by Deforest Day
“ ‘course not. I went along with Davy a couple of times. It was interesting.”
“You’re not Catholic, are you?”
“Naw, but I do know that there are a hundred-and-eight beads on a rosary and hundred-and-eight stitches on a baseball. I learned that from a Catholic. Your brother.”
“It’s from a movie, you dope! Bull Durham.”
“Well, knock me over! That sounds like Davy; a movie line for all occasions.” He paused, searching for the words. “I’m a, a, believer, I guess you could call it. I don’t believe that God created man; caint nobody that powerful be that foolish. But I do hold to the concept of the Creator. The higher power one, I mean, not the ol’ feller with the beard and the wrath.”
“Catholics are inoculated at birth, taught the One True Way.” She snorted a small laugh. “Then we go to college, and get confused.”
They parked in the lot and entered the church. Penny touched water in a stone basin, headed to the altar, knelt, prayed.
Justice slid into a pew at the back, watched the sunlight come through the high windows, bursting into shafts of red and blue and gold, bathing her in a rainbow. She looked so small there, in front of the ornate altarpiece, the towering crucifix, all the trappings of her belief.
She rose, crossed herself again, and came back to Justice, where she sat, working through her rosary with practiced fingers. Finally, she put her head against his arm, grasped his other sleeve, and wept. “I miss him, so,” she sobbed.
After a bit Justice put his arm around her, held her. “He was my brother, too.”
Back at her garage apartment she assembled grilled cheese sandwiches. Justice looked at the ziplock bag on the table. “You said on the phone yesterday that you had Davy’s address book. How’d you come by it?”
She turned from the stove. “It was in his suitcase. The police brought it, when they came to tell me about his death.” She pointed to a travel bag beside the sofa bed.
“His music box in there?”
“His what? Oh, his iPod. No; I guess he was wearing it. Like always.”
“Yes’m. Like always. Except it wasn’t with his others stuff.” Wouldn’t be the first time an EMT pocketed a gold ring, a wristwatch, in the ride between the accident scene and the ER. Except they hadn’t. Another mystery.
He noticed a photograph in a silver frame on a small table beside the sofa. Justice picked it up. “That’s the mountains of Tora Bora, in the background.” Justice and Driver; bearded, heavily armed, grinned at the camera from horseback.
She turned from the stove. “Look at those wild rapscallions. No wonder I didn’t recognize you, this morning.”
“Now I work in a sporting goods store; cain't scare the customers.” A sudden thought flashed across his mind. “At least, I did work there. After you called, I took off, forgot to tell my boss. Probably too late now. What the heck; I wasn’t planning on making a career of it.”
He sat at the table, and watched her work. Slender, lithe, long hair pulled back in a ponytail. You could see Davy in her facial structure. She reminded him of the Chinkara gazelles they’d hunted in Afghanistan. Small, swift creatures, with silky coats and lustrous eyes. The aromas of butter, toast, and sharp cheddar rose from the stove.
She slid the sandwiches out of the pan and cut them into bite-sized pieces, then removed a container of iced tea from the refrigerator. “Gourmet lunch,” she said, sitting across from him. She picked at a morsel of sandwich, drank tea. “What comes next?”
“Well, if the coroner does his job, the police will have to open an investigation. Davy give you any hint that something like this could happen?”
“No, of course not! Nothing. He’d goof around during the day, while I was at school. I ran cross country in high school, Davy’s influence, and we’d do a few miles in the morning, before I dressed for work. Then he’d go to the little local library, catch up on all the magazines he’d missed, or take a drive. I get home at three thirty, and we’d go out. We had dinner a couple of times in Sunbury, went to a dinner theater in Harrisburg. We came back late that night.” She gnawed a thumbnail, reliving the last hours with her brother.
There was a catch in her voice as she continued. “Mostly, we’d talk. Go to Paradise Park, watch the water, and talk. Sit here, and talk. Yakkity yak-yak-yak. We had a lot to catch up on. I used to envy you; Davy was yours, twenty-four-seven, and all I had was an occasional e-mail.”
He needed to pull her out of this dark hole before they both started blubbering. “And I envied him, having a sister. Penelope.”
She examined him for a sign. Davy got a certain look in his eye when he was about to start something. She thought she caught a glint. “Stop that! He must have told you that I despise my name. In grade school the other kids would make it rhyme with cantaloupe. I got to be Penny in high school, which wasn’t much better. I finally graduated to Pen, when I went to college.”
“I been Justice, since I joined up. Davy was the only one called me Bob.”
“Bob and Pen. Short and sweet.”
“Hey, who you calling short?”
“What makes you think I was referring to you? I’m only five-three.”
“Well then, this here’s a historic moment. First time I’ve been called sweet.”
She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. No wedding band; she wondered how this man could have avoided the altar for so long. It was certainly not a lack of interest in the opposite sex. Her brother had made that plain often enough. “You are, you know. Dropping everything to come up here.”
“Davy would have done the same.” He eased his hand away, used it to pick up his iced tea. He was feeling a little uncomfortable. Last time—first time—they’d seen each other, she was about thirteen. And Davy’s sister. In his mind, she’d been Davy’s kid sister, ever since. Except now she was all grown up.
She chewed her lip. “Now that I think about it, there is a small coincidence. Probably nothing, but I’d like to know what you think. Apparently some local contractors went over to Iraq. They just got back, and are throwing money around town.
“One of my third graders showed up in the lunchroom with a hundred-dollar bill. He said his uncle gave it to him. And our fifth grade teacher's husband works at the Ford dealership; he told her that one of them bought a top of the line pickup truck, paid thirty-five thousand cash for it.”
“I think I saw it.”
Her voice quickened as she turned gossip into news. “Another teacher’s aunt is a teller at the bank. Someone she didn’t know, and in this burg everybody knows everybody, opened an account with ten thousand dollars. In hundreds, new, consecutive. And then, Davy was there. In Iraq.” She leaned back, brushed hair from her face. “It’s tenuous, but I can’t think of anything else.”
Tenuous. Whatever that meant. “Any chance he got hisself crosswise with a woman? One that had a boyfriend or husband?”
“I don’t think so. I can read Davy pretty well, and my girlie radar didn’t go off. He told me a fat girl at the hotel had been coming on to him, but she wasn’t his type.” Pen smiled, shook her head. “I didn’t realize there was such a thing as a female that wasn’t my brothers type!”
“I believe I met her; the one calls herself Pudge. What I think he meant was, there’s no fun in shootin’ fish in a barrel.”
Chapter 26
“What’s that shit in your hair?”
”Ain’t shit. It’s stuff they call product.” Howie checked himself in the bar mirror. “I got it cut by a female.”
“You always get it cut by a female.”
“No, I don’t mean my Ma. This was an actual hair person. Not a barber, neither; she calls herself a stylist. Went to school, and all.”
“Well, it looks like you stuck your dick in a light socket.”
“Up yours. Hey, Pudge! You got a thirsty customer here.” Howie leaned against the bar, fooled with a stack of coasters. “What it is, Chick, now that I got money, I need to work
on my persona.”
“Persona? You been watchin’ Oprah?”
“Man, listen to you. Got no sense of style.” He turned to his friend, examined his tan Dickie work shirt, boot cut Levis. “You look like you combed your hair with a eggbeater. Plus, most people shave more than one time a week. You're scruffy; like them movie stars, when they ain’t working. Plus, you’re still driving that clapped out Camaro. While I got my new truck, and Bumpsy’s got a new ride, a new woman. Something I’m working on, too.”
“Well, it’s gonna take more than a red truck and some hair gel to get Pudge interested.”
“Forget her. I’m fixing to go clubbing in Sunbury. Score me one of them pole dancers. You want to come along?”
“Depends. Will I need to get a haircut? Hey, speaking of score, are you holding?”
“Enough for one fatty. I’ll drop by the bodega this after, pick up a lid of Colombian. I’d like to get some seeds, try growin’ again.”
Pudge put his usual on the bar, waited for the money and the grief that went with it.
“Did I order a beer? Chick, did you hear me say, ‘yo, barmaid! Bring me a mug of Coors’?”
“I don’t believe I’ve heard you say ‘yo, barmaid,’ since you were old enough to show a fake I.D.”
“Miss, may I please have a martini? Very dry?”
Pudge rolled her eyes. “You want that up?”
“No, I want it one of those triangle glasses. With a thingie on a toothpick.”
Pudge gave him her crappy look. The one he’d swear she practiced in the mirror, just for him.
Chick explained, “It goes with his hair.”
Howie raised the mug to his mouth. “I’ll just work on this, while you’re making my martini. Could be awhile, seein’ how busy you are, and all.” He watched Pudge make a show of holding a bottle high, pour a stream of clear booze in a big glass. She threw in ice cubes, slapped a metal thing on, shook the devil out it. Man! The way her bubbies bounced; old Johnny Cash’s eyeballs were rollin’ in his head. He turned to Chick. “What would you rather have, big tits or a nice ass?”
“I’d rather have a bigger dick.”
“No, asshole; I meant on a woman. If you had to chose, would you go for a really nice rack, or a bootyluscious butt?”
Chick contemplated. “I guess hooters. Because they’re up where you see them more. Than the ass, I mean. ‘cause with the ass, to begin with, you got to be behind her to fully appreciate it.”
“True. But with boobs you’re in front, and she’ll get all pissy, she catches you checking them out. Like someone we know.” He gave Pudge what he considered a suave glance. “With the ass, unless she’s got a mirror, she can’t see you.”
Chick enjoyed messing with his buddy. “What if she’s sideways?”
“What, boobs or butt?”
Howie wasn't the sharpest crayon in the box. “Both.”
“Well, you're supposed to look at her face when you’re talking, but you can get an idea of how she’s hung, from your whatayacallit. Your perimeter vision. Specially if she’s short, like Alice. Then you’re lookin’ down at her, and she can’t really tell if you’re lookin’ at her eyes, or her rack. Plus, if she’s wearing a loose top, you can see right down. Unless it’s Alice, where there’s nothin’ to see.”
“Well, that’s settled. It’s hooters.” Chick couldn’t resist a last poke. “But then again, the ass is closer to the promised land.”
Pudge strained the martini into a glass, added an olive. Only her Jersey boat fairies ordered martinis, and she kept a bottle of Bombay gin on hand. Shaleville was a brown whiskey town.
Howie took a healthy swallow, reddened, coughed. “Stuff tastes like gasoline!”
Pudge folded her arms and watched him struggle for breath. Barry and his pal had taught her how to make a proper dry martini; when Howie traded his redneck ride for a Porsche she’d change her recipe. “Regular or Unleaded?”
“No joke, Pudge, what did you put in this?”
“Gin. You said very dry, so I went easy on the vermouth. Sophisticated gent like you, don’t like my martini?”
Howie used the beer to remove the taste of gin. Stuff made your eyes water; was worse than Ma’s Southern Comfort. Pudge moved away and he said quietly, “When do you think Mr. Baer is gonna get the rest of our money out of the RoachMobile? ‘cause I’m getting low.”
“How the hell did you spent fifty thousand dollars in less than a week?”
“Hey. My new truck was thirty-five—thirty-seven, with the tax, and I bought Ma a washer and dryer, and I been spending a bunch on lottery tickets.”
“You remember what Mr. Baer said. Don’t get stupid with the money, else somebody’s gonna start askin’ questions.”
“Yeah? Like that broke neck asshole upstairs? I ain’t forgot about him, Chick. And I don’t trust Mr. Baer to do what's right by us. Anybody else comes nosin’ around, I want my share in my hands. So’s I can hide it someplace safe.”
Howie had a point. Another stranger had showed up last night, and he didn’t look like no canoe jerkoff. They needed to quit waiting around for Baer to split the rest. They needed a plan of action. And a gun.
Chapter 27
Justice watched Pen wash the frying pan, came to a decision. “I’m going to slip off for a day or two. I’ll be back, check on what progress the police are making. But there ain’t nothing more I can do here.”
“Slip off? Where? What for?” She absolutely wasn’t ready to be alone so soon.
“I just need to get away. Deal with the loss of my friend.”
Loss. Then it came to her. An e-mail from Davy, years ago. His crazy pal; something about indian ancestors, his granny’s death. And again, a much more recent message. Mom.
Justice and her brother, in the Philippines; more Catholics per square inch than the Vatican. Except they were isolated in the mountains on Jolo island, chasing some Abu Sayyaf terrorists who had murdered six Christian missionaries.
So they had to make do, and Justice had taken Davy on a journey as old as civilization itself. “You going to do a sweat?”
“You know about that?”
“You spent a decade with Davy. I spent a lifetime. Of course I know.”
Justice looked at Pen. Yes; Davy would have told her. They had a brother-sister relationship that an only child could never understand. What else had he revealed?
“Yes’m, that’s what I got a mind to do. A fast and a sweat. It’s another way of doing what you did, at your church.”
Earlier, at the church, she’d put a patch on the wound of her grief. But it would take wakes and funerals and Masses to properly heal her loss. She grabbed at this thread as it slipped through the eyelet to the other side. “Take me,” she begged.
His first sweat was the summer of his thirteenth year. Meemaw had taught him some of the old ways, a few of the prayers, and she had led him into the forest, to fast, beforehand. Traditionally, it takes place at puberty, lasts from a single day to more than four. He was to remain alone, she said, until she came for him.
Clad in just his deerskin breechcloth, she left him at the edge of the cliffs overlooking the Unaka National Forest. “You can see for miles,” she said. “And when I come for you, you will have learned to see a heap further than that.”
He studied Pen across the worn blue table. Perhaps it was meant to be. Brothers and the sister. He would guide her, as Meemaw had guided him. “OK,” he said, and pushed his chair back. “I need to buy a few things. And you do, too. Wear old clothes, ones you don’t care about.”
“You mean the ones we’re going to burn?”
How much detail had Davy gone into? “Yes. The ones we are going to burn. Get us some a-say-ma. Tobacco. A big cigar will do. Sage. Fresh if you can find some at the market, but dried gets it done. They’re what you call a symbol.”
“Like the host, at Mass. It’s not really a tasteless wafer and bad wine.”
“There’s God fearing Christians would give y
ou an argument about that.”
“Yes, but those are TV preachers, more about passing the plate than personal discovery.”
“I’ll meet you back here, in an hour.”
Justice drove to the sporting goods store on Main. He asked where the backpacks were, and the proprietor, a short man with thick glasses, led him to a pegboard display in the back corner. “My personal favorite is the Deva here, by Gregory. Has the Auto-Cant shoulder harness. Each panel attaches to the frame sheet with a single point swivel. That allows them to independently rotate and self-adjust to the slope of the shoulders.” He tugged on a strap. “You can fine tune the degree of rotation by tensioning the stabilizer strap. Lists for $250. I have it on sale this week for $199.”
He reminded Justice of his high school science teacher, a man who never used a sentence when a paragraph was handy. “Well, that surely is somethin’. What I had in mind, though, was a little ol’ rucksack, carry a picnic lunch for an afternoon hike.”
“Ah-ha! A day pack. Something with a hydration sleeve and built in H-2-O port.”
Back at the store in Clarksville there was a bin of army surplus packs, musset bags, canvas sacks originally designed for who knew what. ‘Your choice. $9.99’. “I ain’t planning on assaultin’ Everest. More like what school kids tote their books in.”
The man reached under the counter, pulled out a plastic tub. “Yes, well. I do have these, in a choice of colors. $12.95; but-”
“Perfect. I’ll take two.”
That settled, justice grabbed three blue plastic tarps and a folding shovel; the Boy Scout model rather than the sturdier U.S. Army tool that had dug countless fox holes from Iwo to Anzio. “Do you have topographic maps of the area?”
