When These Mountains Burn

by David Joy

  The way he remembered, there’d been a single road cutting straight through the center of campus, but if it had ever been that way it certainly wasn’t anymore. Turning in to the main entrance, he wheeled through a roundabout with a jacked-up Jeep holding tight to his rear tire. His nose was running and his head was sweaty inside the helmet. Young girls dressed as if it was July strutted across the street and he swerved to miss them without ever letting off of the gas. The road rose and leveled out on a mountain riddled with pine, then dropped down the backside of campus beside the library, where Denny shot left for the river.

  The Cullowhee Dam made a waterfall out of the Tuckaseigee and there were a few old men gathered along the bank drinking tallboys from paper sacks and holding cheap button-cast rods with thin lines angled into the current. Wayehutta Road was just on the other side of the bridge. He had the directions scribbled on his hand in blue pen but as he tried to read them he realized his palms had been sweating so bad the words had rubbed off. Watty Freeman had brought the map up on a laptop. Denny knew this was the road and that the property was just a little ways past a church, but without a street number he’d have to hope there were names marking mailboxes.

  A white church with a green tin roof and a river rock foundation stood close enough to the road that a man could’ve spit out the window and hit it in passing. Just a ways farther, a dirt drive in desperate need of gravel cut off to the left and rose steep through naked hardwoods. The T-post holding the mailbox was bent at a hard angle and there was a letter missing from the tin so that the name read MAT IS. Denny dropped off the shoulder and flipped open the lid. Junk mail for Doris Mathis or current resident filled the box. There was a power bill addressed to the man he was looking for.

  He didn’t have a strategy put together, and that scared the hell out of him because he’d always thought things through and worked from a plan. Going in blind was a surefire way to get caught, and with stakes like this, handcuffs were the least of his worries. It’s just breaking in a house, he told himself. This one’s no different than any other. But that wasn’t true. Deep down he knew he was lying to himself, that if shit went bad here it would likely be the end, and despite what Watty Freeman thought, Denny Rattler had no interest in dying. It had never been that addicts didn’t care whether they lived or died, it was that the feeling you were chasing rested right against the brink and sometimes you just fell over.

  The Suzuki chugged hard to climb the driveway and Denny kept the scooter centered in a washed-out tire track, kicking his way along with his feet at times to keep from toppling over. If there was anybody home, he’d get a quick look and turn around like he was lost. The driveway topped out and there were no trucks or cars. An old busted dog lot rotted against the wood line at the far side of the yard and weeds were springing up in what was left of a summer garden.

  The house wasn’t much to speak of, a board-and-bat farmhouse stained dark as pitch, a shake roof buried by moss. A single-pitch gable extended off the front over a dirt-floor porch. Dusty muck boots stood next to a couple rocking chairs and there was a metal bowl filled with water on the ground beside them. He looked around for a dog, but didn’t see one. He turned his eyes toward the front door, figuring if there was one it was probably inside.

  The fact the old man wasn’t home was a welcome window of opportunity. Denny didn’t have much information. All he knew was that the fellow lived alone, wore a long beard and a funny-looking hat, that he was built too big to fool around with. Watty had assured him that whatever he did it needed to be fast. “You’re not going to want to get into a wrestling match with him is what I’m saying.”

  Watty had also demanded a photograph to prove the deed was done, and Denny didn’t have a clue how in the hell he was going to make that happen with no cell phone or nothing. Wasn’t like he walked around with a Polaroid camera hanging off his neck.

  Pushing the Suzuki around back, he found a place to hide the scooter beside a tin-roofed lean-to that was built for firewood and angled into the slope. A dog was bawling inside the house, and Denny had to balance on a cinder block to get a look through the window. An old beagle stood pigeon-toed on a tile floor with her tail pointed straight back and her head up as she howled. Seeing that dog eased Denny’s mind because he’d broken into enough houses to know which breeds were trouble. Nine times out of ten a beagle was more bark than bite, and that other time didn’t matter because it was a God-given rule that hounds figured more with their stomachs than their brains.

  The house didn’t have a back entrance, and he didn’t try to pry open the window. Plenty of old-timers never locked their doors, so he went around front and sure enough it was as simple as turning the knob. The house opened into a dimly lit den with pine plank tongue-and-groove walls. The dog stood in the opening of the hallway growling but seemed content not to venture any closer.

  Denny skimmed the room and saw the kitchen to the right. The fridge was empty except for a few slices of bologna and a stack of American cheese. Ripping the red plastic ring off the meat, he took a piece of cheese and folded the two pieces into a triangle. The dog stood right where he’d left him. Denny knelt and held the treat out in his hand. The hound lifted her head with a cloudy-eyed stare, and when the scent reached her nose she hobbled over stiff-legged and swallowed the offering whole. She sniffed Denny’s hand as if duty-bound to conduct one final inspection. Everything checked out and the beagle slapped her tongue around her jowls. Soon enough her tail was wagging and she was licking Denny’s fingers clean.

  Denny made up another treat and led the beagle into a bedroom at the back of the house. He dropped the bologna on a braided oval rug at the foot of the bed and shut the door. He could hear the dog smacking her lips as he came down the hall. Just like always, breaking in came easy. Unfortunately, that wasn’t why he was here.

  The idea of killing a man was about as foreign to Denny Rattler as sobriety. Every time he thought about it for very long his emotions got the better of him, so instead of focusing on the act itself he focused on his sister. He’d been in enough fistfights to know he was decent with his hands. But as far as actually killing something, he’d never so much as shot a deer. He remembered seeing a pig killed once when he was a kid and how this old man had hammered the hog in the top of the head with the blunt end of a go-devil, then slit the pig’s throat in one level motion. Blood dumped out as if poured from a paint can, but death came surprisingly fast. All afternoon Denny just kept remembering how that pig’s legs kicked and stirred, dust whirring up from the ground like smoke. He hoped it would be that easy.

  In the kitchen, he pulled the biggest butcher knife he could find out of the block and sat down at a wood slab table to wait. There was no telling when the man might show, but he figured he’d be able to hear him when he pulled into the yard. An old photo album was open on the table in front of him and he flipped through the laminated pages, hoping to get an idea of how big a fellow he was dealing with.

  The first photo Denny saw was an old yellowed Polaroid of a man holding a turkey by its legs in front of Bryson Farm Supply. There was a little boy beside him holding the beard out on the turkey’s chest like a paintbrush and he was making a silly face with his tongue stuck out and his eyes crossed. The man was wearing overalls and had a ball cap propped tall on top of his head. He had on a pair of glasses with transition lenses shading his eyes. Another fellow stood off to the side unloading dog food from a pallet.

  Denny flipped the page and there was a picture of that same boy a little older kneeling on one knee in a baseball uniform. He had a bucktooth smile and was holding on to the grip of a bat with the end of the barrel pressed into the ground. Something about the kid’s face looked familiar, like Denny had seen him before. Probably played him in high school, he thought.

  A newspaper clipping held a photo of what looked to be an awards ceremony. Three men were standing shoulder to shoulder, each holding an opened display box in fron
t of his chest. They were all dressed in Forest Service uniforms—dark slacks and lighter shirts—and the fellow in the middle towered over the other two. He was a head taller than either man and broad as a quarter horse. The photo was black and white but there were gray stripes in his beard and it hung to the center of his chest. If this was the man he’d come for, Denny knew he had his work cut out for him.

  He closed the photo album and ran his thumb along the Old Hickory blade. The knife was sharp carbon steel patinaed the color of slate, the edge a bright silver shining. The wood handle felt balanced in his hand, but he knew it would get slippery covered in blood. He had to keep a firm grip and try not to let his fist climb up the heel or else he’d wind up slicing himself.

  Make the first cut count and it won’t take long, Denny thought.

  As soon as the man’s neck was open, his blood pressure would plummet and it didn’t matter what size you were once that happened. There were two things keeping you standing and those two things were inseparable. Cut off the air or cut off the blood and within thirty seconds it was lights the fuck out. He closed his eyes and pictured his sister. All he could do now was wait.

  THIRTY-ONE

  By the time Holland made it to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, Andy Griffith had already cut the man loose. According to Rodriguez, Walter Freeman was one step removed from the men responsible for every gram of heroin moving through western North Carolina. The DEA had likely been within a month of making their move, and the local law cut him free like a town drunk gone sober.

  The way Freeman lawyered up, odds were they wouldn’t have stood a chance at turning him anyways. But the bigger question was how a man winds up hog-tied with a kilo of powder heroin and enough crystal to open a rock shop sitting in his lap like a basket of Easter eggs. There was backwoods justice and then there was this. In all Holland’s years, he’d never seen anything like it, but here he was picking up the pieces.

  A receptionist led Holland down the hall and the deputies went quiet as he passed. Holland didn’t know whether their silence was fear or contrition. Sometimes they were scared you were the hand that held the ax, and other times it was an unspoken middle finger to let you know you were stepping on their toes. Holland didn’t care one way or the other. He held eye contact until they looked away or lowered their heads, their slack faces passing in the periphery like mile markers along the highway.

  The clop of his chukkas against the linoleum was suddenly overcome by a high-pitched shrill that sounded like nails on a chalkboard. The receptionist twisted her face and jammed her fingers in her ears, nodding her head toward an open door to indicate this was as far as she’d take him.

  Sheriff John Coggins looked like he was about to tip over. He was leaned back in a black leather office chair with his feet propped on his desk. A silver flattop squared off his head and a thick mustache flared around his nostrils from how he held his lips pursed. Unlike most sheriffs, who opted for suit and tie, he wore a black uniform like he still worked patrol. There was some sort of wooden box rested on his stomach and he had the paddle handle of the lid scissored between two fingers. The sheriff made a slight motion with his hand and that same piercing sound Holland had heard in the hallway yelped through the room so loud that he was sure his eardrums had split in half.

  Holland stretched his mouth to pop his ears.

  “That’s walnut over butternut.”

  “What?”

  “What gives it that raspy sound. You just don’t get that kind of rasp out of poplar. I like butternut or limba for the box to get that old hen on the back end. You turkey hunt?”

  “No.”

  “You from Georgia, ain’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And don’t turkey hunt?” Sheriff Coggins yanked his feet down and pulled in tight to his desk. He set the box call on top of a large desktop calendar that was muddied with pen marks and doodles. “That bird right there went twenty-seven pounds.”

  Holland looked over his shoulder to where the sheriff had nodded. A giant bird was mounted on the wall with one wing down, one bent toward the ceiling as if frozen mid-flight. Holland smelled like talcum powder. When the call came in that morning, he’d been in the middle of a haircut and he wasn’t even certain whether or not the barber had finished.

  “I shot that bird up Chadeen Creek. Chastine’s how you’d say it. That’s how it’s spelled. Right above the old Shuler place. Come down off the roost within ten yards. He was sleeping up there in the tree I was sitting under and I didn’t have a clue. I just heard wings and there he was. Never even had to make a call.”

  The sheriff looked at Holland like he was waiting on him to speak, but Holland didn’t have a clue what in the hell he was talking about.

  “Life’s funny like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the way you can just be sitting there minding your business and all of a sudden the world drops a gift right in your lap.”

  “Is that how you think of it? Like a gift?”

  “Well, I don’t know what else you’d call it.”

  “A goddamn mess is what I’d call it.”

  “A gawm.”

  “A what?”

  “A gawm,” Sheriff Coggins said again. “That’s what I’d say.”

  “You can call it whatever you want. All I know is that someone just made my job a whole lot harder than it was yesterday.”

  “I didn’t even know you were working a case up here.”

  “Is that what this is about? You think we’re shitting on your doorstep? I didn’t drive up here to intrude, Sheriff, but I’m not going to apologize either.”

  “Look, I know you think I’m just some dumb hick sheriff, and you might be right, but the fact is that pile of dope just come like a godsend on this department. There’s probably eighty grand in the heroin alone. Between that and the meth and the cash, I’m looking at a pretty good payday. You know how something like that affects the bottom line? We get that money back from the state and all of a sudden my budget ain’t near as tight as it was yesterday.”

  The sheriff opened one of his desk drawers and took out a small rectangular picture frame. He flipped out the stand on the back and stood the photograph up so that Holland could see it. The picture was of a K9, a regal-looking bloodhound with her chest out and ears framing her face.

  “That’s Lucy. And let me tell you she was probably the smartest dog I’ve ever seen. That one dog got more dope out of this county in the ten years we had her than every deputy I’ve got combined. She died about a year ago. Kidney failure. Makes you wonder what’s coming out of that water fountain out there in the hall. But do you know what it costs to replace a dog like that? Between the dog and the training and sending a handler down east for eight weeks, things get expensive in a hurry. Ain’t like raising a cur pup. Anyhow, what I’m getting at is that between all of that dope coming off the street and all of the dope we’ll wind up finding because of it, what was a bad day for you was a fine one for me.”

  The sheriff picked up a manila folder and handed it across the desk.

  “I had one of my deputies put the surveillance footage on a CD for you. If you don’t got a computer that takes CDs, just let me know and I’ll have him email it.”

  “Did the camera catch anything?”

  “Not really. I mean, you can see two people dragging the old boy up through the parking lot and tying him up to a light pole out there, but it’s too fuzzy to make heads or tails of. Maybe y’all can clean it up and get something out of it. My resources aren’t exactly top of the line. This ain’t exactly the Pentagon.”

  “We might be able to do something with it.”

  “I’ll take you down the hall and introduce you to the detective, but I’d say right now you know about as much as we do. Probably more. All we’ve really got is that this Walter Freeman’s from Cherokee. Lieutenant F
ox has a call in with the tribe here in a few minutes and you’re more than welcome to sit in on that call if you want.”

  “I’d prefer we keep a lid on things for now.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “My agents have reason to believe that there could be some people on the inside.”

  “In my department?”

  “Tribal police.”

  “All right. We’ll play it however you say.”

  “For now I’d like to keep the fact we’ve been watching him within this department. It’s fine if the tribe knows we’re here. Something like this happens, they know we’re going to show up, but as far as us having any prior knowledge of Walter Freeman, I need that to stay within this building. Can we do that?”

  “Yeah, I’d say we can do that.” The sheriff stood, put his hands on his waist, and leaned back to stretch. “Anything you need from us, you just ask, and I mean that. Whatever you need, if we got it, it’s yours.”

  “I appreciate that, Sheriff.” The sheriff made a funny face that Holland couldn’t make sense of. “What is it?”

  “Looks like your barber missed a spot there on the side right above your ear.” Sheriff Coggins reached into his pocket and unfolded the spey blade of a tarnished old trapper. He pressed the edge against his thumb like he was peeling an apple. “Lean over here, son, and I’ll fix you right up.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The motel where Rodriguez had been staying was less than a mile from the sheriff’s office. The old courthouse stood on a hill overlooking downtown Sylva, and off toward the creek a little one-story strip building offered weekly rates to anyone who had the cash to pay.