Between, Georgia (28 page)

But if Billy had come? If it was Billy and Grif and Teak, drinking, pissed off, with Ona demanding justice and Jimmy niggling and pushing them from behind like a seedy, balding sprite? It was the working definition of trouble.

All the Crabtree boys had been in and out of jail for guns and dope, drunk and disorderly, DUI, petty larceny, and fighting. But Billy was a different animal. He’d been up on charges of arson, destruction of property, rape, and assault. He’d walked on most of them, but he had logged seven years in St. Claire after he killed a man in a bar fight. Henry needed to find me, fast, but first he needed to know if Billy was in town.

He reached up and took the leather band out of his hair, letting it fall straight and dense, two black curtains closing around his face, deepening the hollows of his eyes and cheekbones. He took off his black Bass loafers and hung them on his shoe rack, right next to his oxblood Bass loafers. He traded his ironed khakis for a pair of jeans (also ironed) and folded his starched shirt neatly. He put the shirt in the bag he dropped off at the cleaners in Loganville twice a month and got a plain gray T-shirt out of his drawer.

Crabtree fashion sense ran toward shirtlessness and flip-flops.

They accessorized with jailhouse tats and attitude. Henry was different, but he’d grown up around them. He was in them but not of them, and he knew how to flash their colors. He had that wicked edge in him, a suggestion of impiety that made the truckers listen to his book recommendations. He slid on this persona now, changing skins. He put on his running shoes and left the apartment to walk over to the gas station.

Grif ’s truck was parked in one of the six spaces in front of the country store that housed the aisles of motor oil and aging snack foods. Henry glanced in the truck’s cab. It was empty, and the truck bed held nothing but a toolbox, a filthy blanket, and three rusty old gas cans. Teak’s truck and Ona’s blue car were nowhere to be seen.

Henry stuck his head in the front door. A Loganville kid, one of Tucker’s friends, sat at the register on a stool. His name was Danny, but he had recently joined a band and was trying to make everyone call him Banger. He was tipped back to lean against the wall of cigarettes with his feet up on the counter. When the bell over the door jangled, he jerked up and clutched wildly at the racks of cigarettes to keep from toppling over. Four or five packs of Merits tumbled to the floor. When Banger saw it was Henry, he righted himself and scowled.

“Aw, come on, Henry. I don’t wanna pump. Why’ncha swipe your card, man? Unless you need, like, a gum or something?”

“Is Grif here?” Henry asked him.

“Nah, it’s just me, man,” said Banger. “They left.” The whites of his eyes glowed as pink as a lab rat’s.

“Was Billy with them?” Henry asked, but Banger just shrugged. “How long ago did they leave?”

“Um . . .” Banger glanced helplessly at the clock. “It wasn’t really soon ago.”

Henry considered asking if he knew where they’d gone, but Banger was leaning down from atop his stool to pluck at the fallen packs of cigarettes. He missed and plummeted to the floor, landing with a meaty thud.

“Aw, man,” he said. Henry withdrew, letting the door shut behind him. Ona’s house was barely outside of Between’s city limits, which meant he could walk there in about five minutes. He glided down Philbert, past the exit from 78 and the entrance to Country Glen, one of Between’s two subdivisions. Once he got past Country Glen, he was outside of Between proper. The sidewalk ended, so he walked on the strip of dirt by the curb, woods flanking him on both sides of the street. One more block and then he took a left, up Hook Lane.

There were five or six houses there, all of them nearly hidden by a row of kudzu-choked trees and overgrown bushes and weed patches. The first two houses were empty and had most of their windows broken out. The next one was a burned-out shell. Ona’s driveway was the fourth one down.

Henry started climbing the steep drive to her house. The concrete had split, and the cracks had branched and run across the drive, forking like lightning. Weeds and grass were fighting for life in the narrow spaces. He could see Teak’s red truck pulled up in the dead grass beside the carport. Lobe’s junky Packard was nowhere to be seen, but the ancient blue coupe Ona shared with her youngest son, Tucker, was there.

Ona Crabtree lived in a flat brick ranch built sometime in the fifties. It squatted low to the ground, and five exhausted azalea bushes stood in a line in front of the house, two of them flanking the small porch. The back door was under the carport, which was so filled with junk that for years no one had been able to do more than crack the door far enough for the cat to ooze out and slink away through the debris. Henry went up on the front porch. The doorbell had never worked in all his memory, so he gave the knocker three hard raps.

He heard Ona holler, “Come on in if you’re coming.”

The front door opened into the den. It was so smoky and dim that it took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust. He squinted and clocked Grif and Jimmy sitting on the sofa with their dirty bare feet lined up on the coffee table. They were slouched deep into the sofa, watching
Wheel of Fortune,
and Jimmy had a beer balanced on his stomach. Teak was sitting in an armchair to the left of them. He was ignoring the TV, leaning forward and watching Grif with a sullen gaze that told Henry the two of them were already ten feet deep into it.

“Henry!” said Jimmy. “Get yourself a beer, there, boy. Set your sorry ass down.”

“Hey, Henry.” Grif raised a lazy hand.

The fourth man in the room was Varner Coop, the latest in Ona’s long series of common-law husbands. He was lounging in the chair opposite Teak, sucking hard on a Marlboro Red. Ona was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, drinking something pale pink out of a chipped juice glass.

Billy was nowhere to be seen, and Henry’s tense shoulders relaxed a notch.

“Henry!” Ona said. She wended her way blearily from the doorway to his side and gave his arm a squeeze. “I hope you come hungry. I made the most huge roast. We’re expecting Nonny, too, but there’s plenty, so’s you may as well stay.”

“Nonny’s coming?” said Henry. Grif took his feet down and sat up, lighting one of Varner’s Marlboros for himself. The smoke was stinging Henry’s eyes.

“Said she was,” said Ona. “I invited her earlier this week. Stop letting the bugs in and come have you a beer or something.” She tugged at his sleeve.

Henry closed the front door and came a step or two farther into the room. “Nonny’s in Athens,” he said. “Her divorce hearing was today.”

“Shoot,” said Ona. “That girl’s not going to get a divorce. I’d put ten bucks on it. She’s a sucker for a pretty man, just like her granny.” She cackled and tipped Varner a wink, but he had his eyes on Vanna White and didn’t notice.

Grif said, “I don’t want to watch a show about your big head, Henry.” Henry moved over to the couch and sat down on the end next to Varner’s chair.

“Bless my balls, it’s Henry.” Billy was there after all. He’d been in the kitchen. He stood framed in the doorway in his almost white Levi’s and a lime-green muscle shirt. He had fatty armpits and narrow shoulders. The skin of his bare arms and face was pure and creamy, so smooth it looked like it had been ironed. His red-gold hair was straight and glossy, flopping over his broad forehead. He was soft in the middle and sweet-looking, except around the eyes. They were a brown so pale they looked yellow, and they were as cool and glittery and empty as glass. “And you took my seat.”

“Billy,” said Henry. He started to get up, but Billy waved him back down. “Here, take this, I’ll get me another.” He fast-balled a Coors across the room, and Henry’s hand went up automati-cally to catch it. It smacked into his palm, hard and perfect. Billy had deadly aim.

“What are you doing here, Billy?” Henry said. “What are all of you doing here?”

“Shit,” said Billy, drawing out the I. “We come for supper. Just like you.” He disappeared back into the kitchen.

Henry wasn’t sure what his next move should be. If he con-fronted them, they’d beat the crap out of him and then go do whatever they were planning anyway. He figured nothing would happen as long as he was here. If they took it in their heads to leave, to go after my family, he couldn’t physically stop all four of them. But he could play dumb and let them go and then call the cops. He could feel the smoke coating his throat, making it harder to breathe. He said to Ona, “I didn’t know you were expecting all this company tonight.”

Ona stared down into her glass and shrugged. She had all but promised Henry that she wouldn’t call her brother until she’d talked to me, at least. “Yeah. Waren’t that a nice surprise.” She wasn’t a very convincing liar.

“Even Billy,” Henry said to her.

“Yup. Even Billy,” said Teak, glaring at Grif as if Billy’s presence were the fifteenth thing Grif had done wrong that day.

“Where’s Tucker?” asked Henry.

Ona said, “Both my boys went into town. They’s gonna shoot some pool.”

Grif flared his nostrils and said, “Someplace where people know them?”

Ona said, “Oh yeah, they’s regular there.”

Grif opened his mouth to say something else, but then he glanced at Henry and stopped. He cleared his throat theatrically and then said to Henry, “You gonna drink that beer or hold it until it’s piss-warm and poorly?”

Henry passed over the Coors, and Grif lifted it up close to his face before he popped the tab, sticking his mouth fast over the hole to catch the foam that came shooting up.

“You want me to make you one of these, Henry?” Ona said.

“It’s a salty dog. Got gin in it, and salt, and then red grapefruit juice for nutrition.”

“Shit, no, he don’t,” said Jimmy. “Henry don’t want some pink fluffy cocky-tail.” He lifted his voice. “Billy, bring another cold one for Henry. Grif skunked him.”

Billy reappeared in the doorway. Henry lifted his hand, and another beer smacked into his palm, dead center.

“I wisht Nonny would get here,” said Ona. “That roast’ll dry up and die.”

Henry popped the tab on his beer, holding it close and catching the foam as he had seen Grif do it.

“Well, she better,” said Billy from the doorway. “She sure as hell don’t want to be no place but here tonight.”

The foam shot out all the way to the back of Henry’s throat.

He tried to swallow, but it was too fast, and he choked.

“Watch it there,” said Grif, and pounded him on the back.

“Shit, Henry. You’re such a fucking girl,” said Jimmy, snigger-ing. “You better feed us, Ona. Nonny’ll be along.”

“Come give me a hand, Henry, and you, too, Billy. We’ll fix everyone a plate,” said Ona.

While the Crabtrees, neutralized by Henry for the moment, ate roast beef and Ona’s velvet potatoes, Fisher was lying down, stiff and sullen, in her room. Her legs were rigid, ankles flexed so her toes pointed at the ceiling. Her arms were folded across her chest, asphyxiating her stuffed monkey in an angry elbow lock.

“And you better stay in that bed,” said Bernese, watching from the doorway.

Fisher kept her baleful gaze on the ceiling, praying open-eyed for God to come and explode the world. Fisher had been promised me and movies and kettle corn, and she’d gotten tuna salad and broccoli and a spanking for having a smart mouth.

“You hear me? You better not go night-walking over to next door and climbing in with Nonny.”

“I wish spiders would come and eat me,” Fisher said. “You’d be so sorry.”

“Don’t be spoiled. Nonny will be back late, and you two can have a big time tomorrow. And tonight I do not care how mad you are. If I see this bed with you not in it, I will come and I will find you and I’ll paddle your butt blue.”

Fisher said nothing.

“Do you hear me?” said Bernese.

“I hear you,” said Fisher.

Bernese eased back from the doorway. “Did you say your prayers?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Fisher. “You want to know what I prayed?”

“No,” said Bernese, and stomped off downstairs. A couple of hours later, right before she turned in, she poked her head into Fisher’s room.

All she saw was a short, squatty tube of resentment wrapped in a woolly blanket, black hair sticking out the top. “Nighty-night,”

Bernese whispered. Fisher did not move or answer, because Bernese was actually talking to the back of Fisher’s Happenin’

Hair Teresa styling head. The real Fisher had already slipped out the back door.

Bernese said, “Fine, then,” and went off to bed, muttering about sulkers.

Down on the square, Trude was standing in the darkness in front of her closed diner, having a smoke before she walked to her car and headed home. She saw Fisher go to the plastic rock Bernese had in the flower bed in front of the store. Fisher opened the bottom and picked out the key. She let herself inside the store, and the door closed behind her. Trude waited, but the lights did not come on.

Trude cussed under her breath, went back inside the diner, and picked up the phone. She was four digits in when she stopped dialing and hung up to think things over. Bernese hadn’t seemed herself lately. Even Trude had noticed how hard she had become with Fisher. And Trude had not forgotten Bernese’s attitude just days ago, when the Bitch had taken down Genny. Trude had left her place of business and come running to help Bernese’s family, bringing every paper towel she had in the place. She had very naturally been upset by all the blood and carnage. And Bernese had slapped her. Some thanks.

When she thought about it, Trude didn’t much feel like calling Bernese, and anyway, Fisher was my responsibility on weekends.

She rummaged around in her purse and pulled out her Day-Timer. Sure enough, she had my cell phone number scrawled in the back. She had gotten it from Bernese a few weeks ago when I’d left a book I was reading in the diner.

She dialed me but got sent immediately to my voice mail.

“Nonny? It’s Trude. I saw that little gal of y’allses off on one of her night walks. She’s holed up over the store. I didn’t want to wake up Bernese with it. Okay, then. You might want to come by and get her little naughty bee-hind before Bernese gets wind of it.