Southern Cross

by Jen Blood

  I looked out the window at the landscape passing by. “He’s a bigger man than I am,” I said. She turned to face me, her green eyes darkening with her mood. “Not that I’d be dumb enough to try and stop you. But if we were together, there’s no way in hell I’d suggest you head off on a road trip with some other guy.”

  “He trusts me.”

  I turned to look at her. Her jaw was hard, her anger plain. I smiled. “How evolved of him.”

  <><><>

  About an hour and a half from our destination, Solomon pointed out a road sign for Smithfield U. that featured two penguins in sunglasses and baseball hats.

  “Why are penguins the mascot for a Kentucky college?” she asked.

  “It’s Kentucky,” I said. “Logic doesn’t always play a big role in things. It’s part of the charm.”

  “Good to know.”

  We’d just passed the campus when Solomon caught me looking in the rearview mirror. She turned around in her seat.

  “Did you see someone back there?” she asked. The edge of panic in her voice was new. I knew it wasn’t unwarranted given our recent experiences, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

  “No,” I lied. A dark blue sedan had been keeping pace with us since we’d left the airport. I wasn’t really concerned until I realized the car was still behind us after we hit I-69 and the Purchase Parkway. It could still be coincidence, I reasoned: plenty of people could be making the trek from Louisville to the westernmost corner of the state on an overcast Tuesday in March.

  Solomon straightened in her seat, frowning. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said.

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “Me, too. I mean—seriously. What are the chances we get knocked off the road and hunted down by a crazed serial killer twice in one year?”

  “Not great,” I said.

  “Exactly,” she agreed. She didn’t sound convinced.

  Outside, new leaves were just budding on a wall of trees lining the road on either side: oaks and ash, maple and poplar and sycamore. I turned on the radio and tuned it to 89.9, smiling at the voice that scraped through our speakers.

  “Weather today in Justice looks gray with a healthy side of rain, so stay on in and keep those toes by the fire. Crazy Jake Dooley’s here ‘til nightfall—we got records to spin and memories to make. Now y’all turn up the noise and stay close.”

  Crazy Jake faded out and Lightnin’ Hopkins faded in. Jake sounded like scorched gravel, but he had a mind for music and an endless supply of classic records that kept me entertained through three long years married to Ashley Durham.

  “What was that?” Solomon asked.

  “That,” I said, “was Crazy Jake Dooley. He broadcasts out of Justice, but he’s kind of a cult figure in Kentucky. If you’re going to Justice, I want to make sure you get the full experience. Jake’s part of the immersion.”

  I turned up the music and refrained from checking the rearview mirror again. Solomon settled in, her feet tapping, for the rest of the journey.

  It was just past one in the afternoon when we got where we were going. The sun had vanished behind a blanket of thick, menacing grey clouds, and the temperature had dropped a good fifteen degrees since Louisville. I tried not to view that as a sign of impending doom, but considering Solomon and my luck in the past, it was hard to write it off completely.

  Justice is a one-streetlight town on the Mississippi that was booming up until the 1970s, when levees rerouted the river. Since then, the population has held steady at about 1,500, with the bulk of those people working in neighboring towns. Visitors are greeted by a sign that reads simply JUSTICE FIRST as they cross the town line. Just beyond that was a sign that hadn’t been there when I’d left five years before, however.

  “ ‘Hell is real.’ ” Solomon read the flaming orange letters aloud. “Or at least it is according to Reverend Jesup T. Barnel. Well, there you go. One theological debate ended.”

  Ten feet later, a second sign appeared. “ ‘Repent all ye sinners. The fire awaits,’ ” Solomon read. Her voice was light enough, but she was doing the knee-bouncing thing that usually means she’s either nervous or she has to pee. When it’s the former, the knee-bouncing is accompanied by an endless, one-sided, rambling dialogue, which is how I knew this was anxiety and not just an overactive bladder.

  After another ten feet, the largest sign of all appeared—ten feet high, maybe twelve across. On it was a picture of an overweight, elderly white man with a white beard and a cowboy hat.

  “There’s a tent meeting tomorrow night,” Solomon said. “In which Reverend Barnel will purportedly ‘Set the clock ticking: forty-eight hours ‘til the End is Come.’ ” She looked at me speculatively. “Look at that—we made it just in time for Armageddon.”

  “Of course we did,” I said dryly. “This is you and me we’re talking about.”

  “Good point.” She shook her head as we approached the center of town. “So, this is Justice. I can’t believe you lived here for three years. It’s not really how I imagined it.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  She had to think about that for a minute. “Kind of a cross between Dodge and that town in Footloose.”

  “Actually,” I said after some thought, “you’re not that far off.”

  The town of Justice consists of a main stretch of boarded-up storefronts and a few diehards still managing to hang on, despite Walmart’s chokehold on the local economy: the Justice Qwik E Mart, True Value Hardware, and Martin Feed & Grain. Across the way, you’ll find the historic Justice City Hall, built in 1862, flanked on one side by the local police station, and on the other by WKRO Radio and the old Twin Cinemas movie theater.

  It took five minutes to leave Justice proper behind. From there, I took River Road past churches and shacks, For Sale signs posted at every third house or so, and then turned onto a pitted dirt road shrouded by old oak trees. We trekked through a mile of mud and deep ruts until Wyatt’s house came into view. The sky darkened further as I pulled in behind a twin-cab 4x4 parked in the driveway.

  Dogs barked. Einstein barked back at them. Roosters crowed. Three goats and a donkey eyed us curiously from behind wire fencing off to our right. I stopped the car, but made no move to get out.

  “You all right?” Solomon asked.

  It was an excellent question. I only wished I had a good answer. “Not at all. But what are you gonna do, right?”

  She took my hand in hers—carefully, like she was taking hold of a live wire. Her hand was cool and dry, soft and strong. Her eyes met mine, a frown tipping the corners of her mouth. “I really am here,” she said. “Whatever you need. It’s what we do, right?”

  We stayed that way for a minute or more before she let go. It had gotten too warm in the car. Too close. I thought again of her body against mine; the way her lips had tasted, the words she’d whispered. Don’t let go, okay? Not until you have to.

  “We should go in,” she said.

  I didn’t disagree.

  Chapter Two

  DANNY

  The house was busting at the seams with every relative they’d ever had, and then some. Danny had never been much for family anyway, and now to have everyone here carrying on about how much they loved his daddy and what a good man Wyatt Durham had been and how he was probably setting at Jesus’s right hand right then… it just got to be too much, is all.

  He went back out, careful to wait ‘til Rick—his twin brother, the good son—and Ida, the baby of the family, were out of the way. He cruised past the grove of birches and the horse barn and the creek, ignoring the howl of the dogs and the threat of rain. Just keep moving, he kept saying to himself. He was seventeen now: too old to cry; too young to go off and get blisterin’ drunk like his college buddies. Well… at least, not right now, with his family around. Maybe later.

  Instead, he kept going ‘til he reached the old tree house his daddy built him and Rick when they was just kids. He climbed the rickety wooden rungs nailed into the trunk of a sol
id old oak, pushed open the trapdoor, and went on in.

  You hadn’t oughta leave your mama alone on a day like today, he imagined his daddy saying. Danny pulled a joint from his back pocket and fetched a lighter from a cubby hole built into the treehouse. He sat back, knees just about to his chin to make room in the cramped space, and leaned his back up against the rough bark. You got a lot of nerve, boy, smokin’ dope today.

  “Quiet, old man,” Danny growled. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. His throat hurt, a lump in there he hadn’t been able to get rid of since his mama broke the news.

  A branch snapped somewhere below. Danny opened his eyes. The weed was already taking hold, taking the edge off just enough.

  “That you, Ida?” he hollered down. “I thought you was off somewhere.”

  “Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” a girl’s voice called up to him. He smiled, relief washing over him like warm summer rain. “It’s just me.”

  Half a minute later, Casey Clinton poked her head up through the hatch. Casey played bass in Danny’s band. She was a couple years younger than him, about a head shorter, and she was about the only person he could talk to these days about… well, anything, really. Music, family, life, school… he could say anything to Casey. It didn’t hurt that she was the prettiest girl in the sophomore class—not that there was anything going on between them, of course.

  She pulled herself up through the hatch and settled across from him. He passed her the joint.

  “They lookin’ for me over at the house?” he asked.

  “Nah. I had to scoot, though, in case your mama saw me.”

  Danny’s mother hated Casey—said she come from trash and was all about devil music. They’d fought about it too much over the years; now, Casey just kept her head down whenever his mama was around.

  “What about Rick?” he asked.

  “He saw me, but he won’t say anything.”

  “You sure about that? If he thinks it’ll earn him more points with Mama…”

  Casey took a good long drag and held the smoke in before she passed the joint back to him, shaking her head. “You oughta go easy on him—he ain’t so bad as you make him out to be. What’s he ever done to you?”

  “Nothin’,” he said. “The kid just bothers me is all.”

  It came out sulky. It felt like most of his life he’d been standing off on the sidelines doing his own thing while his brother couldn’t take a leak without their mama wanting to throw a parade. Rick was the highest ranked high school tennis player in the state. He got the lead in all the school plays and only dated girls their folks liked and already knew where he was headed to college, when Danny wasn’t even sure he’d graduate.

  Casey bumped her leg against his and he jolted back to the here and now. “How’re you doin’, anyway?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  “After Mama died, I didn’t feel much like talking for a couple months,” she said. “Everybody was always on me, though: ‘You gotta talk about your feelings.’ Thought I’d go crazy, everybody hounding me so much.”

  Danny nodded. “They want me to go see Ms. Guilford. Like talking to the guidance counselor’s gonna help anything. I been dodging her so far, but I don’t know how much longer I can do it.”

  “Just get it over with,” Casey said. “Make up some shit about dealin’ with your feelings, maybe talk about a dream, and she’ll get off your back. Otherwise, you’ll just spend the rest of the year on the run.”

  “Okay,” he agreed. Casey’s mother died in a car accident a couple years back. This whole thing was old hat for her.

  Another branch cracked down below—this one right under the treehouse.

  “Dangit, Ida, leave me be for two seconds, would you?” Danny hollered down.

  Casey poked her head down the hatch. “There ain’t a soul down there. Weed’s makin’ you paranoid.”

  Danny shook his head, his shaggy hair flopping in his eyes. For the first time, he felt a little clutch of fear. Casey kept her leg against his, jostling it a little like she knew he needed the reminder: they were okay.

  “Your uncle comin’ in today?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I hear, anyway. Should be around anytime now. You’ll like Diggs—he knows music like you wouldn’t believe. And he’s been everywhere. Done just about everything.”

  “He’s a looker, too,” Casey said. She blushed when he looked at her. “You showed me them pictures, remember? You’ve talked about him enough—I reckon it’ll be good, meetin’ the man behind the myth.”

  They got quiet for a little bit after that, the outside of her leg warm against the outside of his. Danny pocketed the roach when they were done smoking, but he wasn’t ready to go yet. He felt that fear come at him again.

  “You think they’re gonna find who did it?” he asked Casey. He didn’t have to explain what he meant.

  She shrugged, looking sad. Casey always liked her daddy—Danny used to be a little jealous of the two of them, the way she took to talking to him whenever she had troubles.

  “I still don’t know why anybody’d want to go after a man like Dr. Durham,” she said. “He was just about the nicest man I ever met.”

  But you know why, don’t you, boy? Danny imagined his daddy saying. Clear as you please, he pictured Wyatt Durham sitting across from him in the treehouse. A wrinkle in his forehead, eyes sadder’n a hound dog on his worst day. You know there’s only one reason anybody ever would’a wanted me dead, his daddy said evenly. And that’s you.

  Chapter Three

  SOLOMON

  The Durhams lived in a little white farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Like, literally. I left Einstein in the car until I could be sure he wouldn’t be devoured by the family dogs, of which there seemed to be half a dozen. Diggs and I went in without knocking, and were immediately besieged by well-meaning relations. I stayed on the outskirts of the action, watching as Diggs was welcomed back into the fold.

  It took awhile before we were able to wade through the first wave of greeters to get to the inner sanctum, an overcrowded parlor filled with family photos: Wyatt on a sunny summer day, swimming with his twin boys; studio portraits of the kids from toddler-hood on up; a candid of those same twin boys, now teenagers, at what I assumed had been their high school prom. In the prom picture, one of the boys looked like he was straight out of a Mormon recruitment flyer: short hair and a standard-issue tux, bright white smile, a bland blonde girl with braces laughing beside him. The other brother was more my speed, in a suit jacket over an anarchy t-shirt, the girl on his arm every good mother’s nightmare: pierced eyebrow, dyed black hair, plaid miniskirt and combat boots.

  The Mormon poster boy sat on the couch now beside his sister, a dark-haired girl of six or seven missing her front teeth. I saw no sign of the shaggy-haired rebel. There was a playpen in the corner of the room, from which a pudgy blond toddler of indeterminate gender peered out at us. Wyatt’s wife, Mae, sat on an overstuffed sofa at the center of it all.

  She got up as soon as she spotted Diggs, and he gathered her in his arms and held on tight, swaying gently, while Mae cried. Wyatt’s son looked down, his shoulders tense, while the girl watched with that fifty-yard stare you see on kids sometimes when the world’s shifted in incomprehensible ways and they’re still trying to regain their footing.

  Diggs whispered something in Mae’s ear and they finally parted, Mae laughing, wiping at her tears. She was short and plump, country pretty, with healthy pink cheeks and that rural efficiency that suggested she could handle anything from pickling preserves to breach births. Since the only thing I know how to pickle is my own liver, I always feel a little out of my element in the presence of such competence.

  All the same, Mae beamed when she saw me. She pulled me close and held on tight. “Thank you for finding him,” she said in my ear.

  I felt a wash of sadness of my own, and managed a mute nod. The kids descended from there, but before hellos could be exchanged or r
egrets conveyed, a tall, lean brunette appeared in the doorway. The toddler gurgled with what I assumed was pleasure. Diggs looked up, forced a smile, and walked up to the woman.

  Ashley Durham—my least favorite of Diggs’ three ex-wives. And that’s saying something.

  “I’m so sorry, Ash,” he said quietly.

  The whole room looked on curiously. Ashley’s not high strung, necessarily, but she’s not exactly sunshine and puppies, either. The last time I’d seen her in the flesh, she was threatening Diggs’ manhood with a grilling fork for an all-nighter he pulled with me while he was supposed to be vacationing with his lovely wife. In other words: a beat-down wasn’t out of the question. After a tense minute or two, she gave a sigh of concession and they hugged it out.

  I noticed she didn’t extend any such gesture my way, though.

  <><><>

  That night, after the rest of the family had retired to their respective corners, Diggs snagged me and announced there was someone I had to meet. It was cool and grey outside, a refreshing change of pace from the stuffy homestead. Einstein ran on ahead, peeing on trees and digging up toadstools as he went. It was ten o’clock. I’d promised Juarez I would call as soon as I could, but so far the opportunity hadn’t presented itself. I was surprised how much I was looking forward to hearing his voice again, though. No games, no pretenses, no torment; just a stable, interesting guy I liked, who seemed to like me back. Nice. Simple.

  Diggs and I walked about half a mile, until we reached a log cabin in a wooded glade far from the road. There was a handmade wooden chair on the front porch beside a pen with three floppy-eared rabbits inside. Stein nosed at them curiously through the mesh as Diggs knocked on the door.

  “Are you sure I should be here?” I asked. “I mean… maybe you should have this reunion in private. I could hang with Stein and the bunnies out here.”