All previous statements as regards junkies not really trying to get high, just trying not to get dopesick? Scratch that. After Dori was gone, I was chasing the big zero. With fair success. My job at the co-op finally joined the tits-up work history of Demon. And poor Mrs. Peggot, I did nothing around that house except to surface on rare occasions to drive her to the grocery. We’d have starved otherwise, since she didn’t drive, and Maggot was useless on Mr. Peg’s truck. One more strike on his blighted manhood: Maggot never learned to drive a manual.
I had the vague idea that if money became essential, tobacco season was around the corner and I’d make some then. People were hard up for labor. With most every kid in the county hammered, what few farmers were still on their land were having to scout high and low to get decent hands for the hard work. Mainly these were coming to us across the Mexican border. Along with all the heroin. No connection, as far as I know.
The one thing I was still holding together, by a thread, was Red Neck. I couldn’t let Tommy crash and burn, he of all people deserved better. He was more than pulling his weight at this point. In the beginning we’d brainstormed a lot of ideas, and now he was sketching those into panel strips. Skeleton versions. At least once a week I’d get myself sober enough to go over and put flesh on the bones. My style was required by the fan base. But Tommy’s rough drafts had their own weirdly terrifying vision, more truthful than any we ever put in the paper. Our people, our mountains, all our worries: a universe of ghosts. I called his drawings Neckbones, and asked if I could save them. Tommy said this was a dark inclination on my part, but he let me.
The day everything happened, the hitting bottom as it’s known in our circles, came in June. One of those hot, rainy days where you feel like you’re breathing your own breath out of a paper bag. But weather was not the worst of that day’s evils. I’m pointing my finger now at Rose Dartell. Running into her that day would put the nail in the coffin. I’d give anything to have stayed home. If wishes were horses, like they say. We’d all have different shit to shovel.
Maggot and I were at the famous Woodway crack house where Swap-Out was still living with some other guys. People came and went through there like barn cats, you didn’t always bother with names. Maggot needed to get hooked up. For my own part I was okay, I’d scored a pity bottle of oxy off of Thelma at the funeral and had multiplied the investment. Pain clinic, first Friday of the month: loaves and fishes. But I drove Maggot over to Woodway and made the effort to be social. Had a chat with Swap-Out, asked if he still had any doings with Mr. Golly, which he didn’t, too bad. That man had a place in my heart. Then Maggot and the other crackheads got to the part of ring-around-the-rosy where they all fall down, and I went and sat outside, deeply cooked and making the best of it. Breathing the halitosis of summer, basking in the sick glory of that porch. The rotten mattress, the dresser with no drawers, the refrigerator on its side with its mouth hanging open, harboring a tiny waiting room on top of four black plastic chairs joined together. I remembered rescuing Martha from this very porch, a lifetime ago, and wondered what became of her. June would be getting her straightened out, for sure. Maggot and I weren’t crossing our path with June if we could help it.
Half the porch was taken up by stacked firewood that had been there so long, it was covered with a shredded sheet of white dusty cobwebs. I watched a mother rat run in and out of the logs, carrying her babies by their napes from one part of the stack to another. She’d appear with them one by one, all business, like she’s on the clock here, relocating her office space. How she decided one part of this wreck was less dangerous than any other, no guess.
A dirt-brown Chevy pickup came down the road, the first vehicle of any kind in over an hour, and surprised me by pulling up to the house. More surprise, Rose Dartell flung herself out of it, slamming the door and moving fast, carrying a pizza box.
“Damn, Rose. Did you bake me a pie?”
She pulled up hard to a stop. Her hair was different some way, less frizzed out, but the face was unchanged. That scarred-up sneer. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same.”
“I work for Pro’s. That and the phone company, for a couple of years now.”
“Pro’s Pizza delivers all the way out here to fucking Woodway?”
“Regular customers. They pay cash. Any more questions, or can I do my job?”
“Knock yourself out.”
I wondered if they’d be paying her more than cash in there. She stayed long enough. Mr. Pro probably had no idea where all she was driving on his dime. I couldn’t help thinking of our last meetup, the dark highway pullout where Rose gave me the news of Emmy like a drink she’d spit in. I was just about to go in and advise Maggot that it was time to say grace and blow this dump, but she came back out. Sat down on the edge of the woodpile. Mother rat, look out.
“Did Fast Forward call you yet?” She mumbled it, lighting a cigarette.
“Why would he do that?”
She shrugged, wiped her runny nose with the back of her wrist. They’d tipped her in there, all right. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t. He’s always needing something from somebody. He’s back in Lee County, maybe you didn’t know.”
“Oh yeah? Whereabouts is he living?”
“This big old house belonging to some lady. They call it Spurlock around there, but it’s not really a town, more or less by Duffield. It’s a hard place to find.”
Rose flicked at something on the knee of her jeans, adjusted the strap of her sandal. Thunder was rolling around between the mountains to the east of us. Then the sky got a lot darker, in that sudden way that feels like a power outage of God. I lit a smoke of my own, since Rose hadn’t offered. We sat looking at the collection of vehicles that seemed to belong to the Woodway crack house. Some living, some dead, some fallen prey to target practice.
Rose blew out the last of her smoke and ground out the butt with her heel. “You know what, this is my last delivery and I’m going over there now.”
“To where?” My mind had wandered.
“To Fast Forward’s. If you want to follow me over there. Come by and say hello.”
I told her not to do me any favors.
“I’m not,” she said. “Actually, I’m thinking the next time he needs somebody to come scratch his balls, maybe he could whistle for you instead of me.”
Maybe, if I still bowed to the pull of the Fast Forward magnet. But I’d decided some while ago, if I spoke to the bastard again, it would not be in kindness. A fallen hero shatters into more sharp pieces than you’d believe. Emmy was the one that finally stuck in my throat. I tasted bile in my gullet. Then surprised myself by going inside to collect Maggot. We tailed Rose’s pickup out of Woodway.
Before we were back out to 58, rain started slapping the windshield in big fat drops. The Impala needed new wiper blades, but that was far down the list of what that Impala needed. The title transferred out of a dead man’s name, for a start. I squinted through the blur, wishing I were a hair more sober, and tried to keep a bead on the red taillights ahead. She turned off the highway sooner than I expected, on Dry Creek Road, which went no place you’d want to be. Not a sensible way to Duffield, but maybe it was like she’d said, his place wasn’t there exactly. About a mile in, we came on a stranded pickup halfway blocking the road. She edged around it, but I stopped, because I’d come across that vehicle stalled once before. This time I knew the owner and the damage was repairable. Hammer Kelly, left rear flat.
I rolled down the window and yelled hey. Not sure why rain makes you yell across six feet of distance, but it does. Poor Hammer, a drowned cat could not have looked more pitiful. Rain dripping off his nose, white T-shirt soaked like a second skin so his nipples and chest hair showed through. He pushed the wet flop of hair out of his eyes and stared at us, and I saw he was not a sober man. He had tools out but seemed stuck as far as next steps. I got out, assuming Rose would go on and leave us. She must have been watching her rear view, because she backed up.
I yelled at her that we’d have to make it some other time. But she said no, she’d wait, because how long could it take for three stooges to change one tire. It was quickly down to one stooge. I sent Hammer looking for something to wedge the tires on the opposite side, which he did, while I set the jack. But then Maggot yelled for him to come get in the Impala, and he did. I could see Maggot getting out the goods in there. Of all casualties of the Emmy/Fast Forward disaster, the sorriest one was Hammer. He’d said he wasn’t going to get over her, and was keeping his word. Getting ripped with him had become one of our pastimes, to the point of Hammer being one woeful, weepy shitfaced fucker. The guy did not hold his liquor. The downside to his keeping so much on the straight and narrow through his formative years: no conditioning. I’d warned Maggot against getting him into anything stronger, at least till he got his training wheels off. But at that moment while I was pulling the lug nuts off his flat, I saw him snorting crank from the dash of my Impala. Rose saw it too. She never missed a trick.
I was unthrilled to be out there by myself changing Hammer’s tire in a frog-strangling rain, and coming to understand why this was called Dry Creek Road. It was a creek bed. Not dry at this time. Muddy water gushed all around me and under the car, getting me worried about whether the jack would hold. I got the tire off and the spare on, lickety-split, but then, goddamn it to hell, the lug nuts. I’d set them out in a neat line right next to the hubcap, as you do. Now they were nowhere, and the hubcap was bobbing away like a fucking duck. I got frantic, cursing the rain, feeling around with both hands under the rushing water, trying to find lug nuts in the wet rolling gravel. Shit, shit, shit, shit. I was aggravated to the point of murder. Threw open the door of the Impala and yelled for them both to get out there and help me find the fucking lug nuts. But even if any of us had been sober, it was a lost cause. Like noodling for crawdads. Our chance of finding crawdads actually in that mess would have been better.
We ended up having to abandon Hammer’s truck. He could come back later with fresh nuts and a clear head. At the last second, he remembered to go back and get his rifle off the rack in his truck. Probably the firearm had more value than the vehicle. I told Rose we were taking Hammer home, but she said we were only a couple of miles from Fast Forward’s so we could stop there on our way and dry out, smoke a joint to calm our nerves, etc. Then she took off, throwing a wake like a speedboat. Hammer lived in Duffield. I wasn’t entirely sure where we were, only that I should get the hell out of that roaring creek, so I followed Rose. Hammer was in the back seat, in no way clued in to our plan. He and Fast Forward had only ever met one time, as far as I knew, at June’s party. That brief shiny moment of Emmy belonging to Hammer, before she was stolen away. I remembered Fast Forward afterward laughing with Mouse, calling Hammer a chucklehead knuckle dragger. Nothing good could come from a reintroduction. The last sober shreds of my brain were saying this: Go home.
And for the thousandth time in a month I answered back: Go home where, to what person? Useless fuck that I am, who cares. The night I’d found Dori, I hate to say, some part of me was relieved, thinking now I wouldn’t have to worry every minute about her dying. I thought I’d be better off without the fear. I was so wrong. Even with nothing else good left between us, that dread made me a person still attached to another person. Nobody needed me anywhere now.
The rain got worse. I’d never seen the like. We turned onto a side road that was not a running river, but the windshield was blinded out. I saw the faint red glow of Rose’s lights pulling over and I did the same, thinking she meant to wait out the blitz. Then her lights went out and I saw the outline of Rose running from her truck towards the outline of a house, and next thing I knew, Maggot was out and running for it too. We all went. The car felt like a fishbowl we could drown in. We got to the porch and somebody let us in.
Rose had said the house of “some lady,” and I’d thought, housedress, rent check. Nope. Her name was Temple, total and complete hotcake. Short shorts, long blond hair. No love lost between her and Rose, that was plain to see. But she made over us guys like rescue pups, went and got towels, made hot coffee, set us up in the living room with her bong that was a hippie pottery type of thing. It turned out she made these herself. Interesting lady, interesting house. Big old place, not a whole lot of furniture. Maybe they’d just moved in together. I thought of the Emmy wreckage, and wondered how long he’d take to chew this pretty girl up and spit her out. She and Rose discussed something in code which obviously was drug business, and Temple said he wasn’t there, he’d gone out driving with Big Bear Howe and some other guys. She hadn’t gone with them because it was boring as hell, those boys never talked about a thing other than football. And I thought, Huh, maybe there’s hope for this one. She said Fast Forward was still catching up with his homeboys since moving back to Generals territory. They’d gone over to this place on the river they always liked to go, Devil’s Bathtub.
My stomach did a somersault over those words. Over behind the bong, Hammer’s eyebrows went high, late to the party but finally catching on to who we were discussing. Rose said it was a hell of a day to go swimming. Temple said for sure, but it had been pretty as a picture that morning, these summer storms could just blow up out of nowhere. True, all that.
Hammer stood up, knocking over an empty coffee cup, and said we needed to go. Temple was a little shocked, reaching for the
cup. She said we were welcome to wait out the storm. And he said, “We’re going now.” Just like that, the whole lifetime of
Hammer, polite, bashful boy loved by all, for always doing just what they asked, was over.
58
It seemed like the storm might let up. But whatever of it was left, we were driving straight into, headed east into Scott County on a no-name gravel road. Hammer didn’t believe this was my first time at Devil’s Bathtub, and got in his head I was lying about it. He’d been here time and again with this or that batch of Peggots and was sure I was too. Maggot knew better and kept quiet. They both kept saying this is the road, keep going. Hammer meant to hunt down Fast Forward and have it out. Hammer on meth was a whole new man, cradling his rifle in the back seat with the air of a person in charge, and there’s no way I was taking that man home right now. He lived with his stepmom Ruby and her daughter Jay Ann that had her new baby. The Peggots had a deep bench. They would blame me for this and skin me alive.
