by Martin Clark
“You’re sure?” Mason asked.
“Yep.”
“I mean—”
“Damn, Mason—don’t wear me out on this. I’m gonna stand with you.”
“The only other thing…I…I hate the hypocrisy of it. We’re about to become the same as they are, no damn different.”
“Hardly. This guy is a lowlife drug dealer who never so much as earned an honest dime and was harassing your family. You took care of business. He’ll still receive his fair trial and all that jazz, still have his day in court beyond a reasonable doubt.” His voice rose, almost squeaked. “And if you want to couch it in legal terms, you acted in self-defense. Is there any doubt you had a right to intervene on behalf of your family? Bastard was threatening your little girl.” He rested his forearm on the steering wheel, twisted sideways. His tone returned to normal. “I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again: Justice ought to be a bottom-line proposition. I’ve been doin’ this a lot longer than you, and I’ve decided it’s misguided when we worship musty old words in a text at the expense of innocent people’s suffering. Thomas Jefferson and Learned Hand and hearsay rules ought to come into play if we don’t know the truth or if it’s a close call, not when we have the guy on tape, Technicolor friggin’ guilty. We should be concerned with how the soup tastes and not so damn worried about the particulars of the chef’s hat.”
“I’m not in much of a position to argue with you. I’m only hesitating because I don’t want to put you in a jam. If you’re okay with rearranging this, then so am I. I can’t see much reason to ruin our lives over a little self-help and the niceties of how to deal with a criminal who endangered my wife and kid.”
“Exactly. So here’s the scenario as I see it.” He clicked the car into Drive and gassed it back onto the road. “I catch a call from a guy who claims to be Shug’s uncle and says he wants to talk to us about his nephew.”
“Has to be the uncle—I’ve done the same math.”
“Says he’ll only talk to us, wants to see us. We meet him at the top of Shug’s drive, we’re—”
“Skeptical and cautious,” Mason interjected. “He lets on to us that Shug’s still in the trade, still selling drugs, and he’s worried his nephew’s sinking fast, running with some dangerous people and will wind up dead or in more trouble.”
“After some chitchat, he invites us to follow him, claims he wants to show us something.” Custis was nodding his head as he spoke.
“The weakest part of our story,” Mason added, “but the best we can do.”
“We arrive at Shug’s, next thing we know, they’ve let a bunch of dogs loose on us.”
“A trap,” Mason said. “The scoundrels jumped us.”
“Dog bites you, we have to kill a few and defend ourselves.” Custis’s nods became more involved.
“We get the drop—”
“On Shug and the uncle.”
“Even though they attacked us first. And we have—”
“Shug’s pistol and the pipe and fingerprints on ’em both to prove what we’re saying.”
“As well as the bite on my leg.” Mason almost spoke over his friend.
“Who knows he’s been threatenin’ you?” Custis asked.
“You, me, my wife, the sheriff, my daughter.”
“I’ll speak to the sheriff,” Custis volunteered.
“The big picture is that Shug started this,” Mason said.
“And we finished it.” Custis paused, remembering something. “Make sure you lose the video.”
“Really? You think I should?”
They looked at each other and laughed, the giddy, crazy, guilty, fevered laughs of two adolescent boys who’d just vandalized a mean teacher’s car and vowed never to tell.
“Done deal,” Mason declared at the end of their tear.
“Amen,” Custis said.
“It’s weird,” Mason said after they’d quieted down and Custis was searching for a cassette tape, “how life’s full of so many overlays and echoes. Small stones in your shoes you can’t get rid of, riddles…”
“Ain’t any stones in your shoes, and you aren’t your brother and you damn sure aren’t Aristotle, nope, so don’t start wallowing around in any jibber-jabber.”
“I’m just saying this was strange for me,” Mason replied, perking up. “I’m fine.” He cocked an ear, frowned. “What the hell are we listening to?”
“Luther V., my man.”
“Ah, yes. The warriors return from battle to the smooth, overproduced sounds of soulful R&B.” He grinned. “Wouldn’t Wagner or AC/DC be more appropriate?”
“No reason for you to go philistine on me—Luther’s always the man.”
“Maybe if you’re gay or really ancient.”
“Never know. Could be my lady Inez is only for show.” Custis gave him an over-the-top wink, and they both laughed some more.
They drove directly to the magistrate’s office and swore out all manner of warrants, leaving behind the pipe and Shug’s pistol as evidence before traveling to the ER for treatment and photographs of Mason’s bite. Shug arrived forty minutes later with his uncle, wheeling down Main Street in a slick-as-a-button 1982 Ford pickup, the tailgate dropped, a clump of dead dogs in the bed, a few flies circling after he parked and limped into the courthouse. He was soon joined by his hot-shot lawyer from Rocky Mount, but the magistrate, a beefy man with a clubfoot and a stubborn temperament, steadfastly refused to issue warrants for the commonwealth’s attorney and his assistant. “No way on God’s green earth am I gonna have Mason Hunt arrested on the word of a snake like Shug Cassidy” was how he stated it to Shug’s apoplectic lawyer.
Allison knew immediately what had happened, and she nursed Mason’s wound and laid her head against his shoulder and took Grace by the hand and sat her on her father’s tender lap and told the child Mason had punished the dreadful men who’d scared her in the middle of the night. The state police interviewed Mason and Custis, left them together while they were questioned and barely took notes, a pro forma visit if there ever was one. “I mean, why in the world would we go to this guy’s house unless they’d invited us?” Mason asked them. “What—for no reason I wake up and recruit Custis and say let’s ride to Shug Cassidy’s and shoot his dogs and start a fight and while we’re at it take his pistol and a piece of pipe with his uncle’s prints on it? How much sense does that make?”
“Exactly,” said the state police investigator. “We see it the same way.”
Months later, a special prosecutor from Harrisonburg tried Shug, and Judge Richardson sent him to the penitentiary for a long stretch and the state seized the vehicles and land he’d purchased with the dirty profits of a decade in the dope business. Most everyone in the county had a version of the truth concerning the dispute between Mason and Shug, but no matter how it was understood, no matter who went looking for whom, Mason Hunt had kicked an ass that needed kicking, and people were well pleased with their commonwealth’s attorney, impressed by his grit.
After Shug’s drug trial, Mason and Custis requested the charges they’d lodged against him be dropped—he’d already been stiffly sentenced, they suggested—and they never so much as uttered another syllable about what they’d done in the years that followed, this irregular lawlessness that kept them tethered and bound, and sometimes when the one would finish the other’s sentence or there was a mention of the Shug Cassidy case, there’d be an extra blink or a look-away, perhaps even a faint grin, and they’d both know why and take a peculiar satisfaction in the contours of their friendship.
It rained the morning after the melee at Shug’s, plinks and splats sounding off the new aluminum gutters on the Hunt house, the sky a dull gray monochrome when it finally got a dose of light in it, and Mason was up early, drinking black coffee at the kitchen table, content with the somber, shrouded day. Allison came into the kitchen wearing long pajama bottoms and a tank top, barefoot, her hair gathered away from her face. She helped herself to the coffee and flooded it with
skim milk, then added a sprinkle of sugar straight from the bowl.
“You know I love you,” she said, sitting down opposite him at the table, clutching her mug with both hands. “More than anything in this world.”
Mason keened his head and let out a wary breath, realized he was being forewarned. There was no “good morning” or disjointed account of a dream or yawning, stretching transition from sleep to composure—she was bursting to turn loose some unwelcome fact, and this was the balm that preceded the sting. “So what’s up?” he asked, sitting straighter in his chair, rubbing his stubble against the grain.
“I need to talk to you.”
“I gathered as much,” he said, inspecting her face. “I know the drill.”
The mug was still in her hands, held above the table. She hadn’t tasted the coffee. “I expect you’re going to be angry.”
“It only makes it worse when you dillydally and give me thousands of disclaimers.”
“I was so taken by what you did to that Cassidy man.”
Without thinking, Mason glanced at his bandage. A dark red stain had soaked through the gauze, and the white tape had separated from his skin on one side. He was sitting there in a robe and boxer shorts and cheap black flip-flops. “Yeah, well, I hope my conflict with Mr. Cassidy doesn’t cause me trouble down the line.”
“It won’t.” She seemed to have forgotten about her mug. “So, well, so…do you remember how, uh, pissy, I guess you’d say…how pissy I was when we were coming back from buying the house? We were driving to Richmond and you pulled over and got Grace a bagful of candy?”
“Yeah. You’ve already made amends for that.” He noticed the loose knot in the robe’s belt, wasn’t looking at Allison while he spoke.
She finally lowered her cup. “I was upset because—and please don’t take this and lawyer-twist it—I wanted to make sure I wasn’t leaving Richmond for the wrong reasons. Wasn’t running away.”
“I thought we discussed the reasons,” he said.
“We did.” She folded her arms, then unfolded them. “There was a man there, in Richmond, who was interested in me. Romantically interested.”
Mason immediately focused his full attention on her. “What the fuck does that mean?” He gripped the edge of the table and pushed his chair away, started to stand but didn’t. “So what did you do about it, Allison? Huh?”
“Nothing. I mean nothing serious.”
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you weren’t feeling guilty, now would we?” He was still attached to the table, holding on.
“I—”
“Who the hell was it?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters.”
“Why?” she asked. “If I didn’t act on it, what difference does it make?”
“I’d like to know who’s trying to cut my throat and steal my wife so I don’t end up at some party shaking his hand and wishing him well and trading stock tips. ‘Situational irony’ is the term, I think. Plus, since I seem to be in fighting trim this week, I guess I need to know who to beat the shit out of—lots of men in Richmond.”
“It doesn’t—”
“And why the hell am I just now hearing about this? Tell me that.” Mason released the table.
“Listen. It was Norris Deaver, and I didn’t do anything, okay?”
“The greasy little cretin with the colored glasses? The art gallery pussy who sniffed his wine at the restaurant and then wouldn’t drink it, made such a frigging scene? Him?”
“Mason, calm down.” She raised her voice, trying to shift the battle. “He came on to me, and I put a stop to it.”
“Did you have sex with him?” He stood and glared down at her. The robe was open, his hands were on his hips.
“Absolutely not. No.” She looked at him square. “I didn’t.”
“So what did you do?”
“Could you please not wake Grace?” she asked.
“If you answer me.”
“Maybe I should’ve kept this to myself.” Her voice was firm.
“Yeah, and choke on your own conscience.”
“I was at a point where, I guess, I doubted myself. No one wants to be a thick-ankled babushka cooking potatoes and cabbage and suckling babies on floppy tits, okay? My painting was stalled, I’d started questioning—”
“This is going to be a bad cliché, isn’t it? ‘I needed my worth affirmed, needed to know I’m attractive, so I screwed another man.’ Nice. Profound. Very original.” He sat in the chair again, scowling.
“I even sort of tried to broach the subject with you.”
“Funny, I don’t recall your ever asking me if you could have an affair, but it might’ve slipped my mind.”
“I was flattered by the attention and it came at a time when I needed it, but the sum total, Mason, all I ever did was have too much to drink at lunch and let him kiss me once, and I’m sorry and it was wrong and I’m telling you now, and yes, I’d probably kill you if you did the same thing.” She dropped her head, and all the defense and resistance drained from her. In an instant she went to pieces, a collapse that started in her lips and undermined her whole face, tears welling and spilling over red rims. “Mason, I swear on our child that was it.” She sucked a breath and took a napkin from the wooden holder and wiped her eyes. “You are such a wonderful husband…” She stopped, the words hoarse and drowning. “I’ve always known I love you. It was more…I just considered it, thought about it, and I wanted to tell you so our slate would be clean. Nothing bad between us.”
“You promise that’s it? You thought about having sex with this dickhead and he kissed you?”
“Yes,” she said, the word delicate, almost sough.
“Anything else?”
“No. I needed to tell you. I love it here, and there’s not an inch of doubt anywhere. Everything is perfect. I wanted this gone, this single, stupid little mistake.”
“Okay,” he said. “I believe you.” He thought for a moment. “I appreciate your being honest.”
“But you’re mad at me.” The squall was leaving, her eyes clearing.
“You bet I’m mad. Who wouldn’t be?”
“I’m sorry, but I had to deal with this. For my own sake. In the long run, I think having the temptation and not giving in should tell you tons about how committed I am. This was a tough period for me, and our marriage and our sweet girl had such a pull that I barely even broke faith. It’s a good test, a good challenge. It was wrong and I’m apologizing, but there’s an upside.”
“Yeah—that’d make for a splendid Rikki Lake segment. I think you’re being a little too self-congratulatory there, Saint Allison. The image I have is of this greasy, pretentious asshole pawing all over you and you deciding whether or not you plan on sleeping with him, picturing what it would be like.”
“You don’t need to be so rude about it. I’m sorry, and I love you and I will work to be a great wife because you deserve it and it’s what I want to do. I don’t know what else I can say.”
Two weeks later, when Mason had passed through his mope and forgiven his wife, she invited him to skip work, and they rolled around in bed all morning and got up to speed again, watching TV game shows and snacking on Swiss Cake Rolls and dry chocolate cereal. They sent Grace to a babysitter after school and visited their neighbor’s farm pond, where they took out the johnboat and cast plastic worms for the last of the warm-weather bass, cutting up and playing around until the boat tipped and they both tumbled into the water, Mason first, grabbing Allison as he went. Groping, kissing and laughing, they rode home with Allison perched on the car’s console, wrapped in a scratchy picnic blanket, goose bumps on her arms and legs, naked except for her underwear, her hair stringy and damp, her hand in her husband’s wet jeans all during the trip to their house. They had sex in the driveway, and afterward they went upstairs and she lit a lone, well-used candle and they squeezed into a hot bath together, still careful of the four punctures in Mason’s
thigh, the hurt.
To his surprise, he did seem more attached to his wife following her admission, and she to him, and they rocked along in the bull’s-eye for several years, hit the jackpot, raising their daughter on forty bucolic acres and painting and practicing law and reveling in what was happening to them, time, place and desire aligned and serendipitous, so much so they’d occasionally just sit on their porch—the air chilly or hot, it didn’t matter—and not say the first thing, tuned in to every newborn moment, the sensation so sublime and penetrating that Mason, alone one night after Allison had left for bed, actually lifted his hand to see if he could feel the spell and pull it down and make it tangible.
The fulcrum that would rearrange everything arrived in 2001, and like so many other momentous beginnings, it slipped in plain and middling, the kind of commonplace intrusion that goes unnoticed until someone realizes—too late, of course—where the pox was birthed and says, Oh shit, oh my, why didn’t I realize it way back then, when it was nothing, when I could have fixed it, before the briar scratch raged into gangrene?
Chapter Eight
“What’d he blow?” Mason asked Custis. They were sitting in Mason’s office, both of them in chairs on the client side, files stacked indiscriminately near the edge of the desk. It was March 2001, early, before the office opened for business. Custis had brewed them a potent pot of coffee, and they were eating slices of sweet breakfast cake with brittle plastic forks. Although Custis generally had carte blanche to dispose of cases as he pleased, he and Mason met each Monday and shot the breeze and talked about sports and discussed the week’s dockets, especially any trials that might prove difficult or unusual.
“Point-oh-eight.” The legal limit for blood alcohol content in a driving-under-the-influence case.
“What’s the kid’s name again? Doesn’t ring a bell with me.”
“Lonnie. Lonnie Gammons. He’s twenty-one.”
“Who’re his parents?” Mason took a bite of cake.
“His dad’s long gone. His mother raised him by herself.” Custis checked a file. “Her name is April. April Gammons.”
