Sewerville Page 5

  HOME

  An hour after Boone took care of his only brother, the rain disappeared from the valley. It would return soon enough.

  BOONE

  It was the worst of times, and it was the worst of times. It was the worst of the worst times.

  Boone Sumner woke up the next morning feeling like he might throw up. The window by the bed hung open. The room was so cold that a thin frost glazed his blanket. His throat was sore and scratchy from sleeping under the chill. He rolled over, but found the other side of the bed empty, just as cold as the air in the room. Through the fog of half–sleep he remembered a fight with Karen the night before, something her daddy wanted, the usual shit.

  Quickly Boone let it go. No doubt they would take it up again later. They always took it up later. These days their fights were interminable, peaks and valleys.

  Visions of his brother clanged in his eyes. He wanted no part of them.

  He looked over at the night stand and picked up the green picture frame which contained a photo of his five–year–old daughter. Samantha. This was the perfect gift for him whenever he found it upon waking – her perfect smile forever captured, her gossamer curls forever spilling down across her forehead. He wasn’t sure when or where the picture was taken, but felt that, judging from her size, it must have been recently.

  He looked at the picture for a solid minute, thinking. Samantha. He went through peaks and valleys with Karen, a lot of pain and doubt and who–knows–what, but never with Samantha. With Samantha, there were no valleys.

  He put the picture back on the night stand, gathered himself up, and headed for the shower.

  In the bathroom, he glimpsed his thirty–four–year old face in the mirror. A six–day beard made a thin blanket on his jaw line; it had started out dark, matching the short black hair on his head, but now turned the color of rust. It always went that way when Boone went too long without shaving. Another thing: his jawline was normally clean, and firm, but this morning, the beard softened it. Boone didn’t like that, but he didn’t really feel like doing anything about it, either.

  HELL

  The sun dared show itself again just past six–thirty that morning. An angry wind screamed out of the valley, whooshing all the tree limbs on all the hillsides at once, sighing in unison, helpless against the whims of the breeze. Dead leaves and dusty dead–leaf pieces fluttered in the air, the last remnants of summer in their annual dive towards nothingness. Heavy gray thunderclouds rolled over the ridge; already, another storm growled near.

  Boone watched all of this from his truck, which was parked right back where it had started the night before: in Walt Slone’s driveway. He hadn’t even begun to think about sleep.

  Finally he got out and went back to the front door. He knocked, and waited for the old man to answer. He waited, and waited. Walt Slone did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted; he lived on his own time and didn’t care about anyone else’s. Certainly not Boone’s time. Even if Boone was his son–in–law, that didn’t move him up any higher on Walt Slone’s priority list.

  So, Boone waited. The damp, unseasonably cold air lingered around his ears, and he pulled his collar up, and he waited. He buried his hands in his jacket pocket and waited.

  No one came. He turned and looked down the hillside. From the doorstep, even in the gray mist that hung around this close to dawn, Boone could see all of Sewardville in the valley below.

  He closed his eyes and envisioned something else.

  In his mind, Boone saw a nightmare version of the valley. Highway 213 snaked through from bottom to top, pock–marked with potholes and crumbling shoulders. In the brush near the road loomed rusty old dinosaur farm equipment: tractors, hay beds, belt feeders, combines, spreaders, junk. Beyond the dinosaurs stood shoddy mobile homes, shouldered together one after the other like old men in a soup line, with their walls buckling under the twin strains of time and poverty. Past the mobile homes, way down the road, way down in the valley, was a little town. Gas stations filled the town, along with churches, secondhand furniture stores, and fast–food restaurants. A school stood on one end of town, so children could get away from their families. A jail stood on the other end of town, so that families could get away from the school. It rained a lot.

  Images rushed at Boone, as if he were looking through a telescope and jerking from side to side at the same time. A Baptist church here. A Methodist church there. A BP station on one corner. A Chevron on the other. A McDonald’s to the east, a Taco Bell to the west. A logging truck. A school bus. Children. Old people. A pharmacy. A meth lab. A dealer. An addict. A blonde. A cheerleader. A cross. A coffin.

  Boone felt sick.

  The pictures in his mind shifted. He imagined everything in Sewardville sliding into the very bottom of the valley. The churches and the gas stations and the fast food restaurants piled on top of one another – sinking, sinking, sunk – as the earth crumbled beneath them. Everything went down, down, down to the bottom of the pit. The rusty machinery slid a little further down the valley, creeping closer towards the mobile homes. The mobile homes sank down the hillsides, headed towards town. The town sank into a black pit, headed towards oblivion, and Boone could do nothing but stand there and watch them go.

  But, then, the vision went away.

  Boone chased it all away with the thought of his daughter. Samantha. Nowadays, she spent most of her time in this house on the hill overlooking Sewardville, with her mother and her grandfather. Boone didn’t want that, but that seemed to be more and more the reality of the situation. His little girl was growing up while he spent his days and nights at Walt Slone’s beck and call, chasing people through the woods and collecting money from low–rent gamblers or hawkers of illegal cigarettes. While Boone stood on one side of Walt Slone’s closed door, Samantha spent too much of her time away from him, on the other side of that door. And the further they went, the less Boone saw that door opening.

  He couldn’t escape the frightful thought that one day he’d look down into the valley and see her tumbling away from him for good, down there with the whores and the pill heads and the methamphetamine monsters.

  Boone opened his eyes. Real sight returned. He looked down into the real valley beneath Walt Slone’s real brick mansion, and saw the town, saw the churches, saw the gas stations. He did not see a sinkhole. He did not see flames or a pillar of black dust. The combines stood there, rotting beside the roads. The mobile homes were still, the meth heads were safe, the fast–food restaurant signs still glowed in the early morning light.

  The world was right. Right as could be, anyway.

  So, Boone waited for Walt to answer the door. He waited. And waited.

  Finally, Walt opened the door. He did not say hello. He did not say anything. Boone offered him a thirty–ought–six rifle and a case of bullets to go with it.

  The two men exchanged no words at all. Finally, after what seemed like hours but was really only two minutes, Walt accepted the gun and ammunition.

  “What about it,” said the old man, flatly.

  “Dunno. What about it,” said Boone.

  Now they would talk.

  WALT

  Walt Slone stood six foot four, with white hair as close–cropped as it had been ever since he joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1962. His head was almost too small for his body. His skin was tanned deep from all the time he’d spent fishing all the best spots from one end of the country to the other, but especially down in Lake Cumberland, where he’d built the lake house as soon as he had his first million in the bank. Wrinkles dug deep all around his gray eyes. A smooth pink scar went from the edge of his right temple down his face to just under the ear, a trophy won in a fight at the Bears Den four decades ago.

  He said, “Good morning,” in a voice that sounded like skinned knees dragged across concrete.

  “Morning,” said Boone.

  “You got somethin’ to show me?”

  “Sure I got something to show you.” Boone pulled a plain brown pa
per bag out of his pocket and gave it to Walt. Walt nodded and took the offering. He looked at the bag for a moment, opened it, checked inside.

  There were three spent rifle casings in the bag. Walt bounced the bag around, and soon found two bloody human fingers jumbled with the shells. Jimmy’s fingers.

  “That work for you?” asked Boone.

  “Is that brother of yours dead, or ain’t he?” Walt asked flatly, just like he was asking for the price of gasoline at the corner store.

  “He’s dead alright.”

  Walt rolled up the paper bag and handed it back. “Works for me. I know it’s gotta be eatin’ you up, but you did the right thing. Don’t you worry about that. I know he was your brother and all, but you did the right thing, Boone. We’ll have us a funeral, let Harley Faulkner handle the body just like usual, and that oughtta be that. You go see Harley this mornin’ and he’ll take care of us. What about that?”

  Boone pursed his lips.

  “Well huh,” said Walt, more or less to himself. “Anyway, I knew I could count on you. Now I need you to go check on them whores.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Boone interrupted.

  “’Cause they’re whores. Somebody’s gotta check on ‘em.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

  “I’m talkin’ about you and me,” said Boone. “What makes you so sure you can count on me?”

  “You saying I ought not be so sure?”

  “No, I’m asking why are you.”

  “There ain’t no why. I just am. Now all of a sudden you got to get philosophical? You got to question what I say, is that how this is?”

  Boone shrugged. They eyed each other a moment longer, before Walt opened the door and stepped aside. Boone didn’t want to go into the house – these days he never wanted to go into that damned house – but he did anyway.

  By the time Boone entered the foyer, Walt was already in the living room, with his weathered brow furrowed even deeper with irritation. Boone saw the old man there and followed in no hurry at all, his boots creating lonely echoes on the solid hardwood floors as he walked.

  The house impressed Boone, the same way it had the first time he entered, well over a decade ago. It did more than impress him – it imposed its will down upon him. Clean lines, cold steel everywhere. Imported Italian tile and fine cherry hardwood made the floors more valuable than any other five whole homes in Sewardville combined. In every room, heavy glass cases protected the prized artifacts of Walt’s passionate Civil War collection. Letters, uniforms, flags, guns, bullets, the finest collection anywhere in the United States not named the Smithsonian Museum. Cool solid colors painted the walls, dark reds and earthy browns and greens.

  The Slone house was money, real money, not what some of the locals referred to as “holler fabulous.” Folks back in the hollers thought they were high on the hog if they got a new above–ground swimming pool or drank Crown Royal whiskey or maxed out their credit cards on Ralph Lauren shirts from Macy’s or Dillard’s in the biggest Lexington shopping malls. But what was fabulous in the hollows of Seward County was pocket lint for Walt Slone.

  “Karen and Samantha, are they still in bed?” Boone asked.

  Walt snorted, and stared at Boone without answering. He waved his hand as if to dissipate the question.

  Boone entered the living room with the serious concern that Walt would punch him in the face at any moment. But Walt didn’t punch him in the face.

  “They had to fly the sheriff to Lexington, take him to university hospital,” the old man said, almost to himself. “Worked on him all night. Looks like he’s gonna pull through, though. Sure as shit. It’ll take a hell of a lot more than one shot to put Johnny Slone down, that’s one thing he got from me.”

  “What about Caudill?”

  “Not so much,” said Walt.

  Boone walked over by the gigantic living room window and stared across the dewy grass. “Jesus.”

  “Jesus is right. That little shitass brother of yours done it up right this time.”

  That little shitass brother of yours. Boone hated the way that sounded, but knew the words carried truth. Jimmy definitely done it up right this time.

  “Ain’t really too much to talk about now,” said Walt. “The shit is totally fucked. You hear? Tee totally fucked. Your brother Jimmy made us one hell of a mess, Boone. He really done it up right this time and now we gotta figure out what to do about it.” White saliva jumped from the corners of his mouth when he spoke.

  “Fine,” Boone said.

  Walt tipped his head back, pursed his lips. “It ain’t fine. It’s damn far from fine,” he said. “Jimmy shot himself a couple of police officers. Killed one deader’n four o’clock and left the other knockin’ on the door. He ain’t been shit his whole life, but here he is, a cop killer now. Cop killers make news. News makes it hard to handle things ourselves, you hear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I hate the fuckin’ TV news. Cameras and shit, sideways up a horse’s ass, that’s what I say about the news.”

  “You think they’ll come?”

  “Hell yeah they’ll come. The news people always come for shit like this. Prob’ly they’re already here.”

  “Prob’ly they are.” Boone nodded, looking at the dew glistening off the manicured lawn. He walked slowly back and forth, from one end of the window to the other, with his arms crossed.

  He didn’t much like the TV news, either. He felt like the network stations from Lexington spent too much time pretending they broadcast from a big city. Lexington was what, two hundred thousand people? Three at the most? Barely a city at all. Take out the big state university, and there wasn’t much left to brag about; yet, they were so quick to grab their cameras and jump in their news vans and rush out into rural Kentucky at the first word of a toothless robbery victim or a high–school dropout with a bone to pick. Boone couldn’t stand it. He hated the TV news as much as anybody, maybe more.

  Walt clicked some spit around his gums. “Gonna get bad,” he said. “Bad with a capital B.”

  “It’s already bad,” Boone corrected.

  “Some things might come to light,” Walt continued. “We might have to run our business a little differently until all this blows over, you know?”

  Boone shrugged. Nodded.

  Walt ran his hand over his short white hair and took a deep breath. “You ain’t seen Bad,” he said. “Maybe you think you have, but you ain’t. You will, though. Things will have to be done, they’ll be Bad, and you’ll see what I mean. You gonna have a problem with this?”

  They looked at each other. Walt waited for an answer, but Boone said nothing.

  He didn’t know what he could say. Contrary to Walt’s thinking, Boone had seen Bad in his life, plenty of it, more than enough to know where this mess with Jimmy and Sheriff Slone stood in the great pantheon of Sewardville Bad Shit, which was: pretty goddamn bad.

  It was a mess now, but it would be an even bigger mess in the next few days. The news people from Louisville and Lexington would descend on Sewardville, the city reporters with their big voices and righteous sympathy. He only hoped they would quickly get bored with the story and get back in their news vans. Just leave Sewardville to Walt Slone and let things get back to normal. Don’t stir up too much from the bottom of the soup. Let things go. Let Sewardville be.

  “Boone?” said Walt.

  “What?” Boone realized that he’d drifted away.

  “You’re not gonna have a problem with this, are you?” Walt said. “‘Cause if you’re gonna have a problem, if you don’t think you can stick in there with us…” He trailed off, came back. “Anyway. You’re supposed to be the bad ass. Show me you still got somethin’ in your nutsack.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Walt popped his neck. For a moment, he let the conversation hang there. It contented him if conversations stuck at odd points, because when that happened it always made the
other guy uncomfortable. He liked it when the other guy felt uncomfortable.

  “Go down to the Bears Den, clean out the quarter machines,” he finally said. “Put the quarter machines and the video poker in the supply room. The reporters will be there later, count on that. The TV people. We can’t have all that shit out in the open, they’ll put it on TV for the whole goddamned world, some dumbass state senator’ll see our machines in the background and there we’ll be with our dicks in the whiskey.”

  “Okay,” said Boone.

  “Good,” said Walt. “After everything else around here, I’d hate for us to go down over a goddamn quarter machine.”

  Boone took a breath. He didn’t feel like talking anymore. It was obvious that Walt would not let him see Samantha or even Karen, which was also Bad, but hardly a surprise. Things went that way sometimes. Nothing could be done about it.

  Resigned to his lot in Walt Slone’s world, he walked back through the foyer, and out the front door, closing it quietly behind him. He descended the porch steps, ready now to get the hell out of there.

  When he reached his truck, he threw the rifle in the cab and got in behind the wheel. He thought again about his older brother Jimmy. Jimmy, the little shitass. Jimmy, who’d finally done it up right this time. Jimmy, whose two severed fingers now rested inside a little paper bag with some used rifle casings.

  Boone started the engine and as he drove off, familiar images visited his weary mind: rusty machinery, crumbling earth, pillars of smoke and fire, blood. He imagined again that somewhere, a shoddy mobile home slid a little bit deeper into the valley. A tight knot formed in his stomach; it didn’t matter.

  MAMA

  On the way to the Bears Den, Boone took a detour away from his duties as an acolyte of Walt Slone, and headed for his mother’s house. He had to tell her about Jimmy. She shouldn’t hear from a stranger.