Bringing Home The Rain: The Redemption of Howard Marsh 1 (The Jubal County Saga)

by Bob McGough

  I nodded, watching him slowly punch the numbers on the register. The cancer had him bad, that was sure. Whatever treatments he was getting, they looked like either they weren’t working worth a damn, or they were about as bad as the damn cancer. As he shut the drawer, closing away what had been about a third of my net worth, he looked up. “All good to go.”

  “Thanks now,” I said, and made my way back outside before he could unnerve me further. I set the pump to running, not like it would take long, what with gas prices being what they were, and leaned against the car door. I ducked my head inside the open window, keeping it out of the sun. I need a pair of sunglasses, but had long since misplaced my last pair.

  Looking in I saw half my blunt sitting in the passenger seat, resting on top of a big ol’ floppy bible that I reckoned had belonged to Thomas. Had I been smarter I would have tucked that weed under something, in case someone came by, but dead as it looked to be around there, there was little risk of that.

  Staring at that blunt, I kept thinking about how bad Jerry looked. Which kinda hurt, seeing as he and Emma actually treated me halfway decent. Beside me the pump clicked off, but I didn’t move to holster the nozzle back. Instead I reached over and grabbed the weed up, cussing myself out as I did so.

  Walking back inside, I turned and locked the door behind me.

  “Howard, what are you…” Jerry started to say, worry lining his face. I saw there a glimpse, just a quick one, that let me know that on some level ol’ Jerry had always suspected this day would come. That it had just been a matter of time before I robbed the place.

  I walked over to the counter, and slapped that blunt and my lighter on the table. “Jerry, we’re gonna smoke this, so maybe you best crack that window there.”

  Valet Parking

  The thing about Jubal County is nothing ever seems to be close to anything else. I swear I spent more time getting places, than actually spending time wherever it was I was aiming to be. It was enough to get on a bodies nerves, iffen you weren’t riding a nice mellow high.

  After smoking out the initially reluctant Jerry I’d boogied on out of there. Two good deeds in one day was wrecking the curve, but what was done was done. The good karma had already paid off however, as the gas station owner had given me a bag of chips and a pair of sunglasses by way of thanks.

  Now I wasn’t spending my day half blinded, and the once bright world had a faint grey tint to it, just like I preferred it. The chips weren’t half bad either, hitting the spot just right with their sour cream and oniony goodness. The second best chips ever made I reckoned, behind sour cream and cheddar, which he unfortunately didn’t seem to stock.

  The tug in my chest was getting steadily stronger. The way the road curved for moments I would be headed straight for it, then I would round a corner, and I would feel it tugging from the right or left. But I was getting there, no doubt about it.

  I finished the last of the chips, and wiping a greasy hand on my shorts, flung the bag on the floorboard. That lasted maybe a minute and a half before the thing got caught up in the wind and went hurling out the window. I wasn’t much for littering, but then I also wasn’t much for going out of my way to stop it.

  The pull had me turning down a dirt road I’d never been down before. I wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t an old logging road, as it had that deeply rutted look of roads heavy traveled by big rigs. With the busted shocks on the Pontiac, I was sure it would be a real smooth ride.

  Within a half mile I was rattled about half to death as the boat I was captaining hit rough seas. I was lucky I had that weed in my stomach, keeping it nice and settled or I wasn’t entirely sure I wouldn’t have wound up hurling those chips right back up.

  A mile up I found the source of the deep ruts: someone did live on this road, and they clearly drove a truck for a living. A tidy little double-wide was tucked back up a decently sized drive, alongside which was parked an old Peterbilt with a big rebel flag across the grill. I saw a skinny blonde woman on a riding mower cutting the grass, and she waved a thin arm in my direction as I passed.

  Once I was past there the road smoothed out a fair bit. The tugging told me I was getting really close, and I was right on track. I knew I would be up on it at any moment, the way it felt, which left me to wonder what the hell Inez was doing over this way. It was not either of the two places I would have most likely expected her to be at, that was for sure.

  When the tugging suddenly started pulling from behind me, I knew I’d passed it. I slammed on the brakes, and turning my head around I began backing up the road as carefully as I could. And then I saw it.

  There was a narrow cut, something like an old driveway, that went up into the woods. Kudzu was thick on the ground, blanketing the area in its broad green leaves. And there in the middle of it was a Honda sized lump.

  Parking the car I got out and looked into the green mass. Unlike a lot of folks I didn’t have much of a problem with Kudzu. The damn stuff could have finished swallowing up the South any day now for all I cared. I just hated to have to walk in it. It had a nasty habit of hiding holes and snakes, and I wasn’t too fond of walking into it either.

  Looking around I scooped up a broken pine bough, and using it like a walking stick I began poking in front of me as I entered the vines. I tried not to think of what I was probably about to find. I had no desire to find an o.d.’d Inez. In this sort of heat, I could only imagine what state her body was going to be in. With each of my steps, I took to cursing her, her son, and the world in general.

  The car had to have been there at least a few days. I knew kudzu could grow a foot a day, so it wouldn’t have taken too long for it to cover the car like that, but it was still a matter of days. It would also make it a right bitch to look inside I reckoned.

  Reaching the Honda I started tugging on vines, snatching backwards with more than a little grunting. It took a minute or two, but I got them peeled off of the doorway, enough so I could look in the window.

  It was dark inside, the vines blocking a lot of the sunlight, but I could make out the interior well enough. The front two seats were empty of all but trash, that much I could easily tell. There was a lump in the back seat though, which I could only halfway see.

  I stepped back, and sorta steeled myself up. This wouldn’t be the first dead body I’d ever seen, but that wouldn’t make it any easier. Reaching in my pocket I pulled out a couple of napkins I had grabbed from the car, and used them to keep me from leaving fingerprints. Taking a deep breath I ripped the door open, fighting the still clinging vines, and leaned over the driver side seat.

  It was just a few blankets and a pillow.

  I sunk into the seat with relief that there was no corpse. It was damn hot inside that car though, so I quickly got out, closing the door back. While I was glad I had not just stumbled upon the dead body of my old friend’s mom, that meant my job wasn’t done yet. I still had to find the woman. I looked around, wondering if her body might be lying somewhere nearby, under the blanketing kudzu.

  Taking a deep breath told me that wasn’t the case, as did the lack of buzzards. I could maybe try and spell up something just to make sure, but my gut was telling me she wasn’t here. I’d learned to trust that feeling over the years, so I began walking back to the Pontiac.

  “Well,” I muttered, “guess it’s off to Jimmy’s then.”

  Jimmy’s

  My boy Jimmy was an eccentric, a genius, and a drug dealer all rolled up into one. In short we should have been best friends. We weren’t quite on that level, but we were solid pals nonetheless. I think he kept his distance because he was always convinced I was gonna die soon.

  He’d told me such a great number of times. Usually it came something along the lines of “Marsh, there’s no fucking way you can...well fuck me. If you’re gonna die, do it in the yard please.” He had no great faith in my abilities, but I was one of the treasured few disciples so to speak that Jimmy allowed to hang around on occasion.

  One of the others
was Inez.

  Jimmy kept away from any drug that wasn’t weed or a hallucinogen. He was a masterful cook when it came to meth, the best in the county in my humble opinion, and a fair hand at producing or procuring any other drug you could think of. So while he never joined me in my forays into potentially more lethal drugs, he was rather fond of dropping acid with me. The conversations we’d get into, well I like to think that they’d have been life changing if we could ever remember them. That’s what he kept me around for, his little LSD parrot.

  Inez, I think he was in love with. At least a little bit. Jimmy wasn’t the sort of guy to trade drugs for sex like some folks. But with Inez...well, I didn’t get it, but I’d seen her get away with a lot of shit he never let anyone else get away with. Though I suspect you’d have to damn near torture the guy to get him to admit it.

  Pulling into the junk-filled yard of Jimmy’s place, it was pushing noon, and as I suspected I saw no signs of life. Our kind tend to be night owls, and unless I missed my guess, the man of the hour was probably not awake. I really hoped he had Inez in that bed with him, so I could go ahead and be about my business. Not that I really had any, but that wasn’t the point.

  I should have called ahead, but I hadn’t had minutes on my phone in well over a month. That had been one of the first things to go. So I made a point of getting out slowly, and slamming the door as loud as I could. I even hollered out with a fake ‘cacaw, cacaw’ sound that was a sort of inside joke twixt the two of us. So he’d probably be ready for my knock in a moment, with a smile I hoped and not a pistol.

  As it was I hadn’t finished wading through the knee high weeds before the door to the camper opened wide. Jimmy stood there in the doorway, hunched slightly and shielding his eyes against the sunlight. He had on a pair of plaid pajama pants and some sort of band shirt. “Marsh,” he said by way of greeting, then ducked back inside the dim interior.

  The steps up were as wobbly as ever, but I kept my balance with practiced skill, slipping inside where it was cool. I pulled the door shut, so as not to let out all the bought air, which left it dark inside. Jimmy flicked a switch and the lights came on in the tiny room that was both living room and kitchen.

  The inside was old and worn, but tidy. Jimmy tried to keep things clean as best he could, which made my visits all the more fun in my eyes, the eternal battle between his cleanliness and my penchant for chaos. The man himself had slumped onto one of the bench seats that rounded the kitchen table, reaching for the remote to turn on the tiny TV that sat on the counter a few feet away.

  “Damn son, you got any idea what time it is?” Jimmy sighed wearily. “Some of us work for a living, you know.”

  It was a joke as tired as Jimmy’s voice sounded, and I let it just roll right off me. Instead, I slipped in across the table from him. “Good morning to you too sunshine,” I grinned, trying to spread around a little misery.

  The TV was on channel twelve now, showing the noonday news out of Montgomery. The volume was set too low to be more than indistinct noise, but that was something I’d learned about old Jimbo: he hated silence. Drove him up the wall. If he was awake, he wanted some kind of noise, no matter what.

  “Didn’t I just see you like, what, four days ago?” Jimmy was asking, his sleep-bleary eyes looking at the TV screen, not really seeing. “You ain’t done everything already have you?”

  I was low, but then twenty bucks wouldn’t get me very far anyway. I decided to focus on the matter at hand instead of diverging into the land of acquisition. That could wait till after at least. “I’m looking for Inez. She been around?”

  That woke Jimmy up, but judging from the look on his face, it woke him up on the wrong side of the bed. “Fuck no,” he spat. “Not since...fuck, I don’t know. Over a week.”

  I leaned back a bit. “What’d she do to get you all worked up like this?”

  Jimmy huffed. “Last time I saw her, no shit, she did a rail off my junk. It was incredible. Then, nothing for days. No call, nothing. Then I hear from Jerm of all people that she’s gone off and gotten herself some religion. Got ‘saved’ or some shit.” The air quotes he threw around made his opinion on the matter pretty clear.

  “So she ain’t bought nothing from you in days?” Inez was never one to save; if she had five bucks, well, that was enough to get her going til the next bit of money came along. “That don’t sound like her.”

  “Religion is the biggest blight on this whole damn county,” Jimmy ranted. “It’s just a money sink for gullible idiots who want to feel better about themselves. At least with my shit you pay money to actually get something in return, unlike praying to some invisible sky father that never did anyone a bit of fucking good.”

  “Tell me how you really feel,” I said, grinning. I did mostly agree with him, however. Religion was a trap, a waste of money, and more importantly the religious folks in the area were dead set on fucking it up for the rest of us. If I had a dollar for every time I’d gone to buy beer on a Sunday, having forgotten that this backwards-ass county didn’t do Sunday sales, then I wouldn’t be in my current financial bind.

  “First Inez, then fucking Jerm of all people. Two of my best customers, all dried up and gone away. I swear to god Marsh, you end up and get saved, I’ll bash your skull in.”

  I laughed at the idea. “No worries there boss. I’m just trying to find Inez for her kids. She ain’t been home in like a week or some shit.”

  Jimmy eyed me. “Mighty charitable of you.”

  I shrugged. “Moment of weakness, you know how it is.”

  “Yeah,” the man sighed, slouching back into his seat, the anger deflated out of him. Reaching to the end of the table he slipped a cigar box from amongst a stack of them. Opening it, he glanced at the TV. “Want to have some breakfast with me, so’s you didn’t come out all this way for nothing?”

  “I had some chips a bit ago but I could go for…” I started before a glance from Jimmy cut me off.

  “Not what I meant,” he said, pulling a blunt from the box and holding it up.

  Grinning, I nodded. “Guess my appetite done perked right up.”

  He reached his hand out, and I went to grab the blunt. At the last second he pulled it back. “Just promise me something first will you?” He asked.

  I felt my eyes narrowing. “What?”

  “When you find Inez, will you tell her I miss her? I don’t care if she got clean or not, I just want to see her.”

  “Sure. Want me to tell Jerm the same thing? Profess your love to him too while I’m at it?”

  Jimmy rolled his eyes and tossed the blunt my way. “Fuck that guy. He’ll come crawling back on his own, you wait and see.”

  I fished my lighter from my pocket. “And Inez won’t?”

  A morose, thoughtful look came across my friend’s face. “I don’t know. Here lately, she’s been different, kindly trying to get her mind right I think. That shit with Tom, it did a number on her I think.” He sighed again, a regular Eeyore all of sudden. “I mean I can’t really blame her I guess.”

  I took a toke off the blunt, letting out a few coughs, then passed it back. We sat there in silence, smoking some of his best weed, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I was sure he was thinking about Inez. Me, I was thinking about how I kinda wished he had offered me some real breakfast. In my current state free food was right up my alley.

  “Well,” I said at last, breaking the silence, “I’m sure she’ll turn up sooner or later.”

  Naptime

  I woke up what must have been about two hours later. The TV was still muttering along indistinctly, making a muffled sort of drone that paired perfectly with the hum of the window unit air conditioner. Between those sounds and the weed, I’d done drifted right to sleep.

  Straightening up I could feel that there was a bad crick in my neck now from the way my head had been lying against the seat. It was going to be a righteous bitch to work out it felt like, which did little to improve my mood. I was pissed that I had fallen as
leep like that, and it just put more time between being done with this.

  Sitting there on the table in front of me was a honeybun and a note which read ‘Enjoy. Gone to work, good luck finding Inez.” Peeling the wrapper from the pastry I wolfed it down, getting my fingers all sticky in the process. Standing up I began licking them clean, savoring every bit of sweetness.

  For a moment I considered all the drugs there were in that stack of cigar boxes, and how easy it would be to help myself to them. The temptation was mighty strong, I’m not gonna lie. Jimmy would be back off in the woods, out in the little shed where he did his meth cooking, easily far enough away for me to grab and go without him being able to stop me.

  I finally managed to pull my eyes off them boxes, and force myself to step outside. Robbing your drug dealer was never a good idea, especially when he happened to be one of your very few friends, even if y’all weren’t exactly close. Not like H.D. Or my cousin Krista.

  I shot one longing glance back at the camper, and the treasure trove it held within, then stomped through the weeds once more. With each step I got just a little more pissed at Inez. There was going to be hell to pay when I found her.

  One Last Shot

  On the one hand, I knew Jubal County had the most dirt roads in the state. So especially running in the circles I did, it only stood to reason that I would spend more than a little time on them. On the other, I was getting fucking sick of being all shook up because of the Pontiac's shit suspension.

  I’d decided that I was going to check Yasmine’s place, and if Inez wasn’t there, then fuck her. It was getting on later in the day, and all I had to show for at this point after hours of work was twenty bucks, a bag of chips, and a damn honeybun. I could have been out scrapping, or trying to lay hands on some copper, or trying to score some yardwork. Much of my adult life has been spent wasting my days. But those were by choice. This was just pissing me off.