Fallen Mountains, page 7
Seventeen years had passed, but how many times had Red lived through that evening, catching cicadas with his son, the phone call from Laney, then driving out to the shale pit, seeing Transom slip into the woods, finding Possum in the trunk. All of it, a bad dream that kept on trembling back. Try as he could, Red couldn’t seem to free himself of it. The past: never dead. Maybe if there’d been a different chapter after that, maybe if he’d told Possum’s mother and encouraged her to press charges and they’d gone to the state police, maybe if he’d done the right thing, the events of that night wouldn’t haunt him the way they did. But there was no undoing any of it now, no taking it back.
Red sat up in his bed and flipped on the light, squinting in the sudden brightness. Behind the light, on the nightstand, was the green accordion file from Transom’s trunk, and he reached for it. He pulled his reading glasses from their sleeve and slid them on. He’d been systematic about looking through the file, pocket by pocket. In one, stubs from a logging company. Apparently Transom contracted the same outfit to cut the timber, regardless of where a property was located. Earlier, Red had sat at the police station with a microwave dinner and a calculator, peering through his glasses, leafing through the papers, tapping in the numbers. Close to a hundred grand Transom had brought in, from logging alone, over the past year. Six properties, scattered across the western end of the state. In another pocket, three contracts from oil companies, mineral rights in perpetuity, all for Marcellus shale, all within an hour of Fallen Mountains. The last one, signed in February of this year, four months earlier, was for 8817 Old Oak Lane, the Hardy property. How long had Transom owned the place before he’d sold off the mineral rights? Red had walked across the street from the police station to the courthouse and looked it up in the records. Five weeks. Not very long. The loggers had come even sooner. Again, the thought: Had it been Transom’s plan all along, buy that property, cut the good timber, sign with an oil company? Had he known about Jack’s strong stance on the issue?
Red had one pocket left, at the back of the file. He reached in and grabbed an envelope. Sea to Sea Travel Agency, Pittsburgh. Relief flooded over him—here he would find a receipt, an itinerary. Transom had gone off again and there was evidence to prove it. Red would hand in that retirement letter tomorrow, first thing, and he’d tell Leigh right off that he’d intended to hand it in before, but then the whole Transom Shultz thing had come up, and he hadn’t felt right about leaving until it was wrapped up. He’d call Junior and make plans to drive out to see his new apartment in Shadyside and go to a Pirates game. He’d go bass fishing; it was too hot for trout.
What he found instead in the final pocket was not a receipt, but plane tickets, two of them. Red scanned the names: Transom Shultz and Teresa Bradley. Pittsburgh to Atlanta, Atlanta to Jamaica. Red dumped the rest of the contents from the Sea to Sea Travel Agency envelope on the bed. Reservations for a week at a swanky beach resort in Negril. A pamphlet on scuba diving, a pamphlet about a booze cruise at sunset. And a personalized, typed plan, not just their names and a date and time but also additional details—private ceremony on the beach, pink orchids, torches, table for two.
He remembered pretty Teresa sitting across the table from him at the police station, her hand extended, the ring gaudy and brilliant in the fluorescent light. Red’s heart sank. He looked at the empty spot in the bed beside him. A wedding. Transom had been planning his wedding.
BEFORE
By the middle of January, Laney had come to terms with the fact that she needed to prepare herself for when Transom showed up at her place, because one way or another, she’d need to explain that things were different now. Even if her relationship with Chase bore no official title, she hoped that, in time, it would. With Transom, there was chemistry and comfort, a heat lightning that flashed and loomed, but there was only the moment, nothing beyond it. With Chase, she could see a future that stretched on and out: a life together, a family. And that’s what she needed to hold to; that’s what she had to keep reminding herself of. Because when Transom showed up at the back door, his beautiful face peering through the glass in expectation, she needed to be ready to send him on his way.
She devised a plan. She could not let him in the house, she knew that, so no matter how cold it was, no matter how bitter the wind sweeping off the mountains was, she would open the door and step out onto the back porch. “Things have changed,” she would tell him. “So this can’t happen anymore. This is in the past.” She imagined the events, rehearsed the lines. When her mind veered toward Transom, toward the feel and smell of him, that terrible pull he could exert on her, she’d force it back to Chase.
The problem was, Transom didn’t come to the door. Instead, Laney was in the meat section of the grocery store, looking for a ribeye. It was brutally cold and it was one of those days when the absence of Jack and Maggie hung on her like a backache. Chase hadn’t invited her to stay again, and when she’d seen him, he’d been distant, standing far away from her, avoiding eye contact. Laney figured a steak, maybe, a fattening slab of protein, might make her feel better. She was reading the labels, looking for a cut that would allow her to have a good portion and the dog some, too, when she felt someone come up behind her, the body so close she could feel it graze her own.
“I was hoping we’d cross paths eventually.”
That voice, the feel of the speaker so close, after so many years of silence and distance, caught her off guard and sent a shudder through her because this—this she had not prepared for. This, she had not rehearsed. She whirled to face him, those sea green eyes that penetrated, the face, familiar and lovely with its symmetry and grace. “What are you doing here?”
“Same as you,” he replied, breaking into a smile. “Looking for a piece of meat.” He laughed and nudged her, that smile with a hundred lines, those brilliant teeth. Although years had passed since she’d last seen him, Transom didn’t look much different, just older, a little more worn. Still handsome, plus he seemed thicker, somehow. Stronger.
“You look good,” Transom said, tilting his head. He reached out and brushed a stray hair from her forehead.
She became self-conscious then, in her ripped jeans and dirty jacket. She hated that she’d come straight from her walk with Kip, that her face was flushed from cold and wind, that her fluorescent orange beanie was pulled above her ears and way up on top of her head, like some kind of odd Christmas elf. She contemplated yanking it off and shoving it into the shopping basket, but then she worried that such a move might reveal an even uglier disaster: her disheveled, frizzed hair, which she hadn’t washed for two days.
Why was she so embarrassed about all of that? Why was her heart racing, thumping in her chest? Why, after all these years, did she still feel so enthralled, and so ashamed for being enthralled, in Transom’s presence?
“You want company for dinner?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.
“I can’t,” she said, pushing past him to grab a strip steak, the closest package she could reach without touching him. She needed to get out of there, away from him.
He reached out and grazed his knuckles against hers. “Come on. It’s just dinner.”
She shivered, her red shopping basket hanging from her arm and resting against her hip, and she turned to look at him. She tried to read him, wondering if Chase had told him anything. Well—maybe there was nothing to tell. Maybe he’d just been lonely, and she’d been there, a friend, a body. After all, it wasn’t like he’d made some sort of commitment; it wasn’t like he’d said anything at all. Her mind began to spin.
“It’s good to see you,” Transom said.
Everything with Chase, those conclusions she’d come to over the holidays about the two of them belonging together—all of it muddled and bent. “Dinner,” she said. “Just dinner.”
And that’s all it was that night. Dinner, steak and beer and frozen French fries in the oven. Transom told stories from high school: pep rallies and four-wheeling at the farm and wild parties out at the lake. Billy Ferguson drunk and forgetting to put his truck in gear, the pickup sliding into the water, the bubbles floating up and everyone too hammered to do a thing about it. Remembering, Laney laughed so hard she cried. Corning the principal’s house on Halloween, all three of them dressed as zombies, Chase and Transom and Laney, too—pelting the front door with field corn from the farm. Eleventh grade, that had been.
“Remember that night?” Transom asked, looking at her. “That was the first time, you and me. I dropped off Chase first.”
Her mother hadn’t been home, and he’d pulled around back. When she’d reached into the back seat to grab her purse, he’d kissed her neck.
“I remember.” She could feel Transom’s strong pull then, his eyes on her, and she stood and started clearing the plates from the table. “Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have things I need to do.”
“Right. I should get going.”
She dumped soap into the sink, filled it with hot water, and sunk her hands into the suds. “Well, thanks for this. It was nice. It was good to catch up.”
Transom stood and carried his plate to the sink. “Laney.”
She couldn’t look at him, not when he stood that close, not when he said her name like that. She shook her head and kept her eyes on the pot she was scrubbing, her arms deep in the water. “I can’t.”
Transom stepped back. “Okay.” He slid into his coat. “Thanks for dinner,” he said. “I can let myself out.”
From the sink, she watched as he paused at his Lincoln, looked back at her through the window, and raised a hand goodbye. And when he’d gone, when she’d watched his taillights disappear down Locust Street and turn left onto 28, she didn’t feel guilty about having spent time with him. Instead, she slumped on the couch and felt a wash of relief but also a stitch of grief, a sense that she’d missed out on something. If this was the right thing to do, send him on his way, why was there such a sense of loss, she wondered.
Laney still hadn’t heard from Chase when, two days later, Transom returned, stood at the back door, and knocked quietly. She was balancing her checkbook at the kitchen table, tapping numbers into her calculator, and all at once her plans to step outside, to meet him on the porch, scuttled away from her. She opened the door and he stepped inside and pulled her close and then the two of them were entwined and breathless and hungry and stumbling through the living room. Even in the moment, she knew there would be no freeing herself from that thing she’d been so drawn to over the years: like the June bugs that jolted to the bug catcher humming on her back porch each summer, she just couldn’t keep herself from lurching toward the light.
But right after, she felt the weight of her choice, heavy and ugly and whirling. Laney rose from bed, dashed to the bathroom and vomited, her fingers wrapped around the white porcelain rim, her body wrenching. Kneeling on the old tile floor, she closed her eyes, gathering herself. The room spun, white and yellow, and the floor was so cold, the old house with its thin windows and drafty halls. She thought of all those times the three of them had roamed the Hardy farm together, the times, too, that they’d insisted she stay behind, because it was Boys Only, Brothers Only. As a child, she’d resented that, being left behind, but she’d admired their closeness, too: she’d envied it. Transom and Chase, inseparable, two friends who’d navigated the multitude of adolescent trials without a hiccup, and now she’d somehow managed to position herself between the two of them.
“You all right?” Transom called from the bedroom.
She pulled herself up, cupped water from the faucet and splashed her face, then sobbed into a hand towel. She brushed her teeth and stumbled back into the bedroom.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said, her voice hoarse.
Transom rolled onto his side and propped himself up. “What is it?”
“We can’t do this anymore,” Laney said, shaking her head. “We just can’t.”
“I’ve heard that before.” He rubbed his eyes and shrugged his shoulders, smiling, sinking back into the pillows. “And yet, here we are.”
“No, it’s different this time. Things have changed.”
“What’s changed?”
“Chase.”
“What about Chase?”
“I’m with him.”
Transom sat up. “What?”
“Well, I mean, we might be getting together. I want to.” She took a deep breath. “It’s complicated.”
Transom frowned. “Am I supposed to understand what that means, ‘it’s complicated’? Because I don’t.”
Laney sat down on the edge of the bed. “Nothing’s official. Nothing’s been said.”
“But you guys have hooked up.”
She bit her lip. “Once.”
“Recently?”
She nodded.
“Why didn’t you say something?” Transom shook his head, rose from the bed, and pulled on his jeans. “Why didn’t you tell me? I never would’ve—” he paused then, sliding into his shirt and slumping over, the burden of her announcement heavy on him. He sighed. “Does he know about the other times, you and me?”
She shook her head. “I never told him. Did you?”
“No.” Transom struggled with the buttons on his shirt. “He’s my best friend, Laney. I don’t pretend to be the most upstanding guy, you know that. But even I have lines I don’t cross.”
She sat on the bed and began crying again, hiding her face in the pillow. “I know. It’s just—you know how he is. So hard to read sometimes, so distant. And then you and I had dinner. You came over.”
“I came over because I didn’t know.”
“I should’ve told you. It was a mistake. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe we should just tell him. Come clean. I’ll tell him I didn’t know.”
“You can’t do that.” Laney grabbed his hand. “You can’t throw me under the bus. Transom, please.”
Transom seemed to consider this.
“Listen, try to understand. You come and go, you always have.” Did he wince when she said that, or did she just imagine a flash of emotion on his face? “This is my life now. We’re here, me and Chase. We’re never going anywhere, neither one of us. And I want things to work out with him. I really do.” She thought of all the years Chase had spent serenely in Transom’s shadow—Transom the better-looking one, the stronger one, the more popular one. Chase, quiet and unassuming, never complaining about his position. But something told her that if there were any hope of the two of them being together, he couldn’t find out about Transom and her. Not the numerous times before, and certainly not this time. In a moment of sudden clarity, she realized what she really wanted: Chase, the farm, a life together. “He can never know,” she said.
“We had a good thing going, you and me.”
Was that sadness she detected in his voice? Had she hurt him? She couldn’t be sure. “I’m sorry.”
He headed down the steps.
“Promise me you won’t say anything to Chase. Please.”
He turned to look at her over his shoulder. “I can let myself out, Laney,” he said, and walked out the front door.
AFTER
Red drove slowly past the tranquil Hardy farm house, the Holsteins dawdling in the pasture. In the rearview mirror, the dust rocketed up, everything bone-dry and the cicadas roaring, filling the air like a bad fog. A memory scampered back to him: he and Junior crawling around the yard after the ugly, black creatures with enormous folded wings and diabolical red eyes, stuffing them into an old mayonnaise container. Out at Sue’s parents’ place, they pitched the little critters at the hens and watched as the chickens dashed to peck them from the ground. Junior loved every minute of it.
Red turned the Jimmy up the gravel road to the plateau where the oil company was in the thick of construction: a huge swath of cleared land, a spot carved into the hillside and rolled flat. Cylindrical metal containers everywhere, a maze of piping. To his left, a forklift and, he counted, nine pickup trucks. To his right, a tan, windowless construction trailer, and another beyond that. Red quieted the engine and looked around. Before he even got out, a man in a hard hat, fluorescent yellow vest, and sunglasses approached. Thick in the middle with a wide, menacing mustache, the man walked up to the Jimmy and tapped on the window. Red cranked it open.
“Who are you?” the man asked.
“Redifer, John Redifer.”
“What do you want?”
“The man who owns this property, Transom Shultz, has gone missing. Is there someone I can talk to? Someone in charge?”
“Sit tight.” The man pulled a radio out of his back pocket, and when he reached back, his shirt lifting, Red could see a handgun holstered at his hip. The man motioned to Red to step out of the Jimmy. “Boss is in the trailer,” he said. “Come on.”
As the man turned away to spit, Red cautiously slipped his Ruger into the pocket of his khakis. He had a bad feeling about this place and, remembering Teresa’s comments about Transom’s attempts to get out of his contract, he decided he wanted the weapon on him, just to be safe. Cautiously, he followed the man to the work trailer a hundred yards away.
Inside the trailer were three more men, two of whom were dressed like the one Red had met outside, and one of whom wore a light blue polo shirt and sat behind a desk.
“Afternoon,” Red said, nodding to the three of them.
“What is it we can help you with?” the man in the polo asked, leaning back in his swivel chair. In his hand, he squeezed a purple grip strengthener, over and over.
“Well, as I mentioned to your associate,” Red said, “the landowner has gone missing, and I’m here to see if you fellows have heard from him.”
“You a cop?”
“I’m the Fallen Mountains sheriff.”
“You got a warrant?”
