Fallen mountains, p.15
Fallen Mountains, page 15
When he’d first gotten back to the farm that morning, the field had been covered in a thick fog, but now it was lifting, like a stage curtain, floating upward, the sun flickering over the wet grass. He could now see that Transom was with the men as they mounted the hill and paused at the edge of the woods, what remained of them. Transom hadn’t clear-cut everywhere, just some places. In that particular spot, a patch of evergreens and hardwoods remained at the top of the hill, creating a sort of border effect, but then, just out of sight, as Chase had discovered when he’d confronted the young man on the skidder, things had been cut hard. An hour earlier, bulldozers and an excavator had pulled up on flatbed trailers. The oil company had arrived, and they were to begin moving earth.
Chase continued watching Transom and his team of men through the scope. He felt mildly ashamed for spying like this, like some kind of creep, especially since it meant he was pointing a weapon in their direction. He thought of Pete Winslow, the peeping tom who’d been arrested after he was caught watching Kate Appleton through the bedroom window of her house on Main Street. But this was different, Chase reasoned. Pete Winslow was a voyeur, a weirdo. He hid in the bushes and fantasized. Chase was merely keeping track of what was happening to his family’s farm.
He thought of leaving, sometimes. Packing up his truck, asking Laney to go with him. They could drive and drive until they found a place that seemed suitable, a new place to call home. They could land somewhere and start over, where nobody knew them or their histories. The idea of it was appealing, but it also terrified him, and saddened him, too. He couldn’t really leave Fallen Mountains, could he? Everything he’d ever known and loved was here, on the farm, this tiny patch of the world.
In his more rational moments, Chase could remember that none of this was personal. This was just Transom being himself, being how he had always been. If he set his mind on something, it didn’t matter what it took, who or what he had to plow through to get it; he would make it happen at any cost. He’d done it as a young boy, manipulating his mother, nagging and acting up until he had his way. He’d done it as a baseball player, insisting on a certain catcher until the coach had to refigure the whole lineup just so Transom had the guy he wanted. Chase was sure he’d been doing the same thing, all the years he’d been gone, and he was doing it again, now. Chase had always known that was how Transom worked; he’d just never been on the other side of things the way he was now.
As things at the farm became more devastating, the loss of Jack somehow grew worse and worse, the pain ebbing but then gathering weight and sweeping over Chase again. How was it that just six months ago he was driving Jack over the farm lanes in the pickup, mapping out the strategies for spring, calculating seed? Jack, giver of grace. Jack, patron of wisdom. Why hadn’t he just told Chase everything? Why hadn’t he let Chase try to help? Maybe something could’ve been done. Maybe the farm could’ve been saved. But instead, Jack had kept it all a secret, and Chase had been forced to decide with too little time, with too few options. Chase was angry about that, somewhere deep in his heart; he was angry at Jack for leaving a mess and for leaving him to face that mess alone. And now, as if losing Jack and the farm hadn’t been bad enough, he’d lost Transom, too.
The men on the hill disappeared, one by one, into the woods.
Chase shifted the rifle to watch the doe through the scope, the way she lowered her head and nosed the grass, content and unsuspecting. He centered the crosshairs to the position just behind her front shoulder, where, behind the doe’s summer coat, golden and glistening, were the heart and lungs. He waited, palms wet. It had been a long time since he’d hunted, a long time since he’d taken a life—was he ready? Could he do it? Of course he could. The steps felt familiar, second nature, right. He slid his thumb along the ridges of the safety and pressed it off with a sharp, hollow click. The wind picked up, and the doe raised her head, smelling the air, stomping a foot. He took a deep breath and exhaled, gathering courage, calming his nerves. His right pointer finger pressed in against the trigger, slowly, with precision and patience, so as not to cause any movement in the rifle itself. There was a terrible crack, a powerful kick into his right shoulder, and then the reverberations off the ridges. He palmed open the bolt, popped out the casing, and looked through the scope again. The doe jumped, one swift surge to her left, then took a few slow steps, stumbled, and fell.
AFTER
Red sat on the back porch of his house in the dark, crickets roaring, fireflies blinking across the yard, sweet melody of lights. A lifetime ago, he’d watched Sue and Junior as they’d run barefoot through the grass one summer night, palms stretched out into the dark, reaching and grabbing them. Sue had come up and hugged him and her hair was warm and soft against his cheek. They’d used a nail to punch holes into the metal lid of a Mason jar, and they’d let Junior keep them in his room for a night. A firefly night-light, he’d called it.
Tonight Red sipped whiskey alone, his third glass, and he never drank, so everything blurred and the noise was worse and the memories loomed with a greater tug than they would, minus the alcohol.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Red said aloud, to the crickets and fireflies, to Ghost Sue, to the heavy night. “I need to tell him about what happened with Possum. The investigator, Mick Dashel.” He lifted his glass and swirled the liquid. “I need to come clean.”
Ghost Sue leaning back in the rocker beside him, waiting for him to finish.
“You know, it seems so black and white now, but at the time, it wasn’t. I need you to know that.” He took a sip. “Junior hadn’t had his surgeries yet. We were up most nights, you and me, and remember? He’d scream and scream and hold his ears and beg us to make it stop. Terrible thing, your own child pleading for you to take their pain away, and there’s nothing you can do but hold him and pray and wait. Four years of that and I couldn’t take it anymore.” He finished off the glass and poured another. “And that’s what it came down to. It was get Junior the help he needed, or let him go on suffering. Who knows how long it would’ve gone on, how bad things would’ve gotten. That’s the choice I was left with, and yes, I chose my son, I chose to get him the help he needed. He was five years old and I’m his father and I did what any father would’ve done.” The words slurring now. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I don’t regret it. I don’t regret doing what I had to, to help him.”
Seventeen years earlier, when Red drove out to the shale pit and found Possum in the trunk, he leaned in and squeezed the boy’s bony shoulder. “Can we get you out of there?” he asked gently.
Possum sobbed, but in the light of the flashlight, Red could see him nod. He unfolded the boy, who’d wound his arms around his knees like a bat, and helped him out of the trunk. He was thin and short and too light for a high schooler. Wet, too: sweat and urine. How long had he been in there? Red handed him his own canteen of water and helped Possum ease down onto the shale.
“Take a drink, son.” He went to the Jimmy and grabbed a blanket from the back, then hung it over Possum’s shoulders.
For a long time, they sat there, night folding in on them, the roar of the crickets, the moths and mosquitoes quivering toward the yellow of the flashlight. Both of them jumped when a screech owl wailed, its awful sound too similar to a woman screaming in distress. Red flickered the flashlight over the lot and across the trees. Was someone there, watching them? The 30-30 lay beside him.
“Want to tell me what happened?” Red asked, after a long time.
“No,” Possum said, voice shuddering.
Red pulled the blanket tighter around the boy’s shoulders and sighed. “Do you remember anything?”
“I want to go home.”
Red tilted his head and looked at the sky, the moon a white-gray crescent, the stars endless out there, no light from any city, different from the Pittsburgh sky he’d grown up watching. “Was it the Shultz kid?”
Possum began to shake uncontrollably, the air sputtering from his lips, his shoulders heaving. The words came out in convulsions: “Can you take me home, please?”
Red lifted Possum to his feet. Holding onto his elbow, he helped him limp over to the Jimmy, Possum so weak he couldn’t stand. Red lay the blanket across the seat and lifted Possum in. He drove Possum home to his mother’s trailer and helped him hobble inside, where they found Vance passed out drunk, slung across the couch, beer cans on the floor and coffee table, empty bottle of vodka on Vance’s chest.
“Your mother home?” Red asked.
Possum shook his head. “She’s at work.”
“You need a hand getting cleaned up?” Red asked awkwardly, looking around at the mess inside the trailer. At the time, he couldn’t have known that, a year later, he’d be there in that trailer yet again, under very different circumstances, Vance and Lissette on the floor, but Vance spilling blood from his head, Possum wide-eyed, figurine in hand.
“Naw,” Possum said.
“I’ll be by tomorrow,” Red told him, stepping back onto the porch. He took Possum by the shoulder and looked him in the eye. “We’ll take care of this, I promise.”
But he hadn’t kept that promise. After dropping Possum off, Red stopped by the house to tell Sue he’d be late—she would worry, he knew—and that stop had taken a little longer than he’d anticipated, Junior shrieking with ear pain, and Red giving Sue a break, holding Junior until he fell asleep. When, eventually, he made it back to the shale pit to check the vehicle for evidence, it was gone.
The next morning, first thing, he headed straight to JT Shultz’s office, and that’s when things really went awry. Red told him what had happened, the car in the shale pit, Possum balled up and soaked in the trunk, also what he’d seen in the woods, Transom standing there, watching him, then disappearing in the trees.
JT lit a cigar and sat in his wide leather chair, staring out the huge panel of glass that overlooked the factory floor. Below, half of Fallen Mountains worked in long lines, seated on hard rolling chairs, bent over their parts, sliding the next piece along the assembly.
“Been a tough stretch for him recently, Transom. What with his mother and all. He’s the one who found her. Rushed her to the hospital. Saved her life, doctor said.”
Red wanted to know what that had to do with anything, but he stood there in front of his boss, his wife’s boss, everyone’s boss, and kept quiet.
JT tilted his chin up and blew smoke across the room. He took a deep breath and looked at Red. “Life is complicated, isn’t it? People are complicated. We think we know someone’s story, but we never do, not the whole story.”
“Your son’s committed a crime,” Red said quietly, shoving his hands into the pockets of his khakis. He thought of Junior, auburn hair like Sue, toothy smile and skinny legs. “You understand, I can’t just sweep it under the rug.”
JT tilted his head. “Well, you could.” He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest. “Here’s the trouble, Red. You had no witnesses, isn’t that right? I mean, you think you saw Transom, but it was dark. You told me that yourself. You said there was a car, but—” he shrugged for emphasis—“there’s no car.” He took a deep drag from his cigar and blew the smoke toward Red.
Red clenched his teeth. “I’ll talk to the victim.”
JT took another drag. “Listen, I hate for it to come to this, but you should know that we’re cutting back here at the factory.” He paused, looking out at the little bodies at work. “How long has your wife been here?”
Red saw where it was going, the conversation, spinning and plummeting like an airplane going down. They relied on Sue’s job for health insurance. Junior’s surgery, just eight weeks away.
“Your wife, what’s her name again?”
“Sue,” Red said, through gritted teeth.
“And you’ve got a son, isn’t that right?”
“Junior.”
“Yes, Junior. He has some health problems, if I recall correctly. Costs the company a lot of money, to tell you the truth.” JT smiled, his green eyes studying Red. He took another drag and then extinguished the cigar in a glass ashtray. “So what I’m saying here, Sheriff, is that we’re all tangled up here, in Fallen Mountains, the nine hundred fifty of us who live here. We’re all connected. And we need to look out for each other, best we can. You understand my meaning?”
Red wanted to reach across the wide mahogany desk and take the man by the throat. He wanted to hold JT against the glass, still by the throat, so that every person working below could look up and see someone doing what each and every one of them had probably imagined doing, at one point or another. What kind of man used another man’s child as leverage? Red’s fury was burning on his face; he could see a reflection of himself in the glass behind JT. His pulse raced and he began to sweat. No, he wanted to say. I’m not going to be manipulated into covering this up for you. No.
And then he thought of Junior waking in the middle of the night, the sheets twisted around his small body, his hand over his ear, screaming and screaming, Daddy, please make it stop, please! Red thought of how long it could go on, how bad it could get for his son—hearing loss already, vertigo, too—and he swallowed hard and looked out the glass wall behind JT, and in that horrid room with the sweet-foul smell of cigar smoke, Red made a choice, a choice that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
He nodded slightly, spun on his heels, and walked out of the room.
On the back porch of his house on Crocus Street, Red sat alone in the dark with the glass of whiskey in his hand and the bottle on the table beside him. Two months after that conversation with JT, Junior had his big ear surgery. It marked the end of the night waking, the crying in pain, his little boy doubled over and pleading. Red had never gone back to Possum’s trailer like he promised, not until a year later, when Possum himself called in his own different crime.
At the time, Red had been able to reason his way through his choices. When Red had asked him that night at the shale pit, Possum said he didn’t remember anything. His mother wasn’t home; her boyfriend, passed out on the couch. And the car, which may have provided some evidence, was gone. The only thing Red had to go on was his own memory, and as he played the events over and over in his mind, winding the moments back on themselves like an old videotape, he began to question himself, too. How sure was he that the person he’d seen in the woods was Transom Shultz? Sure enough to accuse him of a serious crime, potentially testify against him in court and send him to prison? Red didn’t know Transom personally; he’d never really spoken to the kid. Sure, in a town as small as Fallen Mountains, they’d crossed paths: at the gas station, at the grocery store. But most of what he knew of Transom Shultz stemmed from what he read in the Fallen Mountains Gazette. Sports page stuff: no-hitters, district championships. Transom in a black-and-white photograph from a game, arm high in the air, releasing a baseball.
And it had been dark that night, mostly. Hadn’t it?
He could almost convince himself, almost, but then the Faulkner quote would swim through his consciousness, the past not even past: times when Possum would look at him, those gigantic eyes of his, at Wheeler’s Diner, when they both happened to be grabbing a meal, or at the dollar store, and Red could sometimes see little surfs of disappointment rippling across Possum’s face. Well, it had been disappointment, for a while. But maybe that wasn’t what was there anymore. Maybe what he saw in Possum’s face had shifted into something different. Eyes dark and shadowed, too many years of restless sleep. Mouth taut, a constant scowl. Maybe what Red saw there—and this was what really worried him—maybe it wasn’t disappointment, but rage.
BEFORE
Possum woke in a sweat: the nightmare again, half-dream, half-memory, the two so knotted and twisted that they’d long ago fused together, so that by this point he was no longer all that sure which parts were true. Even back then, the night it happened, the day and the weeks right after, he couldn’t quite remember everything. How his shirt became the thing that held his mouth and eyes closed, the thing that bound his hands and feet. How long he lay in that trunk, folded up and afraid. These were details he’d tried and tried to remember; he’d even tried to dream those parts, that’s how bad he wanted to know, but still, nothing.
His eyes fluttered open, the light of day burning and sharp. He was in his bed, he was home, he was thirty-three. It was May. Each time, he walked himself through the same four steps back to reality: where he was at that moment, what building he was in, how old he was. Then, the month. He’d figured out that by using these steps, he could pull himself from the dream and get a grip on where he really was, both in time and space. Ground himself.
He sat up in his bed and reached for the glass of water he kept on his nightstand, the weight of the dream still heavy on his limbs, his neck stiff, his brain foggy. Seventeen years later and he still couldn’t free himself from that night. A thousand times he’d wanted to tell Laney, because maybe that would be therapeutic, maybe it would do some good, but it might also make things worse. She’d have questions; he’d have to provide answers. He’d looked into therapies. Hypnotists, psychologists. He’d researched on the Internet and found plenty of ideas. Seven steps toward forgetting a bad dream. How to fall back asleep after a nightmare. Nothing helped. The one thing reading through all those posts and websites did for him was make him realize he wasn’t the only person who suffered from recurring nightmares. Which was, he conceded, a small comfort.
Possum sat up. To the left of his bed, just above the nightstand, there was a picture: a stock photograph, in a thick frame with blue matte. He placed his hands carefully on the right side of the frame, and gave it a gentle tug. The front of the frame swung open, and inside, there was a handgun, the only weapon he’d ever owned, a gift he’d never told a single soul about, not even Laney. He reached inside, took it out, and slumped back into bed.
