To my surprise, the country club was closed when I arrived, apparently for remodeling, but a line of cars was parked outside the entrance, a 1980s analog of the mob that watched the “chickie-run” in Rebel without a Cause. I hadn’t known the club was closed, because my family had never belonged to it. Dooley Matheson, Paul’s mean Jackson cousin, opened the locked gate for me, and I drove in to meet my destiny. The sky was overcast with steel-gray clouds. Paul stood out on the practice green, staring off toward the tree line, looking ten pounds heavier than when he’d left town.
We walked the first five holes in silence, not looking at each other except for sidelong glances, the way you look at other men in public restrooms. He stank of sweat and stale beer. I had an eerie feeling that he was measuring me for the first blow. In preparation for my senior football season, I’d put on a lot of muscle over the summer. Paul had been out of training for months, pounding bourbon and Cokes and chowing down with his frat buddies. I had never seen him show fear, and I didn’t that day. But he seemed to be wondering whether taking me on might prove more painful than he’d imagined after a few shots of whiskey at Ole Miss.
As dusk fell over the sixth fairway, he started talking. Not to me exactly, just venting. Strangely, he wasn’t talking about Jet. He was mumbling that college had turned out to be nothing like he’d imagined. It was basically an extension of high school, he said, and nobody he knew had any idea what they were going to do in the real world. A couple of St. Mark’s guys were on track to be doctors. Others claimed accounting was the quickest path to a Beemer and a Rolex and a McMansion in Dallas. None of that interested Paul. He’d been raised by a father who was larger than life—an athlete and war hero who could outrun, outplay, outshoot, outwork, outdrink, and outfuck (just ask him) any other man in whatever state he happened to be in at the time. In short, Max Matheson was a tough act to follow, and Paul didn’t seem to have any idea how to go about it.
At the ninth-hole tee, he stopped to piss out the beer he’d drunk during the drive down from Oxford. Then, as though taking out his dick had somehow broached the subject we were there to discuss, he said, “You love her, don’t you?”
When I didn’t answer, he said, “You’ve always loved her, man. Don’t try to deny it.”
“I didn’t deny anything,” I said, still tense with the expectation of violence.
He sniffed, then looked off in the direction of the river, which flowed a half mile to the west. “I know she’s pissed at me. I’ve banged a lot of chicks up there, you know that. But Jet’s nothing like them. Not even the hottest ones at Ole Miss. Or the smart ones. She’s . . . freaking perfect.”
“Perfect’s a pretty high bar,” I said, but I secretly believed the same thing.
“I used to think so,” he said. “But Jet clears it.”
He finally looked over at me, and when our eyes met, I saw a guy who was hurting at least as much as I had been for a long time. Why? I wondered. Surely not because of Jet. Maybe it’s something to do with his old man—
“The thing about Jet,” Paul said softly, “is that no matter what you do to her, or with her, she stays pure. You know? She’s above all that, somehow—even though she’s doing it, and into it. Right?”
I knew what he meant. He was trying to describe something rare back then, the utter absence of shame in Jet’s carnality. But I didn’t say so. My mind was running rampant. What did Jet think of him in bed, really? Had she been honest with me? Or had she, out of a desire not to hurt me, pretended that sex with Paul was nothing special? How far had she gone with him? What boundaries had they crossed together?
“If you think she’s so perfect,” I said evenly, “why do you sleep with half the girls at Ole Miss? Why waste your time?”
“Why do you think?” he asked, looking out toward the river again. “I’m stuck there with nothing else to do. You think I’m going to lie around the dorm studying? You know me better than that.”
In truth, I didn’t know why Paul had even bothered going to college. It was a foregone conclusion that he’d end up working for his father in the lumber business. I guess he’d expected Jet to put up with a few flings, then be waiting for him when he came home with a report card full of “incompletes,” ready to settle into the rut that had always been waiting for him. One thing I knew—Jet had no intention of marrying into that life.
“You’re boning her, aren’t you?” Paul said, and this time his voice had an edge to it.
I said nothing, but my nerves sang, and the muscles in my arms quivered in expectation of a fight.
“You know,” he went on, “I could tell you something that would hurt you. Hurt you bad.”
My eyes burned and watered, but I held my silence. I wasn’t going to take the bait. I feared what he might say too much.
Paul looked off to the west again. Against the clouds I saw the great electrical tower we had climbed two and a half years earlier, just before Adam drowned. The sight half made me want to fight Paul. Fight somebody, anyway. He saw the tower, too, and maybe the flash of rage in my eyes, because his next words were not what I’d expected.
“Everybody’s gonna ask what happened out here,” he said. “If I kicked your ass or what.”
I was surprised to discover that I didn’t care one way or the other. My fear had seeped out of me during the walk, or else the sight of the tower had driven it from me. “If you want to try,” I said, “let’s get it over with.”
“How about we don’t and say we did?” Paul suggested. “I need a fucking drink.”
The implications of his words washed over me like water in a heat wave. “What do we say out there?”
He shrugged. “Fought to a draw. Got tired of beating up on each other. No girl’s worth killing each other over. Not even Jet.”
I wasn’t sure of this. “No black eyes?”
Paul chuckled. “You want to pop each other once apiece? To sell the story?”
I thought about this. “Not really.”
“Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s get back to the cars. I’ve got an ice chest in my backseat.”
This bloodless accommodation couldn’t have been what he had in mind when he drove down from Oxford with his hands clenched on the wheel of his Corvette. But whatever rage he’d felt over Jet’s cleaving to me had subsided. Night was falling, and a cold wind blew off the river, making the long walk back to the clubhouse an unpleasant prospect. I asked Paul if he wanted to run it, but he just laughed. Three days later, he dropped out of college and joined the army. Everyone we knew was flabbergasted. When George H. W. Bush gave the go order for Desert Storm, Paul was sitting in Saudi Arabia, waiting for the balloon to go up.
The honk of a horn startles me out of my reverie.
I speed up and wave to the impatient driver behind me, surprised to find myself on the Little Trace and nearly to the turn for Buck’s house, which sits well back in the hardwood forest in rural Tenisaw County. I’ve driven out here so many times that I can do it on autopilot, even after an almost thirty-year gap.
The narrow gravel road arrows away from the black asphalt and runs through tall trees wearing the fresh pale green of spring. Back in those trees, Quinn Ferris sits in a house with a bed that will never again hold the weight of the man who built it. Handcrafted guitars hang on its walls—and a mandolin and a mandocello and two dulcimers—that will never have another note pulled from them by Buck’s gifted fingers. All because he threatened to slow down the gravy train of the bastards who run Bienville like their personal fiefdom. I dread facing Quinn in her grief and anger, but what choice do I have? If the Poker Club killed her husband, it’s because nobody ever planted themselves in their path and said, “This far, but no farther.” Am I that guy? My father never set himself against them. But if my brother had lived, he would have. If only for that reason, I realize, I must do it.
Chapter 15