Bitter Sun

by Beth Lewis

  ‘Still want to go searching for a killer?’ I said.

  ‘Come on.’ Rudy strode toward his home, and didn’t even look back to check we were following.

  I’d been in Rudy’s place only once, the day after last Christmas. His brother, Perry, and Bung-Eye hadn’t been home in days. Rudy spent Christmas day on his own in that house without a crumb of food. Same as the year before and the year before that. Me and Jenny had tried to get Momma to invite Rudy over but we were having a family Christmas. Me, Jenny, Momma, and whatever Pigeon Pa she had that month. Just family, Momma said. Bullshit, I’d thought, and tried to tell her Rudy was family but she wouldn’t listen. Gloria tried to invite Rudy over too but her parents wouldn’t have a good-for-nothing Buchanan in their house. When she pushed harder, she was sent to her room without supper. I snuck over to Rudy’s place with a bag of turkey and day-old bread rolls and we had our own Christmas. That was the first time I saw Rudy cry.

  I’m getting out of here, Johnny, he’d said, I ain’t like them. I never will be. Come with me. I’ve got money saved up. He took a worn Greyhound bus timetable out of his back pocket. Thirty-six bucks, Johnny, that’s all it’ll take to get us to LA, I’ve got it all planned out. We can get out of this shithole together. You and me, Johnny, just you and me.

  I’d nodded, said yes, but just to make him feel better. I think he knew that deep down I didn’t want to leave Larson but sometimes hanging onto a lie lets you get through the day where the truth would end it all. We ate turkey sandwiches and watched black and white Christmas cartoons on Bung-Eye’s TV set. It was another two days before Bung-Eye and Perry came back and when school started a week later, Rudy showed off a black eye as his Christmas present.

  The chain-link fence around the Buchanan land was more symbolic than functional. Full of holes big enough to dance through, it served as a test to curious folk. Sure, you can walk right through that missing panel, go for it, take one step across the line, see what happens.

  ‘What now?’ Jenny said.

  ‘We have to go in.’ Gloria stepped forward but didn’t touch the fence. ‘Don’t we? Maybe your dad knows something.’

  ‘Maybe he killed her,’ Rudy said in a dead tone.

  We were all thinking it, of course we were. Nobody jumped to defend Bung-Eye, there was no point. They say he broke a bartender’s nose for giving him a quarter instead of a nickel in change. You could hear the crunch from the other side of the bar.

  ‘Is your dad home?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. Him and Perry had business in Bowmont last they told me. They’ll be gone till tomorrow.’

  Gloria hooked her finger on the fence. ‘Is it true he’s been in prison?’

  ‘In and out like a fucking yoyo. He says they keep a cell open for him in Red River.’

  ‘I heard it was drugs,’ Jenny said.

  Rudy scoffed. ‘And the rest. Guns. Flipping cars. Beating the crap out of people. You name it, he’s done time for it.’

  ‘Should we have a look around?’ I said.

  I didn’t like talking about Rudy’s father, as if saying his name too loud would summon him right to us.

  ‘The trail led here.’ Gloria ducked through the hole in the fence before any of us could grab her.

  ‘We either follow the trail to the end,’ she said, standing tall inside Buchanan land. ‘Or we give up and are no better than Samuels.’

  Jenny glanced at me, held my eyes for a moment, then she was gone, on the other side with Gloria. Rudy and me stayed where we were. We knew what was waiting inside that mess of buildings and junk.

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ Rudy said but it was weak. ‘I would know about it.’

  ‘Would you? Do you know what’s in all these barns?’ Gloria said and Rudy didn’t have an answer. ‘A girl is dead and nobody cares. Why are you letting a broken fence and a bunch of rumours stop you?’

  I went through the fence and Rudy followed. With dragging steps, he led us between the maze of buildings. The main house, the giant faded red barn beside a rusting grain silo, two single-storey outbuildings, and a grimy trailer up on concrete blocks with a deep, black fire pit in the yard. Stacks of crushed cars stood sentinel every corner, towering six or seven high, then a row of them like the Great Wall of China stretched the length of the property. Piles of scrap metal and exhaust pipes and wheels grew at the base of the stacks but this wasn’t a junkyard you could visit to pick up a spare set of rims. This was Buchanan property, down to the last broken washer.

  The thing that struck me hardest was a strange, heavy smell in the air. It should have been the harsh tang of oil and rust and burnt tyres, the base notes of a place like this, but it was sweet, sickly, almost herbaceous. It got into my head, my nose, turned my stomach, but lessened the further we went from the stacked cars. It left a dull ache in the back of my head.

  ‘It’s so quiet. There’s not even any birds,’ Jenny said.

  Except for our footsteps, the only sound was a soft, machine hum from somewhere deep in the compound. No flies, no buzz of mosquitoes or cicadas, it was as if the insects were too afraid or sensible to cross that fence line. We reached one of the squat outbuildings. A line of bullet holes pocked the wall.

  ‘Target practice,’ Rudy said and pointed to broken glass at the base of the wall. Beer bottles and jugs. Green, brown, clear. Indiscriminate destruction.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Rudy swung his arms around. ‘There’s nothing here.’

  ‘What’s in the barn?’ Gloria asked, heading toward the doors.

  ‘It’s his workshop,’ Rudy said, ‘just car parts, tools, useless farm crap my dad doesn’t use. Perry said the other day there’s a brand new Dodge Challenger in there and they’ve been working on it for a few days. He said the old man won it in a card game but I call bullshit.’

  He tried to keep it light, but he couldn’t hide the nerves. Rudy didn’t want to go in the barn but that made Gloria practically run for the doors.

  She didn’t get to them. She didn’t even get across the yard between buildings. She froze mid-step at the end of the bullet wall.

  ‘Gloria?’ Jenny said and went to her.

  Gloria whipped around and grabbed Jenny’s arm, yanked her away.

  All I could see in Gloria’s eyes was white. Bright white. Jenny’s expression told the rest. It was the face she wore when Momma was drunk.

  Fear filled up my blood and turned it solid in my veins. My heart couldn’t pump it. It thudded against my lungs and drove out all my air. Then I heard the voices. The deep, rough sounds of Rudy’s brother and father, all drawl and horror like they would spit out demons with their chewing tobacco.

  They were coming. Footsteps crunching on dirt, kicking a stone, grinding out a cig butt. They shouldn’t even be here, they were in Bowmont, right? Right, Rudy? Jenny was too far from me. Gloria pulled her out of my sight, behind a stack of crates. Rudy gripped my arm and dragged me around the other side of the bullet wall.

  I tried to wrestle free, get to Jenny, but Rudy was too strong. I tried to shout but he slapped his hand over my mouth and hissed to shut up.

  Jenny. Jenny. Jenny. Like my heartbeat.

  ‘You want to get caught?’ he whispered right in my ear. ‘Jenny and Gloria will be fine. They’d never hurt a girl.’

  He said it so sternly that I had to believe him.

  I nodded and he let his hand off my mouth.

  ‘What are they doing here?’ I mouthed the words.

  Rudy shook his head and held his finger against his lips. We pressed our backs to the wall of the outbuilding. I was sure my heartbeat would vibrate through my spine, into the wood and shake the glass windows. Buzz-buzz, buzz-buzz, here I am Bung-Eye.

  They weren’t talking any more but the footsteps got louder, closer. They rounded the other side of the building, painfully close to those crates and to Jenny and Gloria. My heart thundered afresh. I closed my eyes and Frank popped into my head. If he was here he’d save us, he’d
talk to Bung-Eye and calm him down. But he wasn’t here. What would he tell me to do? Pray? Dear Jesus, if you’ve got any good in you, you won’t let a thing happen to Jenny, ay-men.

  I chanced a look around the corner of the building. Perry and Bung-Eye. Standing a few feet from the crates, not moving, not really talking, just waiting. I couldn’t see Jenny or Gloria. For all the rumours and stories centred on Bung-Eye Buchanan, you form a picture in your head of him. Ten-foot tall, bearded, brick-built and full of temper maybe, but not Bung-Eye. Clean-shaven and his hair always combed and oiled to a neat quiff. Shorter than average and made up of bone and sinew rather than fat and muscle. He was a snake, not a dog, and all the deadlier for it. The glass eye, milk-white and unblinking, gave him the name and a dozen versions of the story for how he lost it. Ask him one day and it was a bar brawl, ask him a week later and it was a shaving accident. He was all cracked leather and denim, biker patches and black boots. Perry was a carbon copy of his father, just with two working eyes and a newer jacket.

  Rudy yanked me back, whispered that I was stupid.

  Even Momma had stories of Bung-Eye Buchanan. He was sweet on her when they were kids, sharing sips of hooch behind the high school bleachers. She was the Cornflower Queen back then, and rode a float down Main Street with a crown of blue flowers. He was the bad boy and still is. A dangerous, beautiful man, she called him.

  Rudy’s back straightened. The rumble of a truck engine on the far side of the Buchanan property.

  ‘’Bout time,’ Perry Buchanan shouted as I heard the truck come to a stop.

  The door opened, then the sound of boots on the ground. A man said, ‘Where is it?’

  No reply but I heard more footsteps then the unmistakable sound of the barn doors sliding open and closed.

  The silent starter pistol fired. Jenny and Gloria dashed past the end of the building before me and Rudy could even look around the corner. They didn’t stop, didn’t see us, must have thought we were already at the fence and gone. Shock replaced fear in my blood but I still couldn’t move. I watched them run, red and blonde hair streaming behind them, dresses billowing like sails, arms and legs a blur of tan skin. They were around a stack of cars and out of sight and me and Rudy went to follow when we heard the barn door rattle open.

  We slammed our backs against the wall, didn’t breathe, didn’t dare.

  ‘We have a deal?’ said Bung-Eye.

  They exchanged a few more words. There must have been two men arrive because two engines fired up. The truck first and the other a low rumble I felt deep in my bones. It was too loud to be real, too perfect, like the MGM lion roaring over and over under the hood.

  ‘The Challenger,’ Rudy whispered, a hard frown on his face.

  I’d thought it was a joke. Another Buchanan bullshit tale. We both risked a look, just to check we weren’t hearing things.

  The truck backed away from the barn door and there she was. A brand new Dodge Challenger, sky blue with shining chrome trim, a white stripe straight up the hood onto the roof, looked like it had never seen a road. They revved the engine and the rumble ran right through me, made the windows shake.

  ‘That’s a beaut,’ Rudy breathed. ‘If I’d known it was in there, I’d have taken it for a spin, right down Main Street.’

  The Challenger turned out of the barn and edged down the track toward the road. Something lit up at the edge of my memory. I’d seen a car like that, somewhere. I squinted against the gleam of the chrome, tried to see it clearer. It couldn’t have been in a movie because that model was right off the lot. Was that April on Frank’s Dodge calendar hung on his office wall? No, wasn’t a car like that, it was that car, the white stripe, the chrome trim, but it was different too. How many could there be in a town like Larson? But the smoky memory refused to clear. Maybe it was just from a photograph in a magazine Al Westin had shown me. That man could talk cars until sun-up.

  The man from the truck appeared and handed over a fat paper bag.

  ‘It’s all there,’ he said.

  Perry took it, opened it to peer inside and gave the bag a shake.

  ‘I trust you,’ Bung-Eye said, gave him a dead-eye wink. ‘And I know where you live if it comes up light.’

  The man got back in his truck without another word and followed the Dodge off Buchanan land. Bung-Eye took the bag from his son and felt the weight, like he could tell the value from that alone. He stuffed it against Perry’s chest and hocked up a fat gob of spit. It hit the ground with a puff of dust.

  ‘Ain’t much for the trouble,’ he sniffed.

  Perry dug his hand into the bag and pulled out a handful of notes. ‘Shit, that car didn’t cost us nothing.’

  Rudy and I watched without moving. I felt him shaking against me – this close to his dad and brother, spying on them, his fear was a stink on his skin. If they caught him, I couldn’t imagine what they’d do.

  ‘You a retard, Per? You get horse-kicked when you were a boy?’ Bung-Eye said and clipped the side of his son’s head. ‘If Samuels could do his job half as well as he can put away a dozen jelly-filled, that car would have cost us everything.’

  Perry nodded but didn’t seem to be listening. His eyes were on the money, rubbing it between his fingers, trying to count but not getting very far.

  Bung-Eye pulled out a pack of Camels and lit one up. ‘Damn. That cocksucker didn’t have to kill her.’ He shook his head and threw the full joe as hard as he could, like anger or grief made the cig taste bad. ‘She was a good girl.’

  Perry turned solemn. ‘Should have wrecked the fucker’s car. Sent it to him and Samuels in boxes.’

  I looked over my shoulder at Rudy.

  ‘They knew the girl,’ I whispered but he was ahead of me. His face was set in familiar anger, another reason to hate his name and the blood pumping in his veins. His family was involved. Somehow. Whoever killed Mora must have given over that car to keep the Buchanan boys quiet. They must’ve flipped it and sold it within a couple of weeks for a quick buck. Done and dusted, hands clean of any wrongdoing. Can’t prove nothing, sheriff, ain’t never seen a car like that and I’d remember. That was the Bung-Eye way, deny, deny, deny.

  Rudy clenched his fists, his body coiled up. I’d seen it before. He had his dad’s temper, he would lash out. He would kick and punch and spit at the nearest tree or building or the ground if he thought he could hurt it. Where Rudy would kick a tree, Bung-Eye would kick Rudy. He wasn’t his dad, not through-and-through.

  I grabbed both his arms, tried to pin them against his sides, but he pushed me off. I tripped backward and hit the wooden wall. The thud rang out like a bell on a clear night.

  A second. A heartbeat.

  Bung-Eye shouted, ‘Get your gun, Perry.’

  Rudy and me sprinted out from behind the building. Both men roared Rudy’s name and gave chase. It was thunder and rage, a stampede coming down on us. I gave everything to my legs. Don’t stop, don’t ever stop, run to the ocean, run to the moon, just don’t stop. We were gaining ground, the bulls were tiring, the smoking the drinking the age all catching up.

  We were twenty feet clear. Then thirty. Perry pulled ahead of his dad, closed the gap but we could make it. We just had to get to the fence. We’d be safe at the fence.

  Forty feet and change. Just had to keep going.

  Rudy yelped. His knee buckled and he disappeared beside me.

  He hit the ground hard and rolled. Perry was on him in seconds. Then Bung-Eye. They had their prize. They didn’t chase me.

  ‘Run, Johnny!’

  Rudy tried to pull himself free but Perry had his arm. ‘Keep going!’

  Bung-Eye’s voice roared behind me, chased me like thundering hooves. ‘I know you, John Royal! You mind your fucking business. You come on my land again and I’ll kill you, boy, you hear me? I’ll find you and I’ll fucking kill you.’

  I ran, oh God, I ran. Jesus forgive me. I had to get to Jenny. I had to know she was safe. I told myself they won’t hurt Rudy, not real
ly. They’d kill me if they caught me. He said so. They wouldn’t kill their son and brother. That was blood. That was family.

  Rudy cried out. I saw it all over my shoulder. Every sickening second. Rudy delivered a fist to Perry’s balls so hard the man doubled and dropped and brought his little brother’s face down with him. Bung-Eye didn’t break stride. He grabbed Rudy’s wrist, lifted it, and stamped on his son’s forearm.

  Rudy’s bones snapped. A sound like a gunshot across the fields. Searingly loud. So final and irreversible. Then he screamed. It shook the ground. Shook me. Turned my insides cold and dark.

  And I kept running.

  Coward. You fucking coward, John Royal.

  10

  When Rudy’s arm snapped, so did our great plan to solve a murder. Our little crime-fighting club fizzled out and Mora’s killer was no closer to caught. I felt shame, mostly, that I’d failed Rudy and together we’d failed that poor girl. Then I felt embarrassment that we’d ever thought four kids could make a difference. What a joke, Johnny boy, one day on the job and you see how much of a joke you are. Jenny still talked about Mora all the time. Who she might be, what she might be like, who might have hurt her and why, always why.

  We didn’t see Rudy for the rest of that summer. I checked the Fort almost every night but he was never there and he didn’t come calling to the house like he usually would. He wasn’t at Sunday church or Bible Study and he was never down at Barks for swimming. I went over to the Buchanan place once but with Bung-Eye’s warning still ringing in my ears, I daren’t get too close. They’d repaired the fences and Perry’d put that yellow dog on a longer leash. I couldn’t even get to the front gate. Jenny tried to call on Gloria but Mandy shooed her away. Miss Gloria is at camp, gone all summer. That woman’s a tiger protecting secrets when she’s sober but give her a couple of frosty Buds and that tiger turns kitten. Momma saw her down at Gum’s. Gloria and her daddy had some terrible fight after she told him what happened. Mandy didn’t hear details but heard the name Buchanan and ‘dead girl’ clear enough. Next morning Gloria was packed off to camp on Lake Michigan.