Mockingbird Songs

by R.J. Ellory

  “You think he doesn’t want you to find her?”

  “My first thought was that he was so pissed off with Evan that he didn’t want me doing anything to help him. Second thing, more important, is that Evan was never a liar, not to me, anyway. He said that Carson would know about the girl, and yet Carson says he knows nothing. This morning he said he was gonna give me the full truth, and he ain’t given me shit. Third thing, I don’t like him.”

  “Let’s go,” Evie said. “My dad’ll be waiting. We can talk about it on the way.”

  Henry started the pickup, pulled away from the front of the Honeycutt house, and headed straight.

  “Keep going until I tell you,” she said. “It’s a good way before we turn off.”

  They didn’t speak of Carson Riggs or Evan’s lost daughter. They spoke of Evie Chandler and her history. Henry wanted to stay for Evan’s sake, to fulfill the promise he’d made, but he now also wanted to stay because of Evie. The more he thought of her, the more he wanted to think of her. Reminded him of a line in one of Evan Riggs’s songs from The Whiskey Poet album: She makes my mind quiet and my heart loud.

  “My mom and dad were high school sweethearts,” Evie explained. “I was born back in December of forty-nine. I am the first and last of the Brackettville Chandlers.” She wound down the window and put her arm out. Even now, close to half-past eight, it was still very warm. “You know Brackettville?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  “Southeast, maybe a hundred and twenty miles or so. Past Del Rio, back end of the Balcones. That’s where they were raised, where they went to school, where they met and married, where I was born.”

  “How’d your mom die?”

  “I was a kid. Three years old. She had a brain hemorrhage. Went out like a blown lightbulb right there at the dinner table.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And your dad never remarried?”

  “Nope. Don’t think he ever will.”

  “Because?”

  “Because he’s still of the opinion that he doesn’t deserve someone else. He works hard, drinks hard, takes care of me. I guess that’s all he expects now. Says change is all well and good, so long as it’s not within his lifetime.”

  “Same as my ma. She’s a drinker, too. Has men around every once in a while. But they don’t stay long. They remedy her boredom, but then they become part of the boredom and she throws them out.”

  “Who’d wanna be a grown-up, eh?”

  Henry laughed.

  “So, you get to meet my dad, huh? This is like a proper date.”

  “You figure?”

  “Sure, Henry Quinn. I mean, you’re serviceably good-looking, seem like a nice enough guy, gonna be a Grand Ole Opry superstar some way up the road, and if you behave yourself, you never know what might happen …”

  Henry glanced right; Evie was pouting at him, batting her eyelids and playing the fool.

  “You are a strange one,” he said.

  “You don’t think I’m pretty?” she asked.

  “Sure, you’re pretty. Very pretty. Hell, what do you want me to say, Evie? I don’t know if you’re being serious.”

  “You don’t wanna fool around, Henry? You’ve been in Reeves for three years. You must be so backed up you could drown a girl.”

  Henry started laughing. It was a truly disgusting notion.

  “I don’t know what to make of you, Miss Chandler,” he finally said.

  “You don’t have to make anything of me, Henry Quinn,” she replied. “I ain’t complicated. What you see is what you get. I’m jus’ teasin’ you because you are the sort of guy who needs to be teased.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  “And why would that be?”

  “Because you take yourself too seriously. And you need to turn right down here and take 10.”

  Henry waited for the turn, got onto 10, and then asked her what she meant.

  “Not difficult. You’ve had a hard time, I guess. You fucked up, you went to jail, and now you think that life is gonna be like this forever.”

  Henry didn’t reply; he was wondering whether or not she was right.

  “People make life so much more complicated than it needs to be. Like my dad. Hell, he should just lighten up, find himself another woman, settle down. Sure he can get into a rut, but better to be in a rut with company, don’tcha think?”

  “Depends on the company,” Henry replied, thinking then of his own mother and Howard Ulysses Morgan.

  “See, that’s precisely what I mean. With such an attitude, there’s always a rider, always a way to twist it to the negative. You gotta stop that kind of shit, Henry Quinn, or you’re gonna get ground up in the big ol’ machine.”

  “I’ll try, Evie. For you, I will try.” He looked sideways. She was smiling wide.

  “That’s my boy,” she said, and winked.

  The Ozona trip was brief, forty minutes or so, and the whole time Henry was aware of the tension that now hung between them. She said nothing more that indicated any romantic interest, and he was unsure of whether she’d actually been joking with him. This time, the more he thought about it, the less he wanted to think about it, and yet the more he thought about it, the less he wanted it to have been a joke.

  Time with her had merely served to highlight and accentuate everything that was right about her. Where he had considered her pretty, she was now just beautiful. Her sense of humor was sharp and quick. Plain and simple, she was a very special girl, and he wondered whether fate had played some part in this, whether Moirai’s spinning threads had drawn them together for some other purpose than mere company and conversation.

  By the time they arrived, they were talking like lifelong friends. When he exited the pickup in front of her house, she just sat there. Henry stood on the sidewalk and looked askance at her.

  “You darn well come and open the door for me, you ill-mannered son of a bitch,” she said. “You take a girl to dinner, you better behave like a gentleman.”

  “You are so fucked up,” Henry said, but still he walked around the car and opened the door.

  She got out, hesitated briefly, and then leaned up a fraction to kiss him on the cheek.

  “There’s a good boy,” she said coyly, and took off for the house.

  Glenn Chandler was another man with a story on his face. Henry guessed he was in his early fifties, but he carried a few more years in the lines and creases around his eyes. Henry did not imagine they’d been earned by laughing, and when he shook hands with the man, he was subjected to an extended survey that communicated a very clear message: Can see you, young man; can see right through you; I know you been in prison and want to know what deal you think you’re making with my daughter.

  Henry was simply polite, thanked Mr. Chandler for having him over, to which Glenn Chandler replied, “I ain’t so much of a cook. Tuna casserole. That’s what we got, like it or leave it.”

  “I’m good with tuna casserole,” Henry said. “After Reeves, pretty much anything is the best meal you ever had.”

  “Evie told me about your troubles. Sounds like you got a raw deal.”

  Chandler walked through to the kitchen, Henry right behind him.

  Evie went to the icebox and took out three bottles of Lone Star. She popped the caps and handed them around. Chandler sat at the kitchen table. Henry and Evie followed suit. The aroma of tuna casserole filled the place. Henry had skipped dinner at the Honeycutts even though it had been offered. Given enough ketchup, he’d have eaten roadkill right off the tarmac.

  “You can blame others, even when there’s no one specific to blame,” Henry said, “or you can just accept responsibility for your own life, regardless of whether or not you really understand what happened.”

  Glenn Chandler didn’t reply. Perhaps he was considering something personal.

  “I guess there are those who think everything that happens to them is because of other people and those wh
o think it’s all down to themselves.”

  Chandler smiled ruefully. “So you’re not a great believer in luck or coincidence.”

  “Nope.”

  “Ever?”

  “Can’t say that I am,” Henry said. “I mean, it depends how long a view you want to take.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Whether we think that a human being came from somewhere, or he’s just a mess of chemicals with a street value of about eight bucks.”

  Chandler shook his head and looked at Evie. “Sober as a judge, haven’t even started dinner, and we’re already dealing with the spiritual and philosophical. I can see why you like him.”

  Evie turned her mouth down. “I’m not so sure,” she said. “On the drive over, he wasn’t as interesting as I thought he’d be.”

  Henry laughed.

  “Let’s eat,” Chandler said, and when he rose, he gripped Henry’s shoulder, and Henry took it as a sign of acceptance. If not that, then at least a heartfelt welcome.

  Evie winked at him. Henry smiled. She blew him a silent kiss. He colored up.

  The casserole was good. Henry wolfed down a plate, took a second helping. This earned him another brownie point in the Chandler household.

  He matched Chandler beer for beer, ever aware that he had no place to go, would more than likely drive half a mile, pull over, sleep in the pickup, and hope he didn’t get arrested. He wondered whether Riggs’s authority and influence stretched beyond the Calvary town limits. After all, hadn’t he said that the entire resources of the County Sheriff’s Department were at his disposal? Maybe Redbird was a fiefdom and Riggs the overlord. Maybe he was keeping track of Henry Quinn, making sure that he not only left Calvary but never returned.

  “So, Evie tells me you are on a quest to find a missing girl,” Chandler said once the dishes had been cleared. There was pie, apparently, but it had yet to show its crusty face.

  “Maybe a girl that doesn’t even exist,” Henry said.

  “Evan Riggs’s girl, yes?”

  “You know him?”

  “Of him,” Chandler said. “Anyone who ever picked up a guitar south of the Mason-Dixon Line has heard of Evan Riggs. Hell of a record he made. Hell of a waste.”

  “Couldn’t agree more.”

  “And you bunked with him at Reeves.”

  Henry glanced at Evie. Seemed she had told her father everything.

  “No secrets here,” she said, immediately understanding the question in Henry’s eyes.

  “What’s to be concerned for?” Chandler asked. “You did what you did, you’re all paid up, and if you tell Evie, then you tell me.”

  Henry smiled. “I’ll get used to it,” he said. “Prison tends to twist you in strange ways. Has you second-guessing everything, taking care to say as little as possible to as few people as possible. A different world requires a different attitude.”

  Chandler rose and walked to the kitchen counter. He opened a cupboard and took down a bottle of Old Crow and three shot glasses.

  “Drink any of that and I’ll be driving sideways,” Henry said.

  “Bullshit,” Chandler said. “You can stay here. Where the hell else you gonna go? Evie tells me you aren’t exactly welcome at the Honeycutt place.”

  “Too true.”

  “Weird town, if you ask me,” Chandler went on. “Don’t like it. Never have. And Evan Riggs’s brother?” He raised his eyebrows, took a breath. “All I can say is that with friends like that, you won’t be needin’ too many enemies.”

  “How so?”

  Chandler sat, opened the bottle, filled the glasses, and passed them round.

  Evie raised hers. “No strangers here, but friends we’ve yet to meet.”

  Henry appreciated the sentiment, yet was still hung up in what was really happening with this girl. He’d been out of any kind of game for three years; his radar was redundant.

  “Carson Riggs, from what I understand, has been sheriff over there since the war.”

  “Since 1944,” Henry said, “while Evan was overseas.”

  “Well, you keep a man in a job like that for that many years, then there’s something awry. Either he’s the best sheriff anyone could ever wish for—not that I believe there’s such a thing—or he has somethin’ on folks that makes ’em uneasy to challenge him. I’d lay some money on the latter.”

  “The guy creeps me out,” Evie said. “You saw how Clarence and his buddies were. They don’t dare say a word about him. Anytime I’m over there, I’m careful about what I say. Get the impression there are hungry ears around every corner.”

  Glenn Chandler reached for the bottle and refilled each glass. “Everyone has a history,” he said. “Every town, every city as well. Think a great deal of the shadows in that place are Riggs-colored, if you know what I mean. No secret that there was bitterness between Evan and Carson long before Evan went to war and Carson became sheriff. Money-related, as far as I can figure, but I don’t know the details. Heard rumor that something happened to their daddy that might not have been so wholesome.”

  Evie became curious. “What’s this about? You never said anything to me.”

  “What’s there to say? I don’t know. Rumors are just rumors until something proves they’re not.”

  “But what happened to their father?”

  “He died,” Chandler said. “Happens to the best of us, or so I’m told.”

  Evie shook her head resignedly. “He gets like that. A few drinks in him and you start to get the attitude.”

  “All I’m saying, Evie, is that this is all street-corner gossip. Someone said that someone said that someone said. It’s all bullshit. I don’t have any time for it.”

  “But maybe something happened to the father,” Henry said. “You heard that much, right?”

  “Okay, so what I heard was that he died in a shooting accident, and it was one of those accidents that might not have been an accident. That was all I heard, and I don’t know anything further.”

  Chandler glanced at the clock above the stove. It was past ten.

  “One more drink and I am gone,” he said. “I have an early start.” He refilled the glasses a second time. “Best of luck to you, Henry Quinn, even though you don’t believe in it,” he said, and downed the whiskey.

  He rose from his chair. Henry rose, too, and they shook hands.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” Chandler said. “Father gets protective when a man comes around after his daughter, but you could be worse.” He turned to Evie. “Have fun. Don’t get pregnant.”

  “Go to bed,” Evie said, seemingly unconcerned for her father’s comments.

  Henry was surprised at their transparency. They seemed to hide nothing from each other. Maybe relationships—any kind of relationships—were better that way.

  “Did he mean what he said?” Henry asked when Chandler was gone. “That I could stay here?”

  “Sure he did.”

  “You have another room?”

  “We have a couch,” Evie said, indicating said couch with a nod of her head. “But I have a bed. That is way more comfortable.”

  Henry frowned. “Are you teasing me again?”

  Evie leaned forward, grabbed his hand, and pulled him closer. “Why do you have to make everything so complicated? Seriously, you need to unravel a little, my friend. What’s the problem here? I’m a good-looking girl. I can see you think that. You’re a good-looking guy. I like you. You like me. Why can’t we have some fun together without making it a drama?”

  “No reason, I guess.”

  “So let’s get drunk and fuck like the teenagers we wish we’d been.”

  “I don’t think I have ever been seduced, Evie Chandler.”

  She laughed. “This isn’t a seduction, Henry Quinn … This is a sexual conquest.”

  It was awkward. He knew it would be, but she had anticipated this, and she was assured and sympathetic. The first time happened before he really knew it, but they made love a second time, and it was in slow motion
and sensitive, without the frenzied panic that had marked the first time, and she rolled him onto his back, leaning over him, kissing him, touching him, pausing only to smile with such warmth and tenderness that he thought he might cry right there and then.

  Despite the proximity of other human beings, Henry knew he had been desperately and terrifyingly alone for more than three years.

  They shared a few final words; she asked him about the scar on his torso, and he told her it was little more than a hard-won lesson. Then he held her close, and they fell asleep, their bodies curled in to one another like violin scrolls.

  SEVENTEEN

  War changes a man. It changes his eyes, his mind, his heart, his soul. It teaches him about impermanence and fragility. It shows him the holes in the master plan, and it questions his belief in God. Most often undermines it as well.

  War is for those who have forgotten how to speak to one another. It is for those who have secrets they do not wish to reveal for fear of some penalty worse than war. There is no such penalty, but their blindness and ignorance does not allow them such a rational perspective.

  The defeat of the Axis was ultimately inevitable. Evil men unconsciously contribute to their own downfall. They make mistakes; they commit tactical errors. Some believe that such things occur because of the basic goodness in all man, that the criminal seeks to prevent himself from committing further crimes by leaving clues as to identity and motive. I cannot stop myself. I need someone to stop me. Perhaps tyrants are merely arrogant sneak-thieves.

  Whatever Evan Riggs may have imagined about war, the reality was as far from his imagination as possible. And it seemed that he was alone in his thoughts and feelings, for very few—if any—of Calvary’s men had gone to war, and that was something he did not understand. Redbird County had made great sacrifices for the First World War, had even erected a memorial stone naming those who had fallen in defense of freedom, but Evan imagined that no such memorial would be granted for those killed in the war from which he’d just returned.