I get my hat and walk past Roy cause he’ll come when he’s able. I walk through the woods to his pickup parked on the shoulder of the road and check the truck bed for tarps and shovels. Two tarps are still in wrappers. There’s a used one, folded with shovels on top. A gallon jug a bleach and some rags are in a corner; a gas can and cinder blocks are stacked neat along the sides, in case.
I slide in the driver’s side, wait for Roy, then drive off. I don’t talk but give Roy space to process his situation. Words won’t do no good right now anyway. I drive slow in the fog, round the curves, and think about the plastic tarps in the back, the rope, the pointy shovels, and the bloody stories they could tell if anybody listened. Blood’s just blood to most folks up here. Roy and me count on that.
Roy only kilt one man on purpose what’s buried up where we go. Somebody nosy from clear over McDowell County way that snooped where he won’t welcome and paid the price. Roy and me was glad he was a lightweight we could haul pretty far. Another time, a killing was a accident that was only part Roy’s fault. Moonshine, knives, and betting don’t mix good late at night. There’s a bunch more that got hurt for good reasons but not kilt, and we dumped em on some back road so the long walk back gives em thinking time.
Roy and me got secrets.
? ? ?
Darlene’s street’s empty. The few do-gooders who live in these parts are at Still Water Baptist Church being saved, and the sinners likely sleep the sleep of the dead.
“Pull round to the alley.” Roy almost sounds normal. He sits up straighter, and his face is settled. I do like he says, but already know what to do.
I get out and lean the bench seat forward. We don’t slam our doors, but leave em open a crack for a quiet coming and quick going. I grab the used tarp from the bed, tuck it under my arm, and put the coiled rope over my shoulder. Roy carries the bleach and rags.
I walk up the steps first, careful that my boots don’t come down hard and get heard by somebody who’ll remember. Roy does the same. I stop at the top of the stoop and look him in the eye. “You okay?” I whisper.
He nods. A night like he had don’t make recovery easy.
“She the only one in there?” I think to ask, to cover my bases.
Roy nods, irritated, and whispers, “I pay for the place.”
Shit.
The kitchen table is littered with rib bones gnawed clean, Twinkie wrappers, and an empty bottle of hooch. I walk through the living room, and in three steps, I’m in the bedroom I’ve never been in before, and she’s there. On the bed where I thought she’d be. In a room done up in red and limp lace and that thick perfume smell Darlene wears. She’s naked, mostly covered with a sheet with washed-out roses printed on it, eyes open, head turned too far with gray smudges on the sides of her neck, and a blob a dried blood in her dark hair. The back of her head got a gash likely from banging the side table. Blood is pooled and dried on the pink carpet.
The color of her skin is the giveaway her trouble’s real. All that glow that filled Roy up for a while got dulled out, like cut-up peaches left in the air too long.
Darlene’s used up.
I spread the tarp open, careful not to make more noise than I have to, and whisper, “You ready?”
Roy stands there, and damn if he don’t look like he’s gonna cry. That pisses me. He can cry over a flighty, nobody girl, and not care what he done to Sadie with his mean fists and meaner words that I bear witness to and wish I had guts to stop. Times like this, I think bout coming between Roy and Sadie. She deserves a lot better than his sorry ass. But this morning won’t about Sadie and her heartache that’s come back home. This morning we got a dead girl to get rid of.
I don’t have time for Roy’s breakdown, so I flick back the sheets, take hold of Darlene’s tattooed ankles, and shift her to the edge, giving him a pretty big hint we need to move along. Her arms rise up and her long hair trails above like she’s cheering. Or fallin down a chute. Or surrendering.
“Roy—now!” I whisper sharp, and he moves and takes her by the wrists.
“Wait,” he says, and unhooks the gold flower necklace with a fake diamond he give her she never took off. He slips it in his pocket.
“Why you want that? You gonna give it to somebody else? I don’t think so.”
“Lay off, Billy. I do what I need to do.”
I shake my head to tell him he’s a fool.
We lay Darlene’s body down on the used tarp, put her hands by her sides, strip off the bloody sheets, and throw em on top. Use bleach to wipe blood off the side table and rug, and throw the rags on top of the sheets. Roll her up snug, and I tie the package neat at her head and feet, and make handle grips. Darlene’s light and easy to move through her three little rooms.
At the back door, we stop and I check outside for witnesses. The fog is lifting, and safe leaving time is running short. We know the drill. We done it a time or two. We go quiet down the steps to the passenger side of the truck. The bench seat’s already forward. Slide body in, pull the old blanket over the package against the curious, get in, hope the truck starts on the first try, hold the doors closed, but don’t slam em till we’re a ways away.
We’re lucky and don’t see a soul, sorry or otherwise, when we leave the alley. A dead body behind the seat being carried to its final resting place always feels funny. I think I closed Darlene’s eyes. If not, she stares through the tarp at the back of my head and wonders what went wrong. I could have told her she shouldn’t mess with Roy’s black heart, but I never liked Darlene. She won’t as smart as she thought she was. Won’t as pretty. She was Roy’s plaything for a spell.
What happens to Sadie now, I don’t know. It’ll be no good.
? ? ?
Roy and me found a new burying spot by accident when we look for a better place for our still. The spot clean over Antler’s Mountain way is so rocky and sharp even settlers don’t lay claim to much of it. It’s got sour smells and shadows that shift and dankness that throws folks off from staying. Deep slits in the rocks likely drop into the fires of damnation, and that fits our doing this morning.
Good thing Darlene’s light cause we got a ways to go on foot, and Roy and me not getting any younger, if you call twenty-six and twenty-five old. Days like this, I feel old. I let him take the lead now that he’s come round, and he carries Darlene’s head. That’s the heavy end, you know.
We walk and climb, and Darlene grows heavier.
We muscle her up through the crotches of boulders, and slide her on dead leaves on the short slopes.
I’m proud to see the tarp stays neat and my knots tight.
Roy Tupkin
“Roy, lift up your end, man. You letting her drag,” Billy whines.
I lift up my end so she clears the rocks and stumps, and think on last night that brung us here with me at the head of the rolled tarp and Billy at the feet. We squeeze through a slit in the boulders, cross a tree felled over a stream turned wild after yesterday’s storm. We climb above the fog to this slippery shale and stunted trees and smelly sulfur that’ll be Darlene’s final resting place.
I hold up my hand, stop, and whisper, “You hear that, Billy?”
“What? I don’t hear nothing,” he says in his regular voice and irks me.