch placed the bottle on the seat and said, “Yeah, I suppose I do.”

“Okay, we’re all set. Dwayne’s driving in, gonna stop by Mom’s, then come out to the farm. He’s looking forward to seeing you…” Then Darl forced a jerky grin, working out his nervous kinks. “…We’ll have some fun. You know, like when we were kids…”

Mitch studied the stupid expression on Darl’s face. Fun? “All right, then,” Mitch said. “I better get going to the station.”

Darl reached in and punched Mitch halfheartedly on the shoulder. “Tomorrow,” he said.

Mitch watched his cousin get in his truck, start it up, and drive away. Fun? They were going to kill a man. And that was just for starters. For all his reservations, it was amazing how casually Darl talked about it, grinning and cackling, like he was going over a play in a baseball game on TV. Mitch whistled softly into the dark. Man, that’s a criminal mind for you. Some of the human parts were missing.

Before he pulled back on the highway, he idled on the shoulder, upended the half-pint of vodka out the window, and tossed the empty over the top of his truck into the ditch. Then he got back on the road.

A few minutes later, he sat bolt upright, electrified when a red flasher pulsed the empty stretch of blacktop. The unmarked cruiser came up fast behind him. No headlights. Musta been tailing him with his lights off. Mitch pulled over, watching in the rearview as the black Crown Vic eased up and stopped at his rear bumper.

Now that was downright spooky. Mitch knew the car and the man getting out of it. Alcorn County deputy Kenny Beeman had attached himself to Mitch like a shadow since Mitch had resigned from the bank following his drinking indiscretion. Mitch prepared to have his buttons pushed.

How long’s he been hanging back there? Probably saw him with Darl. Damn. Mitch unclipped his seat belt, pushed open the door, and got out as Beeman walked up wearing dark slacks, charcoal shirt, badge on his belt in a black leather cuff, and a black SIG Sauer .40 on his hip in a black holster. Beeman was still full of himself, since he’d shot Darl’s little brother, Donny, in the knee after pulling another one of his specialties: running Donny’s car off the road into the ditch. True, Donny had gunned down a clerk and a customer in a Texaco during a sloppy robbery just off the Iuka exit. The customer had died, and now Donny was limping around the state penitentiary, filing appeals. Word was out that Dwayne Leets had come down from his cocaine tower in Memphis and put a contract out on Kenny Beeman.

And a lot of people were waiting for that cap to bust.

Okay. Take a deep breath. So here was Kenny Beeman dressed in black, driving his black car. He had worked his way up in the world all the way to being a two-bit investigator for the Alcorn County Sheriff’s Department.

Mitch smiled and shook his head. “Bee, you gotta stop dressing like a Johnny Cash song. Bet you didn’t know that Cash auditioned for a radio job in Corinth when he was starting out…he didn’t get it.”

“Didn’t know that,” Beeman said as he held up the vodka half-pint Mitch had thrown out the window. “You dropped something. I know you didn’t just throw it out the window, ’cause littering is against the law. And we don’t want broken glass on the road, do we?”

Mitch laughed softly. “You know what they say. If we could figure out a way to make money off kudzu and broken glass, Mississippi would be the richest state in the Union.” He took the pint bottle, upended it, and shook out the last few drops, then tossed it into the front seat of his truck. “A leftover. Found it under the floor mat. Poured it out. No law against not taking a drink, is there?” he asked.

“After going to an AA meeting, guess not,” Beeman said carefully.

“So you been following me, huh, Bee?”

Like always when they met, the distance between them crackled with dry fuses. One wrong word could flame the air. But Mitch couldn’t help toying a little with the edge of risk. “Instead of creeping around with your lights out following me you should be catching bad guys, like we pay you for,” he said.

Mitch smiled and Beeman smiled back. “You watch yourself, Mitchell Lee,” Beeman said. “There’s drunks on the road.”

Mitch carefully did not reply as Beeman spun on his heel and walked back to his car. As the cop drove away, Mitch was more certain than ever. The guy never quit.

And that’s why, among other things, Beeman had less than forty-eight hours left to live.

3

WITH PAUL OUT OF TOWN, JENNY DECIDED TO TAKE
her mother and Molly out to dinner. After she showered at the club, she called her mom and proposed they go to the Dock Café in downtown Stillwater.

Jenny and her mother, Lois, ordered salads; Molly always had the macaroni and cheese. They sat at a booth next to the broad plate-glass windows overlooking the historic iron railroad lift bridge that spanned the St. Croix River.

Molly was telling her grandma about a fifth-grade drama that involved a girl who acted friendly to her face but spread gossip about her with the other girls she played with. Jenny stared out the window at the Wisconsin bluffs across the river, where the bare maples and oaks bunched like mangy porcupines. She caught herself drifting, overheard her daughter’s dilemma, and said, “I spy a new word, Molly.”

Molly cocked her head. Attentive. It was a vocabulary game they played.

“Fickle,” Jenny said. “What do you suppose it means?”

Molly furrowed her brow. “Rhymes with ‘tickle.’” She asked, “Use it in a sentence?”

Jenny continued to peer out the window and said, “The weather in March is fickle.”

“Cold?” Molly wondered.

“Was it cold yesterday? What did you wear out at recess?” Jenny prompted.

“Just a T-shirt. It was real warm yesterday.” Molly scrunched up her lips, chewing on a thought.

“So the weather in March is…?”

“Hot and cold,” Molly said. “Hot one day, cold the next…”

“Kind of like your friend at school,” Lois suggested.

Jenny circled her index finger in a tight cuing gesture, “And…so fickle is…?”

Molly conjured with her gray-green eyes, rolling them back and forth. “Not the same?”

“Close,” Jenny said. “Think changeable, not constant. As it applies to people, we could say a fickle person is changeable, not loyal.”

“Ha,” Molly snorted. “So Mary is fickle.”

“Perhaps,” Jenny said. “Now spell it.”

As Molly used “tickle” as a basis for spelling “fickle,” Jenny’s eyes drifted back out the window; thinking of other relevant definitions that exceeded grade-school perfidies. Words like “deceive” or “treacherous,” which reminded her how her husband’s presence tended to exercise a governing influence on her…well…fantasies.

Jenny turned back to the table and found her mother’s eyes studying her over a forkful of romaine, poised in midair. Lois said, “You’re distracted. Penny for your thoughts.”

“That’s a cliché, we studied them in Mr. Magnan’s class,” Molly piped up.

Jenny reached over and tousled her daughter’s unruly dark hair. So unlike her own, or Paul’s. Recovering briskly, she said, “I was thinking the weather in March is fickle. That winter is warmer and comes later.”

Her mother continued to appraise her; then said, “It’s a fact. Minnesota is turning into southern Iowa.”

Back home, they put on sweaters and sat on the deck off the kitchen, watching Molly and her friend Rachel kick a soccer ball. After one of those long silences full of invisible maneuvers, Lois asked casually, “Have you thought more about getting that medical history?”

Jenny let the question slide by, staring across the backyard. Not really a yard, more a grassy gully, a low common area hemmed by ranks of new houses that resembled a beige quilt pattern of dollhouses. Then, down in the yard, Molly decided to impress Rachel with her ability to sneak up on a squirrel.

“Look at her,” Lois said, “the way she stands statue-still, then creeps…”

Jenny nodded. “I saw her actually get close enough to touch one.”

“A squirrel? Is that a good idea?” Lois wrinkled her nose. “A squirrel could have rabies.” Since Jenny’s father died suddenly three years ago from an aneurysm, her mom had become a collector of exotic medical stories. Of possible scenarios. Hence, the current discussion that Lois wanted to initiate.

Below the deck, the girls squealed as the alerted squirrel ran for the sanctuary of a spindly tree. As they darted around the corner of the house, Lois turned to Jenny, patiently.

“So it’s time, don’t you think?” Lois said.

“Paul and I have talked about how to break it to her,” Jenny said.

“No telling what’s in his family background,” Lois said.

“His parents died in a small-plane crash, Mom,” Jenny said pointedly.

“Doesn’t mean there wasn’t heart disease, cancer, diabetes. You haven’t talked to him since…?”

Jenny took a breath, held it until it started to hurt, and exhaled. “Five years ago, just before Molly started kindergarten, he called and asked if there was anything I wanted him to do. You know, with her starting school…I thanked him for calling and said I’d just as soon leave things the way they were.” Jenny narrowed her eyes. “He was never there, Ma. Now what? We spring him on Molly out of thin air?”

“He’s never approached her, you’re sure?”

“Positive. We’ve drilled her about strangers. She’s good at sneaking up on things. But she’s not sneaky.”

“So, you don’t have to meet him face-to-face. Do it on the phone, to break the ice. It’s a legitimate request.”

Jenny shivered slightly. “Now’s probably not a good time.”

“The thing in the paper?” Lois arched an eyebrow and studied her daughter. “That’s just doing his job. That’s not real trouble.”

Jenny smiled tightly. “You mean, not like the other time.”

“Let me do it,” Lois said. “He’ll remember me. I’ll just call him up and explain it’s time to fill in a blank. All he has to do is provide a basic medical history; him, his parents. Just swab his mouth with a Q-tip, pop it in a baggie. No sense in having half a picture.”

“Okay, Mom. Enough. I’ll think about it,” Jenny said with rising sharpness.

Lois put up her hands in a mollifying gesture. “You’re right. ’Nuff said.” She stood up. “It’s starting to get chilly. Molly should get a coat on.”

Jenny warned her with a direct look. Back off, Ma. Lois smiled and pulled on her own light jacket. “Got to run. I have a class in town.” After Dad died, Lois sold the St. Paul house and moved into a tidy condo behind the Menard’s on Highway 36. She had lost weight and dressed more stylishly as a widow; now she filled her nights with cooking classes and yoga.

“Say good-bye to Molly,” Lois said as she took out her car keys, leaned over, and kissed her daughter on the forehead. Then she opened the patio door, went through the kitchen, and left Jenny alone on the deck with the setting sun and a nip of goose bumps on her arms.

Mom was right, of course. And Paul, in his reasonable, calm way, agreed. Sooner rather than later, they’d have to tell Molly about her biological father.

After homework, Paul called from a truck stop. They had driven the width of Wisconsin and made their turn south. He sounded tired but excited, off with the boys. After he said good-night to Molly, they exchanged their own brief good-night. A standard “Love you, Jenny.” As he ended the call, she heard the foreign clatter of country-western on a jukebox in the background.

As Jenny loaded the dishwasher, Molly practiced the piano, a Chopin piece she was preparing for a school recital. Music defeated Jenny. Paul had never played an instrument. They were indifferent dancers. The piano teacher came once a week. “Oh well,” Paul quipped, “it’s a gift that skips a generation.”

Jenny paused and caught a distorted flash of her face reflected up from a plate she’d just wiped off and was holding in both hands. The tingle was back in her arms, almost an ache.

Paul had always known, of course.

She thrust the plate between the plastic uprights of the washer rack. One of the main reasons she loved him was the poised, tolerant way he took things in stride. Never stored them up. Never obsessed.

They had tried for two years to have another child. Then he had the tests done. Sperm counts didn’t skip. They just were. It had been like having another piano in the middle of the living room.

They’d been dating steady for two years when Jenny swerved into her fling with John Rane.

Methodically, she removed the heavy grates from the stove, stacked them aside, and worried dots of grease off the circular plates around the burners with a 3M scrub.

She’d got as far as the first call to Planned Parenthood and knew she couldn’t go through with it. “It’s okay,” Paul had said without a tremor of jealousy or censure, stepping in. Their marriage evolved into an intricate gravitational field revolving around an unspoken core.

She replaced the grates, wiping each one in turn.

After the Indian Ocean tsunami hit Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia, Paul had helped Molly build a water model for a science project. They selected a huge transparent storage tub from Target and Paul spent a week in the garage, converting it into a likeness of the ocean floor. He layered Styrofoam and odd bits of insulation, built it up with glue into the shoreline of a continent, and sprinkled it with sand, gravel, and limestone shards. Then he spray-painted it and used Liquid Nails to fasten it to the bottom of the tub. Molly tucked little palm trees in the Styrofoam beach. Tiny houses and plastic people they found at Michaels. Then he created a movable piece of ocean floor with a handle attached: so you could raise and lower it, like a plunger. Then they filled the tub with water. When the plate was lifted, it shoved the displaced water onto the model shoreline. As a teacher, Jenny pointed out there was too much Dad in the project, but Paul would not be deterred. They took the tub to the science fair at school, and a gang of exuberant fourth-grade boys demolished the ambitious project in two minutes flat.

Jenny took a deep breath. Sometimes she felt like that ruined science project, like she was one seismic shift away from a catastrophic wave.

She added detergent, hit the start button, and looked up to find that Molly had approached silently and was standing next to her. She held up a book from the school library. Every night after supper they read for an hour. The script on the front of the book proclaimed:
MYTHS AND LEGENDS
.

“What are we reading?” Jenny asked.

Molly flipped open the book and pointed to an illustrated page showing Athena erupting full-grown from Zeus’s forehead. “Creation stories,” she said, oblivious to the psychic bullet she’d drilled dead-center into her mother’s heart.