suggested coming in, but I’d told him I would mess up if he
did. I was already beside myself as it was. I pressed my hands into my lap, had to clear my throat before I could speak.
I said, “I got some information,” and he put the cigarette in an ashtray and picked up his pen.
He said, “Good. Good. I’ve been waiting on you to come
back. That information you gave me the first time is one of
two busts we’ve made this summer. That makes you a reliable
source.”
He mashed the button on his pen repeatedly while he
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waited. Mr. Reardon appeared to be under pressure, like a
boiler about to blow, not calm like when he took Daddy away.
I took a deep breath, and said, “I reckon I’m gonna give you my name this time. I have to in order to say what I gotta say.”
I expected a reaction out of him, but he only waited for me
to go on.
I said, “I’m Jessie Sasser. My daddy is Easton Sasser, the man you and them others caught a few weeks back.”
He didn’t seem shocked, or even remotely surprised. He
only nodded, and wrote something down. My name most
likely.
I said, “I ain’t in here ’cause of that; it’s about a Murry.”
He said, “They causing trouble?”
“They’ve always caused trouble. You have no idea.”
He said, “Okay. Well then, go ahead.”
“The man with the eye patch and the scars on his face?”
He nodded, and said, “Agent Robert Smith.”
I nodded. “He got burned a long time ago.”
Mr. Reardon said, “Yes.”
I couldn’t tell if he knew more than that or not.
I said, “He ain’t who he says he is.”
His expression became guarded, and he replied with, “And
just who is he supposed to be?”
“Martin Murry. He’s one of them.”
“How did you come to know all this?”
“He’s been watching our house—”
“That’s not out of line, considering.”
I said, “He told me himself.”
“How’d he come to do that?”
“I was driving Daddy’s old running car. Can’t no Murry
stand anyone else hauling liquor on Shine Mountain. They’d
been trying to get a hold on it for years.”
Mr. Reardon got up and began to pace around the room.
“Were you hauling?”
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“No!”
Maybe that was too loud, too guilty-sounding.
I shifted on the chair. “Of course not. I told you before, I don’t lay claim to it.”
“It tends to be a family thing, like with them. I’m begin-
ning to think it’s why you came in here the first time. A re-taliation of sorts.”
I said, “It wasn’t that.”
I was getting flustered. I had to get him back around to
why I was really in here.
“It was my own daddy I came in here to tell you about,
only I got scared and told you about the Murry still instead.”
“Inform on your father? Why would you do that?”
“On account of what happened to my mama a long time
ago. I’ve always thought she died on account of making shine.
I didn’t know until a couple days ago I had it wrong. It was Martin Murry who caused her death.”
He sat back down, and said, “Your mother was killed by
my agent who isn’t who I think he is?”
I nodded. “I was four years old, but I remember it. She was
standing by a still. It blew up and I never knew why until that agent you think is Robert Smith told me only yesterday he’d
shot at it. She was burned. It’s how he lost his eye, got them scars of his. I been blaming Daddy all along.”
He said, “I’m sorry, Miss Sasser, but this is all sounding a little far-fetched.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“Let’s back up a minute. What happened after he stopped
you?”
“He made me go with him.”
“What reason would he have for doing that?”
“That grudge he’s carrying.”
“What happened then?”
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was ‘cleaning house.’ He had a gun. I figured I wasn’t going to get out of them woods.”
Mr. Reardon got up again, and started pacing. “You say
he’s Martin Murry, and he was involved in your mother’s
death, and intending to maybe kill you too.”
“Like I said, he’s got some sort of grudge. He’d been plan-
ning on getting married back then. It didn’t work out, he says because of his scars and all.”
He paced some more, and while I’d been sure I’d feel bet-
ter after telling everything, there was a heaviness instead, a weightiness that grew with each tick of the clock on his wall.
He reached for the phone on his desk while looking at his
wristwatch.
“Miss Sasser, my apologies, but I need to make a phone
call.”
I was being dismissed, and I rose from the chair. He didn’t
believe me.
I said, “Ask him. Ask him what happened to Lydia Sasser
back in 1948. See what he says. Ask him who Martin Murry is.”
Mr. Reardon began dialing, and said, “Yeah, I’ll do that.”
I said, “I’m scared. My little brother’s scared. We can’t even stay at our house. You go inside, and you’ll see for yourself.
They’ve painted words in some of the rooms. We painted
over the ones outside, but you can still tell.”
He stretched the phone cord across the desk in order to
open the door for me. I hesitated before I walked out.
He said, “Phil Walker, please.”
My voice pleading, I said, “Mr. Reardon, I got more proof.”
He put a hand over the mouthpiece, gave me an impatient
look.
I spoke fast as I could. “There’s an Oldsmobile Rocket
Eighty-Eight on the side of Little River Road. If it ain’t
burned up totally, it’ll be close to it. That was my Daddy’s car, what I was driving when he stopped me. And on Shine
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Mountain Road, in the curve just after Little Pine Creek, is our house. There’s another car parked in the backyard. It’s his.
It’s a 1940 Ford coupe. I took it when I got away from him.
He’ll come for it.”
“Is that all, Miss Sasser?”
“We’re staying with Mrs. Louise Brewer in Wilkesboro.”
He said nothing, but he hadn’t shut the door on me ei-
ther. He appeared deep in thought until the person he wanted came onto the line.
He spoke, “Phil! Thank you for taking my call.”
He shut the door then, and I rushed down the hall. Outside
I pulled my sweater tight around me and walked to where I’d
parked the truck.
Merritt was waiting, and before I’d even shut the door he
said, “It must not have gone too good. You got that pasty look again.”
&n
bsp; I said, “I don’t know if he believes me. He shooed me out
the door so he could make a phone call after I told him his
supposed revenuer isn’t who he thinks he is.”
Merritt said, “You have to wonder, where’s Martin Murry
been all these years? Why ain’t nobody ever said nothing
about him?”
I said, “I don’t know.”
Another mystery.
I headed for Piney Tops and got there as hallways filled
with students along with the usual laughter and talking and
locker doors slamming. Aubrey was finally beginning to real-
ize Willie had slipped from her hold, but she wouldn’t give up.
She stationed herself strategically only to have to watch him make a commotion over Cora. She glared into a compact, her
back to them while reapplying lipstick she didn’t need. Meanwhile Zeb, and some new friend, a boy who didn’t act much
different than him, competed for Willie’s attention. The new boy was Dylan Todd and I could hear him above all else.
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Loud, obnoxious, he’d turn and poke Zeb seeking approval
for when he did something.
Cora and Stacy mostly ignored the three-ring circus going
on about them. Cora had evidently set some rules about Wil-
lie fraternizing with her at school, and he obeyed, hovering though, in case she noticed him. Aubrey had formed a new
alliance with a girl named Marissa Blaylock. Aubrey chat-
tered near Marissa’s ear while the other girl bobbed her head nonstop. That was all Aubrey needed. Somebody to listen to
her and agree. Maybe our friendship had been destined to end anyway. I felt different this year, changed because of what I knew about Mama and what I’d decided to do, while Aubrey
still acted the same.
There was something else above and beyond all this. It was
how after Willie made a commotion the first day in the park-
ing lot, I’d become invisible, even when I passed right by him in the hallways. After how he’d acted last year, and what took place over the summer, it stood out. I was sure it had been
him and his buddies at the house, shooting, scaring us, and it had to have been him who came back and spray-painted those
threats. For one, Willie had never been able to spell worth
a lick, and second, someone like Royce, or Leland Murry,
would’ve been more apt to do something like what had been
done to Oral, or like burning down Uncle Virgil’s house. For as bad as it had scared us, what Willie and his cohorts had
done wasn’t at the level of the elder Murrys. It had been more like fun for them. Cutting up. Being stupid.
The reason for his change of behavior was Cora, and what
I saw as an unexpected opportunity. When the bell rang to let us out at the end of classes for the day, I found him standing just outside the front entrance.
I marched up and said, “You reckon Cora McCaskill would
give you the time of day if she knew the real William Murry?”
I saw a nervous twitch, a minuscule jumping of his upper
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lip, but it was the worry that flickered briefly across his face and told me I’d said something that mattered. He tried to act cool, bluff his way out like he didn’t care.
He said, “Shit. What do you know about anything?”
I said, “Plenty. Like how your family ain’t nothing but
sorry, and ain’t never been nothing but that. Especially that murdering brother of yours, Martin Murry.”
The worry turned to alarm.
“What do you know about him?”
I shifted my books, and said, “What does it matter, but boy, could I share lots with her. About how you and your family
really are, what you like to do during your summer vacation.”
A hint of the old Willie Murry I was most familiar with
peeked through, delivering a bottomless, cold stare. Threat-
ening a Murry was like praying to the devil. On his feet were new Wearmasters. He wore stiff new jeans too, meant to im-press a certain girl, I was sure. He didn’t like standing there with me, and his gaze roamed about the schoolyard to see
who might notice.
He looked down at me, and spit out a question. “What do
you want?”
“What belongs to my family.”
He leaned in, and said, “What the hell you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. What you took
right out of our house. I reckon I could add ‘thief’ to what I could tell Cora.”
The timing couldn’t have been better, because she came
out the entrance with Stacy, heading toward the bus I used
to ride. Like a special radar frequency suddenly switched on, he spotted her, and his manner became urgent as he walked
away.
Over his shoulder, he said, “Hell no. I ain’t doing that.”
I decided to call his bluff.
I said, “Oh. Okay.”
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I too made a beeline for Cora, and he reached out and
grabbed me. The commotion behind her caught Cora’s at-
tention and she turned around, and saw the death grip he had on my upper arm. She had a thing for Willie, not as bad as
Aubrey, but it was there in the way she frowned at him, the
way she noticed his hand holding on to me. She stormed off,
and Stacy had to run to keep up. It was true, he wasn’t bad-
looking, but he certainly was bad. Willie’s fingers dug deeper into my arm.
I flinched at the pressure, and managed to say, “Your true
colors are showing. I’m going to tell her all about you Murrys.
This won’t stop me.”
“All right! Fine!” he said, and he pushed me away.
I wanted to rub the spot, but I wouldn’t allow him to see
me do that.
I said, “It better not be ruined, neither.”
He said something I couldn’t make out as he raced away.
When he reached Cora’s side, she shook her head, denying
him for what she’d seen between us. Cora had laid down the
law, and it surely wasn’t something he was used to. A sick
longing pulled his mouth down. At least one thing had gone
in my favor for the day. I spotted Merritt walking across the lawn alone, his shoulders rounded like he’d had a rough day
too, and I hurried to catch up. I decided not to tell him about my encounter with Willie and what I’d said. I wanted to see
if Willie would keep his word. We walked together to the
school’s parking lot where the truck was parked.
I said, “What’s Curt or Abel up to?”
He snorted, and didn’t respond.
“Have they talked to you?”
“Curt said hey, but that was about it. Abel ain’t said a word.
All they can do is stare at this thing.”
He held up his prosthesis.
Damn them.
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At Mrs. Brewer’s house, I switched off the truck and said,
“Why do you reckon Daddy never reported what happened
to Mama?”
Merritt stared out the front windshield, digesting the ques-
&nb
sp; tion, turning his hook round and round.
He said, “We ain’t never wanted the law interfering with
family matters.”
“I know, but he never did anything against the Murrys
neither.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe he did. Daddy never talked
much about that time.”
With a hint of sarcasm, I said, “Yeah, tell me about it.”
We walked across the yard and I loved how the colder air
carried the smell of whatever she was cooking. We were safer here, hidden away, protected. Up on the porch Popeye snaked
his body in between our legs, his way of telling us he wanted to be petted. I bent down to rub his back and he let out a
throaty, Rowr.
Merritt went inside, and Mrs. Brewer called from the
kitchen, “How’d it go?”
I followed him in, while Popeye hopped on the porch rail
to watch a bird, tail switching back and forth. I liked Mrs.
Brewer’s house, and although it was small, she had three bedrooms. I was in the one she called “the green room,” because it had the green throw rugs on the wood floor. The rugs
matched the leaves in the flowery wallpaper. The bed had
a white bedspread and green pillows. The lamp had a green
shade. Merritt was in “the blue room,” decorated similarly,
only with blue throw rugs and shade. Mrs. Brewer’s room
was pink. I stopped by my room and dropped my books on
the bed.
Back in the kitchen Merritt was telling Mrs. Brewer he
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bubbling, and stirred a skillet of milk gravy. My stomach
tightened and my mouth watered. She had a tendency to cook
exactly what we would eat that night, and no more. I won-
dered if that was habit, or if she only did it because of me.
Maybe wanting to prevent me from doing what she knew I
might do. She studied me as I came in.
She said, “You okay?”
I nodded, and sank onto a kitchen chair, my cheek propped
in the palm of my hand, watching as she went back to cook-
ing. The day had been tiring and worrisome, from seeing
Nash Reardon to contending with Willie. She poured the
gravy into a bowl and set it on the table while my stomach
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