by David Joy
Daddy stood and walked calmly into his bedroom. After a few seconds, he came back out carrying a .22 pistol he used to put down hogs on days when a knife proved too much work. Daddy slid the long bull barrel down into the back of his sweatpants and headed out the front door.
I sat right there and didn’t move until I heard two short snaps like a cap gun echo from the yard. I got up and peered out of the window then. Daddy was walking back from the Cabe brothers’ pickup and the moonlight lit his bare chest blue in places where Irish skin still shone. The Walkers spread as he came through the yard, every hound moving as far back on its lead as it could to get away from him. The bullet hole and splash of color I’d been sure would spread wide open just a few short minutes before was certainly spread now. There was a mess that would need cleaning soon.
13.
In a perfect world we could’ve waited for a new moon to shroud us in secrecy. In a perfect world we could’ve buried those bodies in a place where we could dig them back up and move them when the time came. But it wasn’t a perfect world.
The blood had dried in the hours since those two shots of rimfire came across the lawn, but Daddy had wanted to wait. If it’d been me, I’d have moved those bodies before souls had time to flee. Then again, if it had been me, I don’t reckon I’d have pulled the trigger.
Jeremy always drove the pickup, so he sat in the driver’s side, his body fallen over, arms tucked under him, and his head facedown in his brother’s lap. Gerald’s head was rocked back on the seat where a headrest should have been, but wasn’t, so his head just lay there, throat angled toward sagging ceiling fabric and that cap nearly falling off backward. His eyes were open, his mouth too, and his nose was the color of a plum where Daddy’d smashed it with the pistol. The entry hole had caught him right above his left eyebrow and there wasn’t an exit, just that one hole and a thick line of dried blood wavering on his cheek. That was why Daddy had changed guns, to keep it as clean as possible, to just let that lead go to rattling around against bone until everything inside was pudding.
Hanging halfway out of the left side pocket of Jeremy’s jeans was a small pocket Bible like might’ve been found in the bedside drawer of a motel room. Until I saw it there in Jeremy’s pocket with my own two eyes, I’d always thought the stories were lies, just tales told to add to the mythology of my father. I’d overheard it a dozen times since I was a kid, folks telling stories about Daddy laying a pocket Bible on the chest of every man he killed. The boys who told the tales all gave different reasons for it, none of those reasons really adding up to anything I knew of my father. Come to find out, though, it was a story that held water. I looked across the cab and pressed against Gerald’s chest by his suspenders was a second Bible just the same.
I had my guesses for why he did it. I figured it had something to do with his father, my Papaw, a man whom Daddy had loved. You wouldn’t have known it anymore, but we came from a long line of God-fearing people, good Baptists who never missed a Sunday. When I was a kid, Papaw used to take me to church with him and make me sit through fiery sermons. It was always the Old Testament. That’s all Baptists seemed to have any use for. During those Sunday mornings of my childhood, I learned those verses just like everybody else, learned them until they were memorized. Even now, years since I’d been in the sanctuary, I could quote them. The difference between Daddy and me was that after Papaw died, I didn’t have to go to church anymore. For Daddy, it was different. Daddy never missed a day of church until he was out from under his father’s roof. I reckon there was something buried down deep in him that no one knew about, something buried so deep that only he knew he carried it. Daddy had put those Bibles there as part of some ritual of his, and I would never ask why. Even if he’d offered it up, I didn’t want to know. That type of evil was something best left alone.
He waited until three a.m. to move the bodies. It had to be done by morning, and with night patrols running from six p.m. to six a.m., it was generally about nine hours into the shift when Charlies and Davids started letting their eyes hang low. So that’s when we left.
A few phone calls and there were friends of the family stationed on both sides of The Creek, cars parked in muddy pull-offs with eyes hidden in darkness looking for any sign of patrols. Another phone call had woken the barge operator, a man employed to take summer folks to and from their houses on Buck Knob Island in the middle of Lake Glenville. Rich folks could afford those luxuries. They could afford to build their houses in a place that no one without a fortune could get to, so they did. Oscar Buchanan earned his living taking those people back and forth, and dropping off groceries when they just didn’t want to head the half mile to land to mingle with us lower forms of life. But in winter the pay was low, so Oscar took his cut like so many others, and in return, Daddy kept a spare key to the barge and the landing.
“You’re going to drive their truck, Jacob, and I’m going to follow you.”
“What about the bodies?”
“What about the fucking bodies, Jacob, they’re there, aren’t they? You can’t drive with them there, can you? So fucking move them.”
I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell of me moving Gerald, but seeing as he was propped there like a mannequin on the passenger side, I figured he was fine to ride just how he sat. Jeremy would have to be moved. I opened the driver-side door and the key alarm went to buzzing as keys just seconds away from ignition a few hours before still rested in the switch. Half of Jeremy’s body was already on the passenger side and luckily it was the messy end. I yanked up on the back of Jeremy’s baby-blue T-shirt, tried to budge his head from his brother’s lap and into the floorboard. Deadweight proved a task for two hands, but once his head crested the edge of the seat, gravity took over, and he rolled face-first onto the mat. From the waist down he was still on the driver side, but the legs were easy lifting, just a matter of balancing him into a headstand with his feet over Gerald’s shoulders.
Daddy already had his Jeep pulled up behind the Cabe brothers’ truck by the time I got the bodies situated. As he pulled on a cigarette, the glow lit his face and I could see his scowling eyes watching me. There was a part of me hopeful that soon as that truck made it onto the barge he’d put one into me as well, send me to the bottom of the lake with the Cabes. But there was a bigger part of me, a fearful part of me that said no matter what, I was his son, and there wouldn’t be any getting out of this mess that easy. In just a few short minutes, dying had become simple. It was the living part I feared.
—
THE PRIVATE LANDING was fenced off just a couple miles down the road, and as I drove, Daddy followed closely. A bump in the road rocked Gerald’s head to the side and those wide eyes and gaping mouth opened toward me. I couldn’t keep from staring. I was already a nervous wreck, and now those empty eyes set dumbfounded on me. I drifted off the shoulder and overcorrected a bit to right myself, bald tires screeching against pavement as I straightened out. Daddy never let off, just drove bumper to bumper till we hit the gated landing down a short gravel road.
He unlocked the gate and swung the heavy steel arm back. “Pull the truck onto the barge,” he said as he passed the open window, never even stopping to look me square.
The rusted iron ramp creaked and banged as tires rolled over the threshold and onto the platform. I parked it dead center on a barge built big enough for a school bus, cut the ignition, and stepped out of the truck. Daddy walked across the gravel lot after locking the gate and concealing the Jeep from the road behind a line of trees. He jumped on the barge and threw a lever to get the hydraulic ramp humming, moved fast as if it were something he’d done a time or two before. He didn’t say a word, just crossed the barge and climbed onto the pontoon towboat. The hydraulic ramp had just finished peaking out when Daddy gassed the Evinrude and the engine boiled water. The barge slowly backed away from land as the pontoon pulled in reverse, and once we’d hit open water, Daddy shifted into drive and began t
o push the barge further from shore.
I walked back and climbed onto the pontoon, took my spot beside him on the deck. “Where are we going?”
“Dumping grounds.” Daddy kept his eyes fixed ahead, those acne scars on his face holding shadows with such little light. He still wore the sweatpants, but had wrapped a jacket over his chest, that jacket and his hair both blowing wildly as wind came across the water.
“Whereabouts?”
“River channel by the dam. Water tops one twenty there.”
“What about—”
“Shut the fuck up, Jacob! Just shut the fuck up and get back on the barge. If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t be doing this. Wasn’t for you, one cocksucker would be buried and these two dipshits would still be doing oil changes. Just get back on the goddamn barge!”
His words couldn’t sting me now. I was well past numb. But the summer air was crisp on the water where the wind had a chance to ride unrestrained between the mountains. The moon was already starting to descend behind the ridgeline, with stars that much brighter in its absence. Just a few short hours till daylight now. The boat putted toward the dam, but it would be twenty or thirty minutes before we made it there. I leaned against the front bumper of the Cabes’ truck and kept my eyes fixed on the sky.
—
THE PONTOON IDLED on flat water when we finally made it within rock-skipping distance of the riprap. Daddy crossed over onto the barge and knocked the hydraulic switch to lower the ramp toward water. When the ramp flattened out and clanked locked, he walked over and peered into the truck. He looked around in there as if to scan for anything worth taking, but didn’t spot anything.
“Get in there and roll both of those windows till they’re just about a finger’s length open.”
“Want me to get the back glass too?”
“Did I ask you to get the goddamn back glass, Jacob? For fuck’s sake, boy, just do what you’re told.”
I climbed into the driver side and stretched out over the bodies to get my hand on the window knob. I rolled the window down till it seemed about right and looked back over my shoulder for Daddy to give me the okay. He walked to the open door and reached back behind him. “Just a little bit more,” he said. As I turned away from him, that was when I thought it would come, that was when I thought he’d send a bullet rattling around my head too. But he didn’t. Instead, he rolled up the driver-side window till it was just right, and dropped the truck down into neutral.
I crawled out and shut the door behind me. “Want me to get their wallets and the paperwork out of the glove box?”
“What the fuck for, Jacob?”
“So that if that truck ever does come back up, they won’t know who they are.”
“What about the goddamn VIN numbers and plates? You don’t think they could run those fucking VIN numbers or plates and get their names? In this little shithole of a town, you don’t think an old Ford Ranger, maroon and white, with two bodies piled in it is going to put John Law onto something? You don’t think they’ll recognize that fucking vehicle, that they won’t think, ‘Aw hell, the Cabe boys have been missing awhile,’ and put two and two together?”
I just looked at him blankly, that numbness holding me there on that creaky barge.
“All right then, well, shut the fuck up. There’s a whole goddamn car lot down where this truck is headed, and if it ever did come up I reckon there’d be a lot more to worry about than fucking wallets.” Daddy brushed past me, got in front of the truck, and put his hands on the hood. “Now, quit being a pussy and help me push?”
I didn’t say a word, just put my hands on the rusted hood of that truck and heaved. The pickup rolled slowly until it got moving and dropped ass end first into the lake. Once the water topped the tailgate and filled the bed, Lake Glenville turned the Cabe brothers’ Ford Ranger on end like a slip bobber and gurgled wildly until all of the air was pushed out of the cab. When those last bubbles popped, the lake was flat again, not a ripple across the sheet. The Cabe brothers sank down deeper and deeper in the silence. All I could think was how I wished I were riding shotgun.
14.
Sunlight and darkness became the only testament to time. The way those shadows rose and fell along the walls was the only proof hours had passed at all over the next few days. A low yellow shone through the blinds each morning until white light spread across the room, then the blues settled on evening until it all went black again. I studied all of that movement and light in a drug-fueled delirium. The morning after watery graves, I spent half the cash I had on a quarter bag and twenty white ladders. Those white Xaney bars brought a dreamless sleep and I was thankful.
Those days alone were the first time I ever remember praying, and that’s the thing about folks who aren’t used to offering words to God. Praying’s easiest when you need something, selfish kinds of prayers, and that’s the type I prayed. I prayed that Robbie Douglas wouldn’t wake up. I prayed that no one would miss the Cabe brothers. I prayed that I could get the hell out of this town. And I prayed that I could sleep without nightmares. That last prayer was the only one answered, but it wasn’t God. It was pills.
God never answered a McNeely prayer.
Daddy and I hadn’t spoken since the night on the barge, and after what we’d done, I wasn’t so sure there were any words left between us.
“About time your pussy ass decided to face the world,” Daddy said, only glancing at me for a second before turning his attention back to a skillet full of livermush. “But believe me, I understand. A man needs a little time to himself to let things settle.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it settled.”
“That’s just the bitch in you. It’ll all settle with time. One way or another, that’s just how it works.” He had on an old pair of blue jeans dotted with grease stains. A navy blue button-up shirt like the one Jeremy Cabe had worn the night at the camp held loosely around Daddy’s shoulders. His hair was still slick and wet from the shower and lines from a comb shone where he’d raked his hair to the side.
I opened the refrigerator to find something to drink, but both the orange juice and milk shook empty. Only the beer shelf held anything fit for drinking, so I popped a top on a Budweiser and took a seat at the table.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“There’s nothing left to drink.”
“I been meaning to tell that bitch to run by the store, but hell, she won’t even crawl out of bed this morning.”
“Josephine?”
“Naw, Jacob, your fucking mother. Why, hell yes, Josie. She’s sprawled out in there covered in peter tracks. Useless I say. Ain’t good for shit.”
“Then why in the hell you keep her around?”
“Because a man’s got to have him one outlet, Jacob, and I reckon that’s about what a woman’s fit for. Stress management.”
With the type of women he was referring to, he was right. With the type of woman I was after, he’d never understand. So like always, I just kept my thoughts on the matter to myself.
“You’re going to come down and work around the shop for the next few weeks until I can track down some new help.”
“New help?”
“Well, fuck yeah, son. I don’t know if you realized it or not, but my workforce has just upped and disappeared.” Daddy turned away from the skillet and looked me square for the first time since that truck sank beneath flat water. “Got to keep things moving forward, Jacob. Got to keep this ship sailing.”
“I ain’t too good around engines. Transmissions never made a lick of sense to me.”
“I’m not asking you to build me a fucking race car, Jacob. Simple shit. Tire rotations, oil changes, simple shit till I can find some help.”
“And when did you want me to start?”
“Soon as we eat.”
“What’s today?”
“Monday, Jacob, godd
amn.” Daddy looked back over his shoulder and smirked at me. He flipped thin slices of livermush over in the skillet and that gray meat popped and sizzled against the cast iron. “The day of rest was yesterday for fuck’s sake.”
15.
The three-bay garage smelled of burnt oil and transmission fluid, and the banging and grinding of an impact wrench covered any sound of summer birds chirping outside. Daddy had an International Scout on the lift and was taking off the last tire when a patrol car pulled into the front lot.
“Roll over those tires and wheels from over there in the corner.” Daddy only stopped the impact wrench from busting lugs long enough to speak and ash his cigarette.
“Dad!”
The clatter of torque hammering away at rust-locked lugs kept him from hearing.
“Dad!”
The words caught him just as one nut came free and he dropped the wrench to his side like he was holstering a pistol. “Goddamn it, what?”
“A deputy just pulled up.” I kept my eyes fixed on the patrol car.
“About fucking time. Thought I was going to have to wait around all day.”
A middle-aged deputy stepped out of the vehicle and flipped open a pair of sunglasses before slipping the shades over his eyes. He resituated his belt, slammed the car door, and headed toward the first open bay. The raised Scout partly concealed Daddy and I from view.
“Over here,” Daddy hollered, and the deputy caught himself mid-stride, changed directions on a pivot like he was marching in the Marine Corps.
“McNeely?” the deputy asked, as he rounded the back bumper on the Scout and first made eye contact.
“Yes, sir. Charles McNeely. Nice to meet you.” Daddy smeared the grease from his palms down his jeans and held out his hand to shake, but the deputy never offered his hand.
“Dispatch said you wanted to file a missing-persons report?”
