Where All Light Tends to Go

by David Joy

  Another cat seemed a statue on the wooden steps of the front porch, the lines of its coat camouflaging it against the grayed wood. A pair of yellow eyes peered from a dark opening cut in the skirt around the trailer, and those eyes never let off, never came into the light. There were five I counted from where I stood, the fifth a stringy, young cat wrestling a chipmunk that could barely crawl a few inches before claws stabbed again. I didn’t know what in the world would drive someone to keep after all those cats, but the Cabe brothers must’ve kept them all fed for so many to stick around.

  The cat on the front steps stretched in a tall arch when I got close. Purring wildly, the cat rammed its face into my britches leg and ran the length of its body against my shin. The cat’s face pressed so hard into my leg that its lips turned back along teeth and the purring grew louder. I crouched to pet that old tabby, sure that those last few days had proven awfully lonely with no kibble to fatten its gut. As my hand neared, its ears lowered, hairs raised, and the cat hissed and clawed till I got my boot into its flank and kicked it from the porch. That’s why I’d always hated those sneaky fucking animals.

  The front door was locked and I peered through a clouded window beside the door to get a view inside. No lights were on, just rectangles of sunlight through the windows on the far wall. A box fan was propped in an open window on the back side of the trailer, the fan blades still and dusty. That was where I’d enter.

  The Cabe brothers’ trailer was a good bit longer than that rusted sardine can Robbie Douglas called home. Though it wasn’t really anything to which a man might attach a word like nice, the paint was still fairly fresh on the aluminum and red mud hadn’t dirtied the skirt too awful much. Around back the hillside jutted up fast and ragged-barked locusts towered above. The hillside was steep enough that, reaching just right, I had no need for a bucket to stand on in order to touch that window and slide the box fan to the ground. With those leather gloves fitted over my hands, I yanked once, the box fan came loose, and as it did, the window slammed down hard on the seal a few seconds shy of broken fingers. A short section of two-by-four was on the ground. Stood on end, it held the window propped enough for me to shimmy my way inside belly first onto stained carpet.

  The sun hung low behind the locusts now and the only light to be had shone through clouded windowpanes. That hazy light wasn’t fit for seeing, so I pulled the bead-chain cord of a table lamp that rested beside the open window to take a look around. The main living space was broken like most single-wides with a larger section meant for a living room running into a tight kitchen area, only the shift from ratty carpet to peeling laminate marking the divide. A leather sectional sofa and matching chair that might have been nice when it was new overfilled the living room. The leather had started off black but had been shredded in every place that held cushion, and the tears that proved too big to leave had been patched with shoddy X’s of duct tape. There was no question they’d salvaged that fine suite from the rusted bins at the recycling center. Those were always treasured finds greeted with shit-eating grins for folks like the Cabes.

  A bedroom capped each end of the trailer, and I took the one nearest me to nose through first. I dropped the black plastic bag by the window and tromped into the bedroom, even light footsteps thudding loud on a floor stretched thin as hide on a bass drum.

  The room was kept tidy for the most part, even the window being cleaner than any other in the trailer, clear enough to let evening light the room golden. Only a deep rut in the mattress gave any clue to which brother it belonged. It’d take a man Gerald’s size to rub that kind of waller into a mattress. Planting Robbie’s belongings was something I planned to do in the main room, but a bedroom left this neat didn’t suit a man who’d shot off on the lam. A man in a hurry would’ve roughed the place up a bit to speed things along, so that’s what I’d do.

  I drew the drawers loose from a dresser by the door and spread the clothes over the bed and floor in a layered mess that looked rushed. I split the folding doors on the closet and lifted one heap of shirts on hangers from the rod, spread that armful out across the bed like a hand of cards. A lack of anything dressy meant Gerald kept a long line of empty hangers, and I tossed those hangers every which way to make it look like they’d held something and what they’d held had been taken. As I stepped back into the narrow closet, my boot crackled against something on the floor. It was too dark to make out what lay bunched at my feet, but I nudged it with the tip of my boot until a corner flipped into yellow sunlight.

  The second I saw that blue tarp, my mind shot back to the night I stood with the Cabe brothers on the edge of the bluff and how Robbie Douglas had rolled with arms and legs flailing till he found that place on the rock. I remembered how Gerald had folded the tarp we used to drag the body so carefully, bending and tucking that tarp just so like he was folding a flag. Couldn’t be, I thought. That son of a bitch couldn’t be so dumb as to save it.

  I tugged the leather gloves tightly against my hands and pulled the crumpled tarp out into the room. The tarp had a smell about it, a smell that usually reserved itself for things on the roadside, bodies that swelled in the heat and shrunk back with the coolness night brought, that rising and falling bringing life to something long since dead. I unfolded the tarp and was startled by the stains, the places where blood had dried dark brown. Skin still held from where it had peeled off of Robbie’s face, that skin thin and yellowed, flaking like fish slime dried on a rag. Near those scabs of skin the tarp was warped and burnt from the acid, and that smell caught me again. Only a fear of leaving anything of myself behind kept me from spilling over onto the floor. He couldn’t have been that stupid, I thought. But it wasn’t really about being stupid or smart. A man who’d save something like that did so out of pure meanness. That meanness was what I lacked, and that lacking was why I’d never be able to do the types of things men like the Cabe brothers or my father could do. I was soft in Daddy’s eyes. I’d always been a pussy. But if this was what it took to be hard, then that type of hardness was something I would never know. I dragged the tarp out into the living room and left it unfolded and sagging off the edge of the couch.

  Jeremy’s bedroom was what I expected to find: a living, breathing mess that seemed to crawl across the floor. The metal walls were dented in places, four knuckles distinctly nudging just a little bit deeper in each one of the impressions. The marks were a testament to his quick temper, an alcohol-fueled rage that used to boil him over out of nowhere. A game trail was cut to the bed. No sheets were on the mattress, only the rose patterns printed across polyester ticking and a broad brown stain that looked like it had been wiped and spread many times without lightening in color. An alarm clock set on top of a closed trunk flashed red numbers beside the bed. Jeremy’s two best friends in the world, Jack and Ginger, made residence alongside the alarm. The fifth of Jack Daniel’s still held a few strong slugs, though the top wasn’t screwed on and fruit flies buzzed about the mouth. A two-liter of Canada Dry was all but gone, the bottle squashed and creased in the middle, held in that angle since the top had been screwed tight.

  I squatted down to pull clothes pressed flat by footsteps from underneath the pile, and that’s when I saw the bottle beneath the window. It was a glass jug shaped like a jimmy-john that might have been used to hold cider or moonshine, with a large white-and-black sticker wrapping around the belly. “DANGER! CORROSIVE!” it read, with an image of liquid pouring from a test tube, squiggly lines rising from the hand where it fell. “SULFURIC ACID (H2SO4).” I picked up the jug and swashed the clear liquid around like I was proofing beads on a gallon of corn whiskey. The oily fluid swirled, hung to the sides of the glass, and dripped down slow. The jug was still nearly full with only a pint or two missing, a pint or two that I’d seen splash and fizz.

  If I had known, I wouldn’t have come. Those Cabe brothers had their necks wrung and feathers plucked before I ever climbed through the window of their trailer. I reckon if t
hey’d still been alive it wouldn’t have mattered too much. They could’ve hid it all when the time came. But the fact they were fish now, and all that was left to tell their story was spread out across that trailer thick as cow pies, left little wondering. A name like Robbie Douglas tasted sour in a man’s mouth. Soon as Daddy planted that name in the deputy’s mind, it was left there to fester. All that was left was to bring that festering to a head, so I set the jimmy-john of acid by the recliner, spread Robbie’s shirt right next to the tarp, and placed the bills and Douglas family Bible on the coffee table like tabloids.

  I was just about to make my exit through the window when I heard tires spinning gravel into a crackly racket up the drive. Through the front window I could barely see through the clouded glass, but there wasn’t any mistaking the blue light bar running across the top of the car. I stood still as stone till the patrol car parked where the gravel ended and sparse grass began. A glare on the window kept me from making out who was inside, but the deputy kept the car running and didn’t step out. The cats circled the patrol car and I backed away from the window long enough to ease my escape route closed and cut the only lamp giving light. There was no way out now aside from the front door, but I couldn’t have that bull notice a window left open, couldn’t have him catching whiff of anything awry.

  Back at the glass, I saw the deputy step out of the car. It was the bull who’d taken the report, that pepper-haired, no-nonsense bull that liked to keep which way he looked hidden behind sunglasses. He wore those shades now, though the sunlight was all but gone, night bugs already starting to chatter from the woods. The glaring of cats spiraled around his ankles and he made the same mistake I had. The cocky bull took all that purring and rubbing as a sign of civility, like some other living, breathing thing might have loved him, until he leaned down and jerked back, hand slit where claws sliced.

  My first fears were relieved by the lack of papers in his hands and the lack of backup for inventory. I’d seen my fair share of searches in eighteen years as the son of Charles McNeely, and two things always rang true: there were always at least two badges, and one of them always carried papers. My second fear, though, was standing right there in front of me. A deputy was at the trailer, and I was inside.

  The bull copied something back to county through the radio on his chest before resituating his belt and walking toward the door. I didn’t see what came next. By the time his first foot took a step, I was lying flat behind the leather couch. I heard the boards creak under his weight as he came onto the porch. Then the first knocks pounded boom-boom-boom in a thunderous manner that almost took the locked door off its hinges. “Sheriff’s Department,” he shouted. Then another boom-boom-boom just as hard as the first.

  I was certain one more boom would send that door to booming and flying and then all that would be left was to turn into a rabbit and shoot right past him before he knew what flushed. “The man who looks back gets caught,” Daddy’d always said, and as I lay there, my heart pattering in a frenzy, even shallow breaths seeming to sound out of wind, all I could think was when that time comes, don’t look back.

  The porch planks shifted under him as he moved, and I stayed still. I prayed to a God that I had no use for outside of these types of situations. I prayed that if He were real, He’d puppeteer that bull to leave. But that old truth held true once more: God doesn’t answer McNeely prayers. A broad shadow, darker than inside, rose on the far wall as the deputy moved in front of the window. Then a wide, hazy circle of yellow light ran the room from top to bottom and side to side. I pulled back my feet a hair, and watched the flashlight illuminate the carpet just past my toes. The light clicked off and the boards creaked as the bull made his way off the porch.

  Loud bangs sounded against the outside of the trailer, bangs that nearly sent me out of my skin. Each bang hammered a little further along the trailer, the deputy racking his metal flashlight against the aluminum walls as he walked. From the sound of it, the bull cut the corner and banged against the far wall of Jeremy’s bedroom, then cut the corner again to the back of the trailer. From the window where I’d climbed in, he’d spot me with one swoop of that flashlight, so I rolled onto my stomach and wriggled like a worm till I made it to the far side of the sectional couch. I lay right where the ratty carpet ended and peeling tile began as the rapping on the outside of the trailer walked its way along past me and closer to the window.

  The banging on the trailer stopped and instead a different kind of banging echoed from outside. It was more of a clanking than banging. The racket sounded like the bull was kicking at the box fan on the ground where I’d dropped it, the fan blades and motor rattling against the plastic frame each time his boot hit. That’s when the last noise I ever wanted to hear at that moment sounded loud and squeaky inside. The window I’d come in through rose, the frame shrieking against unoiled guide rails. The window opened and then slapped closed, came up again as the bull got his footing and lifted a second time.

  I could hear him huffing now, hear that fat boy breathing like a schoolkid running suicides. He’ll never fit through that window, I told myself, but running like a rabbit through the front door and never looking back didn’t leave my mind for a second. The flashlight ran from corner to corner, made light of every square inch of the walls till nothing was left that hadn’t been seen. I was sure he saw the tarp there, that red flannel shirt on the couch, the stack of papers and Bible on the coffee table, the jug of acid by the chair. The light kept running and those breaths kept huffing and my heart kept pounding, and I was certain, I was absolutely certain, that I was caught. Soon as that tubby got his belly onto the windowsill, his body half in and dangling on both sides, I was going to burst up and hit that door wide open. Don’t look back, I told myself, just don’t look back. But the window slapped closed and the flashlight banged its way back toward the far side of the trailer and I lay there till I heard the patrol car crank and tires crunching gravel as they spun.

  Sometimes a rabbit doesn’t have to run.

  18.

  There was never a moment in my life when I bought into the idea of light at the end of the tunnel. That old adage rests entirely on the direction being traveled. Out of darkness toward the light, folks might find some sort of hope in moving forward, some sort of anticipation for what awaits them. But my entire life I’d been traveling in the opposite direction, and for those who move further into darkness, the light becomes a thing onto which we can only look back. Looking back slows you down. Looking back destroys focus. Looking back can get you killed. And that’s why I hadn’t spoken with Maggie since the morning in Panthertown. There was already too much on my plate.

  Monday night she called. I was cleaning the dirt from under my fingernails with the sheepsfoot blade of an old Case Stockman when the phone rang.

  “I don’t think I understand you at all, Jacob McNeely.”

  “Maggie?”

  “Will you tell me something, and I want you to be absolutely square with me, because I don’t think I could take it again, Jacob. I’m not going to take it again.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You came looking for me and told me that you’re still in love with me, and even after the way it ended last time, I put my guard down and I kissed you and then I don’t hear from you in almost a week. I just don’t understand you.”

  I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted to tell her about being arrested, about what my father had made me do, about the nightmares that kept me from sleeping. But more than that, I wanted to tell her how I felt about her. I wanted to tell her everything she needed to hear to ensure I would never hurt her again, but the man part of me wouldn’t bring myself to tell her. No, I bottled all of that shit up the way I always had. “I’ve just been busy. I’ve been swamped helping my dad. But more than that is what I’ve always told you. I don’t want to hold you back, and that’s exactly what I’d be doing.”

  “I’m not a l
ittle girl now, Jacob. I’m a grown woman, and if I were to let you hold me back, that would be just as much my fault as yours. So why don’t you let me worry about that. For once, let me worry about whether or not you’re holding me back.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Is that fair?”

  “What?”

  “Is that fair that you let me worry about whether or not you’re holding me back?”

  “Yeah, that’s fair.”

  “Then the only thing I need from you is for you to be honest with me. The only thing I need from you is for you to let me in.”

  “Let you in?”

  “I’m not asking you to spill every secret you’ve ever had.”

  “Then what are you asking for?”

  “I’m asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to trust me and to trust us. If you’re not willing to do that, then it can’t work.”

  I’d never had anyone ask me to let them in. Inside was a place most folks wouldn’t have ever wanted to glimpse, much less be a part of, but Maggie had always been banging on the door. Maggie had always been trying her damnedest to take part of the weight off of me, and I’d never let her. I couldn’t let her then, and I wasn’t sure that I could let her now, but the one thing that was for certain was that I’d carried that weight for too long. I’d carried it until I was almost broken, and the only thing that had ever come along and offered to fix any of it, whether she held that power or not, was her.

  “I’ll try.”

  “I’m serious about this, Jacob.”

  “I know you are.”

  “Then promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  “That’s your word.” For the first time in our conversation her voice seemed to ease.