The Line That Held Us

by David Joy

  The trail that wound a half-mile into the woods behind the shotgun shack where Sissy had lived could be seen more as a tunnel through the trees than any visible path scored into the ground. First light glowed behind a treed horizon, but Dwayne could have found his way whether night or day, whether the path was grown over or exactly how his grandfather’d left it.

  Only an iron door with black paint peeling to ragged patches of rust and a small wall of river stone cobble showed against the hillside. Even that was camouflaged by briar and vine. The rest of the root cellar was buried into the mountain to keep the temperature low and constant. Red Brewer’s father had built this place and it would remain long after their name was gone. The construction wasn’t all that different from root cellars and canning sheds old-timers kept all over the mountains, but what was strange was that he’d built it so far from the house. His grandfather had always run a thumper keg still that required good water, so he set up along a shallow creek and built this place a few feet away to store runs of white liquor.

  Those last few steps, Dwayne hefted his brother a few feet at a time. His shoulders burned and his tired mind retreated to a memory when a thin, red mud wheelbarrow track had marked the path he’d taken. Back then, he and Sissy would help their grandparents run mason jars of canned summer vegetables from the house to the shed in a blue bucket wheelbarrow lined with old quilts.

  Dwayne set the bundle behind him and lifted a thick iron bar from its welded latch, the heavy door groaning open on a rusted hinge. A whisper of air came onto him and the smell of it, the coolness of it against his face, took him back to a moment when he’d stood right there only reaching his grandfather’s waist. A dressed deer had hung from a hook on the ceiling to dry age. His grandfather had brought him to work the dark, sinewy meat into cuts. There was so much memory tied to this place, so many memories of kin and the closest things he’d ever known to love.

  Gradually his eyes adjusted to the darkness inside and he entered. There was no electricity and the lanterns that swayed from rafters were empty of oil. The sliver of light that carved through the doorway lit the dusty dirt floor, the pitched wood eight-by-eight supports, the crate shelves lining the walls where forgotten jars still held canned beans and hominy in clouded solutions. A small crack ran jagged along the mortar on the back wall and glistened with a slow seep of water that left the room damp and dank with mildew.

  Dwayne carried his brother into the far corner and propped him against the cobbled wall. He pulled Sissy’s knife from his pocket and sliced the sheet open as if it were a cocoon. The smell of rotting flesh was growing, and Dwayne was caked with it—his white undershirt and brown pants were stained with mud and blood and sweat and something else, something that leached through the sheet. He worked the fabric away from Sissy’s body, cutting shreds at a time until only a bunched mat rested beneath him. Sissy’s body was rigid so that it took a great deal of effort for Dwayne to balance his brother upright, his arms at his sides, his legs out before him as if he were just sitting there perched against the wall.

  Clay covered Sissy’s camouflage clothes and painted his darkened skin a dry, dusty orange. A tin pail sat by the door and Dwayne carried it outside to fill it with creek water to wash his brother’s face. The ground was soft and green, a thick mat of turkeyfoot spreading right up to where the water ran. There was no color or tinge, the creek clear as crystal as he dipped the bucket full, swirled the water around the rusted bottom, emptied and filled the bucket again until what he carried matched the clarity of what flowed over stone and sand.

  Back in the cellar, Dwayne cupped his hands full and poured water over his brother’s head like a baptism. Carol’s hair was thick and curled, a sandy color like hay, but it lay flat as the water slicked it against his scalp, tiny droplets like glass beads catching in his eyelashes. Dwayne wet one hand and swiped it down his brother’s cheek, the texture like brushing rain from a suede coat. Something about that feeling made him almost sick with guilt and he couldn’t bear to touch his brother again. He stood and took the pail and pitched water against Carol’s face, then poured what remained over his head and arms. Though Carol was soaking wet—his clothes drawing tight to his body, the dusty ground darkened around him—Dwayne could see his brother more clearly now. His skin was greenish in hue, his arms blistered and dark as if charred by fire. There were blisters on his lips, an amber-colored resin dried at his mouth and eyes, that dark birthmark the only proof at all that this was Sissy.

  Dwayne stood over what was left of his family. Until then, it had all been work, and only now could he stop to think about the absolute consequence of it all.

  All his life, he’d felt a responsibility to shield his younger brother from harm, to ensure that he took the brunt of whatever pain this world dealt because he was tough enough to bear it. Whether it was standing between Sissy and their father when Red Brewer grabbed a glass gallon jug or an iron firedog to swing, or shoving Sissy in the closet when one of Red’s drinking buddies wandered into the boys’ bedroom late at night to crawl in bed beside them, Dwayne Brewer had taken everything he could, out of the deepest love he’d ever known.

  Guilt washed over him then, an immense shame that hit him with an intensity he’d never felt before. He crashed to his knees sobbing and toppled face-first into his brother’s wetted chest. Dwayne wailed and screamed and pounded his fists against the ground until his knuckles crusted with dirt and blood. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I’m sorry!” His words were muffled but loud. The tears would wane only when something greater found him. Only one feeling could mask that kind of sadness, only one emotion he knew more powerful than suffering. In time, it would fill him. Only in time would he find a place to aim that rage.

  THIRTEEN

  Calvin Hooper woke at first light frozen to the bone. He was naked all but boxers and boots, his skin slicked and wetted with mud. The sound of his teeth clacking roused him. He was curled in the fetal position, shivering, and as he opened his eyes, his vision tightened onto something shiny in front of his face. He reached for what he saw, rolled the brass casing between his fingers and studied the copper jacket: a single .45 ACP cartridge, left in the grave like a promise.

  Calvin clenched the bullet in his fist, rolled onto his back, and stared into empty sky. A few dim stars had yet to retreat to darkness. He lay there for a few minutes thankful for having woken at all. With the tips of his fingers he traced the cut along his left eyebrow then felt the knot at the back of his head. His skull throbbed with the pace of his heart, and as he stood the pain strengthened, pounding as he crawled his way out of the grave.

  His parents’ house overlooked the middle field and he couldn’t risk being seen, so he kept tight to the hillside on his way home, slinking along a sagging fence line with posts grayed and thin as gnawed bones. There were so many questions, so many things he didn’t know right then. He could still hear Dwayne Brewer’s voice echoing, five words as finite and certain as those carved in gravestone. “He paid what he owed,” he’d said. Soon enough Calvin would know his debt. The bullet he now carried in his hand ensured it.

  * * *

  • • •

  FIELDS GREW THICK on both sides of Darl Moody’s driveway: tall, golden oat grass ready to be cut and baled. Pasture butted against a thick copse of pine, the gravel drive carried on into the trees to where the doublewide stood with its beige siding stained and sagging. The shingled roof was littered rust-brown with pine needles. The ground was strewn the same, so that as Calvin stepped out, the soles of his boots were silent against the yard. He fished his pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his jeans and blew a line of smoke into the sky, the top of the pine above him dead and filled with widowmakers.

  A small covered porch led to the front door; a white plastic chair was slung to the side, the door hanging crooked from its hinges. He made his way up the steps and went inside. The entrance opened to a large living area where clothes were piled
on a black leather couch. The coffee table in front of the couch was cluttered with bills and remote controls, an entertainment center catty-cornered against the wall.

  He walked around the couch into the dining room: a hallway off to the right, the kitchen to the left, another bedroom on around from there. The candlelight bulbs of a cheap brass chandelier were lit over the dining room table, only four of the five bulbs aglow. The table was crooked and there was blood on the floor, that dark red color raising the hackles on his neck. He knelt there and examined the pattern dotted about the carpet. Something under the table caught his eye, a small silver bullet casing.

  Still crouching, Calvin surveyed the room searching for where the bullet hit. Above him, the fifth bulb in the fixture hadn’t burned out. It was shattered. The metal chandelier arm was mangled and there was a hole in the tiled ceiling panel behind it. A single casing on the floor and a hole in the ceiling, but there was not enough blood for anyone to have been shot and killed there. He rose to his feet and made his way around the rest of the house, the place empty and silent.

  When he walked outside onto the front steps, he could see the barn down the drive through the pines. Two Tennessee Walkers stood side by side in the pasture off to the left when he came down the gravel, the grass high around them, horses old and rib-slatted. Calvin watched them and they didn’t turn. A breeze pushed across the field slicking the grass to one side like parted hair and there was a chill to the air when it reached him.

  In his mind, he already knew what was inside. He could walk the place by memory, having been in that place hundreds of times before: a pile of rusted T-posts in the corner, dust-covered quarts of motor oil lining a shallow ledge, brown-glass Clorox bottles, lengths of rope wound and draped on bent nails, bolt cutters here, a set of Allen wrenches there, three cage traps beside a dented gasoline can in the loft. It was a scene not unlike a hundred other barns in the county, a place filled with nothing of great importance. But as his hand touched the cold metal handle of the barn door, he was overcome with an ominous sort of sadness, something coming through his body, assuring him of what he would find.

  Pulling the heavy door back on its rollers, he heard a barn swallow fly from its cob nest in the rafters, the sound of its wings pattering overhead then silence. The air carried a mix of old hay and gasoline and the dull iron smell of rust. There were no lights inside, only daylight coming through the open door. From the mouth of the barn, he could see Darl Moody against the round hay bale, his arms stretched at his sides, his head hung to his chest, the neck of his shirt red with blood. The rest of him was hidden behind an old Massey Ferguson tractor. Calvin inched closer to where he could see the loader raised high with its bale spear driven into Darl’s chest, and for a second he stood there in absolute disbelief. In all his life, he’d never seen this sort of wickedness, the spectacle of what lay before him unreal, unfathomable.

  Blood covered the front of Darl so that he was highlighted dark with it, the puddle under his feet sitting thick as paint on dirt like what might’ve been left from gutting a deer. Calvin collapsed to his knees. He was staring at the dusty ground, pins and needles stinging the palms of his hands, his arms unable to support his weight. A ringing rose in his ears and the room closed in around him and he couldn’t breathe and he turned and crawled out of the barn, clawing his way across the gravel till his hands found grass, dew seeping through the knees of his jeans, the coldness of the world waking him up with a white-hot intensity.

  Mourning found him there, a sorrow so deep that it clenched him into a ball and he sobbed like the world had ended. Seconds were hours and minutes were days, years passing in the decades of tears, a thousand or more before the feeling waned enough for him to make the call.

  “Jackson County 911, what is your emergency?”

  “I need help,” Calvin said.

  “Okay, sir, I need you to tell me your emergency.”

  Those three words were all he could stomach. He tried so desperately to speak.

  “Sir? Sir, are you there?”

  There was not enough breath inside him to answer.

  FOURTEEN

  Four hours into sitting at the sheriff’s office waiting for detectives to return from the scene, Calvin Hooper was stir-crazy. The room wasn’t much bigger than a closet and he’d memorized every detail: the slate-colored level loop carpet; the blank white walls; a round-face clock centered above the door with its red second hand ticking away the last of twelve o’clock; the rough texture of the gray plastic tabletop where he sat in a metal folding chair, staring at a small video camera mounted against the ceiling in the corner of the room.

  He was convinced they were watching him. He tried to stay calm, but the truth was he was losing his mind. The fluorescents overhead were blindingly white, their reflection against the walls surrounding him with light. It was like being snow-blind sitting there, the room so bright he could feel it physically touching him, beating against his arms and his face. Four hours he’d been sitting there. Four hours and no one had come in to say a word. He couldn’t take it any longer. He knew if he sat there one more minute he was going to lose his mind.

  Calvin stood and peered through the small shatterproof window in the door. No one appeared to be standing guard outside. He expected the door to be locked, but to his surprise it opened to an empty hallway, not a soul outside to stop him. Pulling his pack of smokes from his pocket, he headed back the way they’d brought him in. The front lobby was around the corner to the left.

  He passed an open doorway and peeked into an office where a woman wearing too much makeup sat behind a desk pecking away at a keyboard. She glanced up at him and he could see the line where her foundation ended along her jaw, her face a darker shade than her neck. Tight curls streamed over both shoulders, her dark hair teased in the front. She squinted hard and started to stand. “Sir?”

  Calvin sped up and didn’t answer.

  “Sir,” she said again, now behind him in the hall. “Sir, where are you going?”

  He turned around and showed her the pack of cigarettes in his hand. “I’m going to go outside and grab a smoke.”

  “No, I need you to go back down the hall and have a seat in that room.” She came toward him, the pants suit she wore shushing as she walked.

  “I’ve been sitting in there four hours and there hasn’t been a soul come in there and say one word to me. Ain’t said boo to a goose.” Calvin was getting angry. “Now, I’m going to go outside and smoke a cigarette and when I’m through I’ll come back in here and sit down.”

  “No, sir. You’re going to go back to that room like I said and you’re going to sit there and wait patiently.” When she reached him, she latched ahold of his arm and Calvin jerked away from her.

  “Get your goddamn hands off of me.”

  She swiped for him again and he leaned back. The woman was yelling that he was going to go back and sit in the room and Calvin was telling her he was going outside to smoke a cigarette, and they were at each other’s throats when Detective Michael Stillwell came around the corner and pulled them apart.

  “Hey,” Stillwell stammered. “Hey. What’s going on?”

  The woman started to speak and Calvin cut her off. He’d known Michael Stillwell all his life, the two of them having played baseball together in high school, and though they’d never really been friends, Calvin was glad to see a familiar face. “I’ve been sitting in that goddamn room for four hours, Michael, and nobody’s come in there to say a word to me. Now all I’m wanting is to go outside and smoke a cigarette.”

  “Not right now,” Stillwell said. He had gray eyes and dark hair same as he always had, but there were bags under his eyes now and he’d softened up in the middle. He wore a cheap navy blue suit, one of those buy-two-get-the-third-free Belk jobs that wasn’t fit for shit but minimum-wage job interviews and caskets.

  “What do you mean? All I want to do is go outs
ide and smoke a goddamn cigarette. Am I under arrest?”

  “No, you’re not under arrest.”

  “Then why can’t I go outside?”

  “I was on my way in to see you,” Stillwell said. “Come on. Let’s go back here and talk.” Stillwell put one hand on Calvin’s shoulder and opened his other to gesture down the hall. He led Calvin back to the interrogation room, opened the door, and held it for Calvin to enter. “Have a seat right there and I’ll be back in a second.”

  Calvin walked into the room and plopped into the folding chair. He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands, opened his eyes wide to the brightness of the room, and clenched his teeth.

  In a minute or two Stillwell came into the room carrying two styrofoam cups. “Brought you some coffee,” he said, setting both cups on the table. He took off his jacket and hung it around the back of his chair.

  “I don’t want any coffee, Michael. I told you I want a cigarette.”

  “Go ahead and smoke.”

  “They told me I couldn’t smoke in here. Said nobody’s allowed to smoke inside the building.”

  “And that’s about the least of my worries, Cal,” Stillwell said. “Ash into that coffee cup if you don’t want it.” He slid a steaming cup a little closer toward Calvin.

  Calvin leaned back in his chair and dug around in his pocket. He shook a cigarette out of his pack and struck his lighter, took a long drag and blew the smoke overhead. The cloud broke against the ceiling and came down around them as he set his pack on the table, then centered the lighter on top.

  “I looked through the written statement you gave when you got here, but I’m going to ask you some questions and I need you to be completely honest with me, Cal.”