The Drifter's Wheel

by Phillip DePoy

  Skidmore looked at Andrews and, exhausted as they were, they seemed able to share a moment of derision at my expense. It got Andrews out of his questioning mode, at least for a moment.

  “Sure thing, Mrs. Devilin,” Skid answered, barely holding back the laughter. “Do you need somebody to walk you to your door, too?”

  Andrews burst out with what is sometimes ridiculously called a guffaw.

  “No,” I told Skid, “but you could arrange to bite me sometime in the near future.”

  “When I get around to it.” He turned and followed the others up the hill. “Crawdad, do you mind being a delivery service?”

  “Sure thing,” he answered immediately.

  If it had been anyone else I wouldn’t have tossed my keys on a dark night in the middle of the woods, but I knew Crawdad. A silver flash in the air caught his eye, and he had my keys with one hand.

  “I’ll leave it in your yard in a few minutes.” He waved.

  Andrews watched them go for a moment before he completely realized they were leaving. “Is that it?”

  “What more do you want?” I asked.

  “Hey!” Skidmore called back in our direction. “You realize that there is no gold, right? That’s not a gold mine under the Jackson place.”

  “I want something like that,” Andrews responded to my question. “More punch line.”

  Boy stopped dead in his tracks. He was only ten yards away, but I had trouble hearing him.

  “Yes, it is,” he insisted, the grin gone from his face at last. “It is a mine.”

  “No,” Skid said firmly, “it’s not. It was excavated in 1861, long after the so-called gold rush up this way. It was blasted. It’s in the county record.”

  “What was it, then?” Andrews called up to Skidmore.

  “You know how, in the 1950s, lots of people thought it was a good idea to build a bomb shelter in the backyard?” Skid’s voice carried well in the night air. “When the Civil War looked like it could get up in these mountains, some people built their own version of that—a place to hide out from Yankees, an escape route from the house. Just in case. That’s what the cave is. I say again, it’s in the county records. I never knew exactly where it was, but old Sheriff Maddox, he spent some time looking for it. He might have believed the gold stories, or he might have been looking for illegal spirits. Couldn’t say. I’m content to leave it a secret.”

  “But,” Boy stammered desperately, “what about the gold?”

  “There isn’t any gold,” Skidmore said, laughing at Boy. “There was never gold. Are you serious? A lost gold mine? Really?”

  “Did Mr. Jackson say anything to Lucinda before he died?” I asked. “Did you find anything on his tapes?”

  “I didn’t get a chance to listen,” Boy answered, his voice a ghost.

  “Hey, where are my tapes?” I called.

  “No gold.” Boy’s voice was the merest echo of a human sound. “There’s no gold.” Skidmore was still laughing. “You moron,” Andrews whispered.

  If Boy Jackson heard Andrews, he did not respond. He remained silent for the rest of the time his captors spent dragging him up the hill toward the police cars.

  “God.” Andrews leaned back on a tree.

  “At least,” I agreed.

  “Can we go home now?” he asked, looking around. “Didn’t you say that your house was around here somewhere?”

  “Down that way.” I nodded my head in the general direction of my place.

  “Downhill: good.” He began trudging his way toward my house. “And believe it or not, what I’m looking forward to is a cup of espresso, not a glass of that stuff.”

  “Had enough apple brandy for one visit?”

  “Not nearly. But right now I think it might make me … something. Sad, maybe.” He turned to look at me. “You know?”

  “It’s a season of melancholy,” I answered, following him down the hill.

  I drew up next to him, and we walked together in silence for a while—or staggered, grabbing pine trees on the way down, in a lumbering gravity-driven dance.

  When the back of my house came into view, Andrews offered up an audible sigh of relief.

  “I just realized it’s cold,” he said. “All that chasing around and the excitement of everything momentarily obviated the temperature, but damn.”

  “Nice phraseology.”

  “Boy Jackson did all this for gold that never existed,” Andrews said softly—he’d obviously been mulling during our silence. “Killed his brother, shot me, terrorized a town. He’s not just playing at being insane the way Hovis might be. He really is psychotic.”

  “You’re not wearing a watch, are you?”

  “What?” He stopped still. “No fancy summary, no poetic comparisons—nothing about how Boy’s journey is like—”

  “I was supposed to have dinner with Lucinda, and I wanted to know how late I was.”

  “Oh.” He glanced at his wrist. “It’s after ten thirty. Will she still be up?”

  “I have to call her.” I quickened my pace.

  “Jesus,” Andrews said softly, falling in behind me, “you really are engaged.”

  The sound of his voice was strange, a tone I’d never heard from him. I’d nearly made it to my back door before I understood that his comment was, for him, a realization. Because my life would change sometime in the future, so would his. A bachelor’s best friend could easily become a married man’s occasional guest.

  Thirty

  Friday morning came late for me. I slept into the early afternoon. I woke up to the sound of voices downstairs in my house. Sunlight slanted through my bedroom window like a solid wooden beam, something propping up the impossibly bright autumn sky, and I wondered, as I was emerging from the dream state, if it would be possible to climb that beam—all the way to God.

  I sat up, realized I’d slept in my clothes.

  “Dr. Devilin!” Andrews called. “Are you awake?”

  “Define awake,” I mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Coming,” I yelled down the stairs, sliding my legs over the side of the bed.

  Generally given to insomnia, my muscles were reacting weirdly to an excess of sleep. I glanced at the watch on my nightstand. I’d slept for eleven hours. I had to hold on to the footboard of my bed for a moment to get my balance before launching myself through the door toward the stairs.

  “You have company,” Andrews announced.

  I stood at the top of the stairs for a moment, unable to focus my eyes on the couple standing in my front doorway. As I came down, clutching the banister for all my life, I was certain my eyes were playing tricks.

  “Hello, Hovis,” I said uncertainly. “And Simple.”

  I made it to the bottom of the staircase and still didn’t believe it. Hovis and Simple, arm in arm, were standing at my front door. Hovis had changed his clothes. His shirt was stunningly clean. Simple, on the other hand, was still dressed in her floor-length Empire dress, though her dyed red hair was worn a bit more loosely than before. She was carrying a modern purse made of black leather.

  Andrews had slept in his clothes, too. His hair had exploded about his head, and he wore an expression that surely mirrored my own absolute befuddlement.

  “It was her idea to visit you,” Hovis said quietly, his face different than I’d ever seen it. “Hope we’re not a bother.”

  “No,” I managed to say, still holding on to the stair rail. “Please come in.”

  I glanced in the direction of the living room sofa, and they headed for it.

  “Can I offer you some—”

  “We can’t stay.” Simple offered me a beatific smile. “We came to thank you, and I brought you a present.”

  They sat together on the sofa. It was clear that their relationship was … something more than I would ever have thought, but I couldn’t wake up enough at that moment to completely decipher the riddle.

  “Imagine my surprise,” Andrews said, taking a seat on one of the overst
uffed chairs opposite the sofa. “I haven’t been up for more than ten minutes myself. I was doing my best to fathom the espresso machine, when suddenly there came a tapping, tapping at my chamber door.”

  Andrews, clearly, was not awake yet, either.

  “And look who it was,” he continued. “Hovis and Simple.”

  He said it as if I hadn’t yet seen them.

  “Yes.” That single syllable was all I could think of. I took the other large chair opposite the sofa and hoped that our guests would be more coherent than I would be—though their histories could not support that probability.

  “We’ll get right to the point, then,” Simple said. “First, thank you for getting Hovis out of jail. Second, I brought you these.”

  She reached into her black purse and pulled out a packet of papers tied with a thin pink ribbon. She smiled at Hovis and then reached out her hand, offering the packet to me.

  I leaned forward, completely at sea, and took them from her.

  “There.” She nodded once. “Done and done.”

  “What—” I began.

  “It’s every last letter I have from one brother to another,” Simple announced to the room, smiling. “Accompanied by several photographs. I believe you will know what to do. I wish to have all wandering revenants put to rest. You will do that, won’t you, Dr. Devilin? For my peace of mind.”

  Her voice was like steam from an old-fashioned teakettle, and Hovis looked at me so expectantly that I was forced to nod my assent.

  “Oh, good.” Simple sighed, obviously greatly relieved. She smoothed her dress over her legs, preparing to stand.

  “Just … just a moment, please,” I stammered, marshaling all my faculties. “Could I settle a few things in my head? Would you mind?”

  She glanced once at Hovis, and her smile grew to solar proportions. “I expect you’re wondering about me and Hovis.”

  “At least.” Andrews gulped.

  Hovis beamed. “We’ve been sweet on one another for a great many years now,” he said softly, “but we like to keep it from Edna.”

  “You know how she is,” Simple told me, each word rife with compassion.

  With that phrase, the way it was said, and in an electric shock of comprehension, I realized that Simple tolerated Edna out of love and pity—which was quite a different scenario than anyone might have imagined. From the outside it seemed the other way around, that Edna tolerated Simple out of a perverted notion of Christian duty and some cruel joy worthy of Miss Havisham. It was clear to me at that moment that all of Edna’s petty tortures were lost on Simple. She was a candle flame of a spirit—and a woman in love.

  “Poor thing,” Hovis added, shaking his head.

  “But, I mean, how did you two—?” Andrews finished the rest of his sentence by simply moving his hand in the direction of the happy couple.

  “I was a mess when Barbrie died,” Hovis answered immediately. “Came to live with her kin. Edna did her best to make me feel worse, but every harsh word and cold-eyed look was counterbalanced by Simple. She’s a God’s angel and that’s the truth.”

  “Hovis,” she whispered sweetly, and momentarily placed her head on his shoulder.

  “After a while,” Hovis continued, “we become friends, me and Simple. And then friends become more than that. Now—”

  “We can’t decide if we should wait until Edna dies to get married,” Simple began.

  “Or to just go on and do the deed,” Hovis concluded, a short laugh escaping between words, “to finish Edna off that way.”

  True, I thought, Edna might actually die if she saw Hovis and Simple get married.

  “So that’s where you were last night,” I said, my head finally clear. “You went to tell Simple you were out of jail.”

  He nodded.

  “And on Monday night,” I continued, guessing, “you and Simple met, and you escaped out the cave. You wanted to tell her about your visitor.”

  “Pretty good,” Hovis grinned. “Good guess.”

  “How did you know that?” Andrews scowled, leaning forward.

  “Boy said it last night,” I told him. “He said he wanted to move Son’s body closer to Hovis’s place, but he saw Hovis and someone else come out of the side of the mountain. That’s how he discovered the secret cave.”

  “Oh, right.” Andrews sat back. “Wait. Simple—about that cave. Everyone in the Jackson family thinks there’s gold in it?”

  “Not really,” she answered sweetly. “My father’s grandfather, I believe, started the family tradition about gold as a device to control his more unruly relatives. Some of the Jacksons, you may know, are not as sophisticated as the ones who live in the big house on the hill.”

  Hovis explained. “It was, ‘Do what I say and I’ll put you in the will and leave you a portion of the gold mine; go against me, and I’ll cut you out.’”

  “Money is power,” Simple went on. “The idea of wealth is often as good as gold. After that first generation, the tradition was to tell the oldest son the truth so that he could use the power of it—wield it over the more wild sons.”

  “But,” Andrews protested, “that’s not what happened. Boy Jackson is older, and the father told Son Jackson—right?”

  “Boy was always strange,” Simple answered. “Their father didn’t care for Boy because of it. That part of the family—they’re a feral tribe; live in great seclusion at the top of the mountain, up close to where Hovis and Barbrie lived. They work for Red, now, most do. But they’ve always had their secrets up there. Who knows what they really do? I only heard, because Edna would go on about it, that Boy was considered wrong. He was too smart for this part of the world. That can be quite a curse.”

  Simple’s eyes momentarily shot some sort of arrow into my brain, and then she looked down just as suddenly, the old sweet smile returning to her lips.

  “I guess you ain’t heard,” Hovis said softly, looking at his knees, “but Boy Jackson killed hisself this morning. Swallowed a sock and stopped breathing. He’s dead.”

  Andrews and I stared in stunned silence. Before either of us could muster a response, Simple clapped her hands once.

  “We’ve taken up enough of your time,” she concluded and stood suddenly. “We’ll be going.”

  “Oh.” I got to my feet.

  Hovis got up and offered his arm to Simple, and they moved toward my front door.

  “Don’t forget,” she said to me, pointing at the papers she’d given me. “Right,” I assured her. “I’ll do it today.”

  She nodded once, and without another word from anyone, they were out the door and into the bright yard. Andrews and I watched them go; they were whispering to each other and never once looked back.

  “Boy killed himself.” Andrews couldn’t believe it.

  “I guess he wasn’t setting up an insanity defense after all,” I suggested foolishly.

  “Or the news that there was no gold was too much for him?”

  “Not really, do you think?”

  “You’ve got to feel a little … ” Andrews stammered, grappling with his diction, “I mean, what did he say? Something about smart being the last thing you’d want to be in a cabin at the top of this mountain.”

  “I can attest to that.” I sighed, trying not to think about the fact too much. “You don’t want to be smart in that kind of environment, or too aware of a larger world.”

  “He didn’t really seem like a person from Red’s family.”

  “Not that you want to indulge in any stereotypes,” I chided.

  “Well, it’s too much for me before I’ve had my coffee,” Andrews mumbled, turning toward the kitchen. “And I can’t figure out your sodding-damn machine to save my life.”

  “It reacts to temperament,” I explained to him, closing my front door and shivering a bit. “It knows you’re cursing at it.”

  “Shut up.” He sat at the kitchen table.

  I went to the machine, turned it on, grabbed an unopened bottle of Evian from the cou
nter, opened it, and poured it into the water reservoir.

  “Only the best,” Andrews mocked.

  “Do you want espresso or not?” I glared at him.

  “Sorry. Christ.” He rubbed his eyes.

  I pulled an air-tight canister of black, oily beans from the cupboard and poured half a cup or so into the machine.

  “Oh,” Andrews continued, “and PS: What the hell is all that about those letters or whatever it was she handed you? What’s that?”

  I still had them in my hand. I laid them on the kitchen table.

  “Let’s have a look, and I’ll tell you,” I answered him.

  The espresso machine began to click and grumble, warming the water in its well. I pulled out two demitasse cups and set them down beside it.

  “I need espresso,” Andrews moaned.

  “Help is on the way,” I told him, distracted.

  I looked upward, searching the exposed beams in the kitchen for the proper solution to Simple Jackson’s trouble concerning her packet of letters.

  “Here we are,” I said to myself, finding what I wanted.

  I reached up for several sprigs of sage. I’d just put them up there, and they weren’t completely dried, but they would have to do. I took them in hand and sat down before the letters.

  “Let’s see what we have.” I reached over to untie the bundle.

  “I don’t want that in my coffee,” Andrews told me in no uncertain terms, pointing at the sage.

  “Right,” I assured him, “that’s for what we find in this package.”

  I pulled the pink ribbon and spread out the letters and pictures in front of us on the red tabletop. Some of the pages were near decay, but all of the photographs were well preserved.

  “Wait!” I said suddenly, jumping up from the table.

  “What?” Andrews got up, too, staring down at the documents on the table as if there might be something poisonous on them.

  “I nearly forgot,” I told him, going to my good leather coat. “I lifted a photograph of Truck Jackson from the woman at Sunset Acres or whatever that place in Atlanta was called.”

  “You stole a picture from a poor old woman?” he asked, astonished.