Code of the Hills E-Book

Chris Offutt

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 298

Beschreibung

FROM AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR CHRIS OFFUTT. 'Excellent Kentucky noir — Offutt's third Mick Hardin novel is the best yet.' — Kirkus An explosive return to the mayhem of the Kentucky hills, Code of the Hills is a harrowing novel of family — of what we're willing to do to protect and avenge the ones we love. Mick Hardin is back in the hills of Kentucky. He'd planned to touch down briefly before heading to France, marking the end to his twenty-year Army career. In Rocksalt, his sister Linda the sheriff is investigating the murder of Pete Lowe, a sought-after mechanic at the local racetrack. After another body is found, Linda and her deputy Johnny Boy Tolliver wonder if the two murders are related. Linda steps into harm's way just as a third body turns up and Mick ends up being deputised again. The dark, gripping, and propulsive thriller of murder and secrets in Rocksalt, Kentucky where little is as it seems. 'This is a marvellous series… These have become must-reads for me and I enjoy every minute of the reading experience' Deadly Pleasures 'Beautifully descriptive... Offutt's Mick Hardin novels are powerful books that feature characters with questionable ethics.' Library Journal 'Righteous Kentucky noir... I gulped it down, relishing the burn' — Ian Rankin on Shifty's Boys

Leseprobe

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR CHRIS OFFUTT

‘Righteous Kentucky noir with top notes of Daniel Woodrell and SA Cosby. I gulped it down, relishing the burn’ – Ian Rankin

‘In elegant, economical prose, Shifty’s Boys is an accomplished addition to the ranks of country noir’ – Val McDermid

‘The writing is top-notch, shot through with menace and melancholy’ – New York Times

‘Chris Offutt’s mastery of sense of place is still in full bloom’ – Times (Thriller Book of the Month)

‘[The Killing Hills] Violent and funny and invoking a sense of place I haven’t encountered in a long long time. Chris Offut’s Appalachian noir really is something very special. Highly recommended’ – M. W. Craven

‘Excellent Kentucky noir – Offutt’s third Mick Hardin novel is the best yet’ – Kirkus Reviews

‘Beautifully descriptive… Offutt’s Mick Hardin novels are powerful books that feature characters with questionable ethics’ – Library Journal

‘Offutt follows the beautifully written The Killing Hills with another dark mystery featuring Mick Hardin. Fans of the author’s poetic writing, with moments of sly humor, will welcome this second compelling story of family, community, and grief’ – Lesa Holstine, Library Journal

‘How can it be that after just two of Chris Offutt’s Mick Hardin novels I love a bunch of the characters like they were my own family? Here’s hoping Hardin rides for a good long while’ – Jonathan Lethem

‘Offutt has fashioned a mystery plot that’s fast-paced, efficiently plotted, atmospheric, and compelling, but what again distinguishes the book is the author’s command of and affection for the setting and the people who live there. Come for the thriller, by all means; it delivers nicely. But stay for, and linger in, the marvelous incidentals and atmospherics’ – Starred review from Kirkus

‘A fantastic and compelling new crime novel series…rendered with great page-turning style and thrilling action, infused with insight and wisdom, humanity and affection. I eagerly await the next Mick Hardin!’ – Jonathan Ames

‘This is country noir at its most powerful, combining cracking action with crystalline portraits of rough-hewn but savvy characters tragically forced to become “retribution killers” to stop yet another cycle of violence’ – Starred review from Booklist

‘Readers will appreciate the novel’s respectful portrayal of the contemporary South as they ride along with Mick on his fair-minded, almost spiritual quest to root out the truth’ – Publishers Weekly

‘A tale of vengeance that asks difficult questions about the nature and value of honor, every line delivered with the relentless efficiency of a wolf stripping meat from a bone. More Mick, please’ – Christopher J. Yates

‘Wonderfully atmospheric thriller’– Mail on Sunday

‘A delicious slice of hillbilly noir’– Irish Times

(Crime Books of the Year)

‘One hopes Offutt will bring Hardin back; he is a hell of character!’ – Crime Time (Book of the Month)

‘More than just a murder case, it’s a voyage into rural backwoods Kentucky that doesn’t shirk from the darkness to be found there, and unfolds with drive, noir style and wry humour’– Herald

‘It’s genuinely thrilling to read and written with a propulsive momentum, a poet’s eye for the small detail and an expert plotter’s feel for twists and turns that come naturally, rather than bolted on out of the blue. Fantastic stuff’– Big Issue

‘A master-class in the craft of crime fiction’– CrimeReads (Best Noir Fiction of the Year)

For James Offutt

I never met a Kentuckian who wasn’t either thinking about going home or actually going home.

– Albert Benjamin ‘Happy’ Chandler, former Governor of Kentucky

Chapter One

Janice drove slowly to avoid jostling the plastic containers of food on the floor behind her seat. She had better ones at home, but her father was likely to use them for storing nuts and bolts. She brought him food twice a week and resented it – the cooking, the drive, the awkward struggle for a topic other than weather or his cars. It was a matter of proximity. Janice was the oldest of his four adult kids and the only one who lived close. She often wished he’d died before her mother. With his wife gone he’d turned useless and low. Nothing engaged him but working on cars and taking care of his chickens.

At the turnoff for his holler, she tried to straddle the mudholes, an impossible task given their width. They were dry, which made her tires bounce harder. She had a choice with the last one – go through it at the rate of a drugged turtle, or crowd the edge and risk sliding through horseweed into the ditch. Janice never cursed out loud, but her mind flew with blue language. Eff it, she thought and pressed the accelerator, the old shocks scraping metal as the tires dropped into a four-inch hole.

The driveway piddled out into the hard-packed yard filled with five cars – three for parts, one he drove, and one he was working on. He hadn’t been to a store in six months. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d visited her. Maybe it was for the best, she thought. He smelled of sweat, cigarette smoke, and engine oil. His hands were black with grease embedded deep in the pores from decades of mechanical work.

She honked to let him know she was there, got out of the car, and opened the rear door. Sure enough, there was a pool of spaghetti sauce on the cardboard she’d placed beneath the containers. A second one had spilled lettuce onto the carpet, a salad she’d dutifully made, despite knowing he wouldn’t eat it. The lid to the pasta had slid under the seat and she decided to get it later. He wouldn’t care. He’d probably eat it with his fingers over the sink.

She carried the food onto the porch, pulled the screen door with a finger, kicked it open, and entered. The familiar smell of her mother’s hand soap and lotion drifted under the thicker layer of a man alone. The twined scents always reminded her of better days in the past.

‘Daddy,’ she said. ‘I brought you some supper.’

She heard nothing, which meant nothing. He often napped in the spare room, her mother’s old sewing room. He hadn’t slept in his own bed since his wife died. Janice set the food on the counter and shook her head at the dirty dishes in the sink. She’d be the one to wash them. She called to him again, softer, in case he was sleeping, but the spare room was empty except for the narrow single bed and stacks of her mother’s fabric. Bolt ends she’d gotten on sale were leaning in a corner. Janice opened the curtains and lifted the window to relieve the room of stale air. Through the screen she saw her father lying on the ground.

She rushed through the house to the backyard, thinking that he’d had a stroke or a heart attack. She could feel her own heart pounding in her chest. He lay on his back as if taking a rest, a heavy crescent wrench near the curled fingers of his grease-blackened hand. The front of his shirt was matted with dried blood from a gunshot wound. She called the police and began washing the dishes. Nine-one-one was on its way, cops and EMTs and fire trucks. She felt bad for the previous way she’d thought about her father. It was too late now, she knew, but the guilt would live inside her for a long while, like a loose belt on one of the cars in his yard.

Chapter Two

Mick Hardin took his standard two-minute shower, toweled off in one minute, and spent two more getting dressed. His T-shirt was damp against the wet splotches on his torso but he didn’t care. He ran his hand over his head to comb his hair, which was already getting longer. He didn’t care about that, either. As of 2400 hours last night, he’d ended his status as a serving member of the United States military. He was no longer duty bound to care about anything.

He studied his freshly shaven reflection in the misty mirror. He was thirty-nine years old, still fit, with all his teeth and hair. Not much to brag on, but it was more than a lot of people. If he didn’t get too spendy, he could live on his pension for decades. Prior to resignation, he’d agreed to train new CID investigators in exchange for promotion and a commensurate raise. He’d done that for a year. Mick had been surprised to enjoy working with young soldiers but not enough to extend enlistment. He wasn’t a teacher, he was an investigator, and now he was unemployed.

Every action seemed significant on his final day in the army – the last shower, the last bed made, the last breakfast of runny eggs, hard toast, and dry potatoes. His final walk from the mess hall to the barracks. His last withdrawal from the bank on base – twenty thousand dollars in cash. Activity on Fort Leonard Wood continued as if nothing important was occurring. To all the other soldiers, nothing was, just another dull day in the service.

He carried a suitcase and a duffel bag to his truck. A corporal gave Mick his final salute, sloppy and quick, the perfunctory gesture indicating a hangover. At the main gate he nodded to the guards and drove north past the ubiquitous enterprises near all garrisons – pawn shop, pizza place, tattoo shop, strip club, and gaming center. Fast food and cheap motels. Fort Leonard Wood was in the Missouri Ozarks, pretty country that reminded Mick of home. He drove northeast to St Louis, where he got on I-64 for the long drive east to Rocksalt, Kentucky. The old truck ran well, a 1963 stepside that had belonged to his grandfather, the man who’d raised Mick deep in the Daniel Boone National Forest.

Like all soldiers, he’d dreamed of this day since boot camp. Now it was anticlimactic and depressing. He was grateful to be spared a formal and tedious ceremony requiring stoic endurance. His career had ended with his signature on multiple forms. It was similar to divorce. In both cases, a significant portion of his life stopped abruptly with legal documents in a bland office. He underwent a quick sensation of doubt that he swept aside.

After serving four tours as a combat paratrooper he’d transferred to CID and spent twelve more years tracking down soldiers who’d committed violent felonies. Now he was free, truly free. Free from orders, war, and pressure. Free from the emotional responses of victims and their families. Free from making an error with colossal repercussions – the wrong person arrested and a killer still at large.

Mick had a plan for his future, at least the first six months, but he was flexible, ready to shift with any circumstance. No plan survived first contact with the enemy, even if the enemy was civilian life. Affairs had not unfolded the way he’d previously imagined at his retirement – opening a boat rental business on Cave Run Lake and running it with his wife. Now Peggy was living with her new husband and their child. His mother and father were long dead, and the house he’d grown up in had burned to the ground. Mick was going home to a place that was no longer home.

He stopped for gas three times and made it to Rocksalt in ten hours, his speed hampered by the old truck. He’d been gone two years and the town appeared the same – few cars, no pedestrians, the traffic lights blinking both ways at the four intersections. He drove straight to his sister’s house. Calling ahead was not a habit with him, a problem at times for his CO, his ex-wife, and his sister. He’d grown up with no telephone and never embraced the widespread use of cell phones. His own was in the glove compartment, turned off. Arriving unannounced had its benefits, especially when taking into custody a young man trained to kill. He no longer needed to think that way but it was deeply ingrained, the same as vigilance toward suspicious objects by the road, a vehicle that followed for too long, or the quick motion of a furtive figure in the shade. The intensity of the habit had kept him alive in war zones. But he understood that it had severely undermined his marriage and he wondered if he was capable of maintaining a close relationship. Neither he nor his sister had ever been very good at it.

Linda lived in their mother’s house at the end of Lyons Avenue. It was tidier than his last visit two years ago, freshly painted with new gutters and downspouts. The setting sun glinted off the roof in a steady sheen that suggested new shingles. Maybe she’d gotten a bump in pay after winning the election to sheriff. He went to the side door, but his key wouldn’t open the lock. He walked to the front, used only by preachers, politicians, and kids on Halloween. That key didn’t work either. He double-checked both doors, then used a penlight to study the locks. They were shiny and new.

He drove to the sheriff’s office and parked beside his sister’s county-issued SUV. Hand on his door handle, he hesitated. He’d been locked into mission mode so severely that he’d overlooked a detail with negative potential. Two years ago he’d spent his last night in Eldridge County with Sandra Caldwell, who worked as a dispatcher for the sheriff’s department. He wondered if she’d been miffed by his sudden departure and subsequent lack of contact. The prospect of seeing her scared him more than facing a barred entry to a village in Afghanistan, knowing it was booby-trapped.

Mick considered calling the office to see if she answered, or calling his sister directly and asking Linda to come outside. Both smacked of cowardice, which he couldn’t tolerate. Sandra was probably married by now, or with any luck had quit her job. He left the truck and went to the sheriff’s office door, which was locked. He felt a quick sense of gratitude that the staff was gone. He banged on the glass until his sister emerged from her office and let him in.

‘Lord love a duck,’ Linda said, ‘look what the dogs drug in.’

‘Hidy, Sis.’

‘I saw you sitting out there. Getting up the nerve to come in, I bet.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Afraid of facing the music on how you treated Sandra?’

‘What do you know about that?’

‘You leave your truck in front of her house overnight and the whole town knows. Two years is nothing in Eldridge County. Same as two minutes anywhere else.’

‘Is she mad?’

Linda laughed, a rarity in general, and led him into her office. It was as spartan as ever – state and national flag, photograph of the governor, desk, filing cabinet, and guest chair. The wall held new adornments – an honorary commission as Kentucky Colonel, an award from the state for meritorious accomplishment, and a special commendation from the FBI.

‘Two years,’ she said. ‘You look pretty much the same.’

‘You lost weight.’

‘A little,’ she said. ‘Bought a couple of new uniforms that’re supposed to streamline my verticals, whatever that means.’

‘Well, it works.’

‘Yeah, until I put on the vest.’

They sat looking at each other, not so much an evaluation as a willingness to accept. Each was the only family the other had. Despite their differences – many and extreme – they were loyal in the way of the hills.

‘I went by your house,’ he said. ‘Keys didn’t work.’

‘I changed the locks.’

‘Mommy’s old ones finally give out?’

‘No, they worked.’

‘Somebody start bothering you over the job?’

‘Not your business,’ she said. ‘Nothing to do with the job.’

‘Wrong choice of man?’

‘Again,’ she said. ‘As usual.’

Linda shifted in her chair and stared out the window at a small maple. Nothing was happening out there. The humidity draped the leaves with weight that made them droop. Mick knew the topic was over.

‘Thanks for taking care of my truck,’ he said.

‘I thought I’d see you when you picked it up.’

‘I couldn’t get away from work. That’s why I hired Albin to haul it to base for me. Cost a pretty penny.’

‘Albin’s mixed up in a murder case.’

‘Albin? That boy wouldn’t hit a lick at a snake.’

‘He’s not a suspect. Got a hell of an alibi, too. He was racing at the dirt track in Bluestone. Couple of hundred witnesses.’

‘How’d he do?’ Mick said.

‘Took second. Johnny Boy said he’d have won if Pete Lowe was in the pit.’

‘Don’t know him.’

‘You won’t get a chance to. He’s the victim. Somebody shot him down in his yard. Daughter found him.’

‘Well,’ Mick said. ‘I’m off the clock now. But if it was me, I’d look at family and friends. Then any woman he was involved with.’

‘Yep, then neighbors.’

Mick nodded.

‘You’re getting good at sheriffing,’ he said. ‘A regular Nancy Drew.’

‘When are you due back?’

‘I’m not. I’m out.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Yep. Terminated. Retired. Separated from service. It’s a complicated process with all kinds of steps. Right now I’m in a period the army calls “transition to civilian life.” Supposed to be difficult.’

Linda leaned back in her chair, swiveled it one way, braced her feet against the floor, then spun all the way around. She had a big smile at the end of the chair’s rotation, as if the spin had obliterated the years. Mick hadn’t seen the joyous side of her in a long time. It was worth the trip.

‘Damn!’ she said. ‘Twenty years went fast. You here for good?’

‘I’d like to stay with you for a few days, if you ain’t caring.’

‘Okay.’

‘Then I’m moving to France. Got a six-month lease.’

‘What? Why France?’

‘I speak enough of it to get by. Can’t talk to a banker or understand a word on the phone, but I can order food and go to stores.’

‘Do they talk English?’

‘They say they don’t, but a lot do. When they hear how bad my accent is, most folks switch to English.’

‘Do they sound like Pepé Le Pew?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘The whole country is filled with cartoon skunks. You know what I never understood? Why a French skunk had a Spanish first name.’

‘Reckon you’ll have plenty of time to figure that out.’

Mick nodded. He’d missed talking to his sister, to someone who knew him well. The only others were dead or no longer in his life. There was plenty of precedent in the hills for brother and sister to live together in the family home, but it wouldn’t suit him – or her. Both were too fixed in their ways. On the other hand, his presence might prevent her from changing the locks to keep a man out of her house. But it was none of his business.

‘Seriously,’ she said, ‘why are you here?’

‘To say goodbye to you, Sis.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘I’ll put my truck in storage somewhere so it doesn’t sit in front of your house. It might not go with your new locks.’

Linda snatched a sheet of paper from her desk, crumpled it quickly into a ball, and threw it at him. Mick shifted his head and it flew over his shoulder.

‘Used to,’ he said, ‘you’d have thrown a paperweight.’

‘Yeah, well, time affects everybody different. We’re getting mature.’

‘I’ve never known you to be philosophical.’

‘It’s the job,’ she said. ‘I used to think everything was simple, black and white, legal and illegal. Now it’s a lot more complicated. What’s lawful, what’s justice, and what’s best for the community. Sometimes they overlap but not often enough.’

Mick nodded. Two years was the longest period he’d gone without seeing his sister. He wondered if it had been a crucial time for her. When change happened, it was incremental. Then the results appeared suddenly like the overnight success of a musician who’d been playing gigs for fifteen years.

Mick gestured to the framed certificates on the wall.

‘What’s all that?’ he said.

‘The usual bullshit.’

‘Then why put them up?’

‘Politics, Big Bro. Never know who might walk in here.’

‘You’re learning.’

‘Yeah, the hard way. Made some enemies, too.’

‘As long as your friends have more juice than your enemies, you’re doing good.’

‘Sometimes it’s hard to know who’s who in that book.’

‘It’s more like an Etch A Sketch than a book,’ Mick said. ‘Remember those? Turn it upside down and shake it and the screen goes blank. That’s politics.’

Linda took a set of keys from her purse, removed one, and slid it across the desk.

‘I’ll meet you there later. I’ve got to wait for the night dispatcher and do paperwork. There’s half a sub in the fridge.’

‘Maybe I’ll eat with Johnny Boy,’ he said.

‘He’s at the Bluestone Speedway talking to people who knew the victim. It’s race night and they’ll all be there. Easier than traipsing around four counties hunting them down.’

He picked up the key.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘Don’t be messing with my stuff.’

He nodded, grinned, and left.

Chapter Three

Like most boys in eastern Kentucky, Johnny Boy Tolliver had grown up enamored of racing, steeped in stories of powerful muscle cars. He and his grade school buddies drew pictures of the race cars they’d own, choosing personal color schemes. Learning to drive at age fifteen initiated a shift. He was careful behind the wheel, stricken by the responsibility of feet, hands, and eyes working together to operate a dangerous machine. He wrecked three times, minor brushes with two ditches and a tree. Instead of being emboldened by the experience, he became more cautious. He never had another accident.

At age seventeen he went to the Bluestone Speedway because a particular girl was going, too. Stock cars drove a dirt oval, producing a roar on the straightaways and filling the air with dust. The combination of noise and dirt irritated Johnny Boy, compounded by supreme disappointment – the girl he liked was there for a driver whose car left the race with a blown engine. She went straight to the pit and Johnny Boy went straight home.

He hadn’t been back to Bluestone until now, and not much had changed. People still ate hot dogs, drank Cokes infused with bourbon, and smoked left-handed cigarettes in the parking lot. Scruffy young men stared at sexy women who clung to the arms of tough older men. The noise and dust pervaded everything. He was ready to leave and he’d only talked to a few people who knew the dead man.

Pete Lowe was considered the finest mechanic at the track, hard to get along with in general, and worse after his wife died. He’d worked at numerous garages in three counties – Eldridge, Fleming, and Bath – but always got mad over something trivial and quit. No one had ever fired Pete Lowe. His abilities with an engine bordered on the mysterious, as if he was attuned to a layer of ethereal understanding that eluded everyone else. He could diagnose a problem after five seconds of listening to a motor. One sniff of a carburetor and he knew the precise adjustment necessary for the fuel injection. He kept a thumbnail filed at an angle and used it to perfectly calibrate spark plug points. When it came to engines, he was keen as a briar. Everyone wanted him in their pit.

Johnny Boy was tired of hearing about him. The old adage ‘don’t speak ill of the dead’ carried a lot of weight in the hills. You could be in the middle of cussing a man up one side and down the other but if he keeled over dead, you immediately shifted to voluminous praise, as if an apostle had died. The worst thing Johnny Boy heard about Pete came from a large man with a deep voice who said, ‘Pete’s Pete.’ Johnny Boy was wasting his time and getting low-spirited. He recalled his rejection as a teenager. That woman now had four kids and a third husband. If she’d married Johnny Boy, they’d still be together and he’d be happy. He was disgusted with everything – the absurd attention on automobiles going in circles and getting nowhere, the dust and noise and drunken fans, his own past, and most of all himself. He left and headed for Rocksalt, driving five miles under the speed limit.

The interstate was much faster but he took Old 60 in honor of a classmate who drove three races. Chad had loved Mustangs as a kid and driven them despite their lack of acceleration at crucial times. He’d painted his race car the same as he’d drawn it in the fourth grade, with the number 8 in a blue circle. Johnny Boy remembered him saying that 8 was his favorite number because if you turned it sideways it was the sign for infinity, and eventually every race car wound up sideways. Chad never took the interstate because, as he said, he was an oval man, not a drag racer. He preferred driving on Highway 60 for the curves. One night someone called about a wreck and the police found the car easily. They searched all night for Chad, then visited nearby houses, figuring that he’d gotten hurt and was wandering around. The morning mist lifted and the police saw his body in a tree, flung from the car.

Johnny Boy knew he was too young to dwell on the past. People in the hills often died early. By age thirty everyone knew several people in the cemetery. It occurred to him that was the reason hill people revered the dead. There were too many for such a small population.

At a crossroad he stopped for gas at the twenty-four-hour place that had put a family-owned station out of business. He shook his head at such thinking – more of the past. It didn’t make sense to lament the loss of a gas station while sticking the nozzle of a pump into his fuel tank. To cheer himself he went inside for a bottle of Dr Pepper. Behind the counter was a short woman, lithe and quick-moving. Every visible part of her body was tattooed except her face, and Johnny Boy supposed that the smaller you were, the cheaper it was to cover all your skin. A big man would need a second job to cover his tattoo bills.

Outside he completed the automated transaction for gas while watching an old Jeep Wagoneer drive to the farthest pump. A man got out, looked around as if hunting a lost cat, and stepped into the glare of LED light above the pumps. He had a beard and long hair, an unusual combination for the hills, out of fashion. Young boys were bringing back the long beard but kept their hair short, copying styles off television. The man didn’t look old enough to be a former hippie stuck in his own past.

Johnny Boy started his car and drove past the man, giving him a quick glance, then slowing for a long stare. The man looked up and Johnny Boy studied him. Something about him was familiar. It wasn’t from a previous arrest or a face on a state BOLO alert. It could be nothing more than a family resemblance to people Johnny Boy saw every day. Still, it scratched around in the back of his mind like a rat in a corn crib. It was the eyes, he thought. It had to be the eyes since little else was visible. Not the color but the bone structure, the brow and cheekbones. He knew those features. He wished he’d taken down the license plate number of the man’s car.

Rocksalt was a college town, which meant hundreds of shoddy rentals, small houses for junior professors, and a few streets with fancy homes for doctors, lawyers, and university administrators. Johnny Boy lived in a four-room apartment in one of the few buildings intended for working adults. He’d been saving for a house, but didn’t know where he wanted to live. He figured his eventual wife would influence the decision, but he hadn’t married, didn’t have a girlfriend, and his last date was three years ago.

He sat in his favorite chair – the only chair – and wondered if he was depressed. He concluded that wondering about it indicated that he wasn’t. Truly depressed people just sat or slept or drifted in a mental fog. During the last twenty years, the average life span of people in the hills had decreased and he wondered if that pulled back a midlife crisis. He was twenty-six. Maybe this was the onset – negative self-evaluation, boredom with his meaningless life, and chronic reminiscence. He was weary of his own safe routines. Something needed to change, but he had no idea what. He liked his job and didn’t want to live anywhere else. What did that leave?

Chapter Four

Still on army time, Mick awoke just before dawn and decided to make breakfast for his sister before she went to work. He lay in bed looking around the room he’d slept in until age eight, when he’d gone to live with his grandfather in the woods. His mother had devoted herself to her daughter but Linda had moved out at age eighteen for a tiny apartment, a job, and classes at Rocksalt College. Their mother turned increasingly inward, rarely leaving the house, concerned exclusively with time and weather. Her house contained more than sixty clocks and dozens of calendars. Visible through each window was a thermometer. Her large TV was tuned perpetually to a twenty-four-hour weather channel. She died watching a mudslide in Burma. Linda inherited the house.

He made coffee and began preparing the single meal he knew how to make, taught to him by his grandfather – eggs, bacon, potatoes, and toast. Over the years he’d added omelets and poached eggs to his repertoire but today he stuck with the classic formula of fry, flip, and slide.

He heard the bathroom door close and added diced onions to the potatoes. A few minutes later, Linda entered the kitchen with an amiable grunt and poured a cup of coffee. Mick always woke up like a hound dog ready to run but Linda operated on a slower schedule. He made her a plate and they ate silently. After a second cup of coffee she was awake enough to talk.

‘Are you really out?’ she said. ‘For good?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘Got my twenty in. I can live on the pension. Every year there’s thousands of new recruits. They’re the same age but I get older.’

‘I’d say you got time figured out pretty good,’ she said. ‘It’s a special day, you should mark it on the calendar if you can find one around here.’

She smiled, the first of the day, and Mick figured probably the last. He nodded.

‘Have you talked to Peggy?’ he said.

‘Don’t put me in the middle. Mom tried that with me and Dad, then me and you. I didn’t then and I won’t now. If you want to talk, give her a call.’

‘Is she still with that guy?’

‘Yeah, they had another kid. And I’m done on the subject.’

Linda finished her coffee and went to her room. Mick cleaned the kitchen. She returned wearing her uniform and duty belt, hair pulled back and folded into a neat bun. She had car keys in one hand and a ballistic vest in the other.

‘You always wear one?’ Mick said.

‘On a call, yeah. Supposed to stop any handgun. What’d you wear?’

‘Level four with ceramic plates. Good against rifles and shrapnel. That’s one thing I won’t miss. Way too hot in the desert for that gear.’

‘They work though, right?’

‘Fewer casualties. But more soldiers lose limbs and get head wounds.’

‘What’s your agenda for the day?’ she said. ‘Drive around and get sad?’

Mick nodded. She stared at him and he understood that she was waiting for him to offer more information. It was an old trick, one he’d utilized hundreds of times. It meant she was learning on the job or had received training. He could outwait her, initiate a new subject, or simply leave the room. He was trying to figure out which would piss her off the least, when she spoke.

‘Thanks for breakfast,’ she said and left.

Mick drove east of town, stopping for gas at Haney’s Tire and Bible, a station run for thirty years by a family of redheads that went gray early. He’d known three generations’ worth, all named some version of Joe. A dark-haired man in his early twenties sauntered out to the truck, a feedstore hat cocked at an angle and a tire gauge clipped to his shirt.

‘New owners?’ Mick said.

‘Naw. Everybody thinks that on account of my black hair. I’m Joey. Your tires look new. Must be wanting gas or a Bible.’

‘Fill it up.’

Mick cut the engine and watched Joey, unable to recall the last time a gas station attendant had topped off his tank. It was a dying occupation, same as typewriter repairmen and shorthand secretaries. In forty years, Joey would be sitting around telling stories of the old days before electric cars put Haney’s out of business.

Mick paid cash and drove away, thinking about the circumstance of having dark hair in a family of gingers. Either somebody married out or a black-headed gene had finally worked its way to the fore. He pondered his lack of knowledge about genetics in general, then shook his head to clear his mind. Leaving the army had eliminated the need for a rigidity of thought, but he didn’t like how all manner of idea poured into the gap. His thinking was screwy. The day’s mission was to visit the only property he owned, left to him by his grandfather. He figured he was saying goodbye, although he was unsure to what. His grandfather, his past, or the land he loved? Maybe to himself.

The dirt lane ran up the hill and out a ridge so overgrown that he parked and walked. It was less a road than a mile-long driveway of dirt and brush that had regrown since Mick cleared it two years ago. Every sweetgum stump had sprouted a dozen saplings, as if angry at having been cut down and determined to marshal reinforcements. It was the only tree his grandfather had disliked.

At the top of the hill, Mick rested momentarily, admiring the small plateau at the end of a narrow ridge surrounded by thick woods. A pair of blue jays hollered a warning that an intruder had appeared. Smaller birds rose from the trees and fled. Mick approached the remnants of the cabin he’d grown up in. A fire had gutted it two years back, leaving blackened holes for doors and windows, a stone chimney, and little else. The roof and porch had burned. Only the four walls remained, constructed of heavy timbers notched at the ends to interlock. They’d withstood a hundred years of weather and now fire. He used a stick to pick through the debris, vaguely searching for any scrap of his past – a lucky rock, a railroad spike, a coffee pot. He found nothing. The thick layer of ash was matted from rain. A poplar grew in the living room.

He returned to his truck and drove to town. A new Dollar General and a chain gas station had appeared where the old drive-in movie theater had been. He pulled over, called his sister’s cell phone, and asked if she was at the sheriff’s station.