McFall

by Scott Nicholson

  Maybe he’d use that trowel tonight. He’d take Cassandra out of his car trunk and plant her in Heather’s garden, right there in the potato hill. If Heather ended up disappointing him, he’d have a way to take her out of the game. A very practical way. Even someone as inept and washed-up as Frank Littlefield could build a murder case based on that kind of evidence.

  McFall hoped it wouldn’t come to that, though. He really did like her. But his time in Barkersville, as both a husband and as a mockery of a human, had taught him the importance of a back-up plan.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  “You ain’t hanging out with them dopeheads until after you finish your workout.” Elmer Eldreth was slouched on the couch in a wifebeater, rubbing his belly. The middle of his shirt was blotched dark with sweat.

  “I told you, I threw yesterday with Coach Harnett.” Bobby was fidgety and didn’t feel like enduring another lecture. The trailer seemed to be closing in around him, and the box fan in the window wasn’t making a dent in the heat.

  “Bullshit. I called him this morning and he said he ain’t seen you in two weeks. If you show up in the fall with a rubber arm, App State will park your ass on the far end of the bench.”

  “He’s in good shape,” Vernell said. She was sitting across the room from her husband with an old Reader’s Digest in her lap. “All the work he’s been doing this summer has been making him strong.”

  “Bulking up don’t make you no better of a pitcher,” Elmer said. “Hell, we might as well put him on steroids. Juice him up.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t already injected him in his sleep,” Vernell said. “You do know he’ll still be your boy even if he doesn’t ever become a star, don’t you?”

  Bobby was impressed by her resistance, but wary, too. Elmer’s upper lip curled into a sneer as he sipped his beer. After stewing over his response for another moment, he said, “I’ve sacrificed for years so he could have a shot. Least he could do is give me a little respect.”

  “I’m standing right here,” Bobby said. “Maybe you could look at me when you talk about me.”

  Elmer let his bleary eyes roam up and down his son, as if surprised that the Little Leaguer he’d played pepper with was nearly a grown man. He’d had three beers since arriving home from work, and the couch looked like it was going to swallow him whole. “I told Harnett you’d be there in an hour. He’s got a couple of juniors ready to go through drills with you.”

  He wondered what Elmer would say if he told him about the walking pillar of smoke and ash at the church site. Or Sweeney Buchanan’s bloody wrench. Or Ronnie’s tale of seeing Brett Summers’s ghost. There was a whole world out there of which Elmer had no knowledge, a river flowing by. What if Bobby had told him he’d been approached by an agent, only it was someone who wanted to represent his music and not his golden arm?

  “I can’t,” Bobby said.

  Elmer sat forward as if he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “You can’t? Did what I said sound like a question?”

  “You don’t get to order me around anymore,” Bobby said as Vernell twisted her fingers nervously in her lap.

  “As long as you’re under my roof, I sure as shit do. For years, I worked so you could.…”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Bobby said, waving him off, sick to death of the old refrain. “You’re a real role model.”

  Elmer struggled to sit up, then roared to his feet, knocking over his beer. “You little shit, I ought to—”

  Bobby stood his ground, daring Elmer with his eyes, but then made the mistake of looking at his mom, who was quivering in her chair like a bird on a frosted February fencepost. He glanced back at Elmer, and his old man suddenly looked nervous, like he wasn’t quite so sure what he “ought” to do.

  “Okay,” Bobby said. “You win. I’ll head over to the diamond.”

  He went to his bedroom and packed his baseball gear, putting his bats, cleats, and glove in a sports bag and collecting a nylon satchel full of baseballs from the closet. Stopping at his desk he put on his Pickett High Pioneers cap, adjusting the brim as if he were heading out to the mound for the first inning of a big game. Before leaving the room he retrieved his drumsticks from his desk drawer and slipped them in with the two bats.

  By the time he passed through the living room, Elmer had resumed drinking and Vernell was mopping up the spill. “See you tonight,” he said to his mom.

  “Stay away from them dopeheads, like I said,” Elmer yelled just before Bobby shut the door.

  Bobby climbed into the Silverado and pulled out the little glass vial the man had given him at the State Line Tavern. Even though he’d been sniffing the stuff for days, there was just as much white powder in it now as there had been that night behind the club. Maybe even more. He inhaled some as he sat behind the wheel. The drug burned his nostrils going down, and it felt like his brains were running down the back of his throat.

  Kickass powder is right. I could sure get used to this.

  He’d heard about coke and meth, of course, and had seen them used at parties before, but coke was for rich kids and meth was for rednecks. And neither drug seemed to compare to the “Special K,” as he’d come to call it. He kept expecting the agent dude to show up again and sweet talk him some more, maybe even make him an offer. But so far, nothing.

  Bobby hadn’t told the other Diggers about the encounter. Jealousy screwed up so many bands, whether it was over chicks, song credits, or whose instrument stood out the most in a recording. He hadn’t even told Ronnie.

  Maybe he should, though. After all, he and Ronnie had both seen ghosts, and now that Bobby had decided to stay away from Melanie for good the tension between them was gone. It was a relief, because if anybody could make sense out of whatever weird shit was going down around here, it was Ronnie. Besides McFall, Ronnie was just about the only guy he could trust.

  As the buzz kicked in, simultaneously relaxing him and sending fire through his veins, he started up the Silverado. Bobby had no intention of driving to the high school to play silly games with Harnett and his boys. He was going to pick up Ronnie and then head over to Dex’s place for band practice.

  When he came to the bridge, he eased the truck to a stop near the scene of his accident. He took his baseball gear out of the cab and carried it to the middle of the bridge and stood gazing into the water where Brett Summers had disappeared more than a month ago. The red-orange sun was dipping into evening; it was that quiet hour before the night shift came alive in the forest.

  Bobby unzipped the gym bag full of baseballs and pulled one out. Curving his fingers around the seams as if preparing to throw a rising fastball over the plate, he reared back and tucked his body into a windup, hurling the baseball as far downriver as he could. It landed with a wet, smacking sound, sank for a moment, then bobbed back to the surface, spinning as it was swept downstream. He threw the baseballs one by one, sometimes a curve, sometimes a heater, until only one remained.

  A car approached from the far side of the bridge, moving slowing until Bobby waved it past. Everybody’s a tourist out here.

  Bobby didn’t recognize the driver, but he hoped his red-eyed stare would encourage him to speed up. The man looked like a weasel-eyed accountant or banker, some asshole who sat in an air-conditioned office all day making money off the sweat of other people. Sure enough, the car accelerated toward the highway, stirring up a haze of dust.

  “Take this, Brett, you asshole,” Bobby said to the water. “And don’t come back no more to bother Ronnie. You’re dead.”

  Bobby launched a fastball that might have been the best of his career—he wished that scout at the championship game could have locked his radar gun on it—and as the ball launched, he felt something tear in his arm, up near the shoulder. The ball struck with a sper-dunkkk and then it, too, bobbed to the surface and was carried away by the current.

  What did you expect? Brett to jump out of the water with a catcher’s mitt and make a grab for it?

  Bobby opened
his sports bag and tossed his cleats over the bridge, followed by the glove—“I wallowed in shit for three weeks to buy this, so it damn well better catch everything you can reach!”—and his aluminum bat. He pulled out the wooden bat his dad had insisted he use for practice, because aluminum bats weren’t allowed in the majors and, of course, Bobby had to plan for the future.

  He felt a sudden urge to slam the bat into splinters against the bridge railing, but instead he squeezed the handle until his fingers ached, and then rested it on his shoulder. He plucked the Pioneers hat off his head by its brim and flung into the water like a Frisbee.

  As he watched it float downstream, a strange mist coalesced above the wet stones, and the splashing of hundreds of ripples rose up like laughter. The surface of the water glimmered in the dying light. Blackburn River seemed alive, like a green-backed reptile slithering its way into primordial mud. And it seemed as though that monster was intent on spitting up its secrets.

  Shit, no. Bobby backed up but couldn’t tear his eyes away as the mist coalesced into a figure drifting toward him twenty feet below.

  Stay down there, Brett. You don’t belong here anymore.

  But it wasn’t Brett. It was he himself, Bobby.

  He ran to the truck, hurled the bat onto the floor of the passenger side, and spun gravel as he barreled across the bridge. When he hit Little Church Road, he fought for traction, wondering if the part of him he’d lost that night of the crash was finally coming back.

  He wondered where it had been and what it had seen.

  And why it had returned.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Ronnie heard the phone ringing, but he didn’t want to get off the bed. He was planning on studying physics at Westridge, so he was reading a book on Nikola Tesla. Ronnie wasn’t particularly brilliant at math, but working as sound engineer for The Diggers had expanded his worldview a little. Besides, fields like that led to a real job. Poets and English majors had better hope they knew how to play guitar or rob banks.

  Tesla could probably have invented the first electric guitar if he’d seen any practical use for it. Most intriguing of all, he’d remained a virgin his entire life, apparently choosing to invest all his mental energy in dreaming up some of the greatest technological advancements of the Twentieth Century rather than trying to figure out women. That insight alone marked him as a genius. Too bad he’d left it to rich assholes like Edison and J. P. Morgan to exploit his best ideas.

  Tim opened the bedroom door without knocking. “Hey, fiddle fart, it’s for you.”

  Ronnie reluctantly closed the book, his thumb marking his place. “What is?”

  “Telephone.”

  Ronnie climbed down, noticing that dusk was settling outside the window. He wondered if Bobby had called to tell him that band practice had been cancelled. He wouldn’t mind too much. He was still shaken from seeing Brett’s ghost again, and that cryptic message “Days End” played across his mind every time he closed his eyes.

  The family only had one phone besides his dad’s cell, and Ronnie made his way to the kitchen, where it hung on the wall. The location of the phone, and the fact that it wasn’t cordless, made it almost impossible to have a private conversation.

  “Hello?” he said into the receiver, glancing into the living room to see his dad snoring on the couch, the Weather Channel flickering on the television with the sound turned down. Mom was off at her pottery class, so tonight was a rare cease-fire in the war over selling the Day land.

  “Ronnie,” McFall said. “How are you?”

  Ronnie tensed. “Fine.”

  “Good, good. Did you and Bobby finish with the old Buchanan place?”

  Ronnie wondered if McFall knew. Of course he does. It was probably the whole reason he’d put the two of them on the job. “Mostly. We couldn’t get it all in one truckload, though.”

  “Find anything unusual?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything Sweeney might have left. If he truly committed a crime, he might have left some clues.”

  “The sheriff went over the place last week.”

  “Yes, but he might have missed something. People are starting to question his competency.”

  Ronnie felt as if he were being tested. But he always felt that way around McFall, as if every sentence contained a double meaning or hidden threat. “He’s a good guy. He saved us—”

  “Saved you from Archer McFall, yes, I’ve heard the stories about my cousin. All I can say is that I’m glad he’s gone.”

  “I have to go, Mr. McFall. Somebody’s picking me up.”

  “The Diggers have band practice.”

  How does he know? How does he always know EVERYTHING?

  McFall didn’t wait for his answer. “I’ve got a job for you later. “

  “I’ll be in tomorrow morning.”

  “Tonight. After practice.” It sounded like a command, not a request.

  “Is it important?”

  “I need people I can trust.”

  Trust? That didn’t seem like the kind of relationship Ronnie wanted to nurture with McFall.

  “I can’t.”

  “Ýou can. Bobby will give you a ride.”

  “I have to ask my dad.”

  David Day rolled over on the couch and stopped snoring. He’d been working ten-hour days lately. It meant he wasn’t around much, but the extra income had helped him regain confidence, which made him less of a jerk. Or maybe he just drank more and slept more these days.

  “He already knows,” McFall said. “By the way, have you heard from Melanie lately?”

  Ronnie didn’t think his bowels could twist themselves any tighter, but they contorted into fresh, burning knots. “No.”

  “She wasn’t at the waffle shop today.”

  Ask him. Ask him about how he manipulated her. Ask him if he turned her into his whore.

  “I haven’t talked to her in a while.”

  “Really. I thought you two were having a ‘thing.’”

  “We’re just friends.”

  “Okay. If you hear from her, please let her know I was asking about her.”

  I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s sitting there beside you. Or LYING there beside you.

  “I gotta go. Bye.”

  Ronnie banged the phone down so hard that his dad blinked awake and sat up. “What the hell, Ronnie?”

  “Sorry. Wrong number.”

  “McFall said he had a job for you and Bobby tonight. Probably a late shipment, some toilets or plywood. Maybe he’ll pay you a little overtime.”

  Ronnie almost told his dad he was quitting—for good this time—but he didn’t want to wreck one of David’s rare good moods. “You’re going to need a little money to spend on all those hot college girls,” his father added with a wink.

  “I won’t have time for stuff like that.”

  “Maybe you will. I’ve been thinking more about McFall’s offer. If we sell out, you won’t have to work when you start college. You can study and make good grades. Plus, I’d have another hundred houses to build, and that would pretty much keep me busy until retirement.”

  Ronnie wanted to clamp his hands over his ears. “But this is Day land! You said it yourself. It’s like we belong to it instead of it belonging to us.”

  “A man’s got to change with the times.”

  Tim walked out of the hall and opened the refrigerator, pulling out a carton of milk. “You’re selling out?” he said to their dad. “My life will be ruined, but nobody cares. I’m just a kid.”

  Ronnie heard the Silverado in the driveway and headed for the door without another word. As he left, his dad called out, “Be sure to do a good job. We got a lot riding on McFall.”

  When Ronnie climbed into the truck, he was shocked by how ghastly Bobby looked under the dome light, like a mutant, alien junkie. “What happened? Did you see Brett again?” he asked, shifting the baseball bat on the floorboards so that his feet had room.

  “I don’t know what I saw. S
omething—somebody—in the river, coming toward me.”

  “Great. And we have to cross the bridge again.”

  “Maybe I could just drive real fast?”

  “That didn’t work out so well for you last time, remember? Maybe you should let me drive.”

  “No,” Bobby said, squeezing the steering wheel. “I got this.”

  As his friend shifted the truck into first gear and let out the clutch, Ronnie said, “Okay, just go easy.”

  They rode in silence down Little Church Road, Ronnie glancing back and forth from the woods on one side to the river below the bank on the other, half expecting a ghost to drift in front of the headlights and cause Bobby to lose control. But ghosts couldn’t really hurt you, could they?

  Brett left water marks on the door. He interacted with the physical world.

  He needed to think about something else, anything else. “Have you heard from Melanie lately?” he heard himself asking.

  “Not since the State Line gig. She left a message saying she had something important to tell me, but I’m staying away.”

  “McFall told me she didn’t show up for work. She’d never do that without calling in first.”

  Bobby shook his head. “Women. One day you’ll learn, Ronnie.” He slowed down even more as they passed McFall Meadows. The sales model was nearly complete, and three other houses were well underway. The fenced-in cemetery no longer looked a hundred years old, and grass was already growing over the site of the red church.

  “I don’t see your dude of smoke and ash anyway,” Ronnie said.

  “Maybe he’s waiting for us at the bridge.”

  “Mr. Optimistic.” Ronnie grabbed the baseball bat and held it upright. “If I see anything that doesn’t belong, I’m going to knock it back to hell.”

  “Maybe we’re the ones who don’t belong,” Bobby said. “Vernon Ray used to say that some people just came into the world at the wrong time. Like their souls didn’t ever quite catch up with their bodies.”