With (3 page)

Hreapha had never slept in a house, and she knew that only masters and mistresses and their children were allowed to do that. She could not for the life of her understand why he was making such an invitation, and she could only sit and stare quizzically at him as he repeated himself. She got up and walked in a circle twice as if searching for a proper place to lie down and spend the night. It didn’t matter. The hard kitchen floor was good enough, and warm enough. He pointed to a place there. She licked his hand, and then lay on the floor. He poured some more of his brownish liquid into his glass and then poured some into a saucer, which he set before her, saying, “Here, old gal, try a snort.” Dutifully she dipped her tongue into the liquid but it was penetrating and burning, and she left it alone. “Hey, come on!” he said, “Let’s us me and you tie one on!” She whimpered, as if to tell him thanks just the same but she really didn’t care for any of that beverage.

After a while during which he repeated his invitations to drink, he became unhappy with her. “Goddamn,” he said. “Thankless mutt. I got a mind to leave you here when I move away.” Then he kicked her. He opened the kitchen door and kicked her again, and as she scampered out of the house he kicked her several more times. “I hope you freeze to death!” he yelled, before slamming the door on her.

The memory of that night remained with her now as she pondered the decision to run away. She was tired of living in dread and expectation that he might hurt her again, as he had then, and recently when he’d beaten her with the stick for failing to guard the truck. She knew that he had increased his use of the beverage that made him stumble when he walked. She had been in the back of the truck when he had stopped at the places where he obtained the beverages. They were in two different towns and he had to drive a long way to get to them. But she knew they were the beverage-places because as soon as he had loaded the truck he opened one of the boxes and took one of the bottles to the truck’s cab and began drinking from it. He had loaded many, many boxes of the bottles into the truck, and later had carried them, laboriously, carefully, into and out of all the ravines, over the rough trail that led up to the new place. Hreapha bore no illusions about her intelligence but she knew she was smart enough to realize that if several sips from the bottle made him get loopy and rocky, then he had taken possession of enough entire boxes full of bottles to cause him to fly over the moon or kill himself, whichever came first.

Part of her felt an obligation to stay and protect him, if she could. Her protective instincts were all-consuming and she was even proud of them. But a stronger part of her, perhaps not a natural part of her, was self-protective and therefore selfish.

There was only one box left in the truck, and he would soon be coming back to get it. She jumped down from the truck. She had thought about which way to go; her compass or simply her sense of the whereabouts of her
in-habit
told her that the tiny town that had become her home lay south but that south was also the direction of the different place, albeit uphill. So she had better head north, and go downhill. She decided to wait until he came back into view, so he could watch her taking leave of him.

Her mother had once explained to her the meaning of a most common imprecation of people:
bad dog.
Her mother had told her that she could expect to be called a bad dog if she ever, ever did anything contrary to the best interests of people. Her mother told her that the imprecation was meant as a corrective but it usually just had the effect of causing undue guilt and remorse and anxiety. Her mother had advised her to always remember that regardless of how good she was, she would always be somebody’s bad dog.

Now he came back into view. She watched him as he approached the truck, and she said “Hreapha!” to him in a way that clearly meant “goodbye.” And then she said,
Bad man.
And turned and ran.

Chapter two

L
et her go. In his whole life he’d known only a few dogs as good as she was, but damned if she was worth the bother of chasing after her or trying to find her. Driving the truck back down the mountain, bouncing over the twisting, unbearable trail or what was left of it, he thought he caught a glimpse of her in his headlights, and he stopped and turned off the engine and called to her. “Bitch!” he hollered and only then for the first time regretted that he’d never bothered to give her a real name. It sounded like he was cursing her and challenging her to defy him and show her head. He tried sounding gentler. “Bitchie old girl,” he called. “Come on back.” He took his flashlight from the glove compartment and shined it around through the deep, dark woods. “Poochie-wooch,” he called, pleadingly, but already he was debating with himself whether to get another dog or try to do without. It would really be stupid not to have a dog, just as a watchdog in case anybody ever found the old Madewell place, which wasn’t likely, since nobody but himself had ever found the place in many a year. In fact the first time he’d gone up there with Bitch to reconnoiter the place, he was surprised to discover in the dust on the floor his own footprints and nobody else’s, and yet it had to be nearly twenty years since he’d last set foot there, that time he’d been out searching for that kidnapper Montross that he’d finally found and killed, not anywhere near that place but far down below it, in a glen by a waterfall.

That had been his first accomplishment as a state trooper, and now, twenty years later, still only a sergeant in highway patrol although he’d tried for years to get into the criminal investigation division, he had completed his last act as a state trooper, which had made possible this fulfillment of his dream, as well as his retirement. He wasn’t even concerned about the possibility that somebody still held a title to the old Madewell place, or leastways to the hundreds of acres of forest that it was on. He doubted that old Gabe Madewell had actually sold it to anybody when he pulled up stakes after the war and headed for California. Gabe had been a barrel-maker all his life—he tried to remember what the trade was called, something like somebody’s family name, Carver or Turner or Cutter or somebody—but the market had dried up on Madewell and he took his wife and kid and just left everything there like it was, resting on top of one of the highest mountains in Newton County and practically impossible to get to nowadays.

“Well, just you stay out there, Bitch, and see if I care!” he hollered, starting the engine again. “I hope you starve to death!” He went on down the mountain, jouncing over the ledges in the road as if he were driving down steep steps. The poor truck was probably not going to hold up for more than a couple more trips, and he began to think about what he’d bring with him on those last trips. He was putting off bringing the crates of chickens, and he still wasn’t certain about trying to bring the davenport, but knew the time was coming when he’d have to make up his mind whether or not to try to bring it. How in hell was he going to get the davenport down into those ravines and back up and especially across that goddamn ledge? He could carry it over his back much of the way, and maybe use ropes to raise and lower it in the roughest places. Any way you sliced it there was going to be hell to pay, but by God he’d sat or laid on that davenport since he was just a kid, and his mother had loved it, and he sure wasn’t going to put it in the yard sale he was planning on having next Saturday “before going to California.” He laughed. That was a good one. And everybody believed it. Or anybody who gave a rat’s fart what he did or where he went. He had told so many people he was pushing off for California that he halfway believed it himself.

He knew Bitch wouldn’t starve to death in the woods. She was a smart dog and could probably catch something to eat, coons or possums or squirrels. He thought of the three fifty-pound bags of Purina Dog Chow that he had taken the trouble to tote up to the Madewell place, one hundred and fifty pounds of doggie nuggets just to feed Bitch with. Hell, if she was so damn smart she’d probably get it into her head to go on back up to the Madewell place and get in there somehow and chew open one of those bags of Purina. He wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find her there with a big grin on her face the next time he came back.

But more’n likely she’d just keep on a-walking until she came to somebody’s house who would feed her. The nearest house in this direction was a mile or more, down toward Parthenon, and he didn’t even know for sure who lived there. It was an old farmhouse some ways beyond where this trail met up with the dirt road from Wayton to Parthenon. He rarely saw the folks who lived there; he’d waved at the woman once or twice as he went by. If the woman had happened to notice him driving the truck up the road so many times loaded up with stuff, she might have wondered. But once he got that davenport and those chickens up there, assuming the poor truck could make that next-to-last trip, she’d never see him go by again, because the last trip would be made in the dark of the wee hours, with his passenger.

He’d be “gone to California.” Which is where near about everybody from this part of the country had gone anyhow. His mom and dad had gone out there, and died out there. His sister Betty June wrote him once or twice a year from some place called Santa Monica, where she was doing real well. He figured he’d probably have to answer her latest letter, which he hardly ever did, just to let her know that he didn’t live in Stay More any more and not to write him there any more. He wouldn’t tell her he was “gone to California” or she’d expect him to come visit her.

But now he could go spend a couple more nights at home and get ready for that yard sale and heft that davenport up onto his back experimentally just to see if it would fit and how heavy it was. He knew he didn’t need to have the yard sale, not for the money anyhow. The only reason he was having it was to make it look a little more convincing that he was really leaving for good. He’d had a realtor’s
FOR SALE
sign in his yard for weeks now, and might not ever find a buyer for such a rundown old place, but he didn’t need that money either. He didn’t need any money. He’d bought himself a steel fireproof Sentry
^®
security chest and put all the money in it, except for what he thought he’d need to buy whatever he needed to stock his new home, and he’d buried it under the front porch up there at the Madewell place, and he didn’t expect he’d have to dig it up for a good long while. It was dirty money anyhow, probably collected from all kinds of poor folks addicted to the dope that they’d had to buy with it.

His
CID
buddies—not friends because he didn’t have a one but good old acquaintances from way back, Lieutenant Morrow’s men in Company e of the Criminal Investigation Division at Harrison—had been puzzled about what had become of the money, but they hadn’t suspected him, or even questioned him about it. His twenty years of service were spotless, and made him eligible for the retirement he’d taken, and nobody thought to make any connection between his retirement and his shooting of that drug runner, except that, as he’d put it, he was damned tired of being shot at, and it was time to hang it up.

They assumed that if the
DOA
perp had made a delivery in Tulsa and was on his way back to Memphis, he must have had a huge amount of cash on him, which maybe he could have dropped off somewhere or laundered or something. Why had the guy been so far off course, not taking I-40 but US 65? Maybe he’d taken the money to Branson and delivered it to one of the mob who hung out there. The case was closed, although some shady-looking characters had been reported sniffing around Harrison to see if they couldn’t find the money.

The buried security chest had about four hundred thousand still left in it; he hadn’t counted, but he’d spent only about forty or fifty. He’d bought everything he could possibly want, including a real fine set of the best firearms, with enough ammo to last forever, but he had the sense not to do any conspicuous spending, like getting a new truck, which is why he hoped this old crate would hold out for just a few more trips, a couple more shopping trips and then a trip to take the davenport and chickens and a final trip to take the girl.

And of course during those last shopping trips he’d also be shopping for the girl herself. Tomorrow he planned to park the truck alongside one or more of the elementary schools and maybe visit some of the playgrounds and parks. He registered what he had just thought, and realized the ambiguity: no, he wasn’t fixing to shop for the girl, meaning do some shopping on her behalf, which he had already finished. He was fixing to shop the available display of eligible girls and pick out one:
shopping for a girl.

He’d already got her whatever she’d be a-needing at the Harrison Wal-Mart, where he’d bought her a whole bunch of some clothes and shoes and stuff, telling the saleslady they were for his daughter and not knowing her exact sizes but only able to say what you’d expect a girl of seven or eight to wear, summer, fall, winter, spring. The saleslady had helped him load up three carts and just said, “Your girl is sure going to be thrilled with all this.” And he’d said, “I hope she will.” Then he’d gone to the toy department and filled three more carts with enough dolls and toys and games and stuffed animals to serve as birthday and Christmas presents for years to come.

Sog Alan went on home to spend the night, had all the good bourbon he could handle, went to put Bitch out and realized she wasn’t in anymore, then went to sleep. Next day fairly late he took his truck and headed to Harrison for one more shopping trip, reflecting that one more ought to do it, and he’d better avoid visiting any of the places he’d already shopped, although he’d tried to spread his shopping out among as many different stores as possible. He’d already used almost all the various supermarkets in Harrison, Berryville, Huntsville, and driven down to Russellville for others, gone all the way to Eureka Springs for his huge hoard of good liquor, and picked up odds and ends at small stores all over creation, buying several cartons of cigarettes at each of maybe a dozen different places. He had enough smokes to last at least a couple of years, and then he’d just have to plant some tobacco and grow his own. He had seeds enough to grow anything in creation.