Growing Up Dead in Texas

by Stephen Graham Jones

  “Looking for somebody, son,” the Sheriff says, like last time never happened.

  “I already told you—” Rob starts, but the Sheriff stops him with “I’m asking the boy, Mr. King.”

  Rob King bites his lower lip gently, raises both his hands, the good one and the broke one.

  “Ask,” he says. “Same answer.”

  The Sheriff smiles to himself, says, “I don’t doubt that,” then, to Jonas: “Mr. Holbrook. Earlybird Earl. Seen him today?”

  What he’s doing is covering his bases. I know that now.

  Earl Holbrook lost two modules in the fire. Uninsured, because he hadn’t called the gin for his number yet—of all people, it was the gin manager who took too long to get his module logged in. The Sheriff’s office can’t have it looking like they were just targeting Pete Manson. It has to look like Pete Manson distinguished himself from the suspect pool all by himself. For reasons the jury will find all too obvious.

  Jonas, though—this is all a mystery to him.

  “Uncle Earl?” he says, stalling, squinting too much, overplaying, like he’s having to struggle to even connect the name to a face here.

  “Friend of the family, I believe,” the Sheriff adds, nothing but a smile in his voice. “Seen him around these parts today?”

  More than anything in the world, Jonas wants to look up to his dad, see the answer he needs to give, but this is the principal’s office, and sometimes you just have to throw an answer out there, make it right in the way you say it.

  “Son?” the Sheriff adds.

  “He’s not your—” Rob King starts, the Sheriff cutting his eyes to him fast now, a warning Rob’s not backing down from anymore, and this more than anything, the way it’s going to end again if Rob King says anything else, this gets Jonas to finally say it: “He hasn’t been here all day.”

  “Earl Holbrook hasn’t been here all day?”

  Jonas nods that that’s correct, yes.

  “See?” Rob King says.

  The Sheriff smiles again, so tolerant, and lowers his cruiser into reverse. “Guess I got some bad information then,” he says, and nods his farewell, leaves Rob and Jonas King standing there behind him, Jonas already craning back across the grass, for Earl Holbrook.

  Rob King, his hand to Jonas’ shoulder, guides his face back to the road, to Cloverdale.

  Instead of turning right, back towards Midland, his office, the Sheriff brakes at the cattle guard and holds it, holds it, then finally turns left, the direction the trucks have been going all day.

  Lamesa.

  “Shit,” Rob King says, and doesn’t even tell Jonas not to repeat that word around his mother.

  Jonas doesn’t anyway.

  Not yet.

  ***

  Because everybody from Greenwood cuts up 137 to get to Stacy Monahan’s funeral, none of them have to drive by the field on 349 she died in. The only reason she was on it instead of 137 is that she wasn’t going to Greenwood that night, but Midland, where Geoff Koenig had checked back in with a fever. Specifically, Midland Memorial Hospital, the place the doctors killed my brother’s son, the place I had to go in the third grade to have my tongue sewed back on, the place I went the first and second times I broke my hand, the first place that sewed my Achilles back together. The place we’d all been born. The place my mom had a head-on collision, so that the nurses just had to wheel a gurney out to the street.

  She was okay, had been thinking about something else, had no explanation for drifting over to the wrong side of the road.

  I didn’t come down from Lubbock that time. Everybody told me I didn’t have to, that it was just her truck that was hurt, but that’s not why I listened to them, I don’t think. When I was five, maybe, still riding in the passenger side floorboard, the one with a hole rusted in the bottom, she’d wrecked too, in Big Springs, and, what I remember is rolling forward in that floorboard over and over and over, somebody finally lifting me up from there so that I could stop rolling.

  I don’t know.

  The firemen thought I was broken, probably. Head trauma, repetitive motion. Everything else.

  I was just being safe, though.

  My mom was okay that time too, and all the rest.

  And nobody rolls their truck over getting to this funeral, their covered dish floating right beside their head for some impossible moment.

  Rob King even stops in Stanton, pulls his super cab up into the cinder block stall of the two-hole carwash, blows the grime off, Belinda and Jonas and his two brothers sitting inside, hundreds of pounds of water pressure hitting the glass from all sides.

  “Little gentlemen,” Belinda says.

  They all know.

  When Rob gets back in, he’s mostly dry.

  In Stanton, in 1986, the big MOTEL sign is still looming up on the other side of the road, a sign Jonas never understood, like it’s some artifact left over from when Stanton had been this huge, bright place. Except he knows it never was, will even sneak into the nine rooms of the broke-down motel years later, after the sign’s gone, to see if there’s an explanation in there, in the drawers, the rat-nest tubs. There won’t be. The only leftover, really, will be the giant concrete blocks that the sign had been set in. He’ll stand there between them, look up.

  Generations of Buffaloes probably climbed it. Looked all around, the whole town there below them—three thousand people and a few old soreheads, according to the sign on the highway. They’d looked all around and wished they hadn’t climbed up there, didn’t have to see.

  Sometimes it’s better to be the ant.

  Because there’s no dryer at the carwash, Rob King punches the accelerator until Belinda says it without turning around: “Seatbelts.”

  There’s only one that’s not lost under the shallow backseat, though.

  Jonas clicks it closed three times, so they won’t have to make any more stops, and his brother’s eyes widen. He starts to say it again, Mo-om, but then sees that they’re sitting too close for that.

  The trip is eight songs long at truck-drying speed. 92.3, country, where the dials on all the tractors are set.

  Jonas doesn’t want to, but he knows every song, will forever.

  They’re not late, either, but already cars are having to park two and three blocks from the church. All the high school kids crying, their parents shepherding them, always keeping a hand to their backs.

  Inside it smells like a church, like Bible pages and hymns, and Rob takes his hat off and they sit up in the family pews, Belinda having to carry Jonas’ little brother when he can’t walk in front of all these strangers.

  All through the prayers and the song (“Amazing Grace”) and the sniffling, Jonas reads the program he got at the door, imagines some conductor up front, nodding now… now this, yes.

  It could be anybody.

  But, no.

  It could only be one person.

  Larry Monahans, too tall for the front row, and never turning around to get a sense of the crowd, the congregation. Gwen beside him, not standing so well, then Sissy Holbrook, Earl edged in at the end of the pew, looking past the preacher, at the wall behind him maybe, the big wooden cross there.

  If I had a snapshot of the four of them standing there, I wouldn’t even need to be writing this, I don’t think.

  ***

  The cemetery’s where it happens.

  Dramatic, I know. But sometimes life really is, I guess. For once, the wind isn’t turned on, there’s no grit in the air.

  Just blue sky for miles in every direction.

  By the time Rob King cocks his truck up in the ditch across from the front gates, Stacy Monahans’ casket is already graveside.

  “Look there,” Rob King says, leaning to the windshield for Belinda, “I’m not the only one, right?”

  One of the guide wires for the utility pole, somebody’s stretched it with a plow so that it’s unraveling now, the pole starting to lean over, the way all the sagging cables are pulling it.

  B
elinda King shakes her head in exasperation—this, now?— but pats his cast on the seat all the same, and then they’re serious again, all of them single-filing through the headstones, Rob leading, Belinda trailing, three kids between, holding hands like first grade. Like a family.

  At least until Jonas says it, half under his breath but loud enough: “Shit.”

  Belinda squeezes her hand around his some but Rob understands, looks up, ahead.

  “Shit,” he says as well.

  The Midland County Sheriff is here. In uniform.

  A few years down the road, Jonas will find a saddle for sale in the Thrifty Nickel for thirty-five dollars. It’ll have California fenders on it, a chest harness, the works. For thirty-five dollars.

  When he gets to the guy’s house that afternoon, it’s the Sheriff, retired, living alone, waiting it out.

  He doesn’t need the saddle anymore is the thing, is selling it cheap so long as whoever buys it promises to work it like it deserves, like it was made for.

  Jonas will promise, sure, always keeping his hat brim down, his voice different, and fifteen years after that, he’s still never put that saddle across a horse’s back. Doesn’t know where it might take him, what sunset he might have to ride into. Fall out the other side of.

  “Rob?” Belinda King whispers forward, and Rob nods that he sees, yes, how could he not, and they keep walking.

  Everybody from Greenwood is there too, even the basketball team, standing together, Geoff Koenig in a sling and sunglasses, always looking down, never up, where he might cross eyes with Larry Monahans.

  Word later will be that they all showed up in their high-tops, but then Coach knew enough men in Lamesa that he was able to scrounge black dress shoes and boots for all of them. White socks against black leather, pleated pant legs never long enough, flapping.

  If only that could be the main image of this funeral, I mean.

  Pete Manson is there, though, leaning down for one last smoke at his truck before standing up for this with everyone else. Earl Holbrook up on the carpet grass with Sissy, his jaw muscle worrying, his left hand tight around hers. A hundred people Jonas doesn’t know by name but recognizes all the same: him two years ago, when he was a shuffling kid, hands always nervous from wall ball; him in two years, always licking his lips, wanting nothing more than to explode out of this place; him in his twenties, dark from work, nervous that he’s not out in the field right now, a wife beside him he can’t even imagine but trusts will be there all the same, stepped up from the song she’s been living in.

  She is.

  But this can’t last forever.

  Cue the woman Jonas never sees, on the other side of the crowd, just singing all at once the way happens at funerals, some song so beautiful and perfect it leaves his memory as he hears it. Stacy Monahans peaceful in her casket there, no brothers or sisters left behind. Just her. This distant shoot of the King family, snipped short.

  Cue Pete Manson, grinding his cigarette out in the gravel then stepping forward, easing his hat off and trying— failing, like all the men—to smooth his thin hair down, look presentable.

  Cue Rob King, after eye contact with Belinda— goodbye?— stepping forward through the mourners, to Earl, to be in the way should the Sheriff want to tap anybody on the shoulder of their nice jacket.

  Cue Arthur King, parked close in his truck and sitting in it still, in his suit, Cecilia beside him, not to be trusted at solemn events these days but there as close as she can be anyway, her hat pinned to her hair, her hand to the dash like a child, to lean forward, see all this. People she remembers as other people, thirty years ago; forty.

  Cue Tommy Moore, standing awkwardly from his mother’s car, the first time he’s been seen in weeks. It washes over the crowd, his presence. Like Hank Jr., he’s in chrome sunglasses, a low-pulled hat, his face mostly hidden. Jonas looks up to Belinda so he can know how to react, and there’s parentheses around her eyes, like she’s hurting for Tommy Moore. It travels down her arm to her hand somehow, goes right to Jonas. Stays there.

  Cue a row of birds diving in formation from the telephone wire when it shudders from some errant gust up there, the utility pole swaying with it. The birds fall into the breeze, spread their wings and turn as one, sweep low over the headstones.

  Cue Jonas King, tracking the Sheriff.

  Instead of taking his hat off like everybody else, he’s making his casual way around the back of the crowd.

  To Pete Manson’s truck.

  Not Earl’s? Isn’t that who he was asking after?

  “Mom,” Jonas whispers.

  Belinda King looks up from the prayer—it was to be the year of prayers—sees the Sheriff too. And Pete Manson, looking right back at them.

  She turns back to the burial. To the backs of everybody, her face set now.

  “Mom,” Jonas says again, pulling at her hand, a kid again, not really old enough to have been given a program like an adult.

  Belinda King is watching her husband, though, and Rob King—he can see what’s he done, now. To Tommy Moore.

  But the Sheriff.

  He’s the one to pay attention to here.

  Just doing his job.

  Yeah.

  Because Pete Manson’s done with it, is leaving it behind, the Sheriff pinches his uniform pants up, squats down to retrieve the ground-out cigarette butt.

  He holds it to his face, inspects it from one angle, from another.

  It’s probable cause. Close enough for West Texas.

  He stands, stuffing the ashy butt into his shirt pocket, and reaches in through Pete’s open window, for the crumpled cellophane pack on the dash, CHESTERFIELD there for the jury, so they won’t have to look at blown-up photographs to know the brand, make the connection.

  Except then that wall of birds, they swoop up, past. Not at the Sheriff or Pete Manson’s truck, his flashy mirrors, just a random stupid thing—birds—but it’s close enough.

  The Sheriff flinches, drops the crumpled pack into Pete Manson’s floorboard.

  What he probably says here, during the prayer: “Shit.”

  Now it’s not just Jonas King watching him.

  For the first time, Larry Monahans’ wide Stetson is turned to the side, a felt satellite dish.

  Because he’s the conductor here, everybody else turns to look as well, even the preacher, his Bible closed over his thumb now, to hold his place.

  And Pete Manson?

  He chuckles, shakes his head.

  “Anything you need there, Jim?” he asks. The first name, not the office. Because this isn’t Midland County, maybe. But still.

  “Just this,” the Sheriff has to say now, going ahead and just opening the door, pawing down in the floorboard for the Chesterfield pack.

  Except.

  This is where it happens.

  Because it’s bright outside, and he’s got sunglasses on anyway, has to feel in the dark floorboard instead of really look, what the Sheriff’s hand lucks onto isn’t the pack, but a stock.

  When he stands again, what he’s got directed up into the sky—not at Geoff Koenig anymore is the push—is the most beautiful little .22 rifle. A Browning, the kind you load through the stock, so that whole balance of the gun is changed.

  A murmur makes its way through the crowd, and Pete Manson has room now.

  “Just shopping?” he says, “or you looking to make a purchase there?” The whole time just watching the Sheriff, not Larry Monahans, making his steady way through the mourners. The mourners parting before he’s even there, like they’ve been rehearsing this all week, know their roles.

  The only reason Pete Manson looks around, even, sees this coming, it’s Gwen. What she says, already clamping her own hand over her mouth, it’s “no.”

  It’s too late, though.

  Arthur King steps down from his truck, stands behind his door, the wind picking up now like it knows what’s going down.

  “We don’t have to do this here,” the Sheriff says then.
r />   This is funny to Pete Manson. Like everything.

  “Just a plinker,” he says back, about the Browning. “Everybody here’s got one, Sheriff.”

  By this time Larry’s there, and the two of them: everything Pete Manson isn’t, or ever will be, it’s standing there over him now. Standing over him and accusing him of firing the shot that got his daughter to borrow that crap car, to try and drive later than she should have.

  Pete smiles, taps his cigarette pack twice against his wrist and flicks his eyes straight to Belinda, Jonas thinks.

  “This isn’t about me, hoss,” he says to Larry. “You know I don’t mean to—”

  He never gets to finish.

  Larry’s fist comes in high and fast from the outside, might as well be packed with dimes.

  The only reason it doesn’t connect: Rob King.

  Larry’s roundhouse pulls Rob into Larry—Rob rides it into him anyway—and Larry turns fast on him, has a look in his eyes Jonas King will see again years later, on Adam Moore, in a hundred parking lots.

  Now the rest of the men are stepping forward, because Rob only has one arm, and this is Larry Monahans; there might not even be enough men here.

  The Sheriff doesn’t stop them, makes his way instead to Pete Manson. “For your own good,” he says, turning Pete around for the cuffs.

  Pete shakes his head in disbelief, looks to Belinda again, maybe, then to Larry Monahans and Rob King, then to the sea of black suits, all the serious faces.

  “Check the trucks,” he mumbles to the Sheriff, “everybody carries one, it’s no damn crime, last I checked.”

  The Sheriff just ratchets the cuffs on, does a cursory pat-down, coming up with the pack of Chesterfields from Pete’s shirt pocket, since the others are back in the truck.

  “It’s not the damn gun,” he says, face-to-face with Pete now, “it’s this.”

  What he means here is the pack of cigarettes, but what he and the rest of the funeral gets is something heavy and wrong and dark sliding down out of that cellophane sleeve, onto the grass.

  The Sheriff and Pete and everybody look down, and then some Lamesa kid, maybe all of seven years old, probably grown up and selling life insurance now, or grinding the lenses of eyeglasses, he steps forward in his handed-down suit, picks up what dropped, passes it over.