Hearts of Stone

by Brad Smith

  But there was a second guy, trailing, taking everything in. The second guy was heavy, maybe fifty, with graying hair and tattoos on his forearms and neck, what looked like prison ink. Approaching, he looked at Billy with amusement in his eyes. Or maybe it was contempt. Whatever he might call it, Billy had seen the look before and never cared for it. Nothing good ever came along with it.

  ‘What’s up, Billy?’ Bug asked.

  Billy shook his head in response. Nothing was up. Nothing up was good.

  ‘Mr Fixit?’ Bug asked, indicating the electrical cord in Billy’s hand.

  Billy shrugged. ‘We’ll see.’

  Bug looked at the big guy, who was now standing by the open door of the shed, taking a gander inside. ‘This guy could get anything to run,’ Bug said.

  Billy made no reply to that.

  ‘This is Chino,’ Bug said.

  Billy nodded while Chino turned toward him, holding the look. Billy saw now that he had a teardrop tattoo, running down from the corner of his eye.

  ‘You working, Billy?’ Bug asked.

  ‘Laid off.’

  ‘Laid off,’ Bug repeated, glancing at Chino. ‘Looking for work?’

  ‘I can’t get into anything,’ Billy said. ‘Cheryl and I are making a go of things. Got a boy now, just turned two last week. I can’t get into anything.’

  ‘Suspicious little fucker, isn’t he?’ Chino said. Talking to Bug but still looking at Billy. ‘How’s he know we aren’t here to offer him a job down at the Ford plant?’

  ‘Come on, Chino,’ Bug said. ‘Billy’s OK.’

  Chino ignored him. Billy’s cigarettes were on the makeshift work bench and Chino helped himself to one, lit it with the Zippo lying there. ‘You don’t want to listen, Billy who can fix anything?’ he asked as he exhaled.

  Billy shrugged.

  ‘Maybe you should,’ Chino said. ‘Maybe you can make two thousand dollars for a few hours’ work. Does that interest you?’

  Billy fell quiet, looking at the electrical cord in his hand, the naked copper wires.

  ‘Where else you gonna make that kind of coin in a day?’ Bug asked.

  ‘Something seems too good to be true, it usually is,’ Billy said, looking at Bug now, Bug still wearing the grin.

  Chino turned toward the house. The shingles were curled at the edges, some were missing altogether. Some of the windows were covered with plastic. The place was clapboard and hadn’t seen fresh paint in twenty years.

  ‘You own this place or rent?’ Chino asked.

  ‘Rent.’

  Chino pulled on the cigarette. ‘Looks to me like you could use a couple grand.’

  The bar was called Hard Ten and it was built on the county line, four miles south of Rose City. The parking lot was nearly empty, a few cars and trucks by the front door, a half dozen Harleys parked in the back. Chino and Bug walked in at six o’clock. The place smelled of beer and chicken wings and deep fryers that hadn’t had the oil changed in a while. Chino ordered two draft beers at the bar and indicated the corner table, where Tommy Jakes sat drinking coffee.

  ‘On his tab,’ he said.

  The bartender was a cold-eyed blonde with a tarantula tattooed on the back of her hand. She gave Tommy a look, and when she got nothing in return she poured the draft. Chino and Bug carried their glasses to the table and sat down. Bones Sirocco came out of the back, as if summoned, turning sideways to pass through the narrow doorway. He walked over to where the three men sat, but he didn’t sit down. Stood there like a sentry, his breath wheezing in his chest. He was a big man, with huge arms like a lifter, but did not seem healthy.

  ‘Hour late,’ Tommy said.

  ‘Taking care of business, Tommy,’ Chino said. He took a drink of draft, smacking his lips.

  Tommy glanced at Bones and then at Bug. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Bug.’

  ‘That’s not a name, it’s an insect.’

  Bug had been watching the blonde bartender and now he looked at Tommy and shrugged.

  ‘His name is Larry Murdock,’ Chino said.

  Tommy took a sip of coffee and placed the cup on the table. ‘Is Mr Murdock here because he’s going to make the delivery for us?’

  Chino snorted. ‘Bug’s got a sheet as long as that bar and he’s dumber than fucking dirt. They run his name at the border and the whole place would light up like a Christmas tree.’

  ‘Then why is he here?’

  ‘Because he set us up with the guy who’s going to cross,’ Chino said. He drank off a quarter of his beer, wiping his mouth after.

  Tommy glanced up at Bones for a moment. The big man was impassive. Tommy leaned forward, elbows on the table, and addressed Chino. ‘Johnny K tells me that you are a discreet individual.’

  ‘Fucking right.’

  ‘But I hear that you’re into Johnny for some money. Something to do with football parlays.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with this?’ Chino asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Tommy said. ‘It occurs to me that Johnny wants me to hire you so you can pay him what you owe.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing, if you can deliver,’ Tommy said. ‘What about Mr Murdock here – is he a discreet individual too?’

  ‘He wouldn’t be anywhere near this if he wasn’t.’

  Tommy sat back and reached for his cup. ‘So who’s the third man?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ Chino said. ‘It’s covered.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s covered.’

  ‘Tell me his name,’ Tommy said. ‘Or leave.’

  Chino hesitated. ‘His name is Billy Taylor.’

  Now Tommy looked at Bones again. The big man shook his head.

  ‘Why do we like him for this?’ Tommy asked.

  Instead of replying Chino nodded to Bug, who was watching the bartender once more. He seemed transfixed by her.

  ‘Bug,’ Chino said sharply. ‘Tell Tommy why we like Billy.’

  ‘Billy’s got no record,’ Bug said. ‘He used to jack trucks and run ’em to the chop shops on the rez. Never been convicted. He was good at it. He could hotwire anything on wheels. Stole a two hundred thousand dollar Maserati once. Thing ended up in Arabia or one of them countries.’

  ‘So he’s a car thief who’s never been caught.’ Tommy showed his palms, as if to display just how unimpressed he was.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Chino said. ‘He’s an Indian. And Indians get a free pass at the border, as a rule. Especially an Indian with no record.’

  Tommy nodded at the information. ‘How long have you known this Indian?’

  ‘Him and Bug go way back,’ Chino said. ‘They were kids together. Bug’s old man was banging some Indian broad on the rez and Bug used to stay out there.’

  Now Tommy got to his feet, coffee cup in hand. Chino watched as he walked to the bar and got a refill from the blonde bartender. He spoke to her quietly for a time and when he turned away she laughed at whatever he’d said. When he sat down again he looked at Bug for a time without speaking.

  ‘What’s her name?’ Bug finally asked. Breaking the silence.

  Tommy glanced over at the bartender. ‘Joni’s her name. Why – you like her?’

  Bug nodded, sneaking another look toward the bar.

  ‘She’ll be flattered,’ Tommy said, the sarcasm thick. He leaned toward Bug. ‘So you’ll vouch for Billy Taylor.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Tommy turned to Chino. ‘And you’ll vouch for Mr Murdock here.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Chino’s mind was on the laughing bartender. What was between her and Tommy that was so funny? When he looked over, it seemed that she was watching him, the smile still on her face.

  Tommy Jakes sipped the hot coffee. When he put the cup on the table, he shifted his gaze to Chino.

  ‘We’ll be in touch. Pay for those beers on your way out.’

  FOUR

  After breakfast Saturday morning France
s carried her coffee down to the brooder house to ready it for the new arrivals. Carl had driven into town earlier to pick up the day-old chicks from the co-op. Frances swept the building out and spread fresh wood shavings on the floor. She got the heat lamps from the warehouse and suspended them from the ceiling joists, turning them on to check the bulbs. She brought in the feeders and the water troughs. She was filling them when she heard Carl pull into the drive.

  Ten dozen chicks fit in two cardboard boxes, each no bigger than a large suitcase. They put the boxes in the middle of the floor and opened them, then stood back to watch the chicks find their own way out, at their own speed. Some emerged at once and began to explore the coop. Fluffy and bright yellow, the size of a person’s fist, they stumbled and hopped through the shavings, awkwardly colliding with one another, falling down and getting up. They ignored the food for now but would be eating and drinking within an hour or so. By that time they had all escaped the boxes and were wandering about, already growing accustomed to their new world.

  That afternoon Carl and Frances took a walk to the bush lot at the rear of the farm. Carl carried a knapsack and a ten-pound sledge hammer and Frances an armful of surveyor’s stakes. The property was one of the few in the county that still had a lane dissecting it. The rest of the farms – owned or rented by cash croppers – had the lanes and fences bulldozed and cleared away. The family farm had gone the way of the dodo. What was once a patchwork of eight or ten fields was now usually a single hundred-acre piece, more amenable to the use of large-scale equipment. The bulldozing was practical but – to Carl’s eyes anyway – it stole something away from the landscape, something that could never be replaced. It robbed cottontails and foxes and ground squirrels of their habitat as well. And Carl hadn’t seen a jackrabbit in five years. They’d been pushed aside by modern farming.

  The lane ran precisely through the center of the farm, a single dirt road with leafy hardwoods on each side, old growth oaks and maples that created an overhead canopy. Along the fence row stood a number of elm trees as well, most of them dead from disease, their bark stripped away, the revealed wood bleached nearly white by the sun.

  It was a pleasant walk. Frances, freed from the television cameras for the weekend, was relaxed and loose. Carl had made her breakfast that morning and they’d eaten lunch at a diner in Talbotville.

  ‘The crew’s back here on Monday then?’ Carl asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Frances said. ‘Just a couple of hours, though. We didn’t get the footage of me doing my Paul Bunyan thing, splitting wood.’

  ‘Then you’re done?’

  ‘Pretty much.’ As she walked, Frances reached above her head and took down a maple leaf, rolled it between her fingers. ‘But we’re already talking about the Christmas special.’

  ‘They’re going to want to shoot at the house again,’ Carl told her.

  ‘That’s not happening.’ Frances made a tube of the leaf and blew through it before tossing it aside. ‘I need to put the brakes on. This TV show is like one of those giant mushrooms in the northwest. You don’t notice it at first but it just grows and grows and pretty soon it just takes over. Next thing, they’ll want to shoot you and me getting up in the morning.’

  ‘I’ll have to buy some silk pajamas.’

  ‘I’d pay money to see that.’

  The lane ended at the forest. The bush lot covered roughly eight acres. Carl took a claw hammer and a box of copper nails from the knapsack and they spent an hour walking around, identifying the sugar maples and marking them each with a nail in the trunk. They counted fifty-seven in all.

  ‘Why do we need to mark them?’ Frances asked.

  ‘Come sap time in the spring, and the trees have no leaves, it’s not always easy to tell a hard maple from a soft,’ Carl told her. ‘The old-timers could tell by the bark but you and I are rookies. We might end up tapping an ironwood tree.’

  ‘What would we get from an ironwood tree?’

  ‘I don’t know but I wouldn’t want to pour it on my pancakes.’

  When they were finished with the marking they wandered about for a bit, trying to decide where they would build the sugar shack. They eventually settled on a rise near the north end of the bush, seventy yards or so from where the lane ended. They cleared some brush away from the spot and then staked the building out, twenty feet by twelve. Afterward they sat on the rise and drank two bottles of ale that Frances had packed in the knapsack.

  ‘When can we start?’ Frances asked.

  ‘When do you want to start?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  Carl laughed. ‘I took those pine logs over to Kendrick’s this week. Should have the planks in a few days and then we can build. Depends on your schedule.’

  ‘I have one more day and then I’m done for the time being,’ Frances said. ‘We’ve got those Cortland apples we need to press into cider. And I think I have someone who will take the rest of the acorn squash off our hands, if we can deliver it.’

  ‘That’s not a problem.’

  Frances turned to him. ‘Just don’t get the idea you’re going to be building this shack without me, Mr Burns.’

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘I know you.’

  Carl smiled and drank from the bottle.

  ‘I think it should have a cedar shake roof,’ Frances said.

  ‘Steel is good,’ Carl told her.

  ‘I like the looks of cedar.’

  ‘It’s a lot of work and it’s expensive,’ Carl said. ‘Steel goes on quick and it’ll last longer than either of us.’

  ‘Cedar doesn’t last?’

  ‘Well … yeah, it does.’

  She looked at the site of the future sugar shack for a moment, imagining it, and then she smiled at him.

  ‘You think you can show me that smile and get whatever you want,’ Carl said.

  ‘How do you know what I think?’

  Carl got to his feet and took a few steps. He pointed with his chin. ‘That big white oak has got to come down.’

  ‘I’d still like to know what killed that tree,’ Frances said. ‘Wait – are you changing the subject? We were talking about the roof.’

  ‘You were talking about the roof.’ He stood looking at the massive oak. ‘Lot of firewood there. We can use it to make the syrup.’ He turned. ‘Those dead elms along the lane too. Elm burns hot.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘I have a head full of useless information,’ he said.

  Frances stood now as well, finishing the ale and putting the empty bottle in the knapsack. ‘I’m looking forward to this. I wish we could start building today.’

  ‘Does the TV station know that you’re going into the maple syrup business?’ Carl asked. ‘They’re going to want to film everything.’

  ‘No,’ she said emphatically. ‘They don’t know and I’m not telling them. I have a feeling that my TV career will be coming to a close real soon. They keep wanting more and more. The money’s not that great and to tell you the truth it really doesn’t …’ She hesitated, searching for the words.

  ‘Turn you on?’ Carl suggested.

  Frances laughed. ‘Yeah, I guess you could say that.’ She fell silent for a long moment, looking toward the farmhouse and barns in the distance. ‘The more I am on TV, the more I like being a farmer.’

  ‘I suspected that,’ Carl said.

  ‘Well, now you know,’ Frances said, turning toward him. ‘And as far as this sugar shack goes, you and I are building it. Nobody else. OK?’

  Carl smiled. ‘OK.’

  FIVE

  Chino hoisted the wheel on to the tire machine and was removing the valve stem when Bug pulled up in the pickup, skidding to a stop in the gravel outside the shop. Chino glanced out the open door, first at the truck and then out to the road, expecting another vehicle. There was none. Bug climbed out of the truck and walked into the shop as Chino let the air out of the tire and broke the bead on the inner part of the wheel. He slid the flat bar under the
lip of the tire and hit the foot pedal, rotating the wheel to pull the edge of the rubber up and over the steel rim. The machine was pneumatic and Chino’s air compressor kicked on noisily, running for a couple of minutes before shutting down. When the racket stopped Chino cast an eye on Bug, who was now sitting on the work bench, drinking a beer he’d produced from his coat pocket.

  ‘Where’s our boy?’ Chino asked.

  ‘Thought he’d be here,’ Bug said.

  ‘Well, he’s not.’

  Chino walked past Bug to an old chrome and Arborite table in the corner of the shop. The dope was there, stacked in a dozen or so bundles. Bug watched as Chino opened one of the bundles and with a kitchen spoon scooped out three or four ounces of the cocaine, doling it into a baggie. There was a bag of white flour on the table and Chino replaced the pilfered coke with an equal amount of flour, stirred the contents carelessly with the spoon before resealing the package.

  ‘You’re shorting them?’ Bug asked.

  ‘You heard of shipping and handling?’ Chino asked. ‘Well, this is the handling part.’

  Chino carried the bundles of coke to the tire machine and began to stuff them inside the wheel, distributing the packets around the perimeter of the rim. When he was finished he put the tire back on the bead and filled it with air. Lifting the wheel from the machine, he rolled it over and leaned it against the door jamb. He looked out to the road again.

  ‘That Indian getting cold feet?’

  ‘He was OK when I talked to him last time,’ Bug said. ‘I mean, he ain’t what you’d call thrilled about the whole deal, but he needs the money. They got that little kid now, him and the old lady. She’s working at the dollar store.’

  Chino took a cigarette from the pack in his coverall pocket and lit it. He watched the road for a while longer, then turned and walked to the table where he’d left the coke. There was a cupboard overhead; he went into it and brought down a bottle of Jack, poured three fingers into a plastic cup. He drank from the cup, thoughtfully looking at the baggie on the table.

  ‘You want a bump?’ he asked.

  ‘Shit,’ Bug replied.

  Chino rolled a five dollar bill and they each did a line. It was good coke. It was better coke than either of them was used to. Bug hit his first and when the drug reached his brain he jerked upward from the table, smacking his head on the cupboard overhead.