Rain Dogs, page 11
“What happened?”
“Caught me with that stick.”
Tom looked away from Pack’s face. It was a little bit hard to take.
Pack stepped closer and placed the tip of the knife in the soft hollow at the base of Tom’s throat. “Then my cousin calls and tells me some other white dude’s looking for me. Says he’s a friend of Duane.”
“I just wanted to talk to you. That’s all.”
“Ain’t a big fan of white today.”
Tom nodded.
“Ain’t a big fan of Duane today.”
“I’ll tell him that.”
Pack stepped away. He turned and said something quietly to Louise. She didn’t respond.
But she left them. She moved quietly, purse on her shoulder, still gripping her elbows as though she were cold. She walked through the scatter of broken glass, around the corner, and back through the shadows the way they’d come. She didn’t look at Tom when she passed him.
Tom got a feeling in the pit of his stomach, heavy and feather light at the same time.
Time slowed down and Pack stepped forward. He raised the knife and held the tip an inch from Tom’s left eye.
“You want to tell him something?”
Tom didn’t dare nod. “Sure.”
“Tell him he’d better keep his shit together. Or that cop’s the least of his problems.”
Tom said nothing. He began to get light-headed, realized he was holding his breath.
Pack stepped away. He tipped the knife toward Tom a couple of times.
Then he folded it, put it in his back pocket, and left Tom leaning against the Dumpster.
Tom’s heart didn’t begin to pound until after Harlan Pack had disappeared around the corner of the building. Then, all at once, he could feel his pulse thudding in his neck. He could hear himself breathing.
He waited there in the dark and the clinging stink of garbage for a minute or two.
When all the fight-or-flight business finally calmed down, and he realized what a bunch of empty bullshit back-alley posturing Pack’s little threat display had actually been, Tom straightened up, stepped away from the wall, and puked on his shoes.
NINETEEN
Morgan Wheeler had a full-thickness burn that covered his chest and stomach and snaked around his waist on one side.
He’d been standing nearest the stove in the fishing shack and essentially caught a fireball with his body. The cloud of burning gas had blown the door off the stove and pulped out its sides, displacing enough superheated air to knock Wheeler off his feet.
He’d scorched his windpipe and lungs inhaling, and he’d been in the process of suffocating by the time paramedics made it from town. They’d trached him on the riverbank, stabilizing en route to the airfield in Ainsworth, where the medevac chopper lifted him out.
Wheeler started his summer vacation in the burn unit at St. Elizabeth Regional Medical Center in Lincoln. But according to his doctors, Morgan’s burns weren’t his worst problem now.
After almost eight weeks on a ventilator, he’d developed pneumonia, infection kicking his inflammatory responses into overdrive. After all these weeks, he was in the process of suffocating again.
Tom got the message late Sunday night. It was the first thing he heard when he got back from the casino and the last thing he heard that day.
He managed to set an alarm clark before passing out on the couch.
Monday morning, before dawn, he drove Scott home to the Circle Slash.
It was forty miles by highway to Abby’s place. She wanted to get on the road early, hoping to make Lincoln by late afternoon before hospital hours ended for the day.
Scott sat in the passenger seat and looked out the window for most of the drive. Tom watched the road. Neither of them said much of anything.
A few miles south of Valentine, the sun rose over the Sandhills, casting the grass-bound dunes in warm early light. Tom saw a lone windmill atop a gentle rise, silhouetted against the lightening sky. Sunlight flickered through the turning blades, triggering a thought.
“Hey.” He looked at Scott. “What’s the aquifer?”
“Huh?”
“The aquifer.”
Sleeping off last night’s cocktail of beer and box wine and adrenaline had left him a strange hangover. He couldn’t seem to focus his thoughts. One minute, he was locked on Harlan Pack. Cory Severs. Duane. The next, he was thinking about some story he’d covered. Or the busted coin slot on the vending machine at the shop. The strange-looking bird on the fence post they’d just passed. He kept free-associating, wandering, finding his way back.
“Your mom,” he said. “I mean Abby.”
“What about her?”
“She told me that’s how she met your dad. Said he came out to one of her school classes to talk about the aquifer.”
“Ask Abby if you want to know about my dad.”
They rode the next ten miles in stiff silence. Tom wished he hadn’t opened his mouth.
At one point, Scott said, “There.”
Tom looked where he pointed, ahead on the right beyond a four-wire fence line. In a dip at the end of a long, ridgelike dune, he saw a few head of beef cattle standing around a small, irregular basin. Wind kicked up ripples along the surface of a shallow, murky water puddle. Sunlight glinted on the ripples. Cattle stood and blinked.
“There what?”
“There’s your aquifer.”
The cattle watched them shoot past. One roan steer lifted his tail and took a shit where he stood. Tom glanced at Scott and sighed.
“Thanks.”
“You asked.”
After another few miles, Scott pointed out the window again. “See the mile marker coming up?”
Tom saw it.
“Turn there.”
The driveway wound a quarter mile off the highway, taking them around the base of a massive dune, through pasture lined by split-rail fence on both sides, finally up to a plateau. The main house sat here, nestled in a windbreak.
A modern house, with flower beds and landscaping and a domed wood-shake roof. Tom saw a horse barn and corral, a few smaller outbuildings, a four-wheel ATV parked down the hill. All the buildings looked painted within the past couple of years. The fences were iron or wood rail all around.
The front door of the house opened as soon as they got out of the car. As Tom went around to the trunk, he heard a small voice, high on energy.
“Scotty!”
A little girl with big bunches of wheat-colored hair came tearing down the sidewalk and across the rock, pint-sized sneakers kicking up dust.
Over the trunk lid, Tom watched Scott. The kid sighed. A look of annoyance passed over his face.
But it was bullshit. When the girl launched herself at his legs, Scott cracked a smile and scooped her up with his left arm.
“Hey, Scotty Potty.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
Hannah giggled and yanked his hair. “Scotty Potty. Your arm got tan.”
He held up his right arm. “It’s all better.”
“I missed you.”
“Didn’t either.”
“I did too.”
Scott poked her in the stomach and she giggled again.
Hannah saw Tom watching them. “Who are you?”
“That’s Mommy’s friend,” Abby said. She came along behind, crunching across the rock toward the car. “His name is Tom.”
“Oh. Hi, Tom.”
When Abby’s little girl smiled at him, Tom felt something sharp in his chest. He could feel Abby watching.
“Hiya, Hannah.” He tried to smile and couldn’t quite make it. He winked instead. He shut the trunk and walked over, handed Scott the overnight bag he’d loaned for the trip.
Scott took the bag and let Hannah down. She sucked in close and peeked at Tom around Scott’s leg. Abby came up to Scott and smiled, smoothed the back of his hair.
“Hi, honey.”
“Hey.”
“Your arm’s looking good.”
“It’s fine.”
Abby glanced at Tom, and he could see that she had something on her mind. To Scott, she said, “Take squirt in and get her things. We’ll get going.”
Without a word, Scott slung the overnight bag over his shoulder and headed for the house. Hannah ran along in front of him.
When they’d disappeared inside, Tom said, “How old is she?”
“She turned four in April.”
He nodded, suddenly wanting a drink. Bad.
“You okay?”
He finally looked at her. The faint lines around her mouth looked like furrows this morning. He said, “What’s the matter?”
“I need to talk to you.”
There was a garden area in back of the house with a brick patio and a little outdoor bistro set. They sat there. Behind the horse barn, the Sandhills rolled all the way to the horizon. A warm breeze blew.
“Duane got in a little trouble,” he told her. “A couple days ago. I didn’t want you to worry. What did you hear about it?”
“I didn’t hear anything about it.” She set her mouth. “Tom, I have to tell you something. I almost called yesterday, then I decided I was being crazy. But the more I think about it, the more worried I get.”
“What is it?”
“The guy who stayed here,” she said. “The photographer?”
“Larry?”
She nodded. “Is he still at your place?”
“He comes and goes,” Tom said. “But he’s paid up through the summer. A season in the life of the Scenic Niobrara, something like that. Why?”
“I had two guys here over the weekend. They acted . . . well, they acted like a couple. On vacation.”
“Sounds romantic.”
“But they wanted the big room,” she said. “The one with two beds. And I could tell they used both of them. I don’t think they were sleeping together.”
“Spat?”
“They asked a lot of questions,” she said. “Stuff about the area. I didn’t think anything about it then. They said they were thinking about taking one of the canoe trips they’d heard about, asked me if I could recommend a place. I told them my stepson worked for you and they brightened up, asked me how old he was, how long he’d been working there, things like that. They seemed like a couple nice guys who like to have a conversation. But I keep thinking back to things they said. . . .”
“Why did you ask about Larry Salinger?”
“Because I saw him in town yesterday,” she said. “Hannah was hungry, so we stopped in at McDonald’s. The three of them were there having lunch together.”
“Larry and your guys?”
She nodded.
Tom wasn’t sure where to go with that.
“They were looking for an outfitter,” he said. “Larry probably looks about like he’s been living in a tent. Maybe they just got talking.”
“They asked about Scott again when they checked out last night,” Abby said. “And one of them . . . one of them was wearing a jacket. Like a sport jacket. You know what I mean?”
“A sport jacket, yeah.”
“When he bent down to pick up his bag, I thought . . . I don’t know.”
“You thought what?”
She shook her head, dropped her voice. “Tom, I swear he was wearing a gun.”
Tom sat for a minute, watching a windmill spin. He thought it was a mile away until he realized it was only a few feet high, built low to the ground. A trick of perspective.
He thought about Duane Foster. He thought about Harlan Pack and his busted face, about Scott showing up at the Landing with a gun of his own. He thought about Morgan Wheeler in the hospital.
He didn’t know what he thought and what he didn’t. He didn’t know what to tell Abby, what not to tell her. He thought about Hannah, running into the house.
Scott yelled down from a sliding door in back. “We going or what?”
Abby said she’d be inside in a minute. Tom looked at her across the table. She looked back at him. Her eyes still seemed a touch manic, but she forced a grin.
“Sorry, you’re right. I’m probably being crazy.”
“Probably,” he said.
He grinned back, thoughts spinning like the blades of the stubby little windmill in the near distance.
TWENTY
He found a note from Duane when he got back to the shop. They’d only had enough people for one run, which Foster was apparently still making. Two parties of two putting in kayaks at the refuge, a family putting in a tube at the Falls.
Larry Salinger drove a new Ford Escape with a small two-wheeled sport trailer; sometimes he unhitched the trailer and left it at the campground, sometimes he took it along with him. Today he must have taken it along.
Tom was glad that Larry wasn’t around. He was glad Duane wasn’t around. He was grateful for the quiet.
He had a drug dealer working at the Landing, but that wasn’t what bothered him most. All his instincts told him that Duane Foster was into something more than a few pounds of grass; whatever it was, he’d managed to get on Harlan Pack’s bad side. Scott was involved. Trevor Wheeler was involved. Cory Severs was not only involved; Tom suspected he was now running the show.
He thought about Larry Salinger.
Abby was right to be worried. She had a right to know whatever he could tell her. He’d dummied up, told her nothing. He still wasn’t sure why.
Even after weeks of willful oblivion, Tom wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t see a story brewing under his nose. One that probably meant trouble for somebody he’d cared about. For the first time in his ex-career, he knew that what might happen from here mattered more than whatever had happened so far.
Yet whenever he closed his eyes, he saw only one thing.
He tried to shake it. For the first time in a long time, he had other people to think about. He honestly tried.
He started by pouring himself a drink.
He didn’t stop drinking it for almost two days.
From: Tom Coleman
To: Circle Slash Bed & Breakfast
Sent: Wed 7/02 4:35 A.M.
Subject: RE: took you long enough
>Tell me about Emily?
Grace. That’s what we called her.
I don’t remember why. I guess we liked the way the names sounded together, but Melissa liked Grace better for everyday.
I remember the first few times her nurses called for “Emily.” It always took them a couple tries to get our attention. We’d be sitting there in the waiting area, playing with the lizard magnets or whatever they had for toys, while the nurse is standing there saying, “Emily? Emily Coleman?”
Even at the end it still threw me. Emily. I never completely got used to the fact that they were talking about my kid.
He’d never written about her before, he realized.
Nothing in his adult life had ever seemed real until he’d written the story, and he’d never written about her. He’d never even tried.
Once he started, it poured out in a flood.
She was the only kid in the nursery with her eyes open. All the others were sleeping, or squalling, eyes puckered shut like they wished they could go back inside and stay there. And there was mine, wrapped up like a little bean, blinking. Taking it all in. I didn’t see her born. Wasn’t even there. Deadline.
Melissa was in recovery from the C-section by the time I got to the hospital, found my way up to the delivery ward, found the one with my last name. They shoved her at me, and it was either hold her or drop her.
That was the first time she looked at me. If you told me there was a pill that would take away all the pain of losing her, but I’d lose the memory of my kid looking me in the eyes for the first time, I wouldn’t take it.
I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know what I’d do.
When he finished the bottle, he cracked a new one.
He was losing ground fast now. He still hadn’t told the story. It occurred to him that he could stop any time.
She was a happy kid. Sweet as pie. And stubborn as hell from day one. Between me and Melissa, she got that coming and going.
But it was the little things I always worried about. Watching the way she absorbed everything, seeing things about ourselves we hadn’t even recognized until we saw them in her, I always wondered how many little ways I was screwing the poor kid up.
That, and how I’d handle it when guys started coming around in tricked-out cars.
We thought she had asthma. She had this cough. Sometimes she’d lose her wind if she played too hard.
So we finally take her in and they do a bunch of tests. It’s nothing, nothing, nope, nothing, good news, she doesn’t have this, she doesn’t have that.
Then they x-ray her chest. It turns out it’s not nothing. It turns out there’s this mass crawling all over in there, trying to choke her out.
They gave us brochures.
I guess we were grateful for any information we could get our hands on then. All the literature led with statistics: Don’t worry, we’ve got numbers on this. Our people are all over it. You think your kid’s the only one dying around here?
I’ve covered some awful shit, Ab. Murders. Crack houses. Shit you dream about later. But the most depressing place I’ve ever been is a children’s hospital at Christmas.
Kids in her age range are supposed to respond best to treatment; statistically, girls tend to come out better than boys. I remember looking at all those other little kids, and their parents, and feeling guilty for being so grateful that it was going to be okay for us.
I guess she was stubborn. But she went through all of it smiling. All the needles and the machines, drugs that just made her sag and want to be held all day. That goddamn kid smiled even when she couldn’t lift her head.
