by Chuck Hogan
Ripsbaugh stood at about Maddox's height, in a no-brand brown T-shirt, knee-length bleach-spotted beige shorts, and crusted gray work boots with wiry laces untied. His eyes looked less silvery in sunlight, more gray against his dark eyebrows, his mossy hair shaved short like a prisoner's, his hands mittlike and dark with work-toughened nails.
Maddox was also getting the familiar smell of shit, low-grade but pungent enough, that was part of Ripsbaugh's peculiar charm. In addition to running the town's highway department, Ripsbaugh also owned and operated Cold River Septic out of a garage next to his home.
Ripsbaugh nodded, lingering, as though he wanted to say something more. "Heard what you said to those others."
Maddox shrugged. "Just running off my mouth."
"Somebody had to."
"What good it will do."
"You need any help, anything, you know where I am. Town needs reviving."
"That it does, Kane. That it does." Maddox started away, then remembered something. "Hey. Last night when you were driving around, you didn't hear a gunshot, did you?"
"Before yours, you mean?"
Maddox nodded.
"No," said Ripsbaugh, thinking back. "Why?"
Maddox shook his head like it was no big deal. Inside he was frowning at the mystery. "No reason."
7
WANDA
WANDA WAS WEARING A TANK shirt, blue pastel. Used to fit her better, drooping too much under her arms now, giving the boys a piece of profile whenever she leaned the right way. The teasing wink of her cup crease. She looked down to see what else, and on her skinny hips were beige terry-cloth shorts with white racing stripes.
She thought she saw movement in one of his upstairs windows as she came to his driveway. She had wanted to surprise him. That was the whole point of walking all this way. Playing out different seduction scenarios on the walk over. She didn't know why she was fixated. It wasn't even him, probably, if she had to be honest. It was her idea of him.
The good cop. The incorruptible.
She turned in past the FOR SALE sign. The surface of his driveway was hot as a cookie sheet, so she tread the grass lane next to it, feeling slinky in her bare feet. She followed the flagstones past a big planter in front, where the face of his house angled toward the quiet street. It was pretty isolated, bordering a quarter acre of buggy, high-weed wetlands.
There he was, sitting on the front step. He had seen her coming from the window. She couldn't even sneak up on this guy.
She spread out ta-da hands. "Trick-or-treat."
Maddox said, "I think you're a couple of months early."
"This is how I do it. Start early, avoid the Halloween crowds." She liked what her mouth was saying. "Surprised?"
"You could say."
"Pleasantly surprised?"
"Surprised."
"What if I told you I'm here to open my heart to you? To bare my everlasting soul."
He had on a great-looking, soft green cotton tank shirt, hanging off his thick shoulders and chest. His shorts were knee-length, his calves hairy but not furry. He sat half in and half out of shadow, leaning back against one of the narrow pillars. Almost guarding his house from her. She felt powerful and feared, and it made her smile.
"You're drenched," he said.
"I looked a lot better when I started out."
"What's with the wristbands?"
She wore two big ones together on her left arm. No pain today, at least not right now. "It's a look," she said. She was proud of her skinny limbs. "I think I burned some new freckles into my shoulders." She moved the straps to check, giving him a little peek inside.
"Your feet okay?" he said.
She wiggled her toes. They were filthy, and worse inside the cracks. She saw a little blood around her left heel, nothing to get excited about. "I walked a long way," she said, working a smirk. "You should be flattered. I started out in these flip-flops, but the thong thing was cutting into my toe cleavage, killing me."
"Toe cleavage?"
"Don't pretend you don't know what that is. I passed this yard, and there was this little bike, pink with tassels? The kind I always wanted as a girl. Though maybe I shouldn't be telling this to a cop."
"You shouldn't be telling it to anyone. You stole a little girl's bicycle?"
"I borrowed it, who do you think I am? Not my fault if the chain snapped." She chewed on a cuticle, what was left of her fingernail. "I was going to bring it back."
"You walked barefoot all the way here from Bucky's house?"
She put her hand on her hip. "Didn't take long for him to come up. Jesus. Like talking to a guy who only wants to talk about your best friend or your sister or something. Except in this case, it's my guy he's obsessed with."
"You don't stay over at Bucky's?"
"You know I don't."
"I must have forgot."
"No, you didn't. You wanted to make your point that he doesn't treat me right."
"He's a private guy that way."
"And what's wrong with that?"
"I don't know. You think he has someone else?"
"He's a Black Falls cop. What do you think?"
"And that's fine with you."
"Maybe I got somebody else too." She tried to wink at him but she had never been very good at winking. "Hey, if I wanted to be married to someone, I'd be married, right? We have something different from that. Something deeper."
"I'll bet those are his words exactly."
"Like partners. Maybe he chases it on the side, but he can only catch so much. I know he doesn't bring it home with him. No one gets inside his place 'cept me. Why I captivate you so."
"What's he do up there on his mountain, he needs so much privacy?"
She moved to the short stone patio before the brick step. "Kiss me and I'll tell you everything you want to know."
Maddox smiled in that way he had, of appraising her, which made her frown and sent her back to working on her nail.
"You seem a little hyped up," he said. "You eat anything today?"
"I had a Popsicle."
"That's not food."
"Oh, sorry. See, the food stamp people got me and Daddy on this strict twenty-four-dollars-a-month diet." She tried out a wide, dirty grin. "You want to take me inside, feed me something?"
"I don't think so."
She scratched the itch on the back of her neck. "You are such a drag, you know that? It's just rude, not inviting me inside. Why you so hot for Bucky?"
"I'm not."
"So hot for him instead of me."
"Give me a break."
"So secretive all the time. Talk about privacy." She shifted posture, her bare knees rubbing. "You're playing me. You think I don't know it."
"Then that means that you're playing me."
"No. Because I don't play."
"You said you and Bucky are partners. Partners in what?"
"Partners in life."
"Uh-huh."
"You know, he was a new cop when I met him. Just like you. Used to cruise by me in his patrol car when I was walking home from school. Kept offering me rides, until I took him up on it." She smiled. "He liked it on the hood of his patrol car. He was into being a cop when it was new. What about you? You into it still?"
"I'm not that into it."
She looked him over. "You're into it, all right. What is it you do there all night at the station by yourself, anyway?"
"Fight crime."
She snickered. "You're a bad boy. You are. Act all good, but you're bad inside, I can see it. You do bad things."
That hit something in him. Something real. She watched his eyes narrow, and was surprised.
"Maybe your bedroom's air-conditioned," she said. "We could go talk in there."
"No."
"What are you so afraid of?" She took another step closer to him, her bare feet touching the smooth stone landing, just now starting to feel the day's journey in her soles. "You know you don't come around me just for the questions."
"No?"
Maddox looked out at the overgrown marsh his house faced, the weeds humming with bugs. "I guess maybe you remind me of someone."
She was shocked to get any water out of this stone. "All right. Now it comes out. Now we're getting somewhere. Not your mother, I hope."
"Are you kidding me?"
"First love? College sweetheart? Old girlfriend?"
"Just someone I knew."
"And she's dead now?"
He showed surprise at her insight. Even Wanda was a little impressed with herself.
"So come on, then," she said, moving closer still. His sneakers were flat on the landing, his bent legs bunching up his package in between. She reached out and touched his bare knee. "Let's start up the old air conditioner. Go for a spin on my pink bike. What do you say?"
Maddox stood, a head taller than she, so that her hand fell from his knee. "I have to get ready for work now."
"It's personal, this thing between you and Bucky. I can tell. So what better way to fuck him over?" She reached for his shorts over his thighs, wanting to run her hand up inside.
Maddox shook his head. "It's not like that."
"Of course it is. The ultimate get-back. You can't fuck him so you fuck the one he fucks. Believe mehe would jump all over your girl. If you had one."
Maddox's hand guided hers away from his shorts with a firm grip. "Maybe you don't realize what an ugly thing that is to say."
Wanda could only smile at the chill she felt, brought on by her discovery. "You do have a girl?"
Maddox reached out and pulled the sunglasses off her face. It was confusing because she had forgotten she was even wearing sunglasses, and so the change in light disoriented her. A pair she had borrowed from Bucky, too big for her face.
"Good Christ," said Maddox.
"Give those back."
"When was the last time you slept?"
She squinted, nearly blind, the day so bright. "Sleeping alone is so boring."
"Look at me."
She couldn't. Her eyes were stinging and watering over.
He handed back her glasses. She put them on and waited until she could see him good again. He was looking at her forearm. The sweatbands. He reached for her wrist, and she pulled back before he could touch it.
He didn't like that.
"You listen now," he said. "Don't ever come to my house again. But especially don't think you can hit up and then come by. That's not how I live here. You want me to bust you right now?"
"Oh, that would be good. Yeah, go ahead. Rookie cop busting his sergeant's girl."
"You want to talk, and I mean talk, you page me. You have the number. Otherwise you wait for me to get in touch with you. Understood?"
"Understood," she said back at him, with sixth-grade petulance. She took out some aggression swatting at a fly buzzing around her head. "So, what, am I even going to get a ride back home?"
He looked at her like she knew better.
"Hard-ass," she said. "Can I at least use your bathroom first? I'm serious, the toilet's stopped up at my dad's. The plumbing quitI'm serious. He dug a latrine outside last night. Don't make me pee in the woods. Pretty please? You can wait out here, where it's safe."
Maddox stepped aside. "Make it fast," he said.
She curtsied and flipped him off and walked up the steps past him.
8
TRACY
TRACY MITHERS SAW Donny Maddox out in front of his house, so she left her pickup in the driveway rather than use the remote garage door opener he had given her. She followed the flagstones to where he waited with his hands in his pockets, a tank shirt baring his arms, shorts baring his legs.
My man.
Seeing him at the parade that morning and not being able to talk to him was murder, and how the day had dragged on since. The hours she stole each week to be with him were her life now. The rest of the time was just waiting. She wanted to bound up to him and leap into his arms, but something about the way he was standing outside alone in the sun slowed her.
"What's wrong?" she said.
He shook his head, a strange look on his face, a tension. He glanced at his screen door. "Nothing's wrong," he said. "But I don't know if you'll agree."
"Okay," she said, still smiling but confused. "What does that mean?"
"Remember what I said to you when we first started this? That I would be straight with you? That I would never lie to you, no matter what?"
She remembered, all right. They had been in his bed. He had been studying her hand, fingers entwined with his. He had kissed the underside of her wrist, her beating pulse.
He said, "I promised you that, right?"
Now she was getting scared. "Yes."
His screen door opened and a woman stepped out, wiping wetness from her chin as though she had just slurped water from a sink tap.
A bomb went off. The planet cracked open with a tremendous, shuddering roar, and Tracy stood in a deep crater of earth now, the heated air buzzing around her with smoke and steam.
The woman saw Tracy and stopped. They recognized each other.
Oh my God.
Wanda Tedmond.
"Ha," said Wanda, stopping. "What do you know?" She looked at Donny with surprise that, by the time she looked back at Tracy, turned mocking. "Tracy Mithers, right? The llama girl."
Tracy stared at the skinny girl's filthy bare feet.
Wanda walked down the steps and across the stone landing to the grass. "I helped myself to some water, hope that was okay."
She was talking to Donny. Familiar with him.
Her toes were wide-spaced and short and ugly. The nails were unpainted and ground down. The dirt around the bottoms of her heels looked congealed with blood.
Wanda said to him, "You should have told me you were expecting someone."
Her collarbone stood out like a hanger on which her overwashed blue tank top hung, her bony legs rising into beige, Juniors-department Adidas shorts with white piping held up by no hips at all. She wore sweatbands on her forearms like she was a rapper, and a pair of men's sunglasses sat perched on the bridge of her nose, chrome-rimmed, wide and obnoxious on her underfed face.
Tracy looked at Maddox. He looked right back at her.
"Tomboy cutoffs," Wanda said, eyeing Tracy. She wasn't at all flummoxed by the awkwardness of their encounter. "The farm girl look. That works, huh? Once you scrub all that llama shit off your knees, I guess."
The artlessness of the insult stunned Tracy. They had no history Tracy was aware of, good or bad, none at all. If she was exacting revenge, it was not at Tracy's expense: it was at Donny's. And that shocked Tracy even more.
"Anyways," said Wanda, "I wouldn't want to intrude. Just stopped by to say hi." She smiled at Donny and started away, passing a few steps wide of Tracy. "Bye."
Closer, the more hideous Wanda appeared to Tracy. Skinny verging on frail, her hair a sweaty, mustardy mess, making her look drowned. Her limp boobs were barely covered by the stringy tank; Tracy saw ribs pressing through its sides. And she had sores. Like pimples but without whiteheads on them. Scratch marks on her neck.
Say something.
"See you around," said Tracy. Not brilliant, but sort of cutting.
"Oh, definitely," said Wanda, with a quick little smile back at Tracy that said, Game on, slut.
Wanda walked away with her head angled down, knowing her skinny backside had an audience. She reached the FOR SALE sign and turned the corner.
No car. Barefoot, no shoes in her hands. No handbag, no pockets, even. Wanda Tedmond had walked all this way without any money or keys. For what?
Tracy waited many moments before turning back to Donny. She wanted to say something poised. Her heart was pounding in her ears.
"Well," she said. "That was a surprise."
Donny was nodding. "For me too."
"Really."
"Entirely."
"Hm," she said through tight lips, trying to keep from shaking. She kept swallowing, to calm herself, looking out toward the wetlands but not seeing anything.
