Sewerville Read online

  His pickup truck bounced up the gravel drive. The house where he’d grown up loomed at the end of this short, weed–infested drive, and now he off–roaded his way back there. Oak limbs hung over the road from both sides, dotted with orange leaves that hung on to the branches for dear life. A graying wooden fence lined both sides of the driveway, with blackberry bushes poking through the rails in several spots.

  Several yards out in the field beyond the fence stood a tattered red mare. The animal watched Boone come in and chewed dead weeds as the black truck bounced past, not all that interested in much else.

  Boone glimpsed the horse through the trees and wondered where it came from. As far as he knew, Mama hadn’t done anything on the farm since Boone’s daddy drew the ace–deuce two decades earlier. Maybe the mare wandered over from a neighbor’s pasture. Maybe not.

  Boone pulled into the ragged yard, just a few feet from the front door. He shut off the engine and gazed out the windshield at the fading old house wall. The place was buckling under its own weight, much like Boone’s memories of the childhood spent there. He felt sympathy for this house. And empathy.

  An awful dread sunk in his heart like a poisoned arrow. He did not want to go in, did not want to tell Mama that her eldest son was dead.

  Maybe Mama wouldn’t answer the door. The last time Boone had seen his mother, she’d sworn that her house would never be open to either of her sons again. She had kept that promise, too, and at the moment Boone hoped she would still keep it.

  Through the front window, he saw her. The sun–bleached yellow curtains were tied back and there she was, sitting in the kitchen where the family had once spent so many breakfasts, lunches, and dinners together. She had her silver hair pulled into a graceful bun atop her head, and a lacy yellow apron tied around her thin body. She sat alone at the kitchen table, which looked much too big for only one person.

  Her Bible lay open in front of her, the same Bible with the black leather cover that Boone remembered her reading when he was younger. He recalled that this Bible had been a gift from her own mother, who died a decade before Boone was even born. As she read, Mama’s lips moved along with the words, though no sound escaped from them; that was her way. She liked to read with the gentle whispers of her own breath for company. He guessed she’d read the whole book a hundred times and knew it by heart.

  Boone realized his mother could see him through the kitchen window, just like he could see her. It occurred to him that she must have heard his truck. How stupid, to think she wouldn’t hear the truck. Mama always heard everything.

  Now she stared at Boone through the square kitchen window. It was so hard to not look her in the eye. Instead he focused on other things: the light glinting off her silver hair, the pink skin on the back of her hand, the lines of worry around her mouth that her sons helped put there. Her wrinkled face was utterly without expression, her mouth drawn tight, her eyes open and looking at Boone, but also not open and not looking at him.

  Suddenly Boone wanted to leave.

  Jimmy was dead and that was that and why should he be the one to tell her? She could see it on TV or read it in the paper just like everyone else. Maybe that was cold but hell, the world was cold.

  Boone picked up his cell phone and dialed her number, the number she often threatened to change but never did. He watched her answer the call after four rings. She turned her back to him as she spoke.

  “Hello?”

  “Mama, it’s me.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Boone. I’m out in the driveway.”

  “I know.” Of course she knew. “I saw you out there.” She paused, let him think about that, and then said, “You stay out there, too, you hear?”

  “Mama –”

  She spoke louder now. “Stay out there now, you here? I told you not to come around this house. You come here this morning and brought your wicked ways with you, now you and your brother run off into more wickedness. Wickedness, you hear? You got the devil in you, boy. What is it that makes you think I want your wickedness come near me?”

  His heart flipped in his chest as he thought of the awful news he had – had – to share. He decided to keep the news from her just a little longer.

  Boone took a deep breath. A long moment passed, until he said, “It’s Jimmy, Mama. Something’s happened. I need to tell you –”

  “More trouble. Lord knows you all need more trouble in your lives.”

  “It’s something like trouble, yeah.”

  “I ain’t surprised,” she said. “Sometimes I think you don’t know nothin’ but for trouble. Trouble and wickedness, that’s all you got. You know what I think? You ain’t got the devil in you, son, you’re the devil in himself. That’s all there is to it,” she said. Her words came out plain, short, calm even, just like she was reading from a cake recipe.

  Then, she hung up. Boone saw her throw the phone across the kitchen, and walk into the other room without turning to face him again.

  Boone sat in the truck for a few more minutes and waited for her to come back, but she never did. Now he wanted to run away. He couldn’t tell her, not now, not after that exchange. How could he tell her? He couldn’t tell her.

  He had to tell her.

  Mama, I’m so sorry, he thought. He opened the truck door and got out, then walked towards the house, watching through the window with every step.

  He ambled up the front porch and knocked on the door. “Mama?” he said, hoping she would not answer.

  She did not answer.

  Boone knocked again.

  “Mama? You in there?” Of course she was in there. He knew she knew that he knew she was in there. Still, Mama didn’t answer the door. He allowed that really, it was good that she didn’t answer, because if she answered the door, how would he say what he had to say? But she wouldn’t answer the door. Or, she might.

  If Mama did answer the door, what would he say? Something. Somehow.

  Jimmy was dead and Mama would hear the bad news from someone, eventually, yes, but Boone knew what was right: he should tell her. He needed to be the one, as though it might somehow sweep away the ash from his heart. The need to tell Mama that her oldest son was dead – that heavy need kept Boone on the porch. He was a bastard but he wasn’t a piece of shit.

  Boone knocked on the door one more time.

  “Mama? Mama, you in there?” he said one more time.

  The door stayed closed. Mama being Mama, Boone being Boone, the door stayed close. But Boone had prepared for this moment. He knew she wouldn’t answer the door, so this morning, when he got back from Coppers Creek, he’d written his mother a note. The least he could do.

  Now Boone took the note out of his inside jacket pocket, just four ragged black words scrawled on a brown paper scrap of grocery bag, the same grocery bag that he’d filled with rifle casings and his brother’s severed fingers. The only thing in the truck that he could find to write on.

  The note said, “Jimmy’s dead. I’m sorry.”

  That was all.

  He folded the wrinkled paper twice. His head hurt now. He took a deep breath and thought one more time about running away. He thought about Jimmy. He thought about fishing worms, sunshine, rain. He pressed the note between his palms, and brought it to his lips, then finally kissed the piece of paper and slid it under the door. He hoped Mama might read it soon. He didn’t really expect that she would, though.

  DEVIL

  Inside the house, Mama saw the note on her kitchen floor. She picked up the note, and she read the note.

  “Jimmy’s dead.,” it announced, plain. “I’m Sorry.”

  After Mama read the note – the note that her son had written in blurry black ink on a torn piece of grocery sack – she stared at the kitchen door and battled back tears. She tried to be strong, tried to be quiet so that Boone wouldn’t hear. She didn’t want him to hear. He was a bastard. He wasn’t her son anymore. He was a bastard, a bastard that had fallen in with the awful likes of Walt Slone and
John Slone and gotten into wickedness, drugs and gambling and killing and hatefulness and sin, and now all that wickedness had finally got somebody killed, finally got her Jimmy killed. She always said this would happen, back in the days when she still talked to her two sons, when she still saw them every Sunday for dinner. And now, it had happened.

  Evil awful hatefulness. Wickedness. Sin. Bastard. The devil in himself.

  That wicked Walt Slone. This was all his doing. Walt Slone took her boys away from her. Walt Slone brought the silence between her and her sons. Her good little boys. Her home had been filled with joy and love and the bright chatter of hope and harmony. But then her boys fell in with Walt, and Walt brought the silence into her home and wedged it between Mama and her sons.

  She thought of it all, and it all came down on her heart, heavy, heavy, heavy in a way she never imagined. And she stopped trying to be quiet. She didn’t care what Boone heard.

  She put her hands to her face and the tears stormed free, down her face, onto her hands, onto the kitchen floor.

  Those tears flowed for Jimmy, her oldest son, her dead son. They flowed for Boone, her baby, the only baby she had left. And they flowed for her, too. The tears poured forth and Mama’s head hurt, and her eyes hurt, and her heart hurt; and she screamed the name of one son, and then the other; and she screamed for Heaven and she screamed for Hell, and she fell to the floor and she kept screaming; and she kept crying; and she hated Walt Slone; and she hated this place; and she hated Boone. She hated Sewardville. She hated all of it.

  But by the time Mama screamed Boone’s name, he was already gone; and he was on his way back to Walt’s place; and he didn’t hear anything. Still, he knew what his mother thought about him.

  WALT

  After Boone left, Walt sat down in the living room, comfortably in the center of his expensive leather sectional. He put one hand on each knee and silently watched through the tall front windows of the house as the gray dawn mists slowly burned away. He was alone now; he liked to be alone in the mornings. The house was quiet, the world was quiet, and he could think.

  So Jimmy was dead.

  It almost didn’t seem real. When Walt had called Boone the night before, to tell him the sheriff was shot and Boone had to find his brother, he had expected a long conversation, lots of grief, lots of bullshit. Boone did what was asked most times, but asking a man to go after his own brother, that was different. Then again, if there was one thing Walt had figured out over the course of his years, it was that people would do just about anything if you asked them the right way.

  Or told them.

  When it came to favors owed, Walt had Boone by the short curlies. He could call in any favor, anytime. And with Boone, if the favors ever ran out – and that wasn’t happening anytime soon – he could get to him through Karen. If he couldn’t get to him through Karen, he could go through Samantha. But there was plenty enough he could hold over Boone’s head that he didn’t have to resort to playing family games very often. When a man shovels your dirt for nearly two decades, he doesn’t end up too clean himself.

  Of course, Boone Sumner wasn’t alone in his position. Walt had spent his life building up favors that he could leverage for the maximum benefit of the Slone empire. It took more than hard work to rise up from the four–room clapboard house where Walt’s tobacco farming parents raised him.

  Even back to his early days running illegal fireworks into the foothills of Kentucky and West Virginia, he’d always been able to make shrewd connections that paid off later. He’d pay a teenager to deliver a few hundred Roman candles, and if the kid wanted a couple bottles of Kessler whiskey for the weekend, Walt threw those in for free. If somebody’s parents needed a good word to put them over the top for that bank loan that would net them a new Chevrolet, Walt called the loan officer and just like that he was a hero to the parents and the kid. A few extra dollars here, some cheap guns there, some free girls over there, and it didn’t take long before he had a lot of friends around town. Nor did it take long for Walt to realize that friends vote, and a lot of friends meant a lot of votes, and a lot of votes meant he could get himself a pretty big chair in the courthouse. And big chairs made it easier to do big things.

  But even with his big chair and all his friends and favors, Walt Slone couldn’t control everything that happened in Sewardville. Jimmy shot the sheriff, and as far as the rest of the world knew right now, the shooter still ran free. That was news, big news.

  Reporters and probably even Kentucky State Police would be descending on the county soon if they hadn’t gotten there already. The KSP he could handle; he had people he could call that could keep any heat off. The reporters were a different story, though. There were no friends or favors there, only a deep rooted preference on Walt’s part that every news van and mobile satellite stay the hell in the big cities where they belonged. Reporters brought overblown interviews, sensational ratings ploys, film–at–eleven network wannabe bullshit.

  Walt didn’t need any bullshit right now. What he needed was for everything to blow over. He needed the sheriff to get back on his feet, Harley to take care of Jimmy’s funeral and if need be his body, too, and Boone to keep his shit together long enough that he didn’t fuck things up any worse. He needed the smoke to keep smoking, the pills to keep popping, and the whores to keep whoring. He needed the green to keep rolling in. He needed the numbers to be up again.

  He thought about the first man he’d ever shot. Moments like these, he often thought of that man. Anthony Epperson, a chicken fighter out of West Liberty. They’d gotten into an argument at the chicken pit because Walt thought Anthony was spiking some of the bird food, making some of the roosters sick so his own animal wouldn’t have any trouble shredding them in the fights. There had to be some reason that Walt had lost six straight cockfights to the guy, and that seemed as likely a reason as any.

  So, after the matches one Saturday, Walt cornered Anthony Epperson of West Liberty behind the barn. It quickly escalated into shouting. Walt had a gripe. The other guy didn’t want to hear it. Before long, weapons were drawn and Walt fired the first and only shot. He hadn’t killed his man – the bullet grazed Epperson’s right temple and ripped off into the barn wood – but the message went through just the same. Walt Slone was not to be fucked with.

  Over the years, Walt would say that he’d missed intentionally, and just wanted to scare the shit out of the guy. It didn’t really matter. The story was the story. Besides that, a couple years later, Walt and Anthony had another run–in, this time over a few cases of Walt’s whiskey that had turned up missing, and that time the gunshot didn’t go awry.

  Walt noted the symmetry. That was the first body Harley Faulkner had ever disappeared for him, and here it was decades later and Harley was still disappearing them. He’d get another body today, if Boone did what he was told.

  The old man closed his eyes. He rubbed his head gently and cast those thoughts away. Then he stood up and headed into the kitchen.

  KAREN

  Karen Sumner, Boone’s wife and Walt’s daughter though not necessarily in that order, woke up shivering. She was in one of the spare bedrooms, just down the hallway from where her father normally slept. The second–story window hung open, where she’d left it when she drifted into sleep. Her five–year–old daughter Samantha lay beside her, also shivering. Chilled fog puffed from both their mouths.

  Karen sat up in bed, pushed the blankets closer to the little girl’s chin, and then swung her own bare feet around to the floor. The lacquered pine hardwood felt cold, almost wet on the soles of her feet, a sensation Karen found more than unpleasant. She recoiled, jumped back into the sheets.

  The movement woke up Samantha. “Is Daddy home?” she asked, wiping the night from her eyes.

  “No, Daddy’s not home yet,” her mother answered. “Daddy’s still at work.”

  “It’s cold in here,” said Samantha.

  “I know. I’m sorry, honey,” said Karen.

  “Where
’s Daddy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I heard his truck –”

  “He’s not here.”

  “But I heard him, Mommy,” Samantha muttered. “I heard him outside.” She slipped back into slumber.

  Karen loved watching her daughter sleep. Thick blond curls framed the child’s soft face, a gift from God and the Slone family gene pool. These gorgeous ringlets normally brought compliments from friends and strangers alike, and Karen proudly noted that she’d had the same ethereal curls when she was that age.

  Samantha yawned, not asleep after all. “Where’s Daddy?” she asked again. Her eyes stayed shut.

  “Daddy’s not home right now.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s at work,” said Karen. She reached for the girl’s shoulder, but Sam pulled away.

  “Is this going to be one of those mornings?” asked Karen.

  “Mmmm–hmmm,” nodded Samantha.

  Every time Samantha woke up and her daddy wasn’t there, it became one of those mornings. For Karen’s money those mornings happened far too often these days.

  How she wished Boone could be there to see their daughter this way, to actually feel for once the brunt of the child’s disappointment. How she wished she could grab him by the throat and say Look, look at this, this is what you’ve done.

  But in her most honest moments, Karen admitted that only part of her wished she could say that. The smallest part of her. The part that still ran to the window every late night when headlights appeared coming up the driveway, casting starburst in the sparkling glass. That part of her still cared.

  There were other parts of her, though.

  The mother and daughter conversation faded away like mist in the morning sun. The child turned over and pulled the covers tight around her, and a few minutes later, she was asleep again, this time for real. Karen got out of bed and went to the window, pulled it down and locked it, then walked across the room and set the thermostat to seventy degrees. The heat kicked on.