CHAPTER 39
CRETE
Crete left a message for Carl, asking him to reconsider letting Lucy come back to work. He was sure he could wear his brother down, though it might require a bit of patience. He waited a few minutes past quitting time to see if Carl would call back, but he didn’t, so Crete locked up his office and let Judd know he was leaving. Rain clouds hung low as he left Dane’s, and thunder grumbled in the distance. He remembered how Mama used to say she could feel a storm coming. Her leg would ache along the seam where the bone had broken and knitted itself back together. She was right more often than not, but Crete suspected it was all an act. His nose had been broken twice, and after it healed, it never ached in any kind of weather.
He rubbed a finger over the twisted bridge of his nose, feeling hard knots of bone where it had fused back together. It had been that way for so long, he hardly recognized old pictures of himself where it was straight. He was twelve the first time it got broken, and it was all Mama’s fault. She had sat in the rocker in her bedroom for days, eating nothing but oyster crackers she lined up on the arm of the chair, using the toilet only when Daddy carried her across the hall. A bouquet of peonies browned on the dresser, petals dropping onto a doily and curling into themselves, and she did nothing except stare at those petals dropping, at the soft pile they made. Carl had taken sick, fever slicking his little body with sweat, and Daddy had driven him up the road for Birdie to take a look at, leaving Crete to keep an eye on Mama. She couldn’t be left home alone when she was having one of her spells. The year before, she had thrown herself out of an upstairs window and landed in a viburnum bush, breaking her leg. After that, Daddy had installed new screens and planted viburnums under every window to catch her if she jumped again.
Crete checked on his mother, who had fallen asleep in the rocking chair, and then he went to sit outside on the porch. The night was warm and breezy, perfect weather to roll his sleeping bag out in the yard. He liked sleeping outdoors, listening to the night sounds all around him. He wasn’t scared. Nothing outside bothered him, not even bugs, which rarely bit him. They didn’t like his flavor, Mama said. Crete worried she was right, that something in his blood was bad. The bugs smelled it and stayed away.
He heard a loud crash and ran back into the house. On his way up the stairs, he heard another crash, then a moment of silence before Mama started screaming. He flung open the bedroom door and saw her straddling the windowsill, half-in, half-out, waving her arms as a bat flapped around the room. He guessed that the crash he’d heard was Mama kicking out the screen, and the bat must have flown in as Mama tried to get out. If she jumped, it would be Crete’s fault, because he was supposed to be watching her.
Please, Mama, he said. Come back in. He grabbed her nightgown and pulled till she fell to the floor, cussing him. The bat flew back out into the darkness, and Crete closed the window. He tried to help Mama up, but she swatted at him.
I ought to throw you out that window, she sneered. You’re just like me, something wrong in that head of yours. I’d be doing you a favor.
Her words burned into him. He wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t come to stop her, if she had gone ahead and jumped.
Get out, she hissed, pulling herself to a squatting position and lurching toward him. Get out!
He backed to the doorway, and without warning, she slammed the door in his face. Blood spurted out of his nose. He went back outside and sat on the porch swing with toilet paper stuffed in his nostrils, listening, but nothing fell from the upstairs window into the bushes.
When Daddy got home, he handed a sobbing Carl over to Crete and thumped up the stairs to check on Mama. Daddy didn’t want Carl to see her, not until he took her back to the doctor in Springfield and got her fixed up with some pills. Heaven forbid Carl learned the truth about anything that might upset him. They had to tell him pretty lies about Mama and Santa and the Easter Bunny. Carl loved their mother because he didn’t really know her. It was different for Crete. He wasn’t sure that he could ever look at Mama again without seeing the meanness he knew was inside her.
Carl settled down when Crete took him, snuggling his sweaty head against his big brother’s neck. Crete took Carl’s stuffed bear out of his hands and, with little ceremony, drop-kicked it off the porch. Carl’s face quivered on the verge of a sob, so Crete set him down roughly on the swing and retrieved the bear before the crybaby could bawl loud enough to bring Daddy back down and get him in trouble. He would be in enough trouble when Daddy saw the busted screen. But Carl didn’t cry. Crete handed him the bear, and his little brother gave it an awkward punch, knocking it to the ground. Carl sniffled and looked up at Crete with a wan smile. Crete held out his arms and let Carl climb back onto his lap and rocked him in the swing long after the boy fell asleep, swatting away any mosquitoes that dared land on his brother.
Decades had passed since the night Mama broke his nose. He’d looked out for Carl all these years, and his little brother had stuck by him, even when the only thing tethering them was blood. Crete trusted Carl more than anyone else, which was not to say that he trusted him completely; Carl’s weakness—not of character but of constitution—could be a liability. Carl didn’t know everything, for example, about the girls. He knew Crete was invested in some sort of escort business, but the true nature and extent of the operation would have turned his delicate stomach. Crete hadn’t set out to hide it. He figured his brother would find out sooner or later, and then, as with most questionable things Crete did, Carl would manage to ignore it. Carl was good at blinding himself to what he didn’t want to see, especially where his brother was concerned.
But then Carl had gone and gotten involved with Lila. And Lucy had come along. Crete didn’t want Carl to know what he had done, because it might be the one thing his little brother couldn’t overlook. He didn’t dare work any of the girls in Henbane after that (Emory was to blame for the whole Cheri mess, proving again that it was a bad idea to traffic in your own backyard), though he brought new recruits to the farm as needed and kept them hidden for a few days or weeks until he could transition them to Springfield or Branson or other locations. He’d had girls in trailers and basements and back rooms, in the sticks, the city, the suburbs. It didn’t matter where they were, because men would find them, and the money would follow.
He’d learned the basics from Emory, a mentor of sorts who looked more like a senile moonshiner than a businessman. They had met at an Amway meeting, though neither of them was there to join up and start selling vitamins and detergent door-to-door. Crete was there to confront a guy who owed him money, and Emory was there to scout for like-minded individuals who could expand his territory. At the time, business was slumping at Dane’s, and Crete needed to make up for a few bad investments. Once Emory trusted him enough to talk details, Crete couldn’t believe how easy it sounded.
Even with Emory’s guidance, Crete made mistakes at the start. He picked the wrong kinds of girls. Girls who weren’t desperate enough, hadn’t resigned themselves to their situations, wouldn’t cede. And he failed when it came to forcing them. He figured out quick enough that force wasn’t necessary when he picked the right ones. There were plenty of ordinary girls who were poor or dumb or lonely, abused, addicted, confused. No need to import exotic beauties. Emory had told him that looks didn’t matter—a guy would screw a goat if he got desperate enough—but that was another mistake Crete had made in the beginning, picking pretty girls, girls he’d want for himself. It had backfired with Lila in the worst way. He could admit later how stupid he’d been to think something would spark between them once she arrived. He had lost perspective, let himself feel spurned and jealous and vengeful. And instead of cutting his losses on a sour deal, he’d brought strife to his family, ultimately hurting his brother—the one person who had earned his love and loyalty. He wouldn’t let himself be tempted to make that mistake again.
He thought about quitting early on, but it was easy money—which he sorely needed to keep Dane’s afloat—and he couldn’t argue with the business model. You could only sell a cow once, but you could milk it every day. And no matter how much people drank, they would always be thirsty again. Demand was unceasing, and the supply was bountiful. There were so many girls, like milk cows, giving and giving until they gave out. He took them in, spoiled them with compliments and attention and clothes, and sometimes recouped his investment in under twenty-four hours. Someone told him that way back in slave times, a girl might cost you a thousand bucks. For reasons he didn’t question, women’s worth had plummeted, and Crete could buy one for a few hundred dollars. And he didn’t always have to buy them; sometimes he got lucky and found one on his own.
After a while, the thrill dulled and he didn’t touch the girls anymore, even when they tried to touch him. He’d slept with some of them after Lila, hard little creatures with broken parts inside that caused them to malfunction, to seek comfort in his lies, to kiss his stubbled neck, remove their clothes, and kneel before him, an empty offering to a false god. But that was how all gods were, he figured: blind, deaf, and dumb, unconcerned or unaware of what people begged of them. It wasn’t guilt that made him stop sleeping with the girls, it was the pointlessness of it. Sex with a broken girl was hardly better than jerking off. He wanted something he couldn’t find in girls as empty as he was. Nothing plus nothing equals nothing, he thought, an equation that served no purpose.
The only girl he truly cared about was Lucy. He barely trusted Carl to watch over her, doubting his brother could be ruthless enough or smart enough to protect her. And so he was there, always, for Lucy when she needed him. He was there rocking her to sleep while his brother drowned in grief. He was there, with his eye on her, while Carl wandered for work. Carl wanted to send Lucy off to college, but Crete wanted her to stay in Henbane and take over the family business—Dane’s, not the other, the buying and selling of girls. He would rather she saw none of that but the assets, the money he had set aside to provide for her and keep Dane’s running as long as she liked without worrying about its actual profits. That was a reason he gave himself for continuing in the business when he no longer needed the money; it was a better reason than the simple fact that he liked having control over the girls. The flip side was that Lucy wouldn’t want the money if she knew where it came from. She had the same moral compass as Carl but lacked his ability to ignore unsavory things.
When Lila was alive, Crete had been determined to find out if Lucy was his daughter. He was driven by selfish anger and a blind urge to claim what belonged to him. But with Lila gone and Carl floundering, things changed. No one stood between him and Lucy; she was closer to him than ever. He knew that after the loss of his wife, Carl couldn’t take a second blow, the one he would suffer if Crete took away his child. He wouldn’t do that to his brother. And this way, he didn’t have to face the possibility that Lucy wasn’t his. He would rather not know for sure. Though what would a test result matter? It was just a bunch of letters and numbers. It wouldn’t change his love for her. It was real love, true and effortless: stronger, simpler, and more important than what he had felt for Lila or his mother or any other woman. And she loved him back. He gave Lucy everything, and she was enough, a solace for all the other things he knew he couldn’t have.
Crete’s nose had been broken a second time when he lied and told Carl he’d slept with Janessa Walker. He stood there and let Carl hit him, because he knew he deserved it. Janessa was the first girl to turn down his advances in favor of his little brother, and while he felt bad about hurting Carl, he couldn’t stand to let Janessa go unpunished.
Crete was almost home when the sky let loose. Rain blurred his windshield as the wipers struggled to keep up, and he flicked on the headlights. A few minutes later, he pulled into his driveway, parked the truck, and made a run for the house. He fumbled with his keys as he reached the front porch but quickly realized that he wouldn’t need them.
Crete stood there in the wind and rain, fully soaked, staring into his house. Beyond the screen, the front door gaped open on the dark and empty hall, and he knew right then, before he ran inside and down the stairs to check the basement, that the girl was gone.