Fallen Mountains, page 5
AFTER
Red kept trying to consider the various things that could explain Transom Shultz’s mysterious disappearance—run-in with the frackers, car accident on some remote back road, some primordial itch to cut loose and get out of Fallen Mountains—but despite his great efforts not to think about it, he kept coming back to Possum. Possum Miller, with his oversized eyes and his white t-shirt and red puffy vest, every day of the year, even in this oppressive June heat. A year after what happened at the shale pit, Possum had taken a bronze figurine of an eagle and pummeled his drunk stepfather to the point where the man’s eye permanently strayed left and he never could quite utter a complete sentence anymore. Had Possum had another breakdown? Had he snapped again?
Back then, Leigh hadn’t been hired yet, so it was just Red, and he was forty-three and happy. Back then, JT Shultz had a hold on Fallen Mountains like a crooked king. He was mayor at the time, no one else wanting the responsibility for the pathetic stipend the town offered, but more importantly, he owned the electronics factory, where at least one member of every family in town worked, including Red’s wife, Sue. JT didn’t pay well, but he offered benefits. Twice a year, in the spring and fall, he hosted a town picnic with a spread of food so magnificent people would talk about it for weeks. Games, too. He’d set himself up in the dunker, and people would pay a dollar per pitch to see if they could make him drop into the water. Nobody in Fallen Mountains liked working for Shultz, and nobody liked him— overbearing, barrel-chested, handsome, mean—but the thing was, nobody was in any kind of position to turn down a job, period, let alone one with health insurance.
Red and Sue had bought a place on Crocus Street, a two-bedroom cape cod that was in dire need of paint, but its foundation was solid, its windows in good shape. That was Red’s sixth year as sheriff. He’d only been in Fallen Mountains for seven, and people still thought of him as an outsider, the city slicker from Pittsburgh who’d married Sue Philips. He only became sheriff because the previous one dropped dead of a heart attack, mid-term. He had an associate’s degree in criminal justice, so in some ways he was more qualified than any prior Fallen Mountains sheriff, although not knowing the lay of the land or the quirky politics of the town certainly made things difficult at first. Now, Red had more than twenty years under his belt and a much better understanding of life in Fallen Mountains. Junior was done with college and out on his own; his ears were all fixed and his surgeries, paid for with the health insurance from Sue’s job at the factory, were a small chapter of family history. JT Shultz and his stupid picnics were out of the picture, too. Red was in a position to handle things differently.
The day Possum lay into his stepfather was Junior’s sixth birthday; he remembered that. They were outside blowing bubbles and Junior had on a blue and red Spider-Man outfit, the usual cotton balls stuffed in his left ear to catch the drainage. It was months after the big surgery, and things were looking good for him. He hadn’t woken up screaming and writhing in pain for weeks, and Red and Sue were finally, finally getting to a place where they could sleep at night.
Red’s in-laws were at the party; his parents had driven in from Pittsburgh, too. They were all in the backyard and Sue had just served the cake, also blue and red, Spider-Man. Inside, the phone rang, its jingle singing through the screens and into the yard, rang and rang and rang and Red knew the rule: people had his home number and he always had to pick up, no matter what. This was before the days of pagers and cell phones, before 911, too, which didn’t come to Fallen Mountains until 2002.
He went inside and picked the kitchen phone off the receiver. “Redifers,” he said.
“This is Possum Miller.” The voice calm and feathery. “I’m calling to report a crime.”
Red’s heart plummeted in his chest. He gripped the kitchen countertop and thought no, because this was June, a new summer. The cicadas from the previous year were long gone and it was ten months after that incident out at the shale pit: he’d thought he’d managed to avoid dealing with it. He’d thought it was done.
“Possum,” Red said. “Where are you?”
“My mom’s trailer.”
“I’ll be right over.”
Red shoved the last of the birthday cake in his mouth, grabbed the rifle from the gun case, caught Sue’s eye, and leaned his head toward the car. He mouthed an apology, and her face fell, but she nodded. He didn’t say good-bye to Junior because he was having such a good time there with all four of his grandparents doting on him, ripping around the yard in his Spider-Man outfit, playing with his new remote-control truck. Interrupting him would only put a damper on things. Red slipped out, hopped in the still-new Jimmy, and drove four blocks to the trailer park.
Inside the small gray trailer where Possum lived with his mother, Lissette, and stepfather, Vance Taylor, Possum sat on the floor with two bodies close by, a bronze figurine of an eagle in his hands, and blood, so much blood, all over the yellow linoleum floor and cabinets and bodies.
“I thought you would come before this,” Possum said quietly when Red first arrived and walked across the threshold. He looked at Red: those wide, dreadful brown eyes. “You said you would come.”
Red swallowed hard. He knew what Possum was talking about, the thing from the summer before, Possum skinny and bruised and soiled and Transom standing at the edge of the woods, watching, before slipping into the trees, and Red wanted to say some-thing—apologize, explain, because there was an explanation—but no words would come out, the stench, the sight, overwhelming him. He knelt to check pulses on the bodies, the blood soaking up through the knees of his jeans. Both alive, for now.
Possum glared at Vance’s limp body on the floor. “Bastard had it coming.”
“Sure,” Red said, his throat tightening at the sight of the blood, the pasta salad and burger and birthday cake threatening to soar from his abdomen. The smell. Possum looking out the window: a goldfinch at the feeder, bright yellow with summer, head cocked. Red stood and picked up the corded phone in the kitchen and called the closest hospital, a number he’d memorized his first week on the job. Fifteen miles south. He gave his name, a few details, the address, then he squatted across the room from Possum, and told himself twenty minutes, max. Twenty minutes he had to keep things exactly as they were, Possum still and serene, and then help would arrive. He imagined an ambulance and a police car trundling north up 28, past the Orvetto dairy farm, past Shultz’s factory, the baseball field, Red’s own house and the birthday party in the yard. “Sure, son,” he said to Possum, willing his voice to stay calm. Agree with him, don’t say anything to set him off. Keep him right where he is and in twenty minutes you can step out of the room and get some air and decide what’s next.
“He had it coming,” Possum whispered. The finch darted away, a flash of yellow at the window. Over and over, that was all he said. He had it coming.
Which is what Red kept contemplating now, as he thought about Transom Shultz. Vance, beaten to a pulp by a fist-sized figurine, and Possum, sixteen years old and scrawny and his big eyes, looking at Red and saying, in a voice so tranquil Red would dream about it for years, that the man had it coming. After what Transom had done, he would’ve had it coming, too. Red knew that. But obtaining a warrant to search Possum’s trailer and that enormous metal shed of his that held who-knew-what, or even bringing in Possum for questioning was, well, sort of out of the question. As far as Red knew, there were only three other people on earth who knew about what had happened out at the shale pit, and Red was in no hurry to start exposing any of it, especially right before he was about to retire.
More troubling than the idea of digging up that misstep and airing it for the town, though, was a different possibility, and as Red drove along 28, the hot air whipping through the Jimmy, the thought began to stitch its way into him. What if Possum had indeed exacted his revenge on Transom? What if Red was next? Images began tumbling into place, like cards being shuffled and stacked up: years and years of unnerving encounters. Possum holding his gaze at the diner, refusing to look away. Possum trailing him in the grocery store, lingering by the eggs.
For now, Red told himself, he needed to stay calm, stay focused. There was no need to start stirring up trouble, no need to go jumping the gun. He would keep an eye on Possum, see what he could scrounge up without making things messy, without making any dangerous assumptions.
So on his second day on the case, six days since anyone had seen Transom Shultz, Red headed to the Allegheny National Forest, a spot two miles north of town, a little pull-off where he’d seen Possum Miller’s red pickup parked off and on all spring. From what he’d heard around town, Possum hunted for mushrooms there, which was very likely what he was doing, and which of course wasn’t a crime. Besides, people were free to park in a public lot if they wanted to, after all, and people did in fact park there all the time, workers carpooling to the mill up in Empire, teenagers fooling around on fall nights.
Red had a feeling that if Transom hadn’t disappeared on his own accord—if he wasn’t gallivanting around Tahiti or Costa Rica or wherever it was he might’ve decided to go—if he was indeed dead, he was somewhere in those woods. But that Allegheny land spanned over 500,000 acres, more land than any search team could ever dream of covering. The truth was, Red had trouble conceptualizing how much ground that was, how many hills and gullies and trees and streams would comprise such a tract. The body could be anywhere. But don’t go getting ahead of yourself, Red: that’s what he kept saying. Maybe there was no body. Lord, he hoped so.
Red pulled the Jimmy into the empty parking lot, a gravel area on the side of the road with nothing but a sad brown sign with painted white letters to indicate you were in the right place. A skinny, overgrown trail veered off into the woods to the right of the lot. He slipped into the plastic fluorescent orange vest he’d picked up for two bucks at the gas station. It wasn’t hunting season, but he figured better to be safe than sorry. Before he’d left, he’d told Leigh where he was heading. She was typing up traffic violations and she’d dipped her head and peered at him over her bifocals. “You want me to ride along?” It was a long-standing joke, that Leigh, fifty-three years old and barely a hundred pounds, Leigh in her skirt and high heels and hot-rolled blonde hair, would accompany Red on his patrols.
“Next time,” he’d said with a smile.
“Be careful, Sweets.” Leigh called everybody Sweets.
That morning, Red had started leafing through the accordion file he’d found in Transom’s trunk, and by studying the checkbook he’d found there and then making three phone calls, he had pieced together already that Transom had a knack for identifying good tracts of land, buying them on the cheap, and then making loads of money off them. In the past, he’d had luck partnering with a particular real estate developer who’d divvy up the land into decent-sized lots that attracted a very specific clientele. This had worked well for him in the middle of the state, in Harrisburg and State College. More recently, though, he’d shifted his attention: he’d been focusing on the western half of Pennsylvania, buying up land and selling the mineral rights to the oil companies drilling for Marcellus shale. The Hardy farm was the third property Transom had worked. Red couldn’t help but wonder— had it been Transom’s plan all along to return right after Jack Hardy passed, to buy the land off Chase, when his old friend was in a pinch? And then, a more troubling thought, a thought that unfolded a new chain of troubling possibilities: Had Chase Hardy figured out all of that? Had he tried to do something about it? “Not a chance,” Red said aloud. Chase Hardy was as phlegmatic as they came; he was harmless and solid.
Red climbed out of the Jimmy. He caught a whiff of the tall green trash receptacle sitting next to the sign, where yellow jackets churned and hummed. He grabbed his backpack. At the trash, he paused and slipped on a pair of rubber gloves, struggling to pry open the bear-proof metal container. Fast-food bags heaped in the middle. An old t-shirt hung over the side. Whose job was it to empty these? State employees? Volunteers? How long had it been since someone had tended to it? Surely this much garbage hadn’t accumulated in a week or so. He grabbed a stick and poked through the bags and rotten food, holding his handkerchief over his face, gagging at the stench. After a few minutes Red closed the lid, and it reverberated loudly, metal to metal. No dead body in there.
He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and sighed. At the edge of the woods, he stood, squinting in the bright sunlight, pondering what to do. The map he pulled from the wooden box in the parking lot wasn’t very reassuring; it merely showed a winding, dotted line that headed south. White marks, small circles spray-painted about eye-level, indicated the route.
He took a swig of water from the plastic bottle he’d bought with the orange vest and began walking. Although he was sweating profusely in the midday heat, he felt an urgent need to move. He paused, checking the Ruger .380 he’d slid into his pocket. The Borough of Fallen Mountains had issued him a rifle, a 3030, but nobody wanted to lug a rifle around on patrol, and he couldn’t very well go around with it strapped over his shoulder all the time. So years ago, he’d had Sue give him a handgun for an anniversary gift. He’d picked it out, of course, and bought it himself, but she’d wrapped it, in shiny silver paper. He’d bought her an herb garden that year.
“What kind of person buys himself a handgun for an anniversary gift?” Sue had said. “You understand that’s weird, right?”
“It fits right in my pocket,” Red had replied. “See? You can’t even tell it’s there. And to answer your question: the kind of person who wants to protect the people he loves, that’s who.” He’d smiled then, leaning in and kissing her.
The trail led Red into a copse of dense, tall mountain laurel that arced above him, creating a sort of tunnel that he had to forge through, ducking at times. White flowers like teacups held to the branches, fragrant and delicate, their dropped petals dotting the dirt path. Close by, a stream bubbled along, but in the mountain laurel tunnel, he couldn’t be sure of where the sound was coming from: maybe it wound all around him, maybe it lay just ahead.
When Red stopped to take a drink, he thought he heard the sharp sound of a stick cracking, breaking under the pressure of weight. He turned around slowly, searching the woods behind him, but he could only see a few yards. The mountain laurel, dense in the peak of summer, arched over the path.
“Hello?” he called, resting his hand on the Ruger. His heart thundered in his chest. “Is someone there?” Silence. “Who’s there?” Possum, he thought again, the name rumbling through his mind. Possum gathering mushrooms or doing whatever it was he did in those woods, seeing an opportunity and moving on it.
It could be an animal, Red told himself. A bear, a deer, maybe even something smaller. Would his .380 be enough to stop a bear? Should he fire it into the air?
Maybe there’d been no sound at all. He questioned himself sometimes, doubting even his own senses—he hadn’t slept well for two years now, since Sue had passed. He couldn’t get used to it, the dip on the other side of the bed where she used to sleep, the quiet. So the noise: Had he imagined it? He waited for a moment, then kept walking, until he heard it again: a stick snapping. He spun around quickly this time, raising his piece. This time, he thought the noise may have come from his left. “Who’s there?” he yelled. Red pictured Possum sitting on the floor of his mother’s trailer, Vance at his feet, blood pooling at his head and Possum with the bronze eagle in his hand, staring at the refrigerator. The finch quivering at the window.
Red wished he could see a little better, wished it wasn’t so dark and tunneling right there. No sound, no movement. But then—he was sure of it—the sound of retreat, something thrashing through the mountain laurel: twigs breaking, footsteps. Red stood on the trail, surrounded on all sides by the tan, curling branches and large, thick leaves of the mountain laurel. The white flowers. He rotated, looking all around, and then realized with a great deal of anxiety that he could quickly become disoriented if he didn’t keep track of the way he’d come in. At that point he realized he had no choice but to head back; he must acknowledge his limitations and be willing to call it a day. Sweat slid down his forehead and into his eyes, and he dabbed his face with his handkerchief. His shirt was soaked, and his pulse raced. With his Ruger out of its pocket and clenched in his hand, wrist aching, he walked back to the parking lot, back in the direction of whatever—whoever—had followed him.
BEFORE
Possum had earned his nickname in the third grade, when the class was learning about the local fauna and one of his classmates, Katie Johns, had made the observation that Tommy Miller looked like an opossum. When Katie made her remark, the entire class turned to look at Tommy’s face. Even Possum could see why Katie had drawn the connection: he did resemble that scrawny, wide-eyed creature known for playing dead. He was plagued by a terrible cowlick that made his light brown hair stick up in the back, and despite his enormous appetite, he had always been skinny. His eyes were disproportionately large for his thin face, and, despite his efforts to stop, he had the unfortunate habit of staring, mouth half open, in a look of constant bewilderment. Eventually he decided to let the name stick, mostly because after a while, nobody thought of him as anything else. In their small town of nine hundred, even the adults picked up on it, even the teachers at school.
Nobody seemed to care that maybe he might prefer his real name, Thomas, any version of it, really, anything but Possum. The truth was nobody cared much about Possum at all, as long as he minded his own business, which he was more than happy to do. After nearly two decades, the town had mostly forgiven him for what he’d done to Vance—some people had never held it against him to begin with—and to them he was just a quiet, awkward misfit who hunted mushrooms and collected junk.
