Dark River Road

by Virginia Brown

  “I married you of my own free will,” Mama said. “I have told you that.”

  “Yeah, but I know there’s always choices to make when it comes to Quinton getting what he wants, and I know you was plannin’ on leavin’ Cane Creek after that first year. And I know he didn’t want you to go. Just like he didn’t want me to go when I was runnin’ that big job out at the plant puttin’ in new machinery. Said he’d pay me extra to stay, and when I said I still wanted to go back to my kin up in Missouri, he said it could get awful hard to find jobs with a felony conviction on my record. Don’t know how he knew about that, but he did. That trouble was supposed to be over and done. I was just a dumb kid, got caught up in somethin’ over my head, stood to go to jail a long time for armed robbery, until I got out ‘cause of my age. Dumb luck, I thought. Maybe it was. I seem to get that a lot.”

  “Rainey—we have been over this before. I married you by my own choice.”

  “Shit. You ain’t never gonna convince me of that. Just like you ain’t never gonna be able to look at that kid in there and not think how it’s my fault he’s crippled. I know you blame me for that, blame me for gettin’ you pregnant when you was all set to leave me. I know you only stayed after that ‘cause you were so sick the whole time. But I took care of you, didn’t I? Would still be takin’ care of you if not for fallin’ off that granary. If you hadn’t made me so mad that mornin’, I wouldn’t have fell off like I did anyways.”

  “You were drunk.” Mama sounded tired suddenly, and Chantry’s hand knotted hard on the door knob. It was wrong to eavesdrop, to listen to Mama’s private business, but he couldn’t have stopped right then for anything. “You were drunk, and you were angry, and you were careless. That’s why you fell off the granary. And I stayed with you so Mikey would have a father, so he would never feel that aching emptiness like Chantry does every day of his life. In retrospect, it was a mistake. One of many I’ve made over the years. I don’t intend to continue, however.”

  “You sayin’ you’re gonna leave me?”

  Chantry held his breath, squeezed closer to the door in case he couldn’t hear Mama’s answer.

  “No,” she said after a moment, “I’m not saying that. I am saying there are going to be some major changes in our lives or I’ll do what it takes to rectify our situation. Perhaps leaving would be the kindest thing for me to do anyway. For all of us.”

  “I just ain’t never gonna measure up, no matter what I do,” Rainey snarled, sounding mad and mean again. “To that hero got killed over there fightin’ them gooks. Well, he’s damn lucky to have died, ‘cause livin’ with you would take the sap outa any man after a while.”

  “As always, Rainey, you know just the right phrases to convince me of your sincerity. It’s been a long night. I’m tired and I’m going to bed. Tomorrow, we will repair the roof and perhaps find a way to repair our lives. There’s been enough drama and tragedy these past two years to last me an entire lifetime. It is time we all made changes.”

  Chantry eased the door shut when he heard Mama coming down the hallway. For the first time in a long while, he saw a spark of hope. If Mama left Rainey like it sounded, they’d all be better off. No more vicious fights, no more constant tension like a rope being pulled tight, no more Cane Creek. They’d go somewhere else, anywhere else, it didn’t matter. They’d just get out of here and put this all behind them.

  It didn’t seem possible.

  CHAPTER 18

  Chantry woke up early. He hadn’t cleaned up the night before, unwilling to risk running into Rainey, so had just taken off his dirty clothes and put them in a corner. He felt grimy, with mud still caked in his hair and dried blood on his face.

  Standing in the shower and letting the hot water beat down on him, he thought about all he’d heard the night before. He’d lain awake a long time, planning and hoping, caught between excitement and uncertainty. What if she changed her mind? What if old man Quinton really did have some mysterious power over her that would make her stay in Cane Creek? He didn’t think he did. Mama wasn’t the kind of person to have a deep, dark secret in her past that Quinton could use as blackmail. He was willing to bet there’d been a lot more to that armed robbery story than Rainey let on, too, but he didn’t really care.

  Tansy had been so right about the lies being thick. How had she known? Maybe Chris had told her about her real father. Maybe Dempsey had. He felt bad that she hadn’t come to him with how she must have felt about it all. Once, they’d told each other everything.

  Like happened so often, the day after that storm left so much damage, it dawned clear and sunny. Bright blue skies stretched as far as he could see, sunshine glittered in puddles big as ponds in some of the roads. Even Liberty Road had a pothole in it where some of the gravel bed had washed away. School was out for the day since it’d been damaged in the storm, but the big news was the drug bust back behind the Tap Room.

  He heard that from Donny, who came by to see how he was doing. They stood out front in the road, Donny’s car rumbling with that glass-pack muffler he’d had put on, sounding bad.

  “Yeah, I heard Beau and Rafe got caught with a kilo of coke,” Donny said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And I heard you was the one turned ’em in, too.”

  “I just had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “It’s a wonder you managed to live this long, you know that?” Donny’s gaze shifted past him to the front of the house, where Rainey had come out to smoke on the front porch since Mama didn’t allow him to smoke in the house. “I bet he ain’t none too happy about it.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Hell, I could say a lot of things, but getting you to say anything is always like digging a hole, damn hard work.” Donny shook out a cigarette, offered the pack, shrugged when Chantry glanced toward Rainey up on the porch and shook his head no. Donny lit up, then said, “There’s a party over at Maryann Snowdon’s on Saturday night. She wanted me to tell you to come. I think Cinda’s going to be there.”

  Chantry shot him a quick look. “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Nothing. Maybe everything. I dunno. Just playing messenger here.”

  “For Maryann or Cinda?”

  Donny’s brown eyes narrowed slightly, and he grinned. “Come to the party and find out, asshole. It’s been a long time since you got away from the house. Unless you’ve turned into a monk or something, it might be worth it to you.”

  “Cinda’s not speaking to me. She thinks . . . well, you were there. You know what she thinks.”

  “So? Half the town thinks that. What difference does it make?”

  He had a point. After a minute, Chantry shrugged. “Okay. I’ll come.”

  Saturday night turned out cool. Typical April weather, almost hot one day, cold the next. Chantry dressed in his room and slipped out the back door, giving Rainey a wide berth. Since the night of the storm, not too much had been said between any of them, but it felt like any minute it was going to be another storm, that air of tense expectation hovering over all of them like black clouds.

  He’d left Shadow on the bed with Mikey and told Mama he was leaving, and she’d only told him to behave and not said anything about him going out with Donny even though he was still on probation. Maybe she figured he needed to get away for a while. Besides, probation would be up soon, by his birthday anyway, and he hadn’t been in any trouble at all except for outside the Tap Room that night. Since he’d given the cops the break they needed to get rid of a drug ring, he thought as long as he kept out of trouble they wouldn’t say anything much.

  Maryann Snowdon lived on St. Clair Road right down the street from Cinda. Her house was all lit up, with a bunch of cars already parked along the curbs. In the summer, big old oaks shaded the house, but it was early April and only tiny buds promised leaves. Someone had hung a bunch of colored plastic Easter eggs from the bare limbs, so that it looked like a bizarre orchard.

  “What kind of p
arty is this?” he asked Donny, squinting at the eggs doubtfully.

  “The good kind. Her parents are out of town and left Maryann here with her sister, and Christy’s a senior this year. So—party time.”

  It was already crowded inside, with kids laughing and talking and drinking. Maryann had obviously raided the bar. Beer bottles were stuck in tubs of ice, and vodka, gin, and bourbon sat on the kitchen counters. Double French doors leading to a huge back deck were open, and a fire burned in an outside pit. The house sat on probably an acre, with trees and bushes screening it from easy view of the other houses. Once, Chantry had worked here with Dempsey, building a big flowerbed out back for Maryann’s mother. Mrs. Snowdon had been very nice, he remembered.

  Some of the kids had gotten too loud and clumsy, but it was hard to hear anything over the music. He didn’t see Cinda, and figured she’d probably already gone home. A lot of older kids were here, some of them football boys wearing their varsity jackets.

  “I don’t know about this,” he said to Donny after a few minutes. “I’m still on probation and don’t need any trouble.”

  “Then don’t cause any. Come on, dude. Lighten up. We’re here to have fun.”

  Chantry shrugged. He snagged a beer from one of the tubs and went out on the back deck to drink it, off by himself and away from the others. Maybe he didn’t know how to have fun anymore. Maybe he’d lost his edge. He thought about that, how things had changed for him. A lot of it had to do with how he saw things now, too. Differently. With more caution instead of anger.

  “Hey,” someone said behind him, and he turned, surprised to see Cinda.

  “Hey,” he said back, a little wary.

  She leaned on the deck railing beside him, looking uncertain and really pretty. She had her hair all done up different, pulled up on top of her head somehow and fastened with some glittery kind of thing that held it in a curly ponytail. It’d gotten really long, so that even curled and on top of her head it swung every time she moved. Little wisps of blonde hair feathered around her face, and she had on more makeup than he was used to seeing her wear. It made her eyes look bigger and her face look older. She touched one of the wisps like she was nervous, then shrugged.

  “Did you get that cut the other night? The one over your eye, I mean. I heard all about it. That you helped the state police break up a drug ring. That your brothers—stepbrothers—got arrested for it.”

  “Yeah. They did.” Just one more reason for her to stay away from him, he guessed. It was the kind of thing Mrs. Sheridan would definitely disapprove of, having family members involved in drugs and a reputation for getting in trouble. It didn’t make him feel any better to know that she’d been right about him. He wasn’t the right kind of boy for her daughter.

  Cinda smiled uncertainly. “Well, I think what you did took a lot of guts. It had to be hard for you to do that.”

  “Not so much,” he said after a minute. No point in telling her that there was no love lost between him and Rainey’s boys. She probably wouldn’t understand that all families weren’t like hers. But then again, she probably didn’t even know that she had a cousin her uncle had never claimed, either.

  “Look, Chantry—this is hard for me to say after . . . after everything. It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do, not to me, anyway. Last year, when I saw you with Tansy I was just so mad and so hurt. It seemed like everything Chris had said was true, that you and she were together like that even though you’d said you weren’t. And now, with everyone at school thinking—well, you know, I just haven’t known what to think either.”

  He guessed there was an explanation in there somewhere, but he was having a hard time sorting it out. After a minute passed while she just looked up at him like she was waiting for him to say something, he blew out a heavy breath and looked away.

  “I don’t know what you want from me, Cinda.”

  “How about the truth?”

  He looked back at her. “Would you believe it if I told you? No one else does. No one else even asks for it. Everybody just makes up their own truth, what they want to believe. Why should you be any different?”

  She sucked in a sharp breath, then said, “But I am different. I’ve had a crush on you since second grade, when you beat up Frankie Patton for tripping me on the playground.”

  He remembered that. It’d been the first fight he’d ever been in except for Beau and Rafe. It hadn’t really been much of a fight, more like him pounding Frankie’s head against the pavement and telling him not to ever hurt a girl again. A teacher had come running out to stop him before he could do too much damage, and Mama had been mortified by being called in to the principal’s office because of her son. Mr. White had given him three licks with a paddle and he’d gotten two weeks detention, and Frankie Patton had gotten a band-aid and a chocolate ice cream cone. Until Cinda had told what happened. Then Frankie got four weeks detention.

  But he didn’t know what to say to Cinda about that, about how he’d always thought she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, all pale like a porcelain doll, wearing bows in her hair and shiny shoes, almost too fragile looking to be real. And always out of his reach, like so many other things he’d wanted for so long. So he just stood looking down at her helplessly while all these thoughts and feelings churned inside him.

  After a moment her lower lip quivered slightly, then she nodded. “Okay. I understand. I just wanted to tell you that . . . that no matter what the truth is, I still think you’re the bravest boy in Cane Creek.”

  He managed a rueful smile. “That’s not saying much. Cane Creek isn’t that big.”

  “All of Miss’ippi, then.”

  “That’s better. Thanks.” He hesitated, and when she still looked up at him with the glow of the deck lights gleaming in her eyes, he said abruptly, “Tansy’s my friend. She’s always been my friend. I’d be proud to be with her like everyone thinks. But we were just friends, that’s all.”

  It wasn’t all, but not like most of Cane Creek thought, either. There was something between him and Tansy that he couldn’t even explain, a bond, sort of like what he felt for Shadow only much more intense. Shared dreams, maybe. A connection. Something they felt but couldn’t say.

  Or at least, he couldn’t. Tansy had never had much of a problem saying what she felt, even if it was in one of her songs.

  Cinda nodded. “Then I’m sorry for what I said that night, Chantry. Out there when Chris brought me to see you. I . . . I thought maybe you were sick, and I made him bring me in his truck even when he didn’t want to. He was already so mad about something, and had been in a bad mood all night. Maybe he and Mariah had a fight. She said they didn’t, but he didn’t take her to the dance, either. He showed up with Brad and Adam, and they were so mean—but none of that matters. I was wrong. And I’m sorry for it. Sorry for what I said and for what I thought. Forgive me?”

  “Sure.” Maybe he should tell her that he hadn’t wanted not to be with her, but somehow it didn’t seem the right time. Then he’d have to tell her what her mother had said, and that Chris was probably so mad because Tansy had shown up at the dance with Leon.

  She laughed. “Ever the man of many words. So. Want to try again?”

  “Try—?”

  “This.” She rose to her toes and took his face between her hands and kissed him, her lips parting and her tongue slipping into his mouth so that he forgot they were on the deck where just anyone could see, forgot the past year of hard feelings, forgot everything but how sweet she tasted and how good she felt against him. Every girl he’d been with in the past year had never felt so right. Good, maybe, but not right. Not like this. Not like he felt now holding Cinda. It was like none of it had ever happened.

  After a minute, she stepped back, and he set down the beer he’d been holding. When she took his hand in hers and pulled him with her, he didn’t even ask where they were going. It didn’t matter.

  “This is the gazebo,” Cinda said in a whisper, like the closest people w
eren’t all the way up at the house and they weren’t all the way back in a corner close to a high wood fence where no one could hear them anyway. “It’s empty this time of year. Maryann’s mama likes to store stuff in it during the winter. There’s cushions, things like that.”

  It was a wooden structure built from cedar, with a shake shingle roof and screened sides, and in the high-pitched ceiling beams, hung a fan that would turn in the summer heat to cool it off. Right now, the built-in benches along the sides were covered in some kind of cloths, and cushions from lawn furniture were stacked along with small wooden tables. Cinda found a glass jar that held a candle and pulled it out.

  “Got a match?”

  He lit it for her, turning the jar to one side to hold his lighter in it until the dusty wick caught. A spider scurried out just in time, skimming his hand to drop somewhere on the floor. He set the candle on the low table and looked over at Cinda. In the wavering light, she looked cool and mysterious, a lot older than the last time he’d been with her. He wondered if she felt as old as he did sometimes. Just the last year had seemed like five to him.

  Cinda perched on one of the green and white striped cushions, and patted a place beside her. He sat down awkwardly, suddenly feeling big, clumsy, and strangely shy. This was the first time he’d ever been all alone with her.

  If she felt awkward she didn’t show it. Instead she nestled close to him until he put his arm around her, and then she turned into him, one hand on his chest, her face tilted up to his. It was the most natural thing in the world to kiss her. Her lips parted, and before he knew it, they were both doing the tongue thing and breathing heavy in that way people did when things got really serious between them.