The good driver gotta have rare skills to drive in the pitch-black on these mountain roads. I knew guys who bailed outta their car in the middle of the chase and let the shine and the car go up in flames rather than get caught. That won’t delivering the goods. I got more pride than that.
The night, Sheriff Sykes arrested me for half a minute. I’d finished my first run and felt smug. I moseyed back on the main road easy, then the sheriff pulled me over.
I’d forgot to turn on the damn headlights.
The car don’t have moonshine in it, and the money was hid inside the door panels. The sheriff kept eyeing them door panels and was fixing to pull out his switchblade, ready to cut, but he needs the judge’s signed paper to cut into them door panels, and he don’t get it. The judge is one of ours. I was out a jail before breakfast, and waved at Sheriff Sykes when I passed his desk. He won’t happy.
? ? ?
I stop, and the body in the tarp bumps into the back of my legs.
“Here’ll do,” I say.
Here is a crack in the shale wide enough to slide the bundle in, and deep enough to be outta sight. I lay my end down gentle. Billy drops his. I’m fixing to smack him. He gets fatheaded is what happens now and again. My fault cause I give him too much credit, and then he starts believing it.
“Give me a sec,” I say.
Billy looks irked when I stop before I dump Darlene’s body. He backs up a bit and looks off into the woods with a twitch in his jaw. I don’t need him acting pissed.
I reach in my pocket and pull out the gold locket I give Darlene at the start that hung round her neck till I broke it. A rose on the front with a sparkly stone in the middle, with the gold dull on the backside. I kiss that part and think I taste her perfume, and think to hell with Billy if he sees.
I slip the chain under the tarp rope so it’ll go with her to her grave, and it glints in the sunshine like light on creek water.
Damn if my hands don’t shake when I reach to push her! I swallow the bile in my throat and push anyway. The bundle drops outta sight, then I hear the cushy thud, and pebbles scatter. She lands in the dark where she needs to stay.
I can hardly breathe my chest hurts so. I scream “Darlene!” and fling wide my arms, and feel the hurt let loose. Her ghost name flies out into the stinky air and spills into the hollers like lost treasure.
I sit on my haunches and don’t wanna look at the crack in the earth where Darlene went, so I look out on the ridge beyond the shale. Old crows sit at the top of a hemlock and stare at me. Every one of them birds looks my way. A breeze ruffles their feathers, but they just stare. Don’t even call out.
I stand and hurl a rock at em, which is stupid. Then I throw another and another, till my shoulder hurts, and I feel like a helpless old man.
The nasty crows stay put. I swear them beady eyes lock right on me. I stand quick, wipe my snot nose on my shirtsleeve, and head back cross the slippery shale, sure-footed, done with all the lugging and the dead for the day. I won’t feel sorry-assed for myself no more.
I move down the hill fast. I want the stink of rotten eggs gone from my nose and skin, and from the back of my throat. I need to scrub with hot water and soap. I need to sleep a long night in my own bed.
I move fast down the mountain to spite Billy. He slips and cusses and falls as he tries to keep up.
Sadie Blue
It’s been seventy-one days since me and Roy bothered a man’s liver-and-onion dinner to say I do, and Daddy’s miffed at me. Him and me don’t talk since I lost my baby three weeks back at Miss Kate’s, then come back to Roy’s trailer. But today I’m gonna change things. I hope Daddy’s spirit voice will come back to me then. I miss him.
I still wear my bloody dress from last night’s beating and move gimpy slow down the hall this morning, wiggling another loose tooth with my tongue, seeing outta one eye, and holding my side. Roy beat up on me for the last time and don’t even know it. He got seventy-one chances to do right by me and messed up every one of em.
This morning he sleeps in his chair in front of the bootleg TV that works some of the time. The floor round him is messy with scraps a food, beer cans, and a half-empty jar of hooch. His head hangs to the side, and drool runs out the corner of his mouth. I click off the TV all fuzzy, pick up trash, put on coffee, wrap a thick sweater round me, and step outside. Frost coats leaves and branches, sparkling in the early light so I have to squint against the bright. I stretch my sore back careful and breathe in gentle cause yesterday’s beating makes it hard to do the simple things.
Percy comes outta the bushes, and a line Miss Shaw told me drifts to the front of my mind. The fog comes on little cat feet… He wraps his silky self round my ankles, and I close my eyes to feel the softness better. I say, “I see you, little kitty-kitty, but I’m too sore to bend down and love on you.”
“You too sore to bend down for me?”
Roy Tupkin stands in the doorway scratching his crotch and yawns wide. His spittle’s thick and dry on his lips. His T-shirt stained. When I pay him no mind, his face pulls tight and turns dangerous.
“Pack two lunches. Me and Billy going hunting,” he says, then he adds with a sneer, “And clean yourself up. You look like shit.”
I go inside and pack two lunches, then stay outta his way while he downs hardtack, drinks coffee, and grabs his hunting gear. I see through the window Billy shows up and stands in the yard, hunched over in his oversize camouflage coat with the hood up against the morning’s cold, smoking a cigarette, waiting like usual. I don’t let myself think long on the trouble them two get away with, wiggling out from under the law, but sometimes it come in the yard—stink on shoes, blood on clothes, and questions pinned lopsided in the air. They been luckier than their lot deserves.
Billy catches sight of me in the window. When Roy opens the trailer door, his buddy gets up on tiptoes and looks past him at me and whistles. “What she do this time?”
Roy don’t answer. He don’t need a reason.
They leave single file and walk the worn path, Billy at the rear like always. He cuts a funny look back at me and I turn away, tired of it all.
I pour a cup of strong coffee and drink it sitting at the table, looking into them woods where Roy and his shadow walked off to hunt on the neighbor’s ridge, ignorant.
Roy don’t know my backbone’s different today, hardened by sorrow and loss.
He don’t know I’ll take my chances with my Maker but not get beat one more time.
He don’t know he’s going down for the count of ten, and this time I win.