by David Joy
I wasn’t quite sure what to say and so I said nothing. I just stood there staring into her eyes. And in that moment that passed between us, there was this energy in the air that seemed to cup the two of us like lightning bugs in closed hands. I felt numb. I felt weightless and numb, and it was the closest thing to perfection that I’d ever felt. And out of that feeling came words. And maybe they were the perfect words, or maybe just the closest thing to perfect words that I’d ever had, and so I spoke them.
That same look I’d seen appeared again. Those silver blues dilated like she was on some fine drug. She pushed up onto tiptoes, her head cocking sideways as she came, and before I knew it I could feel her lips pressed into mine and I struggled to catch up. I hooked hair that had fallen along her cheeks back behind her ears, and continued with my right hand down her arm till my fingers found their place along her ribs. I ran my left hand down her cheekbone and feathered my fingers under her chin to hold her there a second longer if I could. The numbness stayed with me. It was an old feeling that I had all but forgotten, a feeling that I never knew I’d missed until right then. She pulled back and smiled, and I was left there wide-eyed as a child when she ran away.
10.
The roach had no more than caught the wind when I saw that son of a bitch hiding out in the Jehovah’s Witness parking lot at the three-lane. I’d scrounged up a skimpy pin joint by plucking what little bit of bud clung to stems picked clean at least twice by now and had brought it with me on the ride to smoke after seeing Maggie. I’d figured it for a disappointment-easing kind of smoke, but after what had just happened, I was riding high. It was a fucking celebration in the cab of my pickup, and now this son of a bitch was pulling out to cut the music at the first dance.
He rode along behind me a good six or seven car lengths back for the first half mile, gave me time to light another Winston and let the morning breeze soften the stench. I reckon it was about the time I held that cigarette out the window to let the wind carry ash that he sped up and put the Crown Vic right up against my tailgate. That’s when the lights came and sirens blared, not one of those chirps like pull over and everything will be fine, but full fucking sirens. Though the first thought in a McNeely is always Floor it, I knew that my old beater might just give out coming through Glenville and there I’d be racking up charges. So instead, I slowed down, flicked the blinker, and pulled into a real estate office just Cashiers side of Bee Tree Road.
He stepped out in the same way all those bulls do, opening the door and leaving it wide as they resituate the weight on their belts. He rolled his neck around to push out cricks left from sitting in a cruiser too long, and he shut the door across his body with his left hand as his right flipped the snap on his holster and settled onto the grips.
I was eyeing him awfully hard in the side mirror as he came up to the truck. He sported the same high-and-tight haircut as all rookie deputies. They must have had a deal worked out with the barbers, something to give them all that same I-eat-shit-for-a-living hairstyle so that us lowlifes couldn’t tell the difference from where one asshole started and another began, all of them just shitting on us from a conveyor. He was young—not so young as me, but in my dealings I’d come to recognize the just-out-of-basic look about a man with a badge. Those types all had the same attitude, something to prove, and this bull was no different. This bull was no friend of the family, and that being the case, I knew I was in for the whole play strictly by the books.
“License and registration.” It was standard programmed protocol, but this one had to add his own twist. “Slowly.”
I was already moving pretty slowly, but I let up even more as I reached toward the glove box. Papers were shuffled inside, and I was hoping there wasn’t a bag or two stashed somewhere in a place I’d missed the night before when I’d gone scrounging for something to smoke. There weren’t any bags, but no registration either, so I just pulled out my wallet and slid the license out from under clouded plastic.
“License and?” He looked at me like he wanted me to answer, but I didn’t say a word. “License and?” He gave me one more shot. “Registration.”
“Can’t seem to find the registration. Truck’s in my daddy’s name.”
“And who exactly might your daddy be?”
“Charles McNeely.” I didn’t want to say, knowing good and damn well where that name would get me, but then again McNeely was printed nice and clear on my license, as telling as DNA. I flat stunk with McNeely, and it wouldn’t take some dickhead bull long to move into questioning. “Most folks know him as Charlie.”
“I know all about old Charlie McNeely, and I’m quite sure this truck here is registered in his name. I’m quite sure you’re his son. Thing is, I’m not really worried about that registration right now, you see? Thing is, you’ve got some bigger troubles.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, son, I’m getting the munchies just standing here.” Truth was he’d never smoked a day in his life, but the way he said it put me into a snickering fit. The bull stepped back and slid his pistol up and down in its holster just enough for the slide to peek. “I’m going to need you to step out of the vehicle for me, all right, Jacob?”
“All ri—”
“Slowly.” And there he went again, pushing that slowly on me like I was getting wide-eyed and hairy in the stall with a cowboy cinching tight on the nut rope. But just as he said, I rolled out of that truck slowly, extra slow just for him, my body spilling out like syrup.
The bull led me to the back of the truck and popped the tailgate with his left hand, that other hand never leaving the handle of his .40, and he asked me to stand there with my legs spread. He asked some bullshit line of questions the state had to be teaching at basic, something that must’ve passed for humor with lawmen. “Now, you don’t have any hand grenades, missile launchers, AK-47s, anything like that stuffed down your pants, do you?”
Don’t give the cocksucker an inch, I thought. “Might be a fucking Sherman tank there in the front if you want a feel.”
The patting got harder, and he yanked out everything I had in my pockets and slung it into the bed of the pickup: wallet, a half-crushed pack of smokes, a lighter, my cell phone, and a bottle of Clear Eyes. He worked his way down my legs and started coming back up, running his fingers along the seams of my britches as though I may have hired a seamstress to sew a few condoms filled with black tar heroin into my jeans. Cars were passing with out-of-state tags and children on vacation pressed their noses against the windows like slobbering pigs to get a look at what life was really like in Jackson County.
“Mind if I search the vehicle, Jacob?”
I knew the line of questioning, and I knew the line of action. The McNeely in me said to tell him no, but even a McNeely understood that a no would mean a three-hour wait for the magistrate to sign off on a warrant before they’d search that son of a bitch anyhow. Either way I went about it, he was going to search that car, so I thought I’d save myself some time, especially since that roach I left up the highway was all I had till I could get a bag come afternoon. “Mind? Not a bit, sir. You just go on in there and snoop around till your heart’s content.”
“You’ve got quite the mouth on you, boy. You know that?”
I didn’t say a word, just stared at him till he knew I could see right through that distilled toughness and point out the chicken-shit that lay thick, had always lain thick, in shitheads like him.
“Seeing as I’m alone, I’m going to put these cuffs on you and put you in the back of the car while I search, just to keep you from any funny business.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“Not yet. Ain’t found anything worth arresting you for just yet. I just need you to sit back there and hold tight. Understand?”
I didn’t say a word when he cinched the cuffs down till my hands turned white. Nor did I say a goddamn word when he cupped the crown of my head to slide m
e in and rapped my forehead against the doorjamb of his cruiser. No, I kept awfully quiet, awfully quiet until that door was shut and he was on his way back to my truck. “Cocksucker!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, and he turned around pissed for a second or two with my teeth just shining at him through the smudged separation glass.
I had to wriggle to get sitting upright, my legs cramped sideways in a space not big enough for pygmies. The patrol car smelled sanitized, a chemical reek left behind from something used to scrub the blood and vomit of drunken folks who never went peacefully. From where I’d pulled over there was a perfect view of Lake Glenville, and with the sun just starting to boil mercury, the summer residents, country-club types, were headed out onto the lake in long cigarette boats and pontoons dragging tubes slathered with screaming children. The locals only ventured out onto the lake when the leaves changed and walleye pushed up to waterfalls and run-ins. There used to be loads of walleye and smallmouth in that lake until the state dumped a load of egg-sucking blueback herring in by accident. Just another reason to hate the law, I reckon.
Radio chatter told the tale of Adams and Bakers down the mountain running routine traffic on domestics and burglary alarms that never turned up key holders. I could see the bull rummaging through the cab of my pickup, and knowing that I didn’t have a salt lick to lap on, I figured it was just a minute or two more before he’d stagger out disappointed. Just when I’d turned back from watching an Evinrude slice a clean wake across the middle of Lake Glenville, sure enough here that bull came, his head all but hanging. He opened the door and I smiled up at him knowing I’d beaten him, knowing that, friend of the family or not, the McNeelys had just taken another battle in a war that would last till the tombstones ran out.
“Find anything?”
“Just a pack of rolling papers crammed up under your seat. But I guess rolling papers don’t count for much if there’s nothing to roll, now does it?”
“I’ve been looking everywhere for those papers.” I upped the sarcasm as the thrill of his defeat brought back the joy I’d held since Little Green. “Hope you left them on the seat for me?”
“Afraid not. Afraid I can’t let you go knowing good and well a boy like you might get himself into trouble, now can I?”
I didn’t answer, but stood up out of the car and turned fast, those cuffs warming in sunshine as I waited for him to cut me free. He unlocked the cuffs, those teeth let loose from biting, and I turned to him for salutations. “Reckon I’ll be on my way.”
“Just one more minute there, Jacob. You just go have a seat back in your pickup while I run your name.” I started walking away, and he hit me with it again, a sucker punch to let me know there was not a white flag to be thrown and he was still in charge. “Slowly.”
The cab of the pickup still smelled sweet as skunk piss, and it kind of brought my mood up even higher knowing that he knew what I knew and that there wasn’t a damn thing in the world he could do about it. A day late and a dollar short didn’t get you far in this business, and despite a few hiccups, that joint still had me feeling toasty. After a minute or two of thumbing through pages of CDs, I watched the bull make his way back up to the driver side, my wallet in one hand and his right hand still gripping that pistol.
“Spend much time in Foxfire?”
“Not really. Why?”
“Well, son, seems we’ve got a warrant out for you. Seems you mashed somebody up pretty good at a party there the other night and seems he’s been laid up in the hospital ever since.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I knew who I’d mashed up, but I didn’t know of any warrants out for my arrest. I figured that would be the type of thing they’d hunt a man down for, and being a McNeely, I wouldn’t have been hard to find. But most of the lawmen were lazy. And in a place this small, the hunt between lawmen and outlaws was about like chasing rabbits: give it time and the quarry will always circle back, land in your lap if you wait long enough.
“The way those knuckles are healing, I’d say that you do.” The bull shot that shit-eating grin at me, and he backed up from the truck. “I’m going to need you to step back out of the vehicle, Jacob.”
It was right then that the McNeely blood screamed run, and it was right then the high that was left started turning to a headache. I knew that he had me. I knew that there was no use in running. So once again, I held back on instinct and did as I was told.
“Slowly.”
11.
The concrete was painted a warm kind of gray, something not so depressing as snow clouds but more of a gray like an old woman’s perm. It was a thick, shiny kind of paint like might’ve been used on a floor, and it reflected what little bit of light shone down from two fluorescent tubes flickering and dying. Sound came through the cuffing hole on the steel door and white light beamed through the thin rectangle of glass. Every once in a while footsteps tromped closer, voices grew louder, and I’d watch a bull or two slide by the door, their eyes cutting in at me as they passed.
While I’d let the tongue fly when I wasn’t under arrest, the minute it was official, I zipped it. That deputy had gone to talking even more with the battle won, asking all sorts of questions about my family and about my father, but Daddy had taught me well. Talk shit when you’re free. Shut up in the cuffs. Lawyer up first chance.
That was the call I’d made.
I’d never been to jail before, and that’s why it took so long to get to the cell. That jail was the embodiment of, “When one door closes, another door opens,” only there wasn’t anything bright on the other side. When the bull had driven up, one fence opened, he pulled up to another fence, stopped, the fence behind closed, and the one in front opened. When we headed through the back door, we entered into a small room, and when the door behind closed, the one in front opened. The whole place seemed to work like that, until I got to booking and they fastened my cuffs with chains to a chest-high shelf in front of a window. The woman on the other side asked all sorts of questions about when I’d been born, what sorts of scars and tattoos I was marked with, any aliases I might have, or any gang affiliations. That’s what had taken so damn long, and though I didn’t like being there, I was looking forward to the fact that future visits, and I was certain there’d be future visits, would only require updating that file. Hell, by then I might have a good nickname.
They’d put me in a smaller cell after booking, one right beside the magistrate’s office. I reckon they took the warrant into the office and had the magistrate recheck a bond amount he’d already signed off on when he issued the arrest. I’d been charged with assault and battery, and that old codger must’ve figured me for the running type, setting a secured bond for ten thousand dollars. When the bulls had explained the charges, I was awfully certain of the battery. I reckon I’d batteryed the ever-living hell out of that boy, but the assault, or “threatening of violence” as they put it, was a question I needed answered. I’d never said a word. Not one goddamned word. I’d moved straight into the batterying. Seeing as they said Avery was in the hospital with a shattered orbital, likely to need some reconstructing, I must’ve been a pretty good batteryer. And seeing as how that son of a bitch deserved every lick he took, I figured the fifteen percent needed to post out wasn’t too high a tab: fifteen hundred dollars in crisp bills and I’d be lapping up supper on The Creek come dinnertime. Daddy might even spring for a steak dinner considering how proud he’d been.
I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Daddy, the lawyer, or any friends of the family for the duration of that first cell, and the bulls were about to escort me into a finer abode, so I could have neighbors and company and such, when I heard someone screaming. Two deputies were leading me down the hall, my arms stiff and cuffs cutting into my wrists.
“You two! Deputies! Stop right there! You just stop this goddamn instant!”
The three of us all turned together like a drum line, and once I got facing that
way, I could see that little pudgy bastard shuffling down the hall, his bald head beaming reflective. Mr. Queen had been born with fourteen rattles and a button, just about the snakiest son of a bitch to ever come off of Caney Fork. The whole family of snakes had been denned up in that cut for generations and had a long history of clanking jars and copper worms, but I reckon he’d seen early on that the battle waged against lawmen was fought and won in courtrooms, in fancy suits and ties. Every bit of moonshine a McNeely ever swallowed had come from a Caney Fork Queen, so when things got big enough to need full-time representation, Daddy’d snatched him up. So far there hadn’t been a friend of the family who spent more than a few days clinked up, and we had that vole-faced peckerwood to thank for it.
There was a bull close on his coattails and as Mr. Queen shuffled that bull reached out and grabbed ahold of Queen’s sleeve.
“Unhand me, you maggot! This suit was tailored custom by Jos. A. Bank. Ever heard of him? Can you spell it?” Mr. Queen stopped pacing just long enough to yank his coat sleeve out of grubby hands and then on he came. “That boy you’ve got there, now you need to get those cuffs off of him this instant. His bond is posted and he’s a free man till trial.” Mr. Queen continued until he was standing directly in front of me. He scrunched his nose to lift glasses over squinted eyes, and he kept that scowl long enough to shoot both bulls an I’ll-have-you-for-dinner-on-the-stand kind of look. “How are you, Jacob? I hope these gentlemen have treated you well.”
Mr. Queen held out his hand to shake mine, but I was still hemmed up and could only offer a nod. “Been better.”
“Well, say no more, son. Don’t say one word, and we’ll be taking you home for supper. How about that?”
“That’d suit me fine.”
“Sure it would.” Mr. Queen turned his stare back to the bulls. “Now, I want my client out of cuffs immediately.”
