Graveyard Fields

by Steven Tingle

  “Turn around and face the vehicle, asshole.”

  My hands were still in the air, and it took an enormous amount of self-control not to step toward the guy and tempt a response. The asshole remark stretched my rubber band to its limit.

  “I was speeding, and you were right to pull me,” I said. “But I figure Dale has about twenty years’ seniority on you, and if you haul me in on some bullshit charge, he’ll laugh in your face and I’ll walk away smiling from ear to ear.”

  The deputy seemed to consider that scenario for a minute, then said, “You’re that private detective, aren’t you?”

  I started to respond, but the deputy cut me off.

  “I’ve heard the sheriff talk about you. He don’t seem to trust you as far as he can throw you. And I don’t much trust you either.”

  The angel on my shoulder was in a lotus position taking deep, measured breaths. The devils were grinning and rubbing their hands together.

  “Will you please call Dale?” I said.

  The deputy kept one hand on his side arm and pulled out his phone with the other. He touched the screen a couple of times, and soon I heard a ring tone coming from the phone’s speaker. I was looking forward to listening to Dale ream out this shithead for pulling me over. Hell, Dale would probably be impressed that I got the Mercedes up to seventy-five. Then again, Dale could be a moody bastard. He might tell the deputy to write me a ticket or even haul me in just for the fun of it. When the call connected, all of those thoughts immediately vanished.

  “What do you need, Skeeter?”

  I was so surprised to hear Byrd’s voice that I almost didn’t register that the deputy’s name was Skeeter. I filed that bit of information in with all the other things I hated about him, including the sunglasses and the goatee.

  “Sheriff, I’m up in Cruso with that man from Charleston, Mr. Reed. I clocked him going seventy-five on 276.”

  There was a long pause, and I imagined Byrd’s jowls dangling on his collar.

  “That’s a mighty fast pace,” Byrd said. “Did he give a reason?”

  “It was a joke,” I yelled toward the phone. “I thought Dale was chasing me.”

  Byrd laughed. “Skeeter, write Mr. Reed a warning and send him on his way.”

  Skeeter tapped the phone screen and put it to his ear. “But Sheriff, he was going thirty miles over the limit; we can take his license for that. He needs to be brought in. We can’t allow this—he should be punished.”

  I couldn’t hear Byrd’s response, but whatever the sheriff was saying made Skeeter’s jaw clench so tight I thought his teeth might shatter inside his mouth. A moment later Skeeter put his phone away and stared at me like I was a dog who’d just taken a shit in his living room.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  I stood by the door of the Mercedes and watched Skeeter climb into his patrol car. I wondered what Byrd had said to him. I guessed it was probably something akin to “Let him go, but keep your eye on him.”

  My leg was starting to hurt, so I got inside the Mercedes and plugged my phone into the stereo. When Skeeter reappeared next to my window, I was blasting “Breaking the Law” by Judas Priest. It was a dick move, but it was satisfying.

  Skeeter returned and threw my license, registration, and a blue warning ticket into my lap. He then walked slowly along the side of the Mercedes back to his patrol car. I let the stereo blare the entire time.

  I drove up to the cabin never topping forty miles per hour. When I got out of the Mercedes, something compelled me to look at the side of the car. Skeeter had walked strangely close to my vehicle on the way back to his patrol car. I saw it almost instantly, a long white scratch that ran from the passenger door all the way back to the rear bumper. The son of a bitch had keyed my car.

  9

  I was fuming when I walked inside the cabin, so I distracted myself by going to the basement to check on my batch of IPA. I’d brought most of my brewing equipment up from Charleston, at least what I could fit in the back of the Mercedes: three 5-gallon stainless-steel brew kettles, several 6.5-gallon fermenting and bottling buckets, a copper immersion chiller, a hydrometer, a thermometer, a couple of siphons, and a dozen or so empty glass growlers along with bags of various malts and hops, yeasts, herbs, and spices. The IPA had been conditioning for almost a month, and it was just about ready to drink.

  Dale hadn’t been lying my first day in the cabin when I looked down the stairs into the dark basement and he said, “They ain’t nothing down there.” The basement was bare aside from a few load-bearing wood beams that ran from the ceiling down into the red dirt floor. I’d found a couple of plastic folding card tables behind the cabin and dragged them down the basement steps to serve as the base for my makeshift brewing operation. The basement was dark, damp, and smelled like a locker room. But some really good beer has been brewed in some really shitty places.

  I started drinking beer during my senior year in high school, and for years I didn’t care what brand it was or where it came from. If it was cheap and contained alcohol, it was good enough for me. Then one day a friend invited me to a tasting at the Palmetto Brewing Company in downtown Charleston. The first beer we tried was a double IPA served in a small goblet. “What a rip-off,” I said to my friend. But once I tasted it, I was hooked. It was slightly bitter and full of flavors like pine, lime, grapefruit, and caramel. It was unlike anything I’d ever had. It made the beer I’d been used to drinking taste like bottled water.

  “It’s only a six-ounce pour because it’s eleven percent alcohol,” my friend said. “That’s more than double the alcohol of the crap you’ve been drinking.”

  After that day I never looked at beer the same way again. I stopped buying twelve-packs at the Piggly Wiggly and started running up tabs at craft beer stores. I read beer magazines and bookmarked home-brewing websites. Instead of hanging out in dingy dive bars drinking Miller Lite, I downed double IPAs and stouts at authentic taprooms. I bought an entry-level beer-making kit and started brewing barely drinkable amber-colored liquid. But I read more, experimented more, and bugged the hell out of brewers for advice. My beer making slowly improved, and as it did, I upgraded my equipment. After years of trial and error I finally brewed a batch that would rival some of the best beers on the market. But I didn’t have any intention of selling it—I just wanted to drink it. Lots of it.

  But steady alcohol intake increases anxiety, which doesn’t do much for my temper. The pills help regulate it to a certain extent, but even when loaded down in antianxiety medication, I can feel it bubbling just below the surface. My temper has cost me jobs, friendships, and romantic relationships. One of the more recent casualties had been Sarah, a woman I’d lived with for a little over a year. Sarah was a nurse at MUSC—the Medical University of South Carolina—in downtown Charleston. She worked long hours, which meant when I wasn’t out photographing adulterers and insurance frauds, I was home alone, drinking beer and popping pills. That setup was actually fine with me; the less she was around, the less opportunity she had to judge my lifestyle. But one day when I woke up around noon and stumbled into the kitchen, I noticed a note taped to the refrigerator. It wasn’t a Dear John letter; it was a Dear Davis letter. The long and short of it was that she wanted me out of the house by the end of the day. Apparently she’d had enough of my drinking, temper, and self-medicating. She ended the note with the phone number of a support group that she said helped people like me. As if she knew what kind of people I was. I threw the note in the garbage and got dressed. If Sarah didn’t want me, I didn’t want her either.

  That was the day I called Laura. We’d once been incredibly close, up until the day I was a no-show for our parents’ funeral. It had driven a wedge between us and we hadn’t spoken in years. But she’d actually seemed happy to hear from me when I called, maybe even relieved. She said she was ready to start over, to be family again. We talked on the phone for an hour while I packed up my stuff: clothes, shoes, books, a laptop, a few cases of beer, and my bee
r-making equipment. I crammed it all in the Mercedes and drove from Mount Pleasant over the Ravenel Bridge into downtown Charleston. From there I went south past James Island to a residential development at Folly Beach and a three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath house with a pool and sauna. Laura was standing on the doorstep when I pulled in the driveway. When I got out of my car, she came over and held me tight. We made a pact right then and there to never speak about the past.

  10

  The following afternoon Dale asked me to come down to Junebug’s to watch the Tennessee / Georgia game. Since Dale knew my IPA was ready to drink, I didn’t know if he was interested in my company or my beer. Either way, I wasn’t going to take it personally.

  I turned off 276 onto the gravel driveway and drove past the small family graveyard, where a few concrete tombstones held firm against the encroaching weeds. Beyond the graveyard stood a vegetable garden that by this time of year was nothing more than a mess of dead plants and rotting squash. I parked in front of the house and honked the horn a couple of times. I got out of the Mercedes and was opening the back tailgate when Junebug appeared at the door.

  “You gonna give me a hand?” I asked.

  Junebug waddled over and grabbed two growlers of my IPA, then turned and waddled back into the house without saying a word. I grabbed two more growlers and followed him.

  The house smelled like chewing tobacco and cheap aftershave—much like Dale’s patrol car. Actually, much like Dale himself. I went into the kitchen and grabbed a pint glass from a drying rack next to the sink. I poured a beer from one growler and set it and the other in the refrigerator.

  “Shit!” I heard Dale yell from somewhere in the back of the house. When I walked into the living room, Dale and Junebug were sitting in matching recliners, staring at an enormous TV that sat atop an old whiskey barrel. I moved a fleece blanket from the seat of a slat-back rocking chair, the only other chair in the room, and sat down. It was early in the first quarter and Georgia was already up by ten points.

  “Them sumbitches couldn’t defend against a Girl Scout troop,” Dale said.

  Dale and Junebug drank their beer right from the growlers, which they’d set on a side table between the two recliners. Every minute or so, almost like clockwork, they’d grab a growler by the handle and take a long swig. The scene reminded me of an attraction I’d seen at Disney World as a kid. It was called the Country Bear Jamboree. I remembered sitting in the audience and watching a group of animatronic bears pluck banjos, strum washboards, and blow into clay jugs. “Those are just stereotypes,” my dad had told me when we left the theater. I didn’t know what stereotypes were at that time. But the older I got, the more I realized they existed for a reason.

  Every now and then Junebug would spit chewing tobacco into a Styrofoam coffee cup packed with paper towels. Dale spit his into an empty two-liter Mountain Dew bottle. I tried to imagine these two at a beer tasting: the brewer lecturing about subtle flavor notes and mouthfeel while two enormous men, one in overalls and the other in a stained deputy uniform, spat loudly in the background.

  “Do you like it?” I asked Dale, after he took another swig.

  “Hell yeah!” he said. “What’s the ABV?”

  “Probably around seven. What do you think, Junebug? Is it any good?”

  Junebug grunted.

  “Better than that piss Dale makes.”

  “Bullshit!” Dale yelled. He was staring at the TV. The Bulldogs had just scored again. “Where’s a fuckin’ flag?”

  In his defense, Dale’s beer wasn’t all that bad. Dale’s problem was that he wasn’t patient. It takes time to brew good beer. You have to let it sit and ferment, then sit longer to condition. That’s when the flavor takes hold. A good IPA can take more than a month to go from a sludge of water, grains, yeast, malt, and hops to something close to sublime. Dale just couldn’t wait that long. Whether it was ready or not, the thought of a few gallons of beer sitting in the pantry was just too tempting.

  At halftime the score was Georgia thirty-one, Tennessee seven. Dale was in a mood. He’d unbuttoned the front of his uniform shirt, and the white tank top underneath was stained brown with tobacco juice. When the halftime show started, he slammed down the leg rest of the recliner and got up and left the room. Junebug grabbed the remote and changed the channel over to a NASCAR race.

  Dale’s father wasn’t much for conversation, but I thought I’d give it a try.

  “Did Dale tell you I was writing a book?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, I am; that’s why I’m up here for the winter. I’m writing about Cold Mountain.”

  “They’s already a book about that.”

  “I know, but this is nonfiction, about the military plane that crashed up there.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you ever go up there as a kid?”

  “Where?”

  “Cold Mountain? Did you ever hike up there and explore?”

  “Yup.”

  “Did you see any wreckage, any debris?”

  “Yup. Birddog’s got a piece a metal from that plane.”

  “Birddog?”

  “The sheriff.”

  “Yeah, I talked to him a couple of days ago. He told me there were rumors about gold bullion being found near the crash site.”

  Junebug spat into his Styrofoam cup and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The race had gone to a commercial, and the screen showed a middle-aged couple riding horses on the beach, then hugging under a waterfall. I didn’t pay close attention, but I figured the ad was for either a Caribbean resort or low-testosterone medication.

  “Junebug? Was there gold on that plane? Was it ever found?”

  Junebug watched the commercial as closely as he had been watching the race.

  “Who’s Gerald Johnson?” I asked. “Sheriff Byrd said he was the one who claimed to have found the gold. Is he any relation to you?”

  “That’s Floppy’s granddaddy,” Junebug said, his eyes never leaving the screen.

  “Who’s Floppy?”

  Dale walked back into the room holding a bag of pork rinds.

  “You stay away from Floppy,” he said.

  “Who’s Floppy?” I asked again.

  Dale plopped his mass into the recliner and tore open the bag of rinds.

  “Here,” he said, grabbing the remote from the arm of Junebug’s chair.

  “Who’s Floppy?” I asked for the third time.

  Dale jerked his head like he was trying to shake off a bad memory.

  “Floppy Johnson,” he finally said. “He’s a mechanic. Got a shop up at Sunburst, near the lake.”

  “So it was his grandfather who found the gold?”

  Dale leaned forward and gritted his teeth.

  “There weren’t no fucking gold,” he said. “Gerald Johnson was batshit crazy. And his grandboy Floppy’s just as crazy as he was.”

  “From what I’m learning, crazy and Johnson seems to go hand in hand.”

  Dale shot me a look. “I can make it so you’re never found.”

  The third quarter started, and on the first play the Bulldogs ran back the kickoff eighty-five yards for a touchdown. Dale’s face turned bright red, and I worried that he might spontaneously combust and wallpaper the living room with pork rinds, tobacco juice, and beer.

  * * *

  I left Junebug’s house around five. Tennessee had lost by over forty points. A sport’s analyst called it a blowout; Dale called it “fucking bullshit.” On the way back to the cabin I stopped by El Bacaratos. Doris wasn’t there, but a woman who could have been her twin took my to-go order for a large bowl of guacamole and bag of chips. The place was packed. Folks in Cruso seemed to eat their dinner early, generally between five and six. I stood at the counter near the front door and surveyed the customers. Most were families, moms and dads with young kids in grass-stained football uniforms. An elderly couple sat at a table near the front of the restaurant. The man was wearing light-blue coveralls an
d the woman a green floral housedress. They could have been in a Norman Rockwell painting if not for the two large chimichangas sitting in front of them.

  I looked toward the back of the restaurant and over to the booth where Sheriff Byrd had warned me of the evils of sushi and prescription pharmaceuticals. Now two women were sitting in the booth. The one facing me had wavy blonde hair and wore a black fleece jacket. The other woman, whose back was to me, had dark-red hair that jutted out in all directions from underneath a white knit cap. The redhead was obviously telling a story, because the blonde kept smiling and nodding. Occasionally she would lean back and laugh, revealing dimples in her cheeks the size of cashews.

  The blonde glanced over and caught me staring, so I quickly turned my attention to the elderly couple, who were still working on the chimichangas. When I looked back at the booth, the two women were getting up leave. Just then Doris’s twin appeared, holding a white plastic bag with the words THANK YOU printed on the sides in red.

  “Large guacamole and chips?” she asked.

  As I was reaching for my wallet, the blonde and the redhead walked by me on their way out.

  The blonde nodded at the bag in my hand. “Best guacamole in the county,” she said.

  “Yeah, I had it here a couple of days ago, and—” But the women were already out the door.

  * * *

  In the parking lot I got in the Mercedes and placed the bag on the passenger seat. I started the car and pushed the button for the heated seats. The warmth felt good on my legs, especially the bad one, which most of the time felt as if it had been left in a freezer. I rooted around in my pants pocket and dug out my cell phone. I was hoping to find a text, a missed call, or a voice mail from Laura. But there was nothing. I’d not connected my email to my phone, so checking that would have to wait until I got back to the cabin. I really wanted to hear from her. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through, and honestly she probably couldn’t imagine what I was going through either. I wondered if she even cared.