by Bret Lott
“That’s what we got to figure out.” He paused. “That, and why these boys aren’t playing by their own rules.”
“What do you mean?”
“You said Thigpen give us forty-eight hours. Now they shaved it down to nine o’clock tonight.” He stopped, swallowed, took in a breath. “That gives us eight hours.”
I looked at him, looked at him, tried as hard as I could to remember back before the fire, to what he’d looked like then, to what his eyes were like, his face. I tried to remember him before.
But all I could see was Mom, her face, the tape, her eyes speaking to me, and my own eyes filled, my breath gone again, on my chest a weight I could feel trying to kill me.
“Thank you,” he said. “For taking me down.” He paused. “For making sure neither of us blink.”
I tried at breathing in, tried at it again, then felt, finally, his hand on my shoulder, him holding me, and then the breath came, and I swallowed, whispered, “It’s because I need you,” the words as broken as the window behind us, the air out of me just as cold.
“Likewise,” he whispered.
It wasn’t County Road 221 we went for first at all.
It was Hungry Neck.
We left the trailer, headed right back into the land like we’d started out on Saturday morning, headed down Lannear Road toward the levee, around us the heavy shroud of oak and pine, everywhere a cold kind of lushness, winter on its way. We were headed back, Unc informed me only once we were in the Luv, to try and find precisely where Cleve Ravenel lost his way.
Cherish your momma, Constance’d told me, when all I’d done was abandon her back to the house in North Charleston, led her out here only to get kidnapped, sucked in deeper than Unc and me both.
Cherish your momma. Good advice. But it’d been given to me, an idiot. Just me. Just nothing.
We reached the levee, where Lannear hits Levee Road going to the right and left. To the left, the road headed back toward those stands we’d been letting men off at on Saturday morning. Unc said, “Stop here.”
Here was beside that clear-cut field, not far from where Patrick and Reynold had let out the dogs.
I looked out across the field, dry white weeds no different from the ones I’d parked the Luv in last night, and the levee itself to the right of it all, a twenty-foot rise of dirt.
Unc said, “What time was it when Cleve left?”
I looked at him. “You mean when you sent him off?”
“Yep.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe six-fifteen? Six-thirty?”
“Turn right.”
I turned to the right, followed the back side of the levee. We rotated which parcels we used for hunts and were headed back deep now onto the property, back to parcels we wouldn’t be using until near Christmas.
If ever again, I thought.
“Six-fifteen would have been no more than an hour off high tide,” Unc said as we bucked through a low spot, that shroud even heavier, the lane narrower the deeper we got. “Go toward the river when we hit Trestle Road, then take the fork off to the right.”
I had an idea now what he was thinking, and here came Trestle, Levee Road dead-ending into it.
It was called Trestle Road because it led up to the trestle, though it was gone now, taken down by the WPA, Unc told me once, in some sort of project supposed to keep people working, never mind it was dismantling and not building. But by the 1930s the lumber trains were long gone anyway, the land stripped bare. The track bed still ran through the property, only the gravel left, the tracks themselves hauled away as well for scrap by the same boys took down the trestle.
This was one of my favorite places when I was a kid, where the track bed started its slow rise up to where the trestle used to be. I’d ride my bike all the way back here and on that track bed, and then, at the top, there where the bed ended in a man-made bluff on the bank of the Ashepoo, I’d stop, look both ways up and down the river bending away from me on both sides, the trees right up to the edge of the river like giant men on horseback, I used to think, watching over all the marsh.
Hungry Neck. Our land.
But that didn’t matter now. They had Mom. They had her.
Straight across from the bluff and on the other side of the river was the marsh, stretching wide all the way to Edisto, littered across it all those green islands, nameless, empty, the only remains of the trestle out in the marsh the black tips of pylons now and again stretching off into the distance, like the spine of some huge dead animal. Nothing more.
“Stop,” Unc said, and I hit the brakes. We were parallel to the tracks, the dead end of this fork of Trestle Road another quarter mile or so.
Unc climbed out, stick in hand, and I followed.
Not ten yards in front of the Luv was where the road dipped lowest, where at high tide a finger off the Ashepoo found its way in, covered the road in a good six inches of water.
He’d found it blind, ticked off in his head the distance as we drove, the directions I’d turned, worked out in his head even the tide tables.
Hungry Neck was his.
We knelt at the low spot, the road muddy still, twice a day covered with water. And there, clear and clean and obvious as a message in lipstick or a homemade tattoo, were the tracks: two of them, big tires, perfect for a Ram 2500 four-by-four.
“There you go,” I said. “Tire tracks right on through.” I stood. Up ahead the trees started to thin, past them the river, I knew, and the marsh. “Here’s where he went through,” I said.
But then it came to me: What did this prove? Where was he headed?
Unc still hadn’t stood, only touched at the low spot with his hand, the stick beside him on the ground. “Tracks, you say.”
“Yessir,” I said. “Four tire tracks, two for each side, right and left, front and rear.” I paused. “But what does this prove? Where was he headed?”
“Damned if I know,” Unc whispered, and now he took hold of the stick and stood. “And you say there’s tracks, four of them.”
“Yessir.”
“Well, then,” he said, “what else do we not know?” He turned, seemed to look up to the track bed, then behind him, like he was hearing something.
“About what?” I said. “There’s a whole lot I don’t know.”
“About, for instance, these tracks.” He looked at me. “Think, Huger.”
I looked down, saw the tracks, four of them for four tires, leading on down into the low spot and back out the other side.
Four tracks. One for each tire.
There should have been eight. Four for on the way in, four for on the way out. Trestle Road dead-ended right up ahead.
I looked up at Unc, still with his head turning one way and the other, listening, smelling. I said, “He never came back through here.”
“You got that right,” he said. “There’s hope for you yet.”
We drove the quarter mile on to the end, climbed out, looked around. No tracks anywhere, the ground hard packed. The road widened into a cul-de-sac of sorts, a turnaround for after we’d dropped off men at the stands leading out here. The track bed was here right next to us, a good thirty feet high. There were only a few trees between us and the river, and I walked to it, stood there on the bank.
Here they were, those giants on horseback, watching, waiting.
And the marsh, all the colors of spartina and yellow grass, of salt-marsh hay and bulrushes: greens, yellows, browns, reds, all under an afternoon sky, cool and crisp.
My mom was gone.
I turned, went for the Luv, climbed in, saw only once I was settled in that Unc was halfway up the track bed, his hand feeling the ground, feeling it.
I hollered, “Only way he made it out of here was with his four-wheel-drive. I ain’t got that, so there’s no use, Unc.” I paused. “It’s almost two o’clock. We got places to go.”
Unc started down through the weeds straight to the Luv and climbed in. He said, “County Road 221 is on the way to Walter-boro. T
hat’s handy.”
“Walterboro?” I said.
“Yandle Real Estate and Development, Delbert Yandle, Proprietor,” he said. “We’re going to pay a visit to a two-bit shitass with a son after his own heart.”
I wheeled the Luv around, started back.
“Forgive me,” he said, and I looked at him. Shadows in through his window flew across him, the afternoon sun in a November sky quick on its way down.
I said nothing, because there was no blaming him for all of this. I had my own to ask for as well, I knew, and I gave it the gas, gunned it even through that low spot, mud on our quarter panels now, too, I was certain. We had places to go.
Pigboy Roost turned out to be nothing, only a spot on a road that led out of Jacksonboro proper, the road between the fire station and the Road to Emmaeus AME Church. But it was thirteen miles we had to head back on it, for nothing. We got there, saw only wetlands, the upper end of Snuggedy Swamp. Not even a dead refrigerator or washing machine.
We cruised a mile beyond it, then a couple miles back toward Jacksonboro, just in case my odometer wasn’t working right, me the whole while looking, looking. But there was nothing. Only swamp.
“Should’ve known,” Unc said finally, and slapped hard his knee, shook his head. “Just a place to pick up goods. Just a drop site, nothing else.”
I drove.
I had no clue what it was had been big about Walterboro once, whether it was cotton or if there was a mill here or if it was some major lumbering operation, a depot for all the wood taken off Hungry Neck and everywhere else down here.
But it’d been a hub, which accounted for the big pillared homes on the main street through town, all of them perfect and manicured, like sooner or later Scarlett was going to ride up in her buggy.
And the land, too, was strange, suddenly these small hills beside 64, a small twist to the blacktop, geography out of nowhere here in the middle of the Lowcountry.
Now, as we pulled into town, the blacktop twisting, those weeny hills picking up around us, these pillared homes reminded me of the waste of time a thirteen-mile drive into swampland was. The day was quick on its way to dying, my mom somewhere and scared to death while we took a drive in the country.
“Past the stores and whatnot after the light. First house on the right past the light,” Unc said. “White pillars. May be a sign hanging out front.”
We pulled up to the light at the main intersection, all yellow brick storefronts: a tailor, an ABC store, an Ace Hardware. The light changed, and I pulled through.
There it was, just past Jax Lawn Mower Repair and Snapper Store: YANDLE REAL ESTATE AND DEVELOPMENT in red and blue letters on a white background, hanging from a white signpost.
A pillared house, perfect lawn, rocking chairs on the porch. Live oaks.
“Don’t look two-bit to me,” I said, and turned into the circular drive.
“Two-bit,” Unc said, his hand to the dash, “is a matter of the heart.” He nodded, agreeing with himself. “We went to school together. Might have been a friend of Delbert’s, if the Lord hadn’t been so kind to me as He has.” I stopped the car, square in front of the brick steps up to the porch.
He turned to me. “I don’t know what we’ll turn up in here. But you don’t say word one. Don’t.” He put his hand on my arm. “It don’t matter if he knows something about your momma or not. It don’t matter. What matters is what we can get this man to volunteer without thinking he’s volunteered a whit. So you just keep quiet.”
I said, “Yessir,” and turned off the engine. I turned to him. “Should I bring in the gun?”
He looked out the windshield. “Today, you’re carrying,” he said. “If it was any other day, I wouldn’t let you do this. But today.” He stopped, slowly turned to me. “Today.” He popped open his door, climbed out.
I led him up the steps and to the door, a big oak thing with an oval pane of glass set into the middle, etched in it a huge medieval R. I let go Unc’s arm, made to reach for the doorknob, but Unc pushed it open before I could even touch it.
He walked right in, me behind him, the stick never touching ground.
“Oh,” a woman said, her voice a little chirp of sound. “Oh. Oh.”
She had on a low-cut blouse and sat at a huge desk, eyes open wide. She had orangish blond hair, boofed out frizzy and long, the bangs sticking straight up in a kind of spray across her forehead. A big-hair gal. Then she stood, and I could see the low-cut blouse was also one of those white see-through-but-not-really-see-through kinds. She had on a flowered bra, pink leather miniskirt.
“Leland Dillard to see Delbert Yandle,” Unc said, and walked forward until he touched the desk.
“Oh.” I could tell she knew who he was, her mouth all pursed up, eyebrows together: she’d been warned about him.
The desk sat in the middle of what’d once been the foyer, the wood floor shining. Behind the desk was a staircase that led to a window, turned, disappeared on up. The desktop was nearly empty, on it only a lamp, a phone, a tablet of paper on a green blotter. Next to the tablet sat an open bottle of nail-polish remover, three or four cotton balls.
“Ma’am?” Unc said. “Will you tell him I’m here, or will I simply have to intrude upon his highness?”
“Um,” she said, and picked up the phone, pushed a button. Three nails on the hand with the receiver were still red.
She listened, her eyes going from Unc to me for a second, then back to Unc. “Uh-huh,” she said, then hung up. “He’s in there.” She nodded to our left.
Unc nodded. “Thank you, ma’am.”
I led him to a door to our left, black oak, crystal doorknob. Beside it stood one of those rotating real estate signs, the kind with photographs of places and a line or two about each tacked on. I only saw it for a second, but it looked like every property on there was a trailer.
I pushed open the door, let Unc in first.
There, leaning against the front of his desk, arms crossed, head tilted to one side, stood a man with hair as boofed out as the woman’s, only his looked shellacked into place. He was tan, had on a pink button-down and striped tie, black pants, leather suspenders. Slowly he shook his head, smiling.
“Brought the Cub Scouts today, I see,” this Delbert Yandle said, and laughed, like he’d actually said something funny.
Unc walked to the middle of the room, stopped. He let the stick touch the ground, and I turned, pushed the door closed.
And heard a commotion, papers tossed, something heavy hit the floor, a grunt and tussle. I turned around, saw Unc had Delbert Yandle on his back on the floor, the stick across his throat, Unc sitting on Yandle’s chest, his knees pinning down Yandle’s shoulders.
Unc’s face was right down in Yandle’s, the bill of his cap jammed into Yandle’s forehead. “You get your boy and Thigpen out of my affairs now, or I’ll kill you,” Unc hissed, and I could see Yandle’s face screw up, him trying to get air.
I took a couple steps toward them, wondered what it was I was supposed to do. Unc’d told me not to say a word. But now Yandle’s face was turning too red, the sound he was giving out something past a gasp.
I said, “Unc. He’s not breathing.”
“Seems a personal problem to me,” Unc said.
“Unc,” I said. “This won’t get Mom here.”
Unc held him there, held him. Then, finally, he eased off, but only a little, and Yandle drew in shallow breaths. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he whispered.
“I’m talking about Eugenie,” Unc said, his voice all normal now, calm.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Unc put the stick into his throat again, leaned again into it, maybe even a little harder. “Eugenie Dillard,” he hissed again. “Eugenie.”
And now Delbert Yandle was looking at me, and here came that red again. Only this time there wasn’t even any sound coming out of him, not even that sound past a gasp. Nothing, and the color was going to purple now, and then a kin
d of blue started in.
I don’t know, I don’t know, he mouthed again and again.
“Unc,” I said, touched his shoulder.
Unc held him that way a second more, then let him go altogether, stood up, all in a second. He took the tip of the stick, put it straight to Yandle’s jaw, jammed it in the flesh beneath it.
Yandle only lay there, arms flat on the floor, his chest heaving in and out. He whispered, “All’s I want to do is buy your fucking property, Leland. I offered you a good deal more than it’s worth, and that offer still stands.” He grabbed another breath. “Even if you come in here and try to kill me over my own dickhead of a son. And I know a dozen Thigpens.”
“Where’d you get money?” I said, and Unc jerked a little toward me, surprised at my voice. But here was the man wanted to buy Hungry Neck, and Unc had him by the throat. How many more chances would I have?
“Where’d you get all this money,” I went on, “when all you sell is trailers?”
Delbert Yandle glanced at me, couldn’t move his head for the tip of the stick at his jaw.
He swallowed, or tried to. “Investors,” he said, and swallowed again. “Want to make it a preserve. Want to make it a wildlife refuge and a—”
Unc jammed the tip a little deeper.
“Want to make it another Hilton Head,” Yandle whispered. “Like what they’re doing to Daufuskee. Golf courses, condominiums.”
Unc looked at me over his shoulder. “Does anybody ever have a new idea about what to do with land, except pave it over?” He turned back to Yandle. “And who might these investors be?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I get faxes from Nashville, Atlanta, Miami, Charlotte.” He pulled in a breath again, whispered again, “I don’t know,” then, “Ain’t you ever seen a patsy before?”
Unc leaned the tip a little harder into him. “One more time. Does your son have Eugenie, and where are they?”
“I disowned him three years ago,” he choked out.
Unc froze, eased off the stick.
I said, “Disowned him?”
Unc’d given up most all pressure on the man’s throat, lost on the news, and slowly Yandle reached up, took hold of the tip, pushed it away. He looked at me, then Unc. “Like I said, he’s a dipshit. Haven’t talked to him in five years. Still owes me over twenty-two thousand dollars, spent on what I have no clue.” He swallowed. “Look at his career decision. You yourself can testify what a losing proposition law enforcement is. And of the dozen or so Thigpens I know, not a one of them will speak to me or to my son. But if the one you’re after is any acquaintance of Doug’s, he’s got to be a dickhead too.”
