“Keep your voice down. Zeke doesn’t need to know you finally showed up,” Carrie said. She wanted Jay to know that despite what was happening to them at that moment she had a respectable house where people worked, sat at the table to eat, didn’t allow strange men in at all hours. Carrie imagined that this man in his nice car and expensive shoes might just think she was Henry’s trash—cheap and disposable. Why else would he come to her house, get out of his car in the middle of the night? You don’t do that with people you respect. She could see in his face he was now ashamed of that.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had a child here,” he offered to Carrie. “I shouldn’t have bothered you,” Jay said. He’d expected to find out about Henry’s secret life, a woman probably, maybe drinking or drugs, gambling away his money in somebody’s basement. He had not considered a child.
“Let’s go man,” Henry said.
Jay nodded at Carrie, who looked over her shoulder at the television screen. The young Captain Kirk and his new wife were in their car, riding away and into an uncertain future they could not predict. That’s what people did, right? Face their uncertain lives together? The Twilight Zone ending almost made her cry. The men had once again noticed each other and she was invisible in her own house.
“Don’t bother coming back,” Carrie said.
“Leave me alone right now, Carrie,” Henry said.
“I mean it this time.” Carrie closed the door behind them.
Outside the air smelled like gravel dust. The only sound out there in the woods was Jay’s cooling car still ticking in its many joints, an old man making the slow descent down to a low-riding couch. Jay loved the sky up here, inky black so many stars that even the most cynical started to believe in other worlds.
Henry slid up the bottle he took from the kitchen out of the paper bag. He slid the neck of it up and out like a trombone.
Jay shook his head no.
“It’s good. Made in Ireland,” Henry read from the label. “You know those fuckers know how to drink.” Henry took a dainty drink and readjusted his face from the peaty smell. “She’s a good girl.” Henry nodded his head toward the trailer. “She’s just tired.” Henry drank a sip of the whiskey between his clenched teeth. “Tired of me mostly.”
“That’s on you, man. I don’t know anything about it,” Jay said.
“I know.” Henry felt his face go hot. “I told you so you would know.” Henry held the bottle on his knee while both men watched the golden liquor settle, the hurricane inside slowing to a stop. “Been a long time.”
“What does that mean, Henry?”
“Hell, I don’t know. You look good to a lot of people around here. You know that? That must feel good, right? You must feel like somebody.”
“All the people in the world that care about me are in this town. That’s all I know.”
“You think I’ve got fans all over the country? That’s all you get, man. Wait, wait,” Henry said, though Jay had said nothing.
Jay reached for his pocket for his cigarettes, an old habit he couldn’t shake after six years quit.
“What do you want, Jay? Its spooky as shit out here.” Henry took a quick drink of the whiskey that burned at the back of his throat.
There are two hundred billion stars in the galaxy, and from where they stood he could see them all. Jay wasn’t afraid. “I don’t mean you any harm, Henry.”
“You don’t mean me any harm, that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all night. I know what you’re doing here. You’re not fooling nobody, man. You want me to tell you everything is all okay? Is that it? When did we get to be friends?” Henry spat out. “This is how people lose their goddamn lives, JJ. Running up on people in the dark. Nobody would ever come looking for you out here. You know that?” Henry’s hand started to shake. He could hear everything in that moment, the creaking of the trailer, his son’s turning in his bed, Carrie’s rushed, angry breaths. Everything had fallen and broke into pieces. Somebody had to pay for that. Henry didn’t mind if that person was JJ.
“You’d have to kill me first,” Jay said quietly. “Can you do that, Henry?”
Henry gripped the bottle tighter. He had never been a violent man, and beating a man to death, even one he’d been comparing himself to for most of his adult life, wasn’t a part of who he’d ever been. Years and years ago, Ava had told him that JJ had been in Raleigh for days with Ava in her room. He had suspected JJ was somewhere in the picture, but she told him herself. He should have found and killed JJ then.
Jay reached for his keys, jingled them in his pocket. “This was a bad idea, Henry. I swear to God, I’m not here for craziness. I swear to God.”
It was almost midnight and the air was still warm, still pleasant enough for a walk. So much violence lay dormant under the surface of the world, waited for the slightest provocation to explode into being. How easy it was to find chaos. These woods that should have consumed them all years ago from foolishness, drunken car rides, hateful men and boys, women too, predators with evil intent, waiting in the shadows for the vulnerable and the left behind. Let those beasts stay hidden.
Henry let the bottle drop to the ground. The last dregs of liquor spilled on his shoe. Henry paused and willed the wildness in his chest to settle.
CARRIE LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW at the men in her yard, standing in the shallow light from the trailer porch, their expressions unreadable, passing a bottle between them. She sure as hell knew how to pick them. But how could it be her fault when all of them, every last one, was an ass? Carrie let the curtain fall back closed. They hadn’t noticed her watching. They didn’t care. She thought about crying and she almost did, but she didn’t come from people who respected crying even in children. Crying was at best embarrassing and at worse a sign of unforgiveable weakness. She would not cry. She opened the front door. “Y’all go now.”
“Go where. Come on, Carrie.” She looked first at Jay’s face and then Henry’s. Was it that hard to understand that she didn’t want two men at her house talking about another woman? She wasn’t about to come on. Men tried to make you believe in your own crazy. If you are hysterical they don’t have to see you as an equal, look you in the eye like a person they have to respect. It suited them to make you think that all the shit they pulled, all the lies they told, were in your head. The only crazy part was that most women did believe their men or chose to pretend. Most kept on believing right up to the point the men walked out the door or killed them.
“You can sit and be an idiot anywhere, Henry. Get away from my house.” Carrie spoke in the calmest voice she could manage. She wouldn’t have her son awakened to a scene. “I told you for the last time.” Carrie almost closed the door, thought better of it, and opened it wide again. “And you better believe that she knows. I saw her and she knows everything.”
“What did you tell her?” Henry yelled.
“Keep your voice down. I didn’t have to tell her anything.”
“What did you say to her?” Henry said, his voice wavering with emotion.
“I said hello. I didn’t say anything.”