Cripple Creek t-2

by James Sallis

  Back here in the world, so strange and so familiar at the same time, this was my life. No sign of insight or epiphany peeking through floorboards, sound track of my days innocent of all but the din of memories going round and round. One longs for the three chords of a Hank Williams song to nose it all into place.

  The short list was this: an old cabin I had every intention of fixing up, a job I'd blundered into, a clutch of friends likewise unintended. And Val. She was intended. Maybe not at first, but later on.

  And always, the simple fact that I'd survived.

  Miss Emily was happy to have me back, I'm pretty sure. The young ones were now getting around all too well on their own, straying into every corner of the cabin, not that the house had many corners, or that we could ever fail to locate them by their squeals. Val, in underpants and a faded Riley Puckett T-shirt, was asleep on the couch. When I kissed her she looked up at me blankly, focused for a moment to tell me "J. T. had a call," then plunged back asleep. Her briefcase was on the kitchen table. Labels of folders peeked above the edge. The Whyte Laydie banjo case sat on the floor beside the table.

  "They want me back," J. T. said, coming in off the porch after returning the call. "Couple of federal marshals paid a call to a gentleman at a motel out on St. Louis Avenue and got themselves blown away for their trouble. All hell's broke loose."

  She took a glass off the drying rack and poured from the bottle before me, sat down at the table. Emily strode in again to check on us, snout worrying the air. Pesky offspring are bad enough. She's expected to keep track of us as well?

  "I told them no way."

  "You sure about that?"

  "I'm sure. You mind?"

  "Not in the least. It's good to have you around."

  "Same here."

  I poured again for both of us. "Listen."

  The outside door was open and she looked that way, through the screen. "To what?"

  Exactly. Too quiet. Not even frogs. Of course, it was altogether possible that I'd just grown paranoid.

  At any rate, we sat there, had another drink, and nothing came of it. When J. T. went off to bed, I got the Whyte Laydie from its case and took it outside, to the back porch. Touched fingers gently to strings, remembering the songs my father played and his father before him, "Pretty Polly," "Mississippi Sawyer," "Napoleon Crossing the Rhine," remembering, too, my father's touch. The strings went on ringing long after I'd raked a finger across them.

  "I had," Isaiah Stillman would tell me on my second visit, as J. T. and Moira sat getting silently acquainted on the bench, "the overwhelming sense that my life was a book I'd only skimmed- one that deserved, for all its apparent insignificance, actually to be read. Meanwhile, my grandmother was dying. We'd moved away and I never had the chance to know her. I went there, moved in with her-rural Iowa, a farmhouse in a place called Sharon Center, four houses and a garage, few besides Amish anywhere around-and saw her through her final days."

  Holding the Whyte Laydie close, I sat remembering my own grandmother who in my shallow youth had refused to acknowledge the cancer that all too soon took her, commanding Grandfather to walk behind so he could tell her if her dresses showed traces of blood. What did I have of her? A few brief memories, blurred by time. Grandfather I got to know when he came to live with us afterwards. Neither of my parents showed much interest in anything he had to say. I on the other hand was fascinated by his stories, in thrall to them.

  "At the end, she went into a hospital in Iowa City," Stillman said. "Not what she wanted, but there were other considerations. Standing there by her bed, I watched the tracings of the EKG monitor, the hillocks it made one after another, and I saw them as ripples, ripples going out into the world, becoming waves, waves that would go on and on and in a way would never end."

  My grandparents had a country store. Ancient butcher block in the back, cooler full of salt pork, bacon, and other such cheap cuts of meat, an array of candy bars in one glass-front cabinet, another of toiletries and the like, worn wooden shelves of canned goods stacked in pyramids, the inevitable soft-drink machine with the caps of Coke, Pepsi, Nehi grape, and chocolate drink bottles peering up at you. You slid the desired drink along steel slats where it hung from its neck, into the gate, and dropped in your dime. Summers, when I spent a week or two with them, they let me work in the store. I'd hand over Baby Ruths, loaves of white bread, tubes of toothpaste, and squat jars of Arid deodorant, collect money, hit the key that so satisfyingly opened the register, make change. Most of our customers were black folk working on farms nearby. Afternoons, the white owners would come in, help themselves to a soft drink, and sit gossiping with my grandfather.

  "You mentioned other considerations," I said to Stillman.

  "Local family members. Despite her mode of life, they were convinced-a longtime family legend-that Gram had squirreled away huge sums of money."

  Seeing me glance towards her, Moira lifted her hand in a sketchy wave. Moments later J. T. did the same.

  "Funny thing is, she had, literally," Stillman said. "Almost a million. By then she'd given a lot of it away. Imagine how pissed they were."

  I did and, petty human being that I am, rather enjoyed doing so.

  "What was left went into a foundation that I still oversee."

  "Without electricity or phone service?"

  "Batteries. Satellites. A laptop."

  "What a world it's become."

  "Same way I went about finding others like myself. It took a great while. Whereas, before, it would have been hit-and-miss at best." He stood and walked to clearing's edge, after a moment turned back. "My grandmother was twelve when she got off the train at Auschwitz. A child, though she would not be a child much longer. She survived. Her parents and two siblings didn't."

  Folding back the sleeve of his shirt, he revealed the numbers that stood out on the muscles of his forearm. "It's as exact a reproduction as I could manage. Many of us have them."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Cicadas were gone. Val lost two cases, won another, went on the Internet to pull down tablatures of "Eighth of January" and "Cluck Old Hen." The reek of magnolia was everywhere, and single-winged maple seeds coptered down on our heads-or was that earlier? Lonnie resigned. "Thing is, Turner, I don't do it now, I'm never going to." Eldon had a new guitar, a Stella with a pearloid fingerboard from the thirties in which someone had installed a pickup. "Not collectible anymore, but it still has that great old sound." J. T. sat on the porch tapping feet, drinking ice tea, and saying maybe this time-off thing wasn't so bad after all. Don Lee was out of the hospital, making the two-hour drive to Bentonville three days a week for rehab. He'd tried coming back to work a few hours a day. Second week of it, June pulled me aside. He and I had a talk that afternoon. I told him he was one of the best I'd ever worked with. But you don't have to do this anymore, I said. You know that, right? He sat looking out the window, shaking his head. It's not that I don't want to, Turner, he said. With all that's happened, I want to more than ever. I just don't know if I can.

  No further foul winds came blowing down out of Memphis.

  Patently, I was an alarmist.

  Town life went on. Brother Tripp from First Baptist was seen peering into cars at one of the local parking spots popular among teenagers. Barry and Barb shut down the hardware store after almost twenty years. Customers routinely made the forty-mile drive to WalMart now, they said, and, anyway, they were tired. Thelma quit the diner. Sally Johnson, last year's prom queen, promptly took her spot. Slow afternoons, I'd give a try to imagining Thelma's existence away from waitressing. What would her house or apartment look like, and what would she do there all day? Did she wear that same sweater distorted by so many years of tips weighing down one pocket? Robert Poole from the feed store left his wife and four children. Melinda found the note on the kitchen table when she came home from a late shift at Mitty's, the town's beauty shop. Took the truck. The rest is yours. Love, Rob.

  Everyone in town knew what happened up the
re in the hills, of course, and reactions were mixed, long-bred suspicion of outsiders, youth, and those demonstrably different tripping tight on the heels of declarations of What a shame about that boy! When the funeral came round, Isaiah Stillman and his group filed down from their camp, sat quietly through the ceremony, then got up quietly and left. More than a dozen townspeople also attended.

  When Val told me she was thinking about quitting her job, I said she was too damned young for a midlife crisis.

  "Eldon's asked me to go on the road with him."

  "What, covering the latest pap out of Nashville? How proud I am to be a redneck, God bless the U.S.A.?"

  "Quite the opposite, actually. He's bought a trailer, plans on living in it, travelling from one folk or bluegrass festival to the next, playing traditional music."

  Buy an eighty-year-old guitar, that's the sort of thing that can happen to you, I guess. Suddenly you're no longer satisfied working roadhouses for a living.

  "You've no idea how many there are," Val said. "I know I didn't. Hundreds of them, all across the country. We'd be doing old-time. Ballads, mountain music, Carter Family songs."

  No doubt they'd be an arresting act. Black R amp;B man out of the inner city, white banjo player with a law degree from Tulane. Joined to remind America of its heritage.

  "I wouldn't expect to take the Whyte Laydie, of course."

  "You should, it's yours. My grandfather would be pleased to know that it's still being played."

  "And how very much it's revered?"

  "He might have some trouble getting his head around that. Back then, he most likely ordered it from the local general store, paid a dollar or two a week on it. Instruments were tools, like spades or frying pans. Something to help people get by."

  We were out on the porch, me leaning against the wall, Val with feet hanging off the side. Bright white moon above. Insects beating away at screens and exposed skin.

  Val said, "I'd never have come to this place in my life without you, you know."

  "Right."

  "I mean it."

  I sat beside her. She took my hand.

  "You have no idea how well you fit in here, do you? Or how many people love you?"

  I knew she did, and the thought of losing her drove pitons through my heart. Climbers scrambled for purchase.

  "This is not just something you're thinking about, then."

  She shook her head.

  "I'll miss you."

  Leaning against me there in the moonlight, she asked, "Do I really need to say anything about that?"

  No.

  She stood. "I'm going to spend the last few days at the house shutting it down. Who knows, maybe someday I'll actually complete the restoration."

  I saw her to the Volvo and returned to my vigil on the porch, soon became aware of a presence close by. The screen door banged gently shut behind her as J. T. stepped out.

  "She told you, huh?"

  "A heads-up would have been good."

  "Val asked me not to say anything. I don't think she was sure, herself, right up till now. Amazing moon." She had a bottle of Corona and passed it to me. I took a swig. "Talked to my lieutenant today."

  Hardly a surprise. The department was calling daily in its effort to lure her back. Demands had given way to entreaty, appeals to her loyalty, barely disguised bribes, promises of promotion.

  "Be leaving soon, then?"

  "Not exactly." She finished the beer and set the bottle on the floorboards. "You didn't want the sheriff's position, right?"

  "Lonnie's job? No way."

  "Good. Because I met with Mayor Sims today, and I took it."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Obviously it was my time for surprises. And for mixed feelings. Wounded at the thought of Val's departure, nonetheless I was pleased that she'd be doing what she most loved. The two emotions rode a teeter-totter, one rising, the other touching feet to earth-before they reversed.

  And J. T.? As my boss? Well…

  I gave some thought to how she, city-bred and a city-trained officer, would fit in here. But then I remembered the way she and Moira had sat together up in the hills and decided she'd do okay. It goes without saying how pleased I was that she'd be around.

  I was considerably less pleased when Miss Emily chewed a hole in the screen above the sink and took her brood out through it.

  Because I considered it a betrayal? Because it was yet another loss? Or simply because I would miss them?

  I was standing in the kitchen, staring at the hole in the screen, when J. T. swung by to see if I wanted to grab some dinner. She had moved into a house on Mulberry, or, more precisely, into one room. The house had been empty a long time, and the rest would take a while. But the price was right. Her monthly rent was about what a couple in the city might spend on a good dinner out.

  "They're wild animals, Dad, not pets. What, you expected her to leave a note?"

  "You think she moved in just to be sure her offspring would be safe? Knowing all along she'd leave afterwards?"

  "Somehow I doubt possums very often overplan things."

  "I thought…" Shaking myself out of it: "I don't know what I thought."

  "So. Dinner?"

  "Not tonight. You mind?"

  "Of course not."

  Some time after she left, second bourbon slammed down and coffee brewing, the perfect response came to me: But we slept together, you know, Miss Emily and I.

  Rooting through stacks of CDs and tapes on shelves in the front room, I found what I was looking for.

  It had been one of those drawling, seemingly endless Sunday afternoons in May. We'd grilled chicken and burgers earlier and were dipping liberally, ad lib as Val kept insisting, into the cooler for beers, bolstering such excursions with chips, dip, carrot sticks, and potato salad scooped finger-style from the bowl. Eldon sprang open the case on his Gibson, Val went inside to get the Whyte Laydie, and they started playing. I'd recently had the cassette recorder out for something or another and set it up on the windowsill in the kitchen. Just about where Miss Emily and crew went through.

  "Keep on the Sunny Side," "White House Blues," "Frankie and Albert." No matter that lyrics got scrambled, faked, or lost completely, the music kept its power.

  "We should do this more often," Val said as they took a break. I'd left the recorder running.

  "We should do this all the time." Eldon held up his jelly glass, half cranberry juice, half club soda, in salute. Only Val and I were dipping into the cooler.

  Soon enough they were back at it.

  "Banks of the Ohio," "Soldier's Joy," "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels."

  I left the tape going and went back out onto the porch. Just days ago I'd been thinking how full the house was. Now suddenly everyone was gone. Even Miss Emily. Val and Eldon shifted into "Home on the Range," Eldon, playing slide on standard guitar, doing the best he could to approximate Bob Kaai's Hawaiian steel.

  "What the hell is that you're listening to?" a voice said. "No wonder someone wants you dead, you pitiful fuck."

  Diving forward, I kicked the legs out from under the chair and he, positioned behind with the steel-wire garrote not quite in place yet, went along, splayed across the chair's back. An awkward position. Before he had the chance to correct it, I pivoted over and had an arm locked around his neck, alert to any further sound or signs of intrusion. The garrote, piano wire with tape-wound wood handles, sat at porch's edge looking like a garden implement.

  "Simple asphyxiation," Doc Oldham said an hour later.

  I do remember pulling the arm in hard, asking if he was alone, getting no answer and asking again. Was he contract? Who sent him? No response to those questions either. Then the awareness of his body limp beneath me.

  "Man obviously didn't care to carry on a conversation with you," Doc Oldham said, grabbing hold of the windowsill to pull himself erect with difficulty, tottering all the way up and tottering still once there. '"S that coffee I smell?"

  "Used to b
e, anyway. Near dead as this guy by now's my guess."

  "Hey, it's late at night and I'm a doctor. You think I'm so old I forgot my intern days? Bad burned coffee's diesel fuel for us- what I love most. Next to a healthy slug of bourbon."

  Meanwhile J. T. waited, coming to the realization that further black-and-whites would not be barreling up, that there were no fingerprint people or crime lab investigators to call in, no watch commander to pass things off to. It was all on her.

  She sat at the kitchen table. Doc nodded to her and said "Asphyxiation," poured his coffee and took the glass of bourbon I handed him.

  "Tough first day," I said.

  "Technically I haven't even started."

  "Hope you had a good dinner at least."

  "Smothered chicken special."

  "Guess homemaking only goes so far."

  "Give me a break, I'm still trying to find the kitchen. Speaking of which, this coffee really sucks."

  "Don't pay her any mind, Turner," Doc Oldham said, helping himself to a second cup. "It's delicious."

  "I'm assuming there's no identification," J. T. said.

  "These guys don't exactly carry passports. There's better than a thousand dollars in a money clip in his left pants pocket, another thousand under a false insole in his shoe. A driver's license that looks like it was made yesterday."

  "Which it probably was. So, we have no way to track where he might have been staying because there isn't any place to stay. And with no bus terminals or airports-"

  "No airports? What about Stanley Municipal? Crop duster to the stars."

  "-there's no paper trail." She sipped coffee and made a face. "Nothing I know is of any help here."

  "What you know is rarely important. The rest is what matters- all those hours of working the job, interviews, people you've met, the instincts nurtured by all of it. That's what you use."

  "Something you learned in psychology classes?"

  "From Eldon, actually. Spend hours practicing scales and learning songs, he said, then you get up there to play and none of it matters. Where you begin and where you wind up have little to do with one another. Meanwhile we," I said, passing it over, "do have this."