Soil (12 page)

16

It was about 9:30 in the growing cool of evening, and the cicadas rustled like coins in the dark. Shoals was sitting stakeout in the parking lot of Li'l Nine's Skate 'n' Skeet. He held a flask between his legs and watched the teenagers come and go in their mating struts. He had the windows down, a quiet trebly blues issuing from the car radio. He loved to hear the guitar notes bending just out of tune and played police protocol the same way, enough to be daring without breaking groove.

Take this stakeout, for instance. It was just over the line in Tuckalofa County, out past Flintlock. Technically he had no jurisdiction here, but the rink owner, Daw Robison, was a friend of the family. A bad element had turned up at his place and was running off the respectable customers, kids from well-to-do parents who'd never before worried about dropping their twelve- and thirteen-year-olds off with a pocketful of money. But word had gotten out that disenfranchised teens and junior college dropouts were hanging around. One kid, presumed to be on bad ecstasy, freaked out to the strobe lights during the slow skate to “Stairway to Heaven” and crashed into a child's birthday party. These were good, impressionable church kids, and Robison didn't want to compromise their innocence by allowing a few meth heads and would-be dealers to hang around. He also didn't want to involve the local sheriff's department and risk drawing the newspaper's attention, so Shoals agreed to sit and watch and send a message that unlawfulness would not be tolerated. In return for this sit, Shoals knew he could count on a freezer full of deer meat all winter. And no telling what else. Favors fell in his lap all the time.

Shoals had been sitting in the parking lot for nearly an hour, waiting for the clouds to pass so he could get a few bars of coverage and maybe give Sandy a call. A mysterious night chat to expand the relationship a millimeter or two further. After the mixed reviews on their first date, he'd kept close tabs on her movements and found her and the boy on the playground one Sunday afternoon.

He wheeled in and waved hello.

“I thought that was you,” he called, making cool strides from the parking lot. “This must be the boy. Jake?”

“Jacob,” she said.

“You're a handsome fella,” he said, offering his hand to the kid. “I'm Deputy Dan.” He threw back his suede vest where he had cleverly pinned his badge inside. The kid loved it.

“Hey, I've got something in the trunk you might enjoy,” he said and took off for the Boss. He'd planted a Wiffle ball set there, still in the packaging.

“You ride around with children's toys in your sports car?” Sandy asked. She was suspicious, a sign of real intelligence.

“Aw, it's just something I had for a kids' charity auction. I'll just pick up another one, no big deal.”

“Hmm,” she said. “You sure you're not some predator?” She was feisty today with her sly grin and dangerous accusations. It made him want her all the more.

“Honey, I'm the antipredator. I take pleasure in putting creeps away.”

While she pretended to read a book, he willfully ignored her and taught Jacob how to grip the bat and keep his eye on the pitch. The kid had no coordination whatsoever. Obviously the father couldn't be bothered to show his son the basic thrills of boyhood. Every now and then he'd cut his eyes back at Sandy, shoot her an all-pro grin. The less said the better, he'd determined.

After about forty-five minutes of play with the boy and a few random, playful barbs back and forth across the playground with the mother, Shoals's
CB radio squawked and he jogged over to answer. It was just one of the deputies assing around, but he thought it would be smooth if he played it like an emergency.

He hustled over and gave little Jacob a high five, told him he had to run off and catch some bad guys. “Practice your swing, little dude,” he said, giving Sandy a cool wave. She smiled and waved back, told him to take care.

“I'll give you a ring sometime,” he yelled, since she wasn't offering. He laid smoke and rubber all over the lot screeching out to the street.

A distant shriek brought Shoals back to the skating rink. A redhead in white pants emerged from the shadowy side of the building and clopped across the lot. Her hand was clutching the neck of her shimmery tank top, and she was weaving distraught through the cars, shaking her head and sobbing. She approached the vehicle across from him, a thirdhand SUV, and rummaged through her purse. She shook like she was being chased, kept looking back at the dark corner and finally threw her face in her hands. He watched her for a moment and contemplated getting out. Probably her boyfriend's hands had gotten a little too fast, or else he'd made a careless remark in the heat of foreplay.

She inspected her face in the side mirror, and that's when she noticed Shoals. She shuffled over and leaned down to look through his open passenger window. “Can you help me?” she asked.

“What's a matter, girl?”

“This guy I'm with, he has my keys.” She was breathless and slurry.

“What happened?”

“He's got a knife,” she said, nodding toward the rink. “I think he wants to rape me.”

Shoals squinted into the dark but couldn't see the young punk. Pulling a gun here outside of jurisdiction would be foolhardy, so he focused instead on getting her calm.

“Did he hurt you?”

“He stretched my shirt,” she said. Sure enough, the tank was all yanked
around and the neckline plunged, giving him a box-seat view of her tender ladies. She stood up suddenly, realizing she was showing her goods, and wobbled a bit. She was tight and trim. All he could see was her red hair and decisive bust. Definitely of age. He guessed twenty-three or twenty-four.

“You need a ride?” he asked. He reached over and opened the door.

She covered her cleavage and looked in.

“Go on, sit down if you want. I'm Danny,” he said. “Now don't you worry about him. He won't get his hands on you with me here, I can promise you that.”

She sat down in the bucket seat noncommittally, left the door open, one leg draped outside the vehicle. He extended his handkerchief, and she dabbed her face and caught her breath. Her face was puffy with drink and shame. Her makeup was smudged too, but that could be straightened out. There was definitely something there. Was she of age? Big dumb green eyes and her nose and mouth were slightly disproportioned, like they still might be trying to declare themselves. Maybe more like nineteen or twenty. Surely no younger than eighteen.

She looked back at the dark corner to see if he'd emerged, maybe weighing her options. Who was she better off with?

Shoals sensed her unease. “You want me to go get your keys?” he said. “I'll put his lights out for him, if that's what needs to happen.”

“No, it's his car. I was just the designated driver.”

“That's commendable.”

“What a dick!” she said, her face turned away. “I should have known better.”

“Hey, you didn't do anything wrong,” he assured her, placing his hand gently on her forearm. “You assumed he'd act like a gentleman instead of an animal, and that's a perfectly reasonable expectation.”

She considered her options. “You a cop, aint you?”

“Off duty,” he replied.

“Does that mean you can't take me?” She cut her eyes up at him, all tipsy
innocent. Something had changed between them. She'd shifted up, he could tell, even if she didn't know it yet. Often it happened so easy, as if preordained.

“Not at all. Get in.”

She craned her neck toward the lot once more, whether hoping to see him or hoping he saw her. She tucked herself in the passenger seat and shut the door.

She winced when he cranked the engine.
She must really be a little flower,
Shoals thought. Off in the tall grass with the rough pups. Or maybe this was all a game and she had it planned this way. He gave the engine some gas and let it rumble her seat. He sunk back, became one with the car. His skin was the leather upholstery caressing her. “Wow, I bet this thing goes fast,” she said, a touch of nerves in her voice.

“As fast as you want,” he replied, easing out of the lot with caution, taking his time to look both directions as they pulled onto the dark county road. He was winning her confidence inch by inch.

“Which way you live?” he asked.

“Madrid,” she replied.

“You're a long way from home tonight.”

“You can drop me off at a friend's near Flintlock if you want.”

She was proud of her little body, had her chest all thrust out. The ridge of her bosom, where it swelled and dimpled down, was as pure and smooth as any heaven. Her foamed-out bra didn't fool him with its angles and indentations. It created a false expectation, which may have had something to do with that unseemly business behind Li'l Nine's. But he, being a man of experience and a deep admirer of the subtleties of the female body, didn't hold such illusions.

“I don't mind taking you all the way,” he insisted. “If that's what you want.”

She considered how far she wanted to go and said Flintlock would be fine. She said if she changed her mind she'd tell before they got too far along.

They sat in silence for a while, just the engine thrumming. Finally he asked, “Why get involved with a guy like that?”

“He said he had some reefer.”

He nodded, let it slide. As an agent of the law, he was obliged to warn her off drugs. But he was off duty tonight, and she was testing him. “Well, you're too pretty for a redneck like that,” he said.

She said her name was Kerri and made silly chat for a while. She told him she was a sophomore at the university.

“You grow up around here?”

She said yes but wouldn't say exactly where. She could put on all the college airs she liked, but Shoals could hear the twang in her voice and knew it by her taste in men, she was country all the way. He enjoyed watching her nervous tic of rubbing her hands up and down her thighs slowly. He took it for an unconscious cue.

“You can't be too careful,” he said. “There's some cold customers hanging out around that rink. You gotta be smarter than that.”

“I'm smart enough, aint I? I found you.”

“Hell, you don't even know me,” he said and looked over at her. Their eyes met, and he pushed back against her vixen tricks. “For all you know, you might still get raped.”

She sat there quiet for a moment, working her thighs again, her chest heaving slowly. “You don't have to rape me, Danny,” she said. Her hand found its way into his lap.

“You trying to shift the gear while I'm driving?” he asked. “You might jump the transmission, girl.” She giggled nervously and apologized.

He kept going a ways, plunging through the hills and whipping around blind curves, letting her see what a powerful beast she had leapt astride. He loved teasing them, making them wait. Holding back drove them wild.

Finally he pulled off onto a gravel road, then down into a dry turnrow where he cut the engine. He kept the radio on, rolled down the window a few inches. “Will you reach in that glove box and hand me my kit?” Shoals asked with gentlemanly ease.

She opened the compartment and retrieved a brown shaving bag. “What's in here?” she asked playfully, unzipping the bag and sorting through the con
tents. There was a baggie of white powder and several small foil packages. “Is it dope?”

He smiled. “Let me show you.”

Apprehensive, she handed him the pouch and watched carefully as he turned on the overhead light and pulled out one of the little foiled whipples. He removed the back tab and showed her the contents—a spit of buttery vegetable spread such as one finds beside a plate of diner biscuits. He opened his pants and out he flopped like a quick draw. She gave a slight gasp of admiration.

“You ever buttered a hot ear of corn?” he asked.

She nodded.

He placed the spread in her fingers and invited her to grease him up. She was graceful, rhythmic, and when he was ready, he pulled her hand gently away and told her to lick her fingers clean. She obliged slowly, taunting him with her rehearsed harlotry.

He reached back into the kit for the bag of white powder, which he held up. “It aint dope,” he said, raising himself in the seat. He dipped his shimmering appendage into the sack, clasped it tight, and gave himself a solid dusting. He pulled out, refastened the bag, and stashed the kit.

“Think of it more as a late-night, sugary snack,” he said, reaching over, urging her in with an embrace, then pulling her willing head down ever so gently to sample his sweet ghost-white manhood.

17

Jay stopped midscoop.
There are more microorganisms squirming through this shovelful of dirt than there are humans inhabiting the planet.

He wheezed through clouded lungs and a swollen red nose, sweat beads clinging to his skull, quivering, mud-sliding down his body. His hands, scored red with oozing cracks, gathered a handful of earth. He held it to his ear and listened to the sounds of labored breathing.
This is what the earth sounds like from the heavens
, he decided.

Had it been weeks or days? This work of digging out civilizations and tossing them aside formed a span of hours unjoined from the rest of time. Now he stood at the bottom of a massive pit, surrounded by a ten-foot wall of soil. He would have done anything to keep from pacing the rooms and hallways of the house, where the books read themselves aloud to him from the shelves, or the carport, where the blackened bones resisted his feeble attempts to break them. One of his buckets had taken on rain, and he discovered that the bones sitting in water turned to paste when he ground them, so he soaked the rest and crushed them under brick like an old abuela making cornmeal. But he couldn't take the smell of it any longer. It was a scent no mask could erase. No proximity could halt its advance into his nasal passages. In a foolish, tormented moment, he tried to break his nose by slamming the shovel into his face. He lacked the power or conviction to break it, and so, after the blood and the stinging metallic taste, the smell was still there. It was not in his nose, he decided. It was in his brain. This malignant stench that would live there and spread like advancing societies.

That's when he started to dig.

He dug at first without knowing why and then slowly began to ascribe reason. Reason, with its many spreading tendrils like a root system or colony maze, had always existed. It was not something buried but something that needed not to be found.

He'd read somewhere that scientists were concerned by seismic activity and magma collecting in the basin of the Yellowstone Caldera, which suggested the massive underground volcano below the national park out west was ramping up to blow. Whether it went in two years or two thousand, who could know? The only certainty was the total decimation of America. A blanket of ash would block out the sun for ten to twenty years, killing all agriculture, most wildlife, anything that couldn't burrow underground and sustain itself for a generation. Never mind the bed of decaying uranium under the volcano. It was the loaded gun on the bedside table if the earth ever decided to off herself. No doubt the jihadists were studying how to drop bombs down a geyser and set the whole thing off, if only some dumb-ass Washington politician didn't get there first, lobbying to tap the damn thing and risk a holocaust all for a little oil.

It didn't really matter who did it. Everyone knew it was coming. The collective psychic will of humanity cried out for mercy and in anticipation of it. The story had to end, or at least begin a new chapter. Few would survive, but he was determined to be ready and would protect his family from the horrible fates that awaited all the others with their heads up their machines, killing their instincts, fattening their bodies for the mass sacrifice to the gods.

He'd seen a television documentary about the subterranean colonies of naked mole rats, the only mammals that lived entirely beneath the earth. They resembled human fingers with tiny legs and arms, eyeless in dark caves, which they'd gnawed out with their enormous protruding buckteeth, living like ants in a highly organized system of tunnels and chambers. His plan was similar—to dig three or four large pits and connect them with tunnels. It would be like a house, each burrow its own bedroom, trussed up with heavy timbers, maybe some amenities from their man-made past, like fake windows with photos of nature to make them feel at home.

For eating and breathing, he'd conceived a kaleidoscope garden, which would allow them to grow food underground. It was a series of stackable food plots encased in a cabinet of mirrors that were arranged to refract sunlight down from a skylight. He was eager to build a prototype to see if it was possible to grow food underground this way. Water would be scarce unless he built over an aquifer or filtered and recycled urine. Sunlight would be weak from the ash cloud unless he could enhance it with magnifying glass. Maybe a system of crank lights, everyone taking a turn on the stationary bike to charge the lamps. The plants would provide the oxygen needed for living under the earth, and the Mizes would provide the subsequent carbon dioxide and fertilizer to keep the plants alive. Symbiotic bliss within the earth's crust. Perhaps he could build a whole city under the pasture, caves and catacombs for a worthy new race of humans who recognized the privilege of survival and weren't bent on killing everything.

Jay and Sandy would be the new Adam and Eve. He imagined their squinting babies crawling through the burrows, waiting on the light to reach them, waiting for nuclear winter to end. Perhaps they could teach each other how to communicate by sign language or brain waves and repopulate a silent world.

He missed her at this time more than ever, when night was a distinct possibility. She knew how to be happy and settled in this world, and he needed her as an expression of this knowledge. She didn't know it to say it, but she embodied it, and getting a glimpse of himself without this, he didn't think it was possible to be happy without her. His smarts were all tricks, ideas borrowed from books, but her knowing was real and sacred. He'd failed to protect her, failed in his role. The husband was only for seed and for guarding against the night, but he and millions like him thwarted duty by collecting wealth and building monuments to themselves.

He put the shovel down and climbed out of the pit, which he'd dug in a wedge to keep from having to hoist himself up and down. He would build her a palace underground if that's what she desired. It wasn't too late to lure her back, only he had to make this place pure again. He had much to bury and burn, ashes to haul, a severed hand to find.

Jay fetched the retort barrel with the keg inside it and rolled them into the pit and went to clanging on each with a ball-peen hammer, flattening the rims until the sides collapsed and they lay at the bottom of the hole like crushed beer cans, and next he took the cook pot and flattened it similarly, and he threw over top several bucketsful of dirt and stamped it down to conceal it all well, and then he ran back and forth to the house and brought the old wheelbarrow into the field with its multiple dumploads of shiny pieces, which he carried down bit by bit, careful not to spill—first the steering and pedals and rack engine, the gas tank and suspension, the brakes and exhaust and ignition and transmission, the gun mount and rear rack, and then all of the tiniest components—­the screws, washers, valves, seals, gaskets, bearings, and chains—and after all the metal was disassembled and laid to rest, too far down for detectors to make, there were the sliced tires and guards and cables, the seat covers and handles, a layer of dirt tamped down meticulously over each so that little would be left, and when it was complete and there were a couple of wheelbarrow loads of dirt to take down to the compost bins, he covered the long rectangle of freshly turned earth with plant debris, blended it well, and believed that within two weeks it would look like it had never been disturbed, and after that another century or more before the sense of its contents could be made.

And if anyone was lucky enough to be around to find this, maybe they would be reminded that we've only ever been here, scurrying across or just beneath the Mother's skin at her own gracious mercy, a self-propagating food stock for her deep crumbling hunger.

He slept well that night and much of the next day, and when evening came he crawled again into the pasture, toting a cumbersome garbage sack. He composed a fire for the boat, which he'd splintered with an ax that afternoon. Paperbacks provided the kindling, just a few old classics of paranoia, read and remembered. When the flames shot erect, he dipped the shovel into the sack, pulled up the corpse's jeans, and handed them to the fire. The garment muffled the inferno just a bit and drove into the clear night a tall plume of smoke,
which the wind took straight and mercifully away. The flames adjusted, welcomed the fabric, and fanned out. The jeans appeared to be melting in the heat. After a few moments, he reached in with the shovel and lifted them, and they fell apart like burning paper.

He kept building the fire in layers, first the brambles and leaves, followed by a filthy bedsheet or blood-coated tennis shoe, then more branches. He burned it slow, a clue at a time, and then he'd sit back and stare off into the glow for a while, imagining that he'd always been destroying these things and that he would spend the rest of his life destroying them too, tending this sulfurous hell pit till kingdom come.

When it seemed well enough past dinnertime he unwrapped some rations he'd tucked up in a bandanna. A little cake with a special filling he had recently discovered. It had started innocently with that first taste of honeyed mud at the washout by the river and then later the taste of dust and sweat across his lips. He'd licked the wall of the pit, a yellow-brown strata of clay, and enjoyed the seductive taste, pulled a nugget and eaten furtively. It tasted of rich vinegary mustard greens. The salt and the sugar were present with the sharp bitters. He heated a pan's worth over the fire, fried it up with onions, just a little heat to kill any hookworms. He made flatbread with the old beetle flour and rainwater and ate them together, a dirty taco. A little gritty but uncommonly delicious. This could pass in finer restaurants, he believed. What more were your truffles and mushrooms but ambitious mud?

Chipper, meanwhile, was roving the bountiful acres of unsniffed pasture when he stopped at the top of the hill and set to howling and barking. Jay crept up, flattened himself against the earth, and peered over the ridge. The moon spotlighted a trespasser under the carport. The shadow passed behind the Bronco and lingered before the dark window, peering into the house.

Jay instinctively pulled the pistol from his waistband and cocked it, waiting to see if he recognized the figure. He heard a ripple of plastic. Someone was nosing under the char tarp. He popped off a warning shot, which brought a dose of adrenaline.

The trespasser stopped and moved toward the gunshot. Jay stood, cocked, and fired again into the air. “Don't shoot,” called a deep, familiar voice. The long broad figure moved out of the light and into the shadows of the pasture, the orange glow from his cigarette creating an orb of light around his face. It was Hatcher, his neighbor across the way.

Chipper recognized him and darted down the hill. Jay ran to cut him off. Hatcher was extremely clever and would make him answer for everything that was amiss at the campsite. They met awkwardly in the middle of the slope. “What're you shooting at?” the neighbor inquired.

“You,” Jay replied.

“Well, you got shit for aim,” the neighbor croaked. Not given to expression, he was almost impossible to read, all eyebrows, spectacles, and mustache. He wore a broad trucker hat over gray hair pulled back and tied in a ponytail. “Is that raincoats you're burning back there?”

“How'd you guess?” said Jay.

“Smells like somebody baking tennis shoes.”

Jay froze, grasping for a lie. “It's some of Sandy's old clothes.” It was an idiotic response he regretted instantly, nearly as bad as the truth.

Hatcher took it without a flinch. “I saw her car over here the other day. Y'all get your mess sorted out?”

“Not exactly.”

“Didn't think so, you burning her clothes and all,” Hatcher replied. “She aint in em, is she?”

Of everyone, Hatcher would be the hardest to fool. His instincts were unequaled, almost paranormal. He could smell bullshit a mile away.

“She's not,” Jay replied, managing a smile.

Hatcher craned his neck up the hill. Men like him were drawn to flames. He looked back and eyed Jay suspiciously. “What happened to your nose, she slam a door in your face?”

Jay fingered the scab of his misguided self-mutilation. “Tree branch whacked me in the face.”

Hatcher looked down at Chipper as if seeking confirmation. The dog was staring up with a dumb smile, wagging his tail.

“Look, I'm sorry,” said Jay, impatient. “I'm all out of weed.”

Hatcher was an old hippie, lost between worlds. A toke now and then would put him right, as it did for Jay. A year or so back he'd lost his son, a military hero in Iraq. Since then Hatcher's wife had found religion and couldn't abide him having grass at their house.

“Well, I sure hate that for you,” Hatcher said. “But some crossed my path the other day. I come to share.”

There was something ominous in Hatcher's flat, expressionless tone. Jay urged him inside, where he had some rolling papers, anything to lure him away from the fire over the hill. The neighbor might go berserk if he found Jay burning a perfectly good boat.

“What's all this?” Hatcher asked, swatting the tarp as they passed through the carport.

“Just some compost experiments,” Jay said, moving fast inside.

Hatcher blew a snort of derision. Like many old hippies, he'd lost his optimism and pretended to disapprove of Jay's sustainable farming experiment.

“How'd that compost work out for you this year?” the neighbor taunted.

“Not too well, Hatch,” said Jay. “But it wouldn't, considering the circumstances, don't you imagine?”

“Should've grown rice this first year,” said Hatcher, handing over a folded-­
up paper towel. “Like I told you. Rice don't mind a flood.”

Had he, in fact, predicted the flood? Jay seemed to remember something about it months earlier. Hatcher was nothing if not a harbinger of misfortune.

“Something you could eat at least,” Hatcher said. “Aint you got no food? You look to be wasting away.”