by David Joy
“Get some sleep,” Holland said, and the phone line went dead.
TWENTY-NINE
Two days later, Denny Rattler was nodding out in a booth at the Subway. He knew the manager and had crashed on his couch the past two nights. Chance was what some folks called a functioning addict. He’d tie one on at night, get up and go to work the next day. All the help had called in sick so that Chance was whipping out five-dollar footlongs by his lonesome. He’d been working here since high school and now he managed a bunch of teenage stoners that reminded him of himself at their age. The cycle had come full circle.
Denny had given Chance a ride to work that morning. Thing was, Chance’s Altima had a flat and his wife needed her car to get the kids to her mama’s before a shift at the pancake house. Fall had finally started to give way to winter. There was frost on the seat of the Suzuki when they climbed on that morning and with all that weight on the ass end, the back tire rubbed the fender every time Denny hit a bump. Still, he wobbled the handlebars, engine screaming, and somehow managed to keep them between the ditches. Now he could hardly keep his eyes open.
The world had become a series of fragments, little vignettes that didn’t piece together into anything meaningful.
Denny’s head dropped and his eyes snapped open. Some fat guy with a cul-de-sac and a little ponytail rubber-banded at the back of his head stood at the counter with his gut hanging out of the bottom of his T-shirt. There were bug bites all over his legs and he had on a pair of worn-out flip-flops. He kept asking for just a little more mayonnaise and Denny could hear Chance squirting another gob and another gob over and over like the movie was stuck in a loop. Denny closed his eyes.
Something cold brushed his arm and there was drool running out of the corner of his mouth. Chance was wiping down the table with a wet rag. He was mid-sentence and Denny didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Denny said. He pulled his knees into his chest and curled into a ball at the back of the booth. His head rocked to the side and found rest against the wall.
When he opened his eyes it was to a sharp pain that jabbed him in his stomach just below his breastbone with enough force that it took his breath. His eyes popped open and Jonah Rathbone leaned inches from his face, having slid into the booth beside him. A piece of food was stuck between Jonah’s front teeth and Denny could smell his sour breath. “Get the fuck up,” Jonah said. Denny looked down and that big silver revolver was pushed so hard into his belly that none of the barrel was visible.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Chance yelled from behind the register. He walked around the counter into the small dining area. Flour dusted his forest green apron and plastic gloves hung loosely from his hands. A hairnet was pulled down over his ears and he had a ball cap holding it down. Celine Dion was playing from the ceiling. No one else was in the restaurant.
“You go on back over there and make me a sandwich,” Jonah said. He had the revolver in his right hand and he kept the muzzle pressed into Denny’s stomach as he covered the gun with his left arm and turned his body toward Chance.
For a brief moment, Denny thought about making a move while Jonah’s head was turned, but he knew that crazy son of a bitch was just as liable to pull the trigger here as anywhere else.
“How about you get out,” Chance said, signaling toward the door. He took his gloves off, balled them up, and shoved them into a trash can beside the soda fountain.
“Mister, I’m going to tell you one more time to get back over there behind that counter.”
Chance was just a few feet from the table now and Denny could feel the tension loaded into Jonah’s body. Denny started to say something, but Chance’s mouth was already moving.
“And I’m going to tell you one more time. Get the fuck out!”
No sooner had that sentence found air than Jonah clocked Chance in the side of the head with the revolver in his half-opened palm. Chance’s body crumpled to the floor and he curled into the fetal position with his arms shielding his head like a tornado had just lifted the house from around him. Jonah took a long stride and kicked as hard as he could into Chance’s kidneys and there was a loud gasp for air like that old boy might’ve been drowning.
Denny rose out of the booth with a half-assed plan to jump onto Jonah’s back and choke him out, but his movements were sluggish. Soon as his feet found the floor Jonah whirled around and lodged the gun under Denny’s chin so that he was suddenly staring at the ceiling with his head cranked back as far as his neck could bend, Celine singing how her heart would go on and on.
“Let’s me and you take a ride,” Jonah said, and that fast they were out the door, the sun shining so bright overhead Denny had to close his eyes to keep from going blind.
* * *
• • •
The truck squeaked and squawked and Denny’s head seesawed back and forth, then smacked against the passenger side glass. He blinked his eyes and they were driving past a field burned black and gray, the ground still smoldering in places. It took him a second to realize where he was and where they were going.
One of the trailers on the hill was half burned so that it looked similar to a cigarette butt. The abandoned car that had always sat at the Outlet Mall was nothing more than warped metal, now black as cast iron, smoke rising from the frame. There were a few people outside the trailers picking about the yard, but from the bottom of the hill Denny couldn’t tell if he knew them. They looked like zombies. The whole place looked like a scene straight out of The Walking Dead.
He turned his head and Jonah was sitting across the cab with the revolver propped on his stomach in his left hand. He had his right hand high on the steering wheel so that the gun was shielded by his body, the muzzle aimed straight into Denny’s ribs.
“Morning, sunshine.” A shit-eating smile spread across Jonah’s face.
Denny didn’t say anything, but he was wide awake all of a sudden. His knees ached and his palms were clammy.
“Past two days I’ve been trying to figure out just what the fuck you were thinking, Denny. You thought you were going to slip off and I wouldn’t remember I had a bundle sitting on the table? That’s where my mind went the second I heard that little shitty scooter of yours fire up at the bottom of the hill. I thought, That motherfucker has stole that dope, and damned if I wasn’t right.”
Jonah always talked really fast so that it was hard for Denny to decipher. For some reason the car ride was making him sick to his stomach. He felt like he might throw up and he rubbed his hand in a slow circle around his belly trying to stave off the feeling.
“What doesn’t make any sense to me was what you thought you were going to do from then on. If you stole from me, you had to know you couldn’t show your face around here again, so where the fuck was you going to go? That’s the thing about you, Denny, it’s like you can’t see no farther than the headlights.”
The truck passed through a tunnel of tall pines and the cab dropped into shadow. Denny could see the house just up ahead and he knew right then that things were going to be worse than a simple ass whupping. He knew the man running things, had known Watty Freeman for years, and he knew that if you wound up in front of him nowadays, odds are you’d reached the edge of the bluff.
Jonah backed the truck in against a pile of old tires stacked at the side of a barn. It was a little box-shaped house with pale yellow vinyl siding spotted with mildew. There was a small concrete porch with nothing on it, a tarnished aluminum screen door with a triangle of mesh hanging dog-eared from one corner. The gun was swinging by Jonah’s side and he stayed a good two or three steps behind.
“Just go on in,” Jonah said when they came onto the porch. “Straight down to the end of the hall.”
The front door opened into a narrow hallway that ran through the center of the house like a spine. Rooms cut off to the right and left, but Denny could hear the television on in the room a
t the end. There weren’t any lights on in the house but there was enough daylight coming from the room ahead that he could see the carpet stained to hell beneath his feet, the bare Sheetrock walls at his sides.
When he entered the room, a salt-and-pepper blue heeler growled just a few feet away. Watty Freeman was leaned forward in a black leather recliner. He grabbed hold of the dog’s collar in one hand and reached for a remote on a glass coffee table in front of him. There was a flat-screen television playing loudly on a cheap entertainment center crowded with DVD boxes and PlayStation games. The screen went black and the room fell silent except for the sound of the dog.
“Denny Rattler,” Watty said. He had a thick Big Cove accent that drew out the vowels, but he spoke slow and deliberate, each word enunciated as if he was delivering a speech. “Why don’t you come on in and have a seat.” There was a knot swollen on the top right side of Watty’s head like he might’ve been starting to grow a horn. A dark red split ran across the bridge of his nose and dropped into thin, bruised arcs beneath his eyes. Watty nodded toward a place on a black leather sofa that ran against the back wall. A large picture window was centered over the couch and a pair of French doors stood to the right, opening onto a deck.
Denny crossed the room and took a seat at the end of the couch by the door. Watty let go of the dog’s collar and the heeler ran over to sniff Denny’s legs.
“Why don’t you let him out,” Watty said.
Denny started to stand, but Watty stopped him.
“Not you,” he said.
Jonah Rathbone shoved the revolver into the front of his pants so that the grip hung on the waistline of his dark blue Dickies. He strutted across the room like John Wayne and opened the door to let the dog out.
Watty held a coffee mug in one hand and pinched the string of a tea bag in his other. He lifted the bag out of the mug and set it on the edge of the table, leaned back in the chair, and crossed one leg over the other. Black denim jeans rode low on his waist and he wore a red plaid flannel with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. There was absolutely nothing imposing about Watty’s frame, but he was one of the scariest people Denny had ever met. From the looks of things, he’d been in a car wreck or a fistfight but none of that amounted to an ounce of vulnerability. Light came through the window and seemed to evaporate in his eyes.
“I guess you already know why you’re here, so we can skip all of that. You and I have known each other a long time, Denny, and that means something. At least it does to me. A month ago if you’d stolen from me I’d probably have had Jonah cut you off and let it slide,” Watty said. “Thing about it, you stepped on my toes at the worst time imaginable and so that hundred-dollar debt is worth a lot more to me now than it was a few days ago. That hundred dollars right now is about the price of a man’s life.”
A pump shotgun stood propped in the corner and angled into the wall behind Watty’s chair. Denny stared at the glass tabletop in front of him to try and keep his mind off the scatter-gun and what Watty was saying. His reflection stared back at him from the glass and he couldn’t stand the sight of himself right then.
“I need you to do something for me. You do what I’m about to ask and we’ll call it square.” Watty rocked forward and slammed his fists down on the arms of the chair. “Matter of fact, next bag you want to put in your arm, you’ll know right where to come. It’ll be on me. You go see Jonah and he’ll fix you right up. Won’t you, Jonah?”
“If that’s what you want,” Jonah said.
“That’s what I want.”
Denny looked up at Watty and he had the coffee mug to his lips. The way the light was hitting him made the acne scars on his cheeks look like gravel.
“What do you want me to do?”
Watty slid the mug onto the table and took a pack of cigarettes out of the breast pocket of his shirt. He lit a smoke and offered the pack to Denny. Denny took one and patted his pockets for a lighter. Watty struck a Zippo and held the flame out in offering.
“There’s no sugarcoating it, Denny, so I’ll just come right out and say it. I need you to kill somebody.”
The words came out so matter-of-fact that Denny thought he had to be joking. He shook his head and laughed, tapped ash from the end of his cigarette into his cupped hand. Watty’s face was flat as stone. There was no emotion, no expression, and that stoicism turned Denny cold. “You’re serious?”
“Of course I am.”
“Who?” Denny asked.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” Denny took a long drag from the cigarette and held his breath while he spoke. “Of course it matters.”
“It’s nobody close to you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Watty said. “I doubt you’ve ever met this man in your life. So right now who it is doesn’t make any difference. The only thing that matters is you telling me that you’ll do it.”
“No.” Denny shook his head. He couldn’t imagine a thing in the world that would lead him to murder someone, especially not for Watty Freeman. “What if I just say no?”
“I don’t think you’re going to do that.”
“And why’s that?” Denny asked. “You going to kill me if I don’t?”
Jonah Rathbone rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. He was standing in the entrance to the room and he pulled the revolver back out of his pants and crossed his arms over his chest.
“I wouldn’t threaten you with your own life, Denny. A threat like that just wouldn’t mean anything.” Watty chuckled and stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray on the floor. “There’s nothing at stake when a man doesn’t care whether he lives or he dies. For a long time now, I’d say you’ve made that pretty clear.”
The dog scratched at the foot of the door and the sound exhausted the tension. Jonah paced across the room to let the dog inside. The heeler lumbered past and lay down beside Watty’s chair, his back legs stretched straight behind him and his head propped on his front paws.
“You know what I like to do to clear my head, Denny? It’s a funny thing really.”
“I don’t have any idea.”
“Nickel slots,” Watty said. “I like to go down to the casino with twenty dollars in my pocket and sit down in front of one of those machines, just let the lights and the sound and the chaos of it all just sort of wash over me and clear everything out of my head. It’s usually just me and the Asians and the old ladies, Denny, without a care in this world.”
The cigarette had burned down to the filter between Denny’s fingers. He slid the butt into an empty Coke can that lay on its side on the table.
“The reason I tell you that is because I ran into somebody the last time I was there. You know who I’m talking about?”
“Not off the top of my head.”
“Your sister, Carla. She was strutting around in her little uniform, real official looking. Looked like she’d really made something of herself. I spoke with her and we caught up. Now, she still lives in that house y’all grew up in, doesn’t she? Your uncle’s place right there in town where the school bus used to drop y’all off when we were kids. The house with that Quonset hut behind it.”
Denny tried to swallow and choked.
“I think you know what I’m getting at, Denny, and I think that’s why you’ll do what I’m asking. You might not care enough about yourself to keep from overdosing in some motel somewhere, but I’d say there’re things in this world you still value.”
Between the dope wearing him down and his mind suddenly racing, Denny was dizzy. Sweat blistered his brow. He was knocking his knees together nervously and his hands were balled up at his chest. The heeler stood up from the floor and came over to watch him. The dog’s eyes were copper coins, a payment for the ferryman, and as Denny Rattler stared into them, a low groan bellowed from the back of the animal’s throat. Denny looked away and the dog shi
fted on his front paws, his collar jangling on his neck.
“I don’t understand,” Denny said. “It doesn’t make sense why you’re asking me.”
“Sure it does, Denny. There’re a couple of reasons. For one, I know you’re not the type to run to the police. Take that little incident the other day. You were asked a whole lot of questions about this place and a lesser man would’ve told them everything he knew just to keep his own head above water. But you, you kept it all to yourself, didn’t you? Didn’t say a word.”
Denny wondered who was on the take, maybe that young officer who arrested him, the one who stood in the corner of the room while Owle questioned him. “If that’s all you’re looking for, I’d say you’ve got plenty of people you could call.”
“Yeah, but not everybody owes me, Denny, and you do,” Watty said. “There was something someone told me the other day that really struck home. They said everything in this world carries consequences. I think that’s about right, don’t you? I don’t believe I could have said it better myself.”
THIRTY
When it came to Jackson County, Denny Rattler didn’t know his ass from his elbow. He could get to Walmart since it had always been the closest one to Cherokee, and he could find his way to Smoky Mountain High School from having played them in football. But other than that what little he knew was left to the flea markets, pawnshops, motels, and campgrounds that dotted the highway along the Boundary. Fact was, a man could go his whole life in these mountains without traveling more than twenty miles.
Just south of Sylva, the college had turned Cullowhee into its own little town. Last time Denny’d been there was during his senior year in high school when him and some other football players rode down to play stickball at Mountain Heritage Day. That had been twenty years ago and the place was unrecognizable now.
Growing up, Denny’s uncle hated the college. He used to tell Denny stories about how there was a native mound there before the campus was built, how they flattened the place to pour footers for a building. He said they found skeletons when they were digging and that there was a professor who kept a child’s skull out of that mound on his desk as a paperweight. Denny didn’t know if any of that was true or not, but he recalled the stories just the same.
