Hunter's Moon (33 page)

“Grandpa, can we go for a drive?”

“Not today.”

“When, Grandpa? When can we go?”

As it turned out, the answer was
never
. The closest he’d come was sitting in the front seat and pretending to drive. With that in mind, he walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door. With a foot on the sideboard, he leaned in and took in the vintage leather smell of the car. He slipped into the seat and put his hands on the wheel.

He remembered being much smaller the last time he did this. He couldn’t see over the steering wheel then and could only imagine driving down the road, and the things he would see. As he looked through the windshield to the garage’s back wall, he decided that being too short to see out was a blessing.

He sat in the car for a long time. It felt good around him, as if he belonged there. It was as he began to move a hand from the wheel to the gearshift that he brushed against an object. With something between hesitation and deliberation, his hand froze halfway between the wheel and the gearshift. Finally he reached down and pulled the key from the ignition.

Sal had kept the key in a box on his dresser, like a souvenir. He’d once pulled the key out to show CJ, had even let the boy hold it, and CJ suspected that was why it felt familiar in his hand. Why, though, was it out here?

His first thought—and it was one that threatened to make him angry again—was that Graham had been messing around in here. Why that should have bothered him, seeing as he was doing the same thing, eluded him, but it was the truth nonetheless. Gripping the key in his hand, he was about to get out of the car when, in leaning forward, he caught a glimpse of something white on the floor of the passenger side, almost beneath the seat.

Curious, he reached over and picked it up, and was surprised to see a cigarette butt. But what kept him from fuming at Graham even more was that it wasn’t his brother’s brand; it was Sal’s.

It took a few seconds for the idea to come, but when it did his eyes quickly went to the odometer. He knew those numbers— frozen at 104,338 in 1964. He’d stared at them often enough, wishing he could drive the car just far enough to tick up to 104,339. Just down to Main Street and back. Except now the six digits on the odometer no longer matched his memory. He looked closer: 105,479.

When the laughter came, it began as a chuckle, yet it wasn’t long before he was laughing until tears came. He was happy for his grandfather—for the secret urge he’d given in to.

CJ hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand, laughing until his side hurt. Sal had driven the car.

After driving the Honda so long, the 853 took some getting used to. To CJ, it felt more like the Jaguar, if only in the sense of the car’s power. And while the Jaguar delivered that in engine performance, the 853 did so with size, and with the sound of the straight-eight doing its work.

He knew how much trouble waited for him when he brought the car back. Right now, though, he couldn’t have cared less. The knowledge that Sal had driven the car before he died—that he’d put enough miles on it to have had the chance to open it up on the open road, to feel the engine run through its gears—pleased CJ enough to cancel out any negative thoughts. It was enough to drive the car.

It was enough as well to think that Sal had left the keys in the ignition for
him
, for he knew that CJ would be the only one who would slide into the driver’s seat. CJ had no way of knowing if that was in fact true, but he decided to make it true, and that worked for him.

The engine rumbled with a power he could feel in the chassis, coming up through the floorboard and into the wheel. It was everything he’d dreamed of as a boy, and he surrendered himself to it. It was the happiest he’d been in years.

Much like when he drove the Honda to the house, not realizing at first where he was headed, when he got the Horch on the road it seemed to point itself south. He drove until he reached the interstate, and as he took the curve of the on-ramp he realized where he was going.

Janet could keep the house, the car, their mutual friends, the shared history of their life together, but she would not get his dog.

He pressed down on the accelerator and felt the engine respond.

Chapter 26

When he pulled up to the house both he and the car were running on fumes. He was tired enough that he’d driven the last hour with the top down, and while it was warmer in Tennessee than it was in New York, a nighttime chill was a nighttime chill.

The Jaguar was in the driveway and he parked the Horch behind it. If she was inside, she undoubtedly knew he was here.

He knocked at the side door, and it concerned him that Thor wasn’t on the other side barking at him. He waited awhile, but Janet didn’t come to the door. He knocked again, then rang the doorbell. When neither brought the desired result, he repeated the procedure, a duplicate of the scene at the house on Lyndale. And as with that episode he grew angry—because he knew she was inside, and she had his dog. Unlike last night, though, he resolved to keep his anger in check. This was a precarious position into which he’d placed himself, with the potential domestic violence charge and a warrant hanging over his head. It wouldn’t do to force Janet to call the police on him. But as he knocked again, it seemed he wasn’t going to be given the chance to earn such ignominy; the house on the other side of the door remained quiet.

He thought of knocking again, but then realized the futility of doing so. Instead he left the side door and walked around to the front of the house. He had no plans to break in this time. He only wanted to look at the window, to see it whole again. She had indeed fixed it, and it looked like she’d had the sill and framing painted.

Before returning to the car, he took out his phone and dialed her number. There was no message when it kicked over to voice mail, just a tone.

A year ago there’d have been no doubt about what kind of message he would have left. It would have been angry and caustic— anything to get at her, to hurt her for what she had done. And he was close to starting down that path again, especially since he didn’t know where she’d taken his dog. Yet for some reason his heart wasn’t in it.

Rather than get back into the Horch, he sat on the sideboard, facing the house—his house. He didn’t know what to say into the phone, so instead of saying anything, he hung up. He sat on the sideboard as the minutes ticked by, the sun warming him as it hadn’t once during his sojourn in New York. When after a while he dialed her number again, he knew he could talk without saying anything he’d regret.

“Hey, Janet,” he said—an admittedly weak beginning. He took a deep breath, and when he let it go, a few words came with it. “Look, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am for the way everything’s turned out.” He shifted position on the sideboard and looked up into the sky, searching for the right thing to say. “I know that this is mostly my fault, and I know it’s probably too late to do anything about it, but . . .” As he lapsed into silence he could hear the ticking of the 853’s engine. He ran a hand through his hair and blew out a breath. “I’ll sign whatever papers you want me to sign. And I hope everything works out for you. . . .”

He was surprised to find that he meant that, regardless of what she’d done to him. It felt good to let it go, and it was with a smile that he said goodbye, stood and slipped the phone into his pocket, then reached for the door handle. When, an instant later, a squad car swung in behind his car, that smile turned into something else.

“Down on the ground. Now!” one of the two officers shouted, exiting the vehicle and leading with his gun. CJ, whose hand was still on the 853’s door handle, and whose brain was running slow from lack of sleep, apparently didn’t comply with the officer’s order quickly enough because the man repeated the command with, if possible, more menace in his voice. By this time the other officer had stepped from the squad car and he held something that looked like a large electric shaver.

Knowing it was unlikely that the one with the gun would shoot him, but having doubts about the officer with the Taser, CJ went to his knees, and then continued on to his belly.

The Taser officer closed the distance while the one with the gun watched. Once he was close enough, the cop put a knee in CJ’s back, which hurt more than he would have thought, and proceeded to pull CJ’s hands behind his back until he could snap the handcuffs in place.

That was when the cop with the gun holstered his weapon and helped his buddy pull CJ to his feet, which again hurt more than CJ thought it should have. He was marched to the squad car, and as the officer put his hand on the top of CJ’s head and guided him in, CJ thought he saw a curtain in the front window move.

CJ sat in a holding cell at the Williamson County jail, pondering synchronicity. Just yesterday he’d visited the courthouse in the town of his birth for the first time, despite a youth spent in less than angelic fashion. Now he was visiting another venue of criminal justice in the town he’d called home for more than a decade.

He was one of four men in the cell, and in his short incarceration he’d made friends with Lemon (the jury was still out about that being the man’s given name), who was the only one of his cellmates who wasn’t passed out.

“I’m telling you,” Lemon said, his foot twitching. It hadn’t stopped twitching the entire time CJ had been in the cell. “There are some women you just can’t please, no matter how hard you try.”

CJ pondered this bit of jailhouse wisdom, then said, “I don’t know, Lemon. While I’m inclined to agree with you, I’m not sure any woman wants to come home and find her name burned into the lawn.”

Lemon’s foot began twitching faster now. “Show’s how much you know. It’s poetic—Shakespearean, really. Like . . . What’s that dude’s name? The dude who held the boom box up in the rain for his girl?”

“John Cusack.”

“Yeah, that dude. That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” CJ said, nodding. “Still, I don’t think it’s the same thing.”

“Ah, what do you know?” Lemon said.

CJ thought that was a great question. What
did
he know? He knew enough to leave a girl he never should have left; he knew enough to marry someone he shouldn’t have; and he knew enough to get himself arrested while making an effort to set things right. If one compared his track record with women against Lemon’s, he wasn’t certain his cellmate’s approach was all bad.

“You may have a point,” he conceded.

“Of course I do. But some women, see, they don’t have their heads screwed on right. Can’t see the forest for the trees and all that. See?”

“I’m not sure. There’s a tree in the way.”

Lemon grinned at him. “You’re a sharp one, aren’t you?”

“I’m not sure about that. I’m in here with you, aren’t I?”

“A minor setback for us both, I have no doubt,” Lemon said. “See, I figure she can’t stay mad forever, right? I’ll think of something. Got to climb back up on that horse.”

“That’s the spirit,” CJ said. “But maybe you can try it without the fire next time.”

Lemon seemed to give that some thought. “Yeah, maybe you’re on to something. Fire may not be the way to go.”

“Good man.”

“Baxter,” the guard called, approaching their cell. “You have a visitor.”

CJ nodded at Lemon, and let the guard direct him to another room. He recognized his agent before he’d gone two steps, which was simple because he was the only person in the room, seated at a small table next to a line of vending machines.

“Good morning, Elliott,” CJ said as he sat down across from the man. Elliott had been his agent for a decade—long enough to have seen CJ through the bad times, and to have profited from the good period. A dark-haired man with chiseled features and impeccable fashion sense, Elliott looked bred to carry a briefcase and to conduct remote meetings via cell phone.

The guard who’d escorted him stood close by but far enough away to allow for a modicum of privacy.

His agent gave him a clinical once-over. “You look terrible,” he said.

“I’ve had a rough night. Are you here to bail me out?”