The Line That Held Us

by David Joy

  The metal door clanked and banged as Dwayne wrestled his way inside. Calvin couldn’t see him once he went into the building and at that moment he was overcome with how ill prepared he was for this, how there was no way to know what lay ahead. Dwayne came back out with a camouflage tarp folded under his arm, a coil of rope in one hand, the knife held with its point to the ground. He headed back the same way he’d come and Calvin knew he must’ve been holding Angie somewhere off in the woods, that that’s why the deputies hadn’t been able to find her when they raided the house. When Dwayne came into the front yard, Calvin had the rifle pointed at the sky, struggling with his free hand to get his cell phone out of his pocket. He found the number and dialed, keeping his eyes on Dwayne as he headed back into the trees. The phone rang and no one answered and in a second it cut to voicemail.

  “Pick up the phone,” he muttered under his breath as he hung up and dialed again. “Pick up your fucking phone.”

  The line kept ringing and then he heard someone answer.

  “Hello.”

  “I know where he’s got her,” Calvin said. “She’s in the woods. He has her back in the woods behind his house.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Listen to me, Michael. He’s got her off in the woods somewhere behind his house. He’s going there right now.”

  “Calvin?”

  “Yes, goddamn it. You need to listen to me. Dwayne Brewer has her in the woods. I just watched him come out of there and now he’s going back and I’m going after him. You need to get up here right now. Get up here to his house right now.”

  “Calvin, you need to slow down and tell me what you’re talking about. Tell—”

  “Get up here, Michael. He’s got her in the woods behind his house. Do you hear me? I don’t have time to keep saying it. Get up here now. She’s in the woods and I’m going after them. When I find her, I’m going to do what I should’ve done in the beginning, Michael. I’m going to blow his fucking brains out.”

  Calvin hung up the phone without waiting for a response. Dwayne was already almost out of sight. He knew if he waited any longer he wouldn’t catch up, that a man could lose track of what he was chasing in a hurry in these mountains and never see it again. Things had a tendency to disappear like ghosts in this place, into the trees, over the ridge, then gone.

  He stumbled down the hill and hunched low as he crossed the yard trying to move fast but stealthily. The leaves crackled under his steps and he weaved through a maze of saplings standing thin as river cane. The hillside rose steep ahead and Dwayne had already crossed the horizon. This is the end, Calvin thought. This is where it all ends. Right on the other side of those trees. Just over that hill.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Halfway back to his grandfather’s cellar, Dwayne Brewer knew he was being followed. At first it was a gut feeling, a sort of paranoia that stopped him in his tracks and he knelt and waited and listened.

  The mountains had a way of concealing sound so that something right over the ridge might as well be in another world. But the opposite was true as well. Inside a cove, every sound was cupped and amplified like it was being held inside a jar. That’s how he knew someone was coming. Soon as they topped the ridge and started down the other side, the sound of footsteps rushing through leaves came to him like a voice.

  He hid behind a giant tulip poplar and when he saw who trailed him he felt all of the blood in his body flush his face. His head was on fire, a fury spinning his mind thoughtless. The brown canvas pants and camouflage T-shirt Calvin Hooper wore blended into the hillside, but Dwayne could see him just fine, just as he could see the rifle Calvin carried. The 1911 would’ve felt so good in his hand right then, but the law had taken everything so that now he was left with only the knife he carried.

  There was no way he could get his brother’s body out of here now, and that thought packed dynamite inside him, knowing he’d have to leave Carol behind. He’d gone back to the house for a tarp and rope to gather the pieces. Every choice held consequence. Every step he’d ever taken in his entire life had led right to this.

  Fate’s a funny thing, he thought, the way things might seem meaningless at the time, but wind up being what brought down a man’s whole life. There was so much hatred in his heart, so much disgust for how he’d never had the cards to play out a single hand. There had always been two choices: a man could lie there and take it, or he could grab whoever was closest and squeeze the life out of them so that he wasn’t alone in his suffering. That choice had always been easy and his decision was no different now.

  Dwayne set the rope and tarp at his feet, because he would no longer need them. Turning back to his path, he ran through the woods like an animal, barefoot and wild, the knife he carried gutting the air before him. Jagged sticks and stone shards stabbed the soles of his feet as he ran and he hobbled through the pain until he found the place his grandfather’d built.

  He stood there out of breath for a moment, his chest heaving for air. Inside, he hovered over his brother’s body, fully aware that he would likely never see him again. He was fixated on Carol’s teeth, that smile so perfect and straight, his mouth open so that Dwayne could see every groove and ridge of his top molars, a sound accompanying that image as it settled inside him, the sound of his brother laughing. Carol had always had this goofy sort of laugh, the kind that made others join whether they were in on the joke or not. Dwayne’s mind was consumed by that smile. He could see his brother on the other side of the room, that dish towel tied around his waist like an apron, hear him saying, “You got to let them cool,” those mud pies lined out, those teeth spread wide and white. The thought of never seeing that again was too much to bear and he reached down and pinched one of Sissy’s front teeth between his fingers. He wiggled the tooth back and forth and it slid free with little effort at all, its long yellow root like a fang cupped in the palm of his hand. He slipped that first tooth into his jeans and reached for the next. Those that pulled easily were taken, those that hung were left, and with his hand in his pocket he rattled the teeth like dice as he turned away.

  The sun was on its descent and now found an angle that shined directly through the open door so that Angie’s face was lit by blinding spotlight. She was crying, her breath stuttering from her lips. Her legs twisted and kicked at the dirt floor. Her body wove back and forth and her head rocked, all of her movements slowed and beaten, and she muttered the same few words in different order as if repeating them over and over might will them to be so. “Just let me go. Let me go. Please. I have a child. Let me go. I have a child. Please. Just let me go.”

  Kneeling behind her, he clenched a fistful of her hair and yanked the crown of her head into the post at her back. He nosed forward and whispered in her ear. “You remember what I told you. ‘In a moment he will be broken beyond healing,’” Dwayne said. “Well, that time has come. He’s coming, darling. Calvin’s right out there in those woods, and the two of us are going to meet him.”

  Dwayne twisted her hair around his hand as if he were winding cordage, and when it was coiled he clamped as tight as he could. Her skull tapped against the post and he glanced down to where her wrists were bound and slipped the knife into the crease between her arms. When she was free, he stood slowly. Her head remained flush against the post, her shoulders and back arching there, too, as she tiptoed upright. He eased the blade to her throat, serrated teeth gumming at her neck, then pulled her into him, letting go of her hair, and wrapping one arm tight around her chest.

  “If you try to run, if you try anything at all, I’ll yank this knife back and forth across your throat like a goddamned ripsaw. You understand me? I won’t stop till I hit bone. You understand?”

  He felt Angie’s head nodding against his chest. “Yes,” she said. “I understand.”

  “You think about that baby in your belly. Don’t you think about nothing else. You hear me? Nothing else. Now, walk.”


  Dwayne took a step forward and Angie’s feet faltered beneath her. They tripped those first few steps, each struggling to learn the other’s timing, an awkward waltz where neither led nor followed. The world was blindingly white outside, a light shining with an intensity he’d never seen in all his life, and for a moment Dwayne held there in the open mouth of the cellar, not quite sure what to make of it. He hugged her tight to his chest and Angie’s hands clasped on to his forearm, as if she would fall from some tremendous height if she let go.

  All his life the world had seemed so exposed, like anything could be had if a man were willing to take it, the gate open and the road broad. But suddenly he had a strange feeling like it had closed in, like it had narrowed down into a cavernous place he could barely squeeze through and there was only one way out.

  “Calvin,” she whispered. “Calvin.”

  Dwayne glanced up and there he stood with his rifle shouldered, his eyes glaring down the length of the barrel. Calvin’s teeth showed and there was a strange sound coming out of him, his teeth clacking, as Dwayne and Angie walked straight toward him. The woods were filled with a luminous sort of gleaming, jewel-like in the way the trees and branches shone, a light casting them glass.

  “I’m leaving now, Calvin,” Dwayne said as he turned and backed into afternoon sun. “You do something stupid and you’ll lose the last of it. Think about that. Look at what you’ve lost and look right here in my arms at what you’ll lose.”

  Calvin floated there in front of the root cellar, his knees half bent, his shoulders sagging like he was on the verge of collapse. Stumbling backward, Dwayne could feel the air opening around him and he knew where he had to go. Just a little ways farther, he thought. I’m almost there.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Calvin couldn’t look away from Angie’s eyes, the way those eyes were begging him to save her, begging him to make everything okay. Her cheeks were red from weeping, her blond hair silken in the light. Bare legs streaked with mud, her knees were bruised and bloodied, but those emerald eyes seemed almost prayerful, like she was praying to him, like everything rested solely in his hands.

  Angie braced tightly to Dwayne’s arm and he held the knife’s edge against her throat, her head tilted up like she was trying to keep her nose above water. Sweat streamed down Calvin’s face and he kept opening his hands and clenching them tight on the rifle. His fingers were dead, sweat stinging his eyes as he glared down the sights. A voice in the back of his head kept saying, Just shoot him. Shoot him, Calvin. The top of her head didn’t reach Dwayne’s collarbones, but he’d never been a good shot and all he could think was how he’d fuck it up like everything else, how he’d pull the trigger and miss.

  “How long you think you can follow me?” Dwayne said. He was taking long strides backward through the woods, the two of them no more than twenty feet apart.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “But I am, my friend. I am going somewhere. And we’re getting close to the point where we part ways. Pretty soon you’re going to have a decision to make.”

  The dirtied jeans Dwayne wore hooked under his heels as he back-stepped barefoot through the trees. His pale skin was dark with hair except a bright red stain over part of his chest and covering the arm he used to hold her. The mark was raised and blistered like he might’ve been burned. His face was this clean-shaven juxtaposition to the rest of his body, with eyes that seemed to hold the very end of the world. Reaching back into those hollowed eyes, Calvin could see there was nothing inside him. It was foolish to follow, to take a man like Dwayne Brewer on his word.

  They ascended a gradual slope broken with post oak and poplar. Rusted leaves crackled under their steps and a flurry of tulip poplar seeds whirled down around them as wind bowed the treetops. It was one of those days where warm air rolled up from the gulf, the wind carrying the smell of saltwater six hundred miles from ocean to mountain. Off to the right, Calvin spotted an outcrop of boulders and he thought, If I can back him into those rocks, I can force his hand.

  Calvin quickened his pace and rounded Dwayne to push him, and Dwayne seemed confused for a second as he turned, staring at Calvin like he was trying to read his tell. Dwayne trod carefully so that he never gave angle to his back. He kept Angie hugged to his chest, that knife pressed so hard into her neck that her skin lapped the edge. Peeking over his shoulder, he seemed to see where Calvin was forcing him and he sidestepped quickly, Angie’s feet dragging the ground, but Calvin cut him off.

  Soon Dwayne was backed against the boulders. Fallen leaves had blown against the outcrop in knee-high drifts, dark stone splotched with olive-gray patches of lichen. Dwayne tried to rush to his right but she was a burden to him now, and Calvin headed him off with the rifle, pulling the trigger, that .45-70 blew apart the mountains like a stick of dynamite.

  His ears wailed and he racked the lever. Smoking brass ejected to his right as another cartridge rode forward. A wide circle was blown into the rock to the left of Dwayne’s head, the stone opened white to quartz and feldspar.

  “You’re going to force me to do something I didn’t want to do, Calvin,” Dwayne yelled, all of their heads ringing. “When I cut her throat, that’s on your hands.”

  “You’re not leaving here with her.”

  “That’s where you’re mistaken.” Dwayne shook his head and smiled. “You’re getting awfully brave staring down the barrel of that rifle, but you’re not thinking clearly. God be the man with the gun, but not today. Not this time. Not when you know what I’ll do just to see the shattered look on your face.”

  “Calvin, please,” Angie stuttered. “Please, just put the gun down.”

  “She’s making good sense, Calvin. You put that gun down.”

  “Let her go.”

  “I let her go and you’ll shoot me where I stand.”

  “No, he won’t,” she said. “He won’t shoot you. Will you? Put the gun down, Calvin. Put it down.”

  “You ever think the three of us were meant to be right here, that all our lives we’ve been headed right here to this place, that it’s fate? It’s fate that brought us here.”

  “Shut your mouth, Dwayne.”

  “What if I told you I was a prophet?”

  “I said shut your fucking—”

  “What if I told you I was sent to teach you something, Calvin, that that’s all the meaning my life ever had?”

  Angie was sobbing, her eyes like glass, her breath sputtering from her lips.

  “This is exactly how it was supposed to end,” Dwayne said. “Every one of us fighting to hold on to what we love most, one no better than the other.”

  Calvin watched him but didn’t speak.

  “This is the only way it could have ended, ain’t it? We’ve all been headed right here all along. All our lives. Every step we ever took brought us right here. Can you see that? Can you see that, Calvin?”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

  “I’m no more out of my mind than you are, friend.” He stretched his eyes wide and stared long into him, a look Calvin Hooper could feel boring through him.

  “We’re nothing alike,” he said.

  “You can’t see it yet,” Dwayne said.

  “I can see fine.”

  “What I’ve taught you is all that there is, friend. It’s everything.”

  “You haven’t taught me a goddamn thing.” His cheek was hot against the buttstock of the rifle and he could see his breath fogging and fading from the stainless receiver.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Dwayne said. “I think I’ve taught you the most valuable lesson in the entire world. For whom are you willing to lay down your life? Till a man knows that, he doesn’t know anything. ‘For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce,
despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.’ For whom are you willing to lay down your life, friend? Outside of that there is nothing.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Dwayne!”

  “That’s the reason all of us are here. That’s the reason, but the difference is you took mine. You took everything I love. I watched it slip away like water through my fingers. You stole the only thing I loved in this world.” Dwayne looked for a second like he was about to break, but then his brow lowered and he showed his teeth like an angered dog. He growled loudly as if in pain. “But that’s okay. I can see that now. It’s okay,” he said. “Maybe it all had to be piled on me. Maybe I’m the only one on this goddamned earth could take it. And maybe that’s what had to happen for your eyes to be opened. We’re exactly the same, me and you.”

  “I’m nothing like you. Now, let her go. It’s over.”

  Dwayne took a single step backward, his bare back pressed against the stone. He watched the sky and closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and a smile spread over his face. “You still can’t see it,” he said. “You still can’t see it and it’s right in front of your eyes. It’s the reason we’re gathered here. The only reason we’re here is because of the ones we loved. That’s the line that held us. I would’ve done anything in this world to keep my brother from enduring the slightest suffering. I would’ve given my life if I were asked. The reason you’re here, Calvin Hooper, is because of this woman in my arms, and the reason she fought like hell is because of that little baby inside her. Are you so blind you can’t see?”

  Calvin didn’t think he’d heard Dwayne clearly. He thought he’d misunderstood. But those words settled into him like he was being filled full of sand, weighing him down and holding him motionless. Confusion bent his face and he twisted his cheek against the rifle, staring hard into Angie’s eyes. “Is it true?” he tried to say, but those three words fell silent, no air to breathe them over his tongue, so that she had to read what he was trying to say on his lips.