by Wiley Cash
Colleen had forgotten that today was Halloween, but then she found herself wondering why she should have remembered. “You never have trick-or-treaters, Mom,” she said. “I don’t think you need candy.”
“Well, we never have pilots and FBI agents stay in the guest room either. So I guess anything can happen.”
To get to Food Lion they had to drive to the end of the island and take the bridge across the waterway. Colleen drove her mother’s car, her mother sitting upright in the passenger’s seat, talking nonstop about people Colleen either didn’t know or didn’t want to know about, telling stories of death and illness and unforeseen catastrophes as if the tragedies of other people held incredible and imminent bearing on their lives. Every story paralleled Colleen’s mother’s life in some way: a woman had cancer; an older couple had an adult child who lived far away; someone was struggling with the question of retirement and Social Security and Medicare.
“And I told Sylvia, I said, ‘Sylvia, if your daughter’s helping you it means that she wants to.’ Her daughter lives all the way in Raleigh, but she and her husband get off work on Friday and drive down here and spend every weekend with Sylvia since Ralph died. Isn’t that something?”
“That is something,” Colleen said, only half-listening. They were driving past the airport now, and Colleen craned her neck, looking out at the crash-landed airplane and trying to imagine the spot on the grass where her father had found Rodney’s body. Her mother kept talking as if she’d already forgotten about the plane, the mystery of it, and the tragedy her father had discovered.
“So that’s why I told Sylvia, ‘Let yourself be taken care of.’ Lord knows she’s done enough taking care of Ralph and the kids.”
Colleen tried to focus on her mother’s story, but her headache had not abated.
“Who’s this?” she asked.
“Sylvia,” her mother said. “Sylvia Webb.”
“Where do you know her from?”
“The gym,” her mother said. “The gym here on the island, at the rec center.”
“You’ve been going to the gym?” Colleen asked. She looked over at her mother, tried to imagine her lifting weights or riding an exercise bike in the midst of her illness.
“Well, I was,” her mother said. “Before, you know, all this. All this being sick.”
“And what did Sylvia’s daughter do?”
“She just comes to visit a lot,” her mother said. “Since Sylvia’s husband died, her daughter just comes down a lot to check on her.”
“When did her husband die?”
“Gosh,” her mother said. “I don’t know. Maybe two years ago.”
Colleen quickly picked up the pieces and threads of what her mother was telling her, ran dates through her mind, made associations from loose connections, and gauged the timing of what she was hearing. Her mother had had cancer for over a year, and Colleen knew she didn’t have the strength to go to the gym. Her mother’s friend’s husband had been dead for two years, so the story of her daughter returning home on weekends was not a new one. So why would Colleen’s mother be telling her that story now?
“What’s Sylvia’s daughter’s name?” Colleen asked.
Her mother paused for a moment and looked out the passenger’s-side window as the car whipped past stands of pine trees, the clustered businesses of the Food Lion shopping center appearing ahead on the right.
“I don’t know,” she finally said.
“It seems like you would know her name if she’s so great.” Colleen looked at her mother, but she was still looking out the window. “And what does she do? In Raleigh, what kind of work does she do?”
“I don’t know,” her mother said. She inhaled as if about to release a sigh, but she held it.
“Well, I’m sorry I don’t live closer,” Colleen said. “I wish I could come home more, but Dallas is a good bit farther away than Raleigh.”
Colleen could tell that her mother had turned her head to look at her, could feel her eyes on her now. “That’s not what I’m talking about,” her mother said. “I’m just telling a story. It’s not about you or what you should do. Everybody’s different, Colleen.”
“No,” Colleen said. “Everybody’s not different, Mom. Sylvia’s daughter, whatever her name is and whatever she does for a living, wants to see her mom. I want to see you too. She can drive home on the weekends. I can’t. We’re not different. Our situations are different.”
“That’s what I meant,” her mother said, her face now turned away from Colleen and back toward the window. “Anyway, it’s just a story.”
Colleen pulled her mother’s car into the parking lot in front of Food Lion. Her mother refused to hang a handicapped tag from the rearview, but Colleen parked as close to the store as she could. They climbed out and walked across the parking lot without speaking. Once inside, Colleen’s mother found a cart and set her pocketbook down inside it. Colleen tossed her pocketbook in as well.
“Is there anything you want?” her mother asked.
“Nothing comes to mind,” Colleen said, “but I’ll look around.” And with that they were off in separate directions, each one burning with anger and perhaps a little embarrassment from the turn their conversation in the car had taken.
Colleen found herself on the breakfast aisle, and her eyes scanned boxes of cereal, Pop-Tarts, instant grits, and oatmeal as she walked toward the back of the store. She’d had only dry toast for breakfast, and her stomach clenched at the sight of some of the sugary offerings. Her headache now squeezed at her temples and narrowed her vision, and she found her forehead sweating and felt her neck grow flushed.
When she reached the end of the aisle and turned left to round another, she spotted a woman at the far end pushing a young baby in a stroller. Colleen recognized her immediately. It was Myra Page, a girl she’d been friends with in high school but had hardly seen since they both left home for college. Myra didn’t see her, and Colleen stood for a moment, watching the baby in the stroller, who looked to be a little boy. He was chewing on something as if his teeth hurt, and Colleen thought of the Brazelton book and tried to gauge his age, but something in her stomach turned, and she suddenly feared that she was going to vomit right there on the floor.
She spun away from Myra toward the meat counter, where great slabs of steaks and ground hamburger sat on crushed ice behind thick glass. She tried to remember the layout of the store, to recall where the restrooms were. She scanned the back wall for a sign, and then she saw it on her left and made a beeline for it.
Colleen was barely able to close the stall door and lift the lid of the toilet seat before that morning’s coffee and dry toast and whatever remained from last night’s dinner left her stomach in a weak, brown stream that trickled into the toilet. She coughed, spit what was left in her mouth into the water. She flushed the toilet and grabbed a fistful of toilet paper and dabbed at her face and neck. She opened the stall door and walked to the sink. She ran the water and splashed it over her face, cupped some of it into her mouth, swished, and spit it out. Her pale face stared at her from the mirror. She winced at the dark circles under her eyes. Her blond hair still looked damp where she’d pulled it back in the stubby ponytail. Her pocketbook was in her mother’s shopping cart, so she didn’t have anything with her. No lip gloss. No brush. Nothing to improve what she was seeing before her. She pinched her cheeks to bring color back into them, gave them a few light slaps. She opened her mouth, smiled gruesomely at herself.
Outside the bathroom, Colleen saw that Myra Page had reached the end of the aisle and was now standing by the butcher’s counter, a woman beside her. To her great horror, Colleen discovered that the woman with Myra was her own mother, and she was holding Myra’s baby in her arms, her fingers clasping the teething toy and passing it in and out of the baby’s mouth while its flailing arms reached for it. Myra and her mother were laughing. Both women looked up and saw Colleen at the same time. Her mother smiled a smile that looked like elation to Colleen. Myra sim
ply waved as if she and Colleen were still girlfriends.
Myra, as if remembering or intuiting the great upheaval of Colleen’s life, cocked her head to the side and looked at Colleen as if she were a child. “And how are you?” she asked once Colleen was close enough. “You’re in”—she paused as if trying to remember something—“Texas now, right?”
“Yeah,” Colleen said. “Dallas. My husband took a job there.”
“Wow,” Myra said. “I bet it’s really beautiful out there.”
“It’s nice,” Colleen said. She tried to smile, tried to keep her eyes off Myra’s baby boy. “It’s growing on me.”
“Well, now she’s home visiting her mama,” Colleen’s mother said, rocking her body and the baby from side to side at the word mama. She laughed a little and looked at Colleen. Her face changed. “Are you okay?” she asked. Colleen nodded her head and did her best to smile. “Honey, did you just throw up?”
Colleen was crying by the time they made it out to the car. Her mother sat in the passenger’s seat while Colleen lifted the paper bags full of groceries into the trunk. When she was finished, she slammed it closed and left the cart sitting where it was. She pulled her shirtsleeves over her hands and wiped her eyes, and then she opened the driver’s door and climbed inside. She started the engine and backed out of the space without looking at her mother.
“I’m sorry,” her mother said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It’s okay,” Colleen said. She sniffed, wiped at her eyes again.
“I wasn’t thinking at all,” her mother said. “I just saw Myra and didn’t think a thing about holding her baby. I just forgot.”
“Forgot what?” Colleen asked. They had come to a stop at a red light before leaving the parking lot and turning onto Beach Road. “Forgot that I was with you? Forgot that I lost my son? Forgot that you lost your grandson?”
“I don’t know, Colleen,” she said. “Maybe, for a minute, I forgot to be sad.” Her face broke and she closed her eyes. Colleen knew she was fighting tears. She had rarely seen her mother cry, and seeing it now surprised her.
Colleen reached out and closed her hand over her mother’s. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not mad. I’m definitely not mad at you. I’m just sad, and I know you are too. It just is what it is.”
The light turned green, and Colleen eased onto the gas and turned out of the parking lot. They rode in silence for a moment.
“I shouldn’t have held that stupid baby,” her mother finally said.
Colleen smiled a little, looked over at her. “It did look stupid, didn’t it?” she said.
Her mother smiled too. “Yes, it did. It looked pretty stupid.”
Colleen laughed. She reached for the radio. “Stupid baby,” she said.
They left the radio on once they crossed the bridge and returned to the island, and Prince’s song “When Doves Cry” played while they drove up and down the gridded streets, leaving campaign leaflets in people’s mailboxes, the cold and frozen groceries almost forgotten in the trunk. And they talked, really talked. About Scott’s new job and how much he was gone. About her mother’s uncertainty over whether or not she wanted Colleen’s father to take on another term as sheriff. About the airplane and what it could mean for her father’s reelection, for the investigation into Rodney’s death that would now take so much of his time.
Colleen wanted to stay in the car with her mother, their windows rolled down, the radio on, their conversation moving freely and loosely among topics that were connected by memory and shared history and kinship. But they had the groceries to unload, and Marie had a round of medicine due with her lunch, and so Colleen was forced to point her mother’s car toward home.
The phone was ringing when they walked into the house, and Colleen, carrying a bag of groceries in each arm, walked into the kitchen and set them down on the counter. She answered the phone, immediately recognizing the man’s voice on the other end.
“Hey, girl,” he said. It was Danny Price, her first best friend, and also the first boy she’d ever slept in a bed with. The first boy she’d ever danced with until she was certain she’d drop from exhaustion or exhilaration. The first boy she’d ever seen stare at himself in a rearview mirror while applying mascara outside the Pterodactyl Club in Charlotte, strobe lights flashing on the other side of the building’s nearly blacked-out windows, the music pulsing through the walls and into their chests. They had just turned eighteen, and as Colleen had watched Danny swipe the makeup wand across his eyelashes, she realized that she had never felt freer or more certain about her freedom at any other time in her life.
Now, all these years later, Colleen smiled, turned, and leaned her waist against the counter.
“I was wondering when you’d call,” she said. She twirled the cord around her finger.
“I’m calling to check on you. Myra Page says you threw up at the Food Lion.”
Colleen laughed out loud now, the first real laugh that had escaped her body in what felt like years.
“Word travels fast,” she said.
“It does on this island,” Danny said. “You want to go out tonight, make some bad decisions? Give Myra and them something else to talk about?”
“I do,” Colleen said. “I do.”
Chapter 9
After getting off the phone with Sheriff Petty, Winston called Glenn and then Agent Rollins and told them what he’d learned. Both were happy with the news, but Winston could tell that neither one of them had high hopes that anything at the scene down in Horry County would prove to be connected to their own investigation. Sure, the cocaine from Petty’s bust might have been flown in on the airplane that now sat on the runway here in Brunswick County, but without fingerprints or ballistic evidence connecting the two scenes there was just no way to know. So, they’d have to wait until all the samples were turned in and tested and then tested against one another.
“We’ll know something sooner or later,” Rollins had said, but Winston didn’t have any use for later. He didn’t want to acknowledge the ticking clock of next week’s election, especially not to Rollins, but the ticking was there, even if he was the only who could hear it.
After hanging up with Rollins, Winston heard Vicki raise her voice out in the lobby, speaking loudly as if trying to get someone’s attention. “Sir,” she said. “Sir!”
Winston leaned forward as if being closer to Vicki’s voice would give him a better idea of what was going on on the other side of his closed door.
“Sir!” Vicki said. “You can’t go in there!”
Footsteps rounded the corner and pounded down the hallway toward Winston’s office. As if commanded by instinct, Winston stood and braced his body for whatever was about to come through his door, understanding that his gun hung just out of reach. Without thinking, he moved from behind his desk and readied himself to face the person that Vicki had been unable to stop.
He winced when the door flew open, not so much because the force of the swing made him blink, but because of the person the door’s opening had revealed: Ed Bellamy stood just a few feet away from him, breathing heavily, his face gleaming with sweat, from either anger or exertion, his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. Neither man said a word, each seemingly surprised to be in such close proximity to the other after the stir Bellamy’s march into the station had caused. Winston could see Vicki standing in the middle of the hallway, her face a combination of fear and anger. Winston looked from her to Bellamy, and then he looked back at her. “It’s okay, Vicki,” he said. “It’s okay. I’ve got it.”
She nodded her head slightly and turned the corner to make her way back toward her office.
Winston watched her go, and then his eyes settled on Bellamy’s. He’d left one hand on the doorknob, and with his other he pushed his glasses back toward his eyes, and then he raised a hand and pointed his finger at the dead center of Winston’s chest. Bellamy didn’t say a word. He just stood there, pointing.
It was cle
ar to Winston that Bellamy was not someone looking for a fight; he was very clearly someone who’d had the fight taken out of him: a father who’d lost a child, a man whose life had been destroyed in the course of a single day. Behind his thick glasses his eyes were damp with tears garnered by grief and rage, and in that single moment of silence that passed between them, Winston understood just how close and inextricably tied together the two emotions are.
Winston did not whisper, but he did speak quietly. “Ed,” he said, “you can close the door.”
Bellamy stood there for a moment, and then he pushed the door closed behind him, his other hand still pointed at Winston in what seemed like an accusation.
“What’s going on, Ed?” Winston asked. He stepped back, felt his desk brush his thighs. He leaned against it as if he were about to relax into a conversation with a colleague who’d stopped by to swap gossip.
“We’re not going to do this again, Winston,” Bellamy said. He waved his finger as if scolding a child, and then he folded his fingers into a fist. “We’re not going to do this.”
“Do what, Ed?” Winston said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He gestured to a chair in front of him, and then he bent slowly and picked up his hat where it sat on the seat. “You want to sit down? Talk this over?” He stood slowly and walked behind his desk to give Bellamy more room to do whatever he decided to do.
Bellamy did not sit, choosing instead to put his hands on the back of the chair and grip it as if preparing to throw it against the wall. He leaned toward the chair, his voice coming out even and clear.
“We’re not going back, Winston,” he said. “We’re not going back to night rides and gunshots. We’re not going to stand for it.”
“Jesus, Ed,” Winston said, “what in the world are you talking about? What gunshots?”
“Last night,” Bellamy said. “Bradley Frye and all his good old boys. They showed up at Rodney’s house and threw something through a window, demanded that boy Jay come out. They were driving through the Grove in the middle of the night in their trucks, revving their engines, shooting off guns. Had their rebel flags flying.” He pushed his glasses up again, and Winston saw that his hand trembled. “They came by my house too, and I was waiting for them. Anybody firing a weapon in front of my house is going to take fire in return.”
