The Line That Held Us

by David Joy

  Colima Mexican Restaurant was slammed for a Wednesday. The waiter had rushed by twice to check on her and she’d ordered a frozen margarita, though as soon as he brought the drink, she knew she wouldn’t take so much as a sip. A couple in their early sixties was eating with two little girls, probably granddaughters, in a booth across the room. Angie watched the younger of the two girls pour four sugars into her soda, the grandmother finally stopping her when she reached for a fifth.

  Even if Angie was knocked up, she wasn’t going to run off and get married just to save face. Nine times out of ten, those marriages fell apart. So many girls she’d gone to high school with got pregnant soon as they graduated and married before they were nineteen. Nowadays, most of them were divorced, splitting custody of six-year-olds, and meeting at gas stations and grocery stores every other weekend to swap off, barely a word left to say to the men they’d sworn to spend the rest of their lives with.

  Truth was, she wasn’t in any sort of hurry to have kids. After this fall, she needed thirteen credit hours, mostly clinicals, before she could take the National Council Licensure Examination to become a registered nurse. Lately, she’d been thinking about going to the university when she finished her associate’s. Western had an RN to BSN program that’d set her up for grad school, go on to be a family nurse practitioner. All told, she was looking at another four or five years to finish, and at twenty-four that seemed like forever.

  Through the doorway leading into the front dining room she spotted him stopping to talk to a pair of state troopers eating with two town cops. In a place like Jackson County, most everyone knew one another, and if they didn’t outright know you, they probably went to church with your kin. Commonality could typically be reached within a name or two or by asking what cove you came from. If you couldn’t make heads or tails of someone by then, odds are they weren’t from around here.

  As Calvin wandered into the room, the older man at the table she’d been watching stood and grabbed ahold of his hand, shook with one and patted him hard on the shoulder with the other. The two little girls examined him while the man’s wife smiled as if sitting on a church pew. They spoke for a minute back and forth, but Angie couldn’t hear what was said over the soccer game playing on the television in the corner of the room.

  The restaurant kept salsa in syrup dispensers, and she poured some into a black bowl and took a chip from a basket in the center of the table. Salsa ran down her chin as Calvin scooted into the booth, and Angie cupped her hand to catch what spilled, grabbed a napkin, and laughed.

  “How ladylike,” she joked.

  “You been here long?”

  “Maybe ten minutes.”

  A tall waiter with a kind smile squeezed Calvin on the shoulder. “Amigo,” he said. The restaurant was family owned, all the waiters looking almost identical except for facial hair and haircuts. “You know what you want to drink?” the man asked.

  “I think I’ll have a Dos Equis,” Calvin said.

  “Grande?” The waiter raised his eyebrows and stretched his hands to show the height of the mug.

  “Sure,” Calvin said, and the waiter nodded his approval before walking away.

  When his beer came, Calvin squeezed a lime wedge and sprinkled a dab of salt into it. Angie ordered shrimp fajitas and Calvin asked for two chicken burritos with nacho cheese and red sauce, the same as he had every time they’d ever come. Staring through the window onto the shopping center parking lot, Angie saw a group of college kids sneaking nips from a metal flask as they strutted toward the Quin Theater ticket box.

  “You know, that’s the first place you ever took me,” Angie said.

  “Where’s that?”

  “To the movies,” she said, nodding through the glass toward the theater across the parking lot. “You took me out to eat Robbie’s Char-Burger and then we went and watched a movie. I can’t remember what we saw.”

  “World War Z,” Calvin said.

  “You know you’re lucky I ever went out with you again.” Angie traced some of the salt from the rim of her margarita glass and licked it off the tip of her finger.

  “Why’s that?”

  “You took me to the Char-Burger, Calvin. Had grease all over your shirt.”

  “So why’d you go?” Calvin raised his eyebrows.

  “I don’t know,” Angie said. “I guess I felt sorry for you.”

  “Sorry for me?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled. “You were just pitiful.”

  Calvin grabbed his beer, leaned back in the booth, and took a long draft. He shook his head and peered out the window. There was something about the way he always looked at her. They’d been together two and a half years and she’d loved every minute. They were always picking at each other and laughing, and sure, that was part of it. But the reason Angie knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him was that there was comfort even in silence. They didn’t have to say anything.

  Angie thought about how she’d hesitated to tell Calvin about wanting to go back to school. They’d only been together six months at that point, and while the mountains were changing, there were still plenty who bought into that old-fashioned idea that women were wives and mothers. To her surprise, though, he was encouraging. He told her to get out of her lease and move in with him so she could save some money and focus on her schoolwork. If that’s what she wanted, he said he’d do anything he could to help her.

  Remembering that right then, she still didn’t know how he’d take the news of a baby, if there was a baby, but she knew she could tell him anything.

  In a few minutes, the waiter brought the food, a cast-iron pan sizzling with shrimp and peppers and onions, the rest of the plates circling a tray he balanced on his outstretched arm. He slid the pan onto the table, warning, “Hot plate,” as he emptied the tray and asked if they needed anything else.

  “I think we’re good,” Calvin said.

  Angie was starving, having skipped lunch to make it to microbiology lab. Wednesdays were her hardest days of the week: developmental psychology, health system concepts, and lab before one; three hours of clinicals from two to five. She loaded one of the warm flour tortillas and shoveled half a fajita into her mouth, scarfing it down, never shy about eating.

  Calvin chewed a small bite of food forever, finally choking it down as if it pained him to swallow as he picked about his plate. Over the past three or four days he hadn’t eaten much of anything that she’d seen. Wasn’t sleeping, either, though that wasn’t all that strange. He dropped his fork and it clanked against the plate as he kneaded his eyes with the heels of his hands. He stretched his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, turning in his seat and appearing to look back at that table where the troopers sat.

  “Why you so squirrelly?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You not going to eat?”

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  “You getting sick or something?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Angie shoveled shrimp and peppers onto another tortilla. She was headed out of town for a few days to visit one of her girlfriends in Asheville. “You sure you don’t want to go with me? We can go out to some of the breweries. I know how much you love Asheville,” Angie said sarcastically.

  “I can’t,” Calvin said. “Not in the middle of the week. We’re already behind and Dad ain’t going to be there to make sure anything gets done.”

  Angie wondered if work was wearing him down. As long as she’d known him, he’d been busting his ass six days a week, and he was too stubborn to listen when she told him to slow down. That’s the way he was, working himself to death, and in a complicated way that was one of the things she loved most because no one carried that old-time work ethic anymore. That drive reminded her of her father and grandfather, salt-of-the-earth men who worked head down with callused hands.

  The older gentleman
from across the room wandered over to their table, hobbling bowlegged ahead of his family like he’d climbed off a horse. He rubbed his stomach with one hand and held a styrofoam to-go box in the other. A thick mustache crossed his lip. His hair was thinning and he had a pumpkin for a gut.

  “Tell your dad I asked how he was doing, all right?”

  “I will,” Calvin said.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met.” The man’s wife shuffled in front of her husband and held her hand out to Angie. Angie covered her mouth until she’d had a chance to swallow. The woman wore a loose-fitting T-shirt and a long denim skirt, her hair permed and dyed. “I’m Dottie Mathis,” she said. Her voice was high-pitched and nasal. “Our boys grew up with Calvin. Played ball together.”

  “I’m Angie.” She shook Dottie’s hand and smiled.

  “You’re a Moss, aren’t you?” Dottie said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I think I know your mother.”

  Angie nodded.

  “She work down there at Freeman’s?”

  “She does.”

  “I thought so,” Dottie said.

  “And who are these little cuties?” Angie turned her attention to the girls.

  “These are our granddaughters,” Dottie said. “Amber and Tiffany.” The older girl, maybe fourth grade, stood proud with her hair in a frizzy ponytail and black-framed glasses; while the younger girl, about five years old, tried to look tough hiding shyly behind her grandfather’s leg. “They belong to our oldest, Mark. The two of y’all ought to be having some kids of your own pretty soon. Y’all tied the knot?”

  “No,” Angie said. Her face blushed as she thought, Who the hell asks that?

  “You not asked her yet, Calvin?”

  Angie turned to Calvin, who clenched his fork in his hand. He looked like he wanted to stand up and ram it right in her ear. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

  “You’re living together, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  Who the hell is this woman?

  There was an abrupt pause in the conversation, everyone smiling awkwardly.

  “Well, let’s let them get back to eating,” the man said, and he gathered his wife and grandchildren, putting his arms behind them to lead them toward the cash register.

  “It was good seeing you,” Calvin said.

  “Nice meeting you,” Angie said.

  “And it was nice meeting you,” Dottie added.

  “Tell your dad I said hello,” the man said, and then they were gone.

  Angie waited until they’d left the room. “They seemed nice.”

  “They are,” Calvin said.

  “Then why you say it like that?”

  “Nosey old bat.” Calvin pinched his nose. “You’re living together, aren’t you?” he mocked. Angie shook her head and snorted.

  Reaching across the table, she scooped a chip through his refried beans and raised her eyebrows with her mouth full. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “What’s stopping you?”

  “Stopping me from what?”

  “From asking.” She beamed, having put him to the fire.

  Calvin looked at her, and the last of daylight came through the window and shone in his eyes like lake water. “You not going to drink your margarita?”

  NINE

  That first week work kept Darl Moody busy sunup to sundown and that was his savior. They were building a rock wall along the front of a piece of property owned by folks who summered in the mountains. The last week had been spent digging and pouring a footer, but now that the concrete was dry, he got to do what he did best—and while his hands worked, his mind was thoughtless.

  Now, in theory, with enough time and practice, any man could learn how to lay block. But the truth of the matter is that anyone who’s spent time trying knows good and well that what looks simple enough simply ain’t simple at all. There’s an art to it. There’s muscle memory to throwing mud and there’s a God-given eye for level. Some of that can’t be learned, but Darl Moody was a natural.

  Early that first summer out of high school, he went to work and it was clear as day he’d been born with a gift. From the way things normally operated, even an outsider could look on at a crew and tell the pecking order. There were usually four men, and the youngest mixed mud and moved block. If the youngest was smart, he kept his mouth shut and stayed out of the way and watched the older men work and tried his damnedest to learn something in how they moved. Then there was an older one who could prep block and lay it well enough to make quick work of sidewalls, which was easy enough because there were line blocks and mason string to keep things running true. The boss man usually spent most of his time staring through a transit, moving that transit all around the jobsite to make sure everything was plumb. But the man who mattered, the most experienced mason, was the one who built the corners, because all of it, the whole wall, tied back to how those corners were laid.

  What took most folks years took Darl Moody about a month. He had a natural eye for balance so that what he put down left little need to check for level. He laid block like a savant, cocking his head to the side, shifting things a hair, so that when his hands let go, it was plumb. Every time. Like clockwork. He didn’t have to think much about it to do it. The truth of it was that when his hands were moving he never thought about anything at all. And that’s how he worked.

  The sun came up and the frost burned off and the day warmed the men’s backs so that by lunchtime the others were beat, but Darl kept working. He turned, grabbed block, threw mud, and went on until the day was gone and there was no more light to see.

  Visiting his sister had complicated things in a way he hadn’t expected. Though guilt was eating him alive, he’d started to think that maybe that was punishment enough. Having to live with those feelings. Having to hold on to that secret. If he confessed, it wouldn’t just be him who’d pay. His conscience would be clear, but all of that weight would shift onto the people he loved most. So him carrying it started to seem like the more honorable thing to do. Sacrifice the one for the many.

  After work, Darl stopped in town, grabbed four junior bacon cheeseburgers from Wendy’s, and scarfed the first three down before he was a mile up the road. He’d save the fourth for breakfast and get started early. Best to stay busy, he thought. Best to just work yourself dog-tired, drink yourself to sleep, and hope you don’t dream. Dreaming was the worst of it anymore. Within that space a man had no choice whether or not he ventured into the shadow of memory.

  He shook a can of Skoal to check if there was any left, then threw the empty tin on the floorboard and reached for a new can out of a roll he kept behind the seat. He ran his fingernail around the edge to rip the paper seal and loaded his lip with wintergreen, the tobacco stinging his tongue as he licked his fingers clean.

  Darl lived in a doublewide tucked in a grove of scrub pine by the hay barn on the last of his family’s land. His father had rented out the trailer all Darl’s life, but after the old man died of a heart attack not long after his son finished high school, Darl shacked up in the trailer so that he could stay close to home and keep an eye on his mother. At one point in time, the Moodys had owned somewhere close to two hundred acres at the end of Moses Creek. But through the years, bills came due and folks lost jobs and times came where the family couldn’t even afford the taxes, so now they were down to a final twenty-acre plot that didn’t amount to much more than a few thousand dollars each fall when Darl cut the fields for hay.

  It was almost nine o’clock when he pulled down the gravel alongside the barn and made his way to the house. A car was in the drive and Darl didn’t know who in the hell the beat-up Buick belonged to or what they were doing at his house. He reached under the seat for his pistol only to realize he’d left it by the bed that morning. As he pulled alongside the car and parked, he c
ould see the shadow of someone sitting in a white plastic chair on the porch. Darl stepped out of the truck, raked the tobacco from along his gums, and tossed the plug of snuff into the pine-needle yard.

  “Can I help you?” Darl asked.

  “Wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t,” a voice grumbled from the porch.

  When he got to the front steps, Darl could see him in the yellow porch light. Dwayne Brewer sat low in the chair, his back bent awkwardly with little posture at all. He wore a pair of dark canvas carpenter’s pants and a white T-shirt that climbed high on his arms. Dark black hair covered him from his shoulders to the backs of his hands. Dwayne stood when Darl came onto the porch. He was a good three or four inches taller than Darl and built like a concrete pillar. His hair was shaved low and he wore no beard, though stubble grew from the base of his neck to his eyes.

  “I’m Dwayne Brewer,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Darl answered. He fiddled in his pocket for his keys. “What you doing here?” Darl asked, as he stuck his key in the dead bolt and opened the door.

  “I got a few things I need to ask you.” Dwayne stood behind Darl as if he were going to follow him inside.

  “Well, to be honest with you, I’m beat,” Darl said. “I ain’t much in the mood for company, and I don’t know a thing in this world me and you would have to talk about.”

  “It won’t take long,” Dwayne said, a certainty in his voice that ensured he would not leave until he got what he’d come for.

  “All right,” Darl said. “Let me just run take a leak right fast.”

  “I’ll come inside.” Dwayne waltzed into the house without waiting for a response.

  Darl hit the lights in the living room. Clean laundry he hadn’t folded was heaped on the couch. He tossed his keys on a side table and walked toward a darkened hallway. “Make yourself at home,” he said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  A small bathroom opened to the left before Darl’s bedroom, but he headed for the gun. Darl flicked a lamp by the bed and found the M&P Shield where he’d left it and he shoved the pistol down the back of his pants, the grip hanging on the ridge of his belt. In the bathroom, he panicked. He turned on the faucet and stared at his reflection in the mirror over the bathroom sink. The water ran into his hands and he cupped it to his face, droplets catching in the curve of his beard. He tried to tell himself that it was all right, that things were going to be okay, but the feeling in the pit of his stomach said different. Darl flushed the toilet nervously in case Dwayne was listening, then made his way back to the front of the house.