by Bret Lott
I stopped. She’d have found the note hours ago, when she went into my room and tried to wake me up for the first day back to school after Thanksgiving. And now the woods went cold on me, the wind up in the treetops sharp and loud, the dead leaves everywhere making more noise than I could take in. Mom would most likely have called the police on me by now and would be crying there at our kitchen table over where I was.
That, or she’d be at the trailer this very second, the Stanza pulled up out front, waiting for us. Like that was where we’d be.
I looked up to the treetops, saw them sway in the wind, saw the bitter blue sky up there above it all, a midday sky in November. Somewhere deer were feeding, chomping on acorns, living like they had nothing to fear, because, it seemed to me, they didn’t. Sure, they heard something, they got spooked, took off. But what did they know of what they heard? It was only sound, and if it was a hunter, and if that hunter got what he’d come looking for, then one of those deer was just gone, and the next morning these same deer would be out there in that same field, chomping on the same acorns, walking the same trails, settling down in the high grass for night, and that life gone, the one taken by that hunter, whether he was a South-of-Broad surgeon or me, a fifteen-year-old kid who didn’t know shit about how the world worked, those same deer would just take a look around, maybe, and see one of them was gone, and everything would just start over again, like that deer’d never existed, like he’d just been some dumb dream all those deer’d been having together.
And I wanted, I guess, to be one of those deer right then. Then nothing would worry me, a sound out in the woods only something to duck away from and run for cover. And then next day I could just pick up again.
Because now I knew there were things out there, things that weren’t going to be reconciled and tossed away with just going to sleep at night. Somebody was out there, waiting for something to happen from Unc. For him to sell off the land in order just to let Unc live.
Tell him the people who count don’t give a good flying fuck where he’s hid out. The only way through this all is for him to do what he’s been asked to do.
Sell Hungry Neck.
I jammed my hands into my pockets deep as they could go, shoulders up, that bitter blue sky too big, too wide, me too small against this all.
I felt stuff in my pockets: in the right, the money, that wad of bills Tommy Thigpen’d given me.
And in the other, the paperweight, there at the bottom of my pocket.
You tell him he’s got forty-eight hours, and it’s over and done with.
I ran.
There stood Miss Dinah Gaillard’s place, half trailer, half shanty, the whole of it painted haint purple.
I’d been here a few times before, driving Unc over to deliver a ham at Christmas and Easter, flowers on Miss Dinah’s and Tabitha’s birthdays, and every time we pulled up in the Luv I sort of shook my head at the place, at the way these people thought painting a house a hideous color might actually scare off ghosts and demons and all. I was in the backyard, if you could call it that, and like in the front yard there were those tires painted white and split up to make planters, pansies in them. There was a clothesline strung up out here, an old dead refrigerator, next to it a dead washing machine, the two of them side by side beneath a live oak.
Same as always.
But as I went up the cinder blocks and onto the back porch, reached for the screen door, pulled it open to knock, I thought for a second this color wasn’t such a bad thing, saw for an instant Unc’s place painted this same shade, and I wondered if, had our trailer been painted this color years ago, all the bad that had happened since might not have been averted somehow: Unc’s accident, my daddy taking off, a murder.
Haint purple. It was a thought.
The door opened before I could knock.
There stood Tabitha, a smirk on her face: What took you so long? She nodded, pulled the door open, and Miss Dinah hollered from inside, “She can feel in the floor somebody coming up the porch. No surprises round here.”
The first thing I took in, even before I got through the door, was the smell: biscuits, bacon. Hot food waiting, no matter I’d been expected at six o’clock this morning.
I stepped in, and stopped.
I didn’t know what I’d expected of the place; though I’d been here so many times before, I’d never actually been inside. I’d never given it a thought, really, only assumed it’d be like every other black’s house I’d been in: a TV, a sofa, a table and chairs, and somewhere a picture of Jesus on the wall. Deevonne’s house, and Jessup’s, LaKeisha’s and Tyrone’s houses. The only blacks’ houses I’d ever been in.
Not any different from my own, to tell the truth.
But here.
Here there were books. Everywhere.
Bookshelves lined the walls, from floor to ceiling. Books were piled in stacks on the floor, too, and lay on a coffee table to my right. A sofa sat just past the coffee table, behind it bookshelves, floor to ceiling, and at either end of the sofa were more books piled up.
The only clear wall space in the whole room was across from the sofa, where a set of shelves stopped three feet from the ceiling. There, centered on the wood paneling, was a framed photograph of Benjamin Gaillard in full Marine dress uniform. The American flag was behind him, and he seemed maybe about to smile, his eyes right on me, like he was ready to tell me something I could use.
The kitchen was to my left, a little counter right there where, if it’d been any other place, there might have been a couple of stools so you could sit, eat, talk to whoever was at work in the kitchen. But beneath the counter were bookshelves, all full. A hallway led off the kitchen, back into the house, and from where I stood I could see bookshelves down that way as well.
Unc sat at the table in the kitchen, sunglasses on but with the baseball cap off. He was smiling at me, one leg crossed over the other, stick behind him and leaned against the bookshelves, floor to ceiling, behind him.
Bookshelves in the kitchen.
Miss Dinah, dressed in one of the same old flowery print dresses she always wore, was bent over in front of the oven, then stood, in her hand a plate heaped with biscuits and bacon, a puddle of grits.
“Breakfast at noon,” she said, and gave me something of the same smirk Tabitha had: What took you so long?
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, and turned, looked for Tabitha. She was gone.
“Hurry ’fore it goes cold,” Miss Dinah said, and I went around the counter, stood at the table, next to Unc. A place had already been set: napkin, fork, knife.
“Quite a luxury,” he said. “Sleeping till noon. Like you’re the Prince of Wales or whatnot.”
Miss Dinah put a hand at her hip, the plate still in her other hand.
Unc said, “Take a load off, son.” He’d lost the smile now.
I said, “Why’d you let me sleep for so long? Unc, we got to get going,” and soon as I said it, I wondered, Get going for what? To where? Forty-eight hours to get what done?
“You don’t have a good breakfast, you not going to have a good day,” Miss Dinah said, and set the plate on the table.
I’d kissed this woman’s daughter.
I sat down, looked from her to Unc to her again. I said, “Where’s Tab—” and stopped. Miss Dinah’s jaw got a little bit tighter, her eyes narrowing the smallest bit.
I scooted my chair in, without looking at her said, “Where’s Dorcas?”
“She’s got a little homework assignment,” Unc said.
He had his Braves cap in his hand, was turning it with his fingers, a habit I’d seen him do a million times when he was worried over something: somebody at the club saying something nasty to someone else, the two of them threatening to quit their membership; Patrick or Reynold beating holy shit out of one of their dogs for no reason whatsoever; those few times a doe’d be brought up for butchering and we’d find a fetus.
I said, “What’s the plan?”
He was looking dow
n, chin almost to his chest, thinking. Miss Dinah put a plastic tub of butter down on the table, and a cup of coffee, heavy on the milk. Just like I liked it. She’d seen me fix it this way for years at the club.
She leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed. Books were stacked on the kitchen counter, too.
Unc fingered his hat, Miss Dinah stared at me. Something was going on here already.
I tried a smile, said, “What’s with all these books?”
“As a rule,” she said, and turned her head, gave me the other side of her jaw, “we read them.”
“Ease off on the boy,” Unc said. “He’s scared as the rest of us, Dinah. So please.” Still he worked the hat.
I turned back to Miss Dinah. “I guess I meant how is it you got so many of them. Books, I mean.” I shrugged. “I mean, what did—”
“You mean how come a shanty like this one have a better library than any high school in the county. That’s because I know what to spend my money on. My baby.” She seemed to soften then, talk turned to her daughter. She smiled, looked out to the front room, all those shelves, all those books. She nodded at them. “We go to the library sale every year, stock up and stock up. Proud to say, too, Dorcas read every one of them.” She gave a sharp nod. “I home-school that girl since day one. She never seen the inside of a public school, and already she got the universities of Duke, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford banging down the door to get ahold of her. Not to mention ten dozen other schools we don’t even wink at.” She nodded hard again. “She going be somebody of noteworthy mention. I tell you.”
Duke, I thought. Harvard and Yale. Stanford.
Shit.
I read. I’ve read all my life, and right then, right there, something started to twist in me, something had nothing to do with the matter at hand, namely what the hell was going to happen next. And I thought maybe that something had to do somehow with the word jealousy.
Here was Tabitha with offers already from places I’d only dreamed of.
“She got fifteen-twenty combined on her SAT, and she only a junior,” Miss Dinah said.
Shit.
Then here came Tabitha, walking fast from the hallway that led out of the kitchen. She had some paper in her hand, her forehead all worried up, and I thought she was even more beautiful than last night.
Fifteen-twenty SAT. Shit.
I looked down at my plate and didn’t feel like eating anymore.
“What you find, Missy Dorcas?” Unc said.
She sat beside him, spread the papers out on the table. She hadn’t yet looked at me, and it seemed she had no plans of it, either. She started in with her hands, motioning and motioning, her eyes right on Unc, as though he knew exactly what she was saying.
“She get in, start to download the information,” Miss Dinah said. Her eyes were on Tabitha, focused, translating. “Had seven baffles between the password and the line in.” She paused, watched Tabitha.
Unc nodded.
“Once she make it in, she find the file you looking for.” She paused, watched.
“Hello?” I said.
Still Tabitha motioned, eyes right on Unc: she made a fist, slapped it twice into the palm of her other hand. She crossed her arms, sat back.
“She say somebody find her.” She paused. “Somebody know she in there monkeying round.” Miss Dinah paused again, and now she looked down, shook her head. “Whoever it be cut her off. Just now.”
Unc stopped with the hat.
I said, “Why is it everybody knows more about what’s going on than me?”
Unc looked at me, then Tabitha. He said, “Do they know who you are?”
She moved her hands, all the while shaking her head. Miss Dinah said, “She had to break down seven baffles to get in, but she loaded in ten of her own on the way.”
Unc gave a small smile at this. “You get anything?”
She quick moved the papers on the table, shuffled them, lay them back down again.
Unc set the hat on the table, touched the papers. “Just like I figured. Like every overeducated clod I ever run into, he’s kept records of everything. Like someday somebody’d make a book out of it.”
He looked at me. He said, “Here’s your chance. Read these to me.” He pushed the papers toward me until they touched the plate. He picked up his hat, started with it again.
Tabitha finally looked at me. She leaned back again, crossed her arms again.
I glanced at Miss Dinah, saw her arms crossed, too, waiting, like everybody else, for me.
I pushed the plate away, picked up the papers. They were printouts, at the top and bottom all kinds of garbage codes and whatnot. Stuff Tabitha’d done to get in wherever she’d gotten in.
She had a modem, of course, not to mention a computer, a laser printer.
I had an alarm clock at home whose hands glowed in the dark: about the extent of the technology I had going for me. But I’d worked with computers at school, had read enough magazines, and a couple books, to know it wasn’t easy to steal mail. Or lawful.
“Read,” Unc said.
“This is somebody’s e-mail?” I said. “You stole this?”
Tabitha let out a hard sigh: Get on with it!
I took a breath, said, “There’s the stuff at the top. All this first page says is, ‘Meet with Pigboy Wednesday. Got the goods, good to go.” ’ I stopped, the rest of this page blank.
“Next,” Unc said.
I turned the page, more codes at the top. This one was a little longer. “ ‘Turn left at CR221, follow to Pigboy roost, thirteen miles, for pickup. Maersk Line at Chucktown Terminal, container 1118, will wait for you. Crate up goods, lots of popcorn. Next parcel to the boss man. We be seeing you.’ ”
Tabitha was watching me. Both she and her momma had their arms crossed, heads tilted the exact same way.
“This making any sense to anybody here?” I said, and both of them quick cut their eyes to Unc.
“Next,” Unc said.
I looked at the next page, read, “ ‘CMS fucking pain—’ ” and stopped, looked up.
Miss Dinah slowly shook her head, eyes narrowed down to nothing. “They be evil people,” she whispered. “ ‘The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.’ James three: sixteen, King James Bible.” She paused. “You read they words. You go ahead, and let evil reveal itself.”
I looked at Tabitha. She hadn’t moved.
“ ‘Pain in the ass,’ ” I went on. “ ‘Gone maverick on us. All measures must be taken. Pigboy and Fatback notified, sent packing. Must be voided by 11/24. And? LD put away, of course, if he gets in the way.’ ”
“LD,” Unc said. “One guess who that is.”
Miss Dinah said, “Leland Dillard.”
He whispered, “None other.”
“CMS?” I said, though I thought I already knew.
“You saw the man day before yesterday,” Unc said. “There between stand seventeen and eighteen.” He paused. “Dr. Charles Middleton Simons.”
We sat there, no sound at all, for a long time, that hat twirling slow as ever.
Finally, I said, “Whose files are these? Whose mail?”
Unc stood, took his stick from the bookshelves behind him. He said, “Your friend and mine, Dr. Cleve Ravenel.”
Cleve Ravenel, I thought. Cleve Ravenel. The cherry-red Ram 2500 with the black bed liner. The red-faced and white-haired club member with a beer gut that made his belt buckle disappear.
The one who’d turned too quick, scared when Unc called out his name, asked him to meet with whoever was responding to our call about a body with not much of a head left.
And look who’d responded: Yandle, Thigpen.
Pigboy and Fatback?
Unc started for the door. We were on. Going.
I said, “And who sent this stuff? Who did these come from?”
“That’s a fine question,” he said,
and pulled the door open. “You just fold these up and keep them in your back pocket.” He stopped, turned from the door to us. “If I know anything at all about the way these things work, it’s easier to find out what the message is than who’s the messenger.” He looked past me, smiled. “Ain’t that right, Missy Dorcas?”
I heard her chair scrape against the kitchen floor, turned, saw her standing, smiling at him. Then her eyes were on me, and she handed me the papers, already folded square, and it seemed for a second she was looking me over.
Cold air fell in from the open door, and I think I shivered.
Tabitha made a quick move with her hands.
“You watch your mouth, child,” Miss Dinah said. “Who taught you to talk like that?”
Tabitha grinned, pointed to Unc, nodded hard.
“What’d she say?” I asked Miss Dinah, but it was Unc to answer.
“I’ll wager her turn of phrase was a short and simple ‘Damn straight,” ’ Unc said. He was grinning now, too.
I looked back at Tabitha. She had a hand over her mouth, shoulders moving up and down, the same laugh she’d given me when I’d fallen in the ditch last night. Only now it was at her momma, scowling down at her from there at the kitchen counter. “I appreciate you don’t corrupt my only child any more than she already is,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Unc said, and nodded. “Missy Dorcas’s next assignment is, if you can make sure you ain’t going to get yourself identified, to try and poke around, get hold somehow of who the bad boy sent these might be.”
She motioned, shrugged. Miss Dinah said, “She say she try but can’t promise nothing.”
“All I can ask for,” Unc said, and Tabitha turned, headed back down that hallway crammed with bookshelves.
But at the last second, just before she disappeared, she looked back over her shoulder. She gave me the smallest wave, just her fingertips.
I smiled, nodded.
“Lose whatever idea you got in your head right now, you hear?” Miss Dinah said. She missed even less than Tabitha. “You hear?”
“What do you mean, Miss Dinah?” I said. “I was just saying goodbye.”
“Lose it,” she said, and crossed her arms.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
