We put Brody, cuffed, in the truck. He doesn’t resist, but I can tell by the tension in his muscles that he’d like to. “This is a crock of shit.” His grumbling lasts only until Kyle and me start unloading the girl from the truck bed. “What are you doing?” he asks then, his voice muffled. “Where are you taking her?”
“She needs burying,” I call back, and ignore whatever else he says. He probably thinks being her lover gives him some right to dictate what happens to her in death, and ordinarily I’d agree. Fact is, though, this isn’t an ordinary situation. Fact is, she’s dead because he was going too fast, hightailing it along dark twisty roads probably looking for somewhere to rob. Doesn’t matter how he felt about her in life. For her, life’s over, and he drove the hearse. So fuck him and his sense of entitlement. We’re planting her.
Kyle stands and draws the back of his hand across his eyes, carving clear furrows in the dust and soot. He glances at me for a moment, then shakes his head. I can’t figure out if the gesture is more disdain for me or regret for the tragedy that’s befallen our friends. Guess it doesn’t matter now. I get back to work clearing the debris from my own head. After all, we’re standing over a dead girl, about to put her in a hole far from home where no one will ever know she’s planted and won’t be able to visit her if they care to. But I’m guessing she was just as lost as the company she kept in her final hours, and probably won’t raise a fuss about where I lay her bones, and no one else will either. No milk carton appearances for this one, just an unceremonious burial out back of a burning tavern.
I turn away from the flames and it’s like walking from night to day. Raging light and heat behind me, cold rain and darkness ahead. A few feet away, Kyle’s watching.
“You got a shovel?” he asks.
“No. Why don’t you take that piece of yours and shoot some earth loose for me?”
“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“You need me to explain it to you?”
His face contorts with rage. “Hey, I saved your fucking ass in there.”
“That so.”
“Yeah it goddamn well is so.” He moves to stand close, in my face, his eyes black fire. “I saved everyone in there. I stopped that guy from killing Wintry, and God knows who else. I stopped the Reverend from sending us all out on our little death drives. Permanently. So what the hell’s your problem?”
“You saved us?”
“Damn right I did. No one else had the guts to do it.”
“That what you think?”
A step closer. “We’re standing here aren’t we?”
“We are, yeah.”
He doesn’t answer, just stares until I can’t meet it anymore.I hunker down to the girl. She smells of sweat, or maybe that’s me, but there’s no question where the faint trace of perfume is coming from. The feeling I had earlier about the girl weighing less is gone now and my arms and legs quiver as I carry her up the slope. I figure it’s because I’m exhausted. All the fight has left me, along with everything else.
“What are we going to do with him?” Kyle asks, looking back toward the truck.
“I don’t know yet.”
“I could take him back.”
“If it’s all the same, I’d feel a lot better taking him in.”
“You don’t trust me?”
I look up at him and shrug. “You just killed a man, Kyle. I bet you’re even wondering if you’ve got the nerve to kill me, so no, I don’t trust you. In fact, I’d rather set that guy free than let you take him in.”
“You’re a real asshole, you know that?”
“Yeah well…doesn’t change the color of that bullseye on my back, now does it?”
“Fuck you.” He stands there for another moment, a black ghost with the flames of hell behind him, then he turns and walks away. I watch him go, waiting for him to lunge toward my truck and the unsuspecting guy handcuffed in back of it, because as little as I’ve known about this son of mine, I know even less about the one with the cold look in his eyes and the big goddamn gun in his hand, so I’m watching, waiting to see what he’ll do next.
But he doesn’t go to my truck. He goes to his Chevy, and doesn’t look back. The car’s lights make gray funnels in the smoke as he reverses out of the lot and back down the hill.
I’m left to ponder the irony of protecting a murderer from my son when I was all too willing to leave the guy in Cobb’s care. Could be I trusted Cobb when I had no right to. Could be not letting Kyle take the guy in was my way of protecting, not Brody, but my son, keeping him out of further trouble. Yeah, sure.
With a sigh, I circle the fire as close as it will let me get without burning the hair out of my ears. There’s a plot of land back here where no one should rightly be put to rest. It’s stony ground and hard, and its closeness to a tavern should disqualify it if the fact that its unconsecrated doesn’t. And when the toilets quit working, as they often did in Eddie’s, people pissed out here. That’s the smell I’m getting now, despite the rain and the smoke, because the smell of piss is stubborn like that. It’ll hang around, get stronger, no matter what you try and do to get rid of it.
Here’s where the whore’s going to get planted, in rocky unblessed earth that smells like the men’s room.
The fire’s close. If I stood up right now, turned and took a dozen strides I’d be right on the edge of it feeling what little hair I have left shrivel up. It dries my back as I lay the girl down and set about finding a rock with enough of a point to work as a tool. I’d use my hands but it would take me until this time tomorrow to get it deep enough that the coyotes and other scavengers would let her be. Takes me a minute, but I find what I’m looking for. It’s a spade-shaped rock half-buried in the wormy earth, and though it takes some persuading, I eventually get it free and start hacking at the earth.
Nothing here to say it’s a graveyard. No markers, no lumps in the ground where the dead have pulled the covers up over themselves, and no flowers. There’s a reason for that. Anyone planted here isn’t meant to be mourned, and so far they haven’t been disappointed. Looks like a damn vegetable patch that’s been let go to seed, but under all that stone and dirt and weeds, there are a number of folks I used to know and don’t miss. Among them is ’ol Eddie, a rat-bastard of the highest order and, I’m guessing, another reason this patch of ground reeks of piss.
You’re a real asshole, you know that?
Kyle’s got a girl. She’s not much, but she’s company. Used to be she ran a pretty good store out of one of the old buildings on Winter Street, selling clothes and trinkets and such. But in Milestone, the days of prosperous business for all but bartenders, undertakers and whores has ended, and Iris Gale knows that well, which is why she’s now self-employed in the latter trade. I figure she doesn’t charge Kyle for her services, on account of how he’s got no money, or at least none that I know about outside of the odd jobs he does for those willing to open their doors to him. Maybe that’s why he was so concerned about Carla. Maybe Iris has changed his opinion on whores and the like.
Doesn’t matter.
He’s gone, and now it’s just the dead girl and me with her boyfriend sulking in the passenger seat of my truck.
Or maybe not, because all of a sudden the back of my neck’s cold and that’s not right at all, not with the fire still fighting its blazing fight against the wind and rain. Someone’s watching me. I’m sure of it, and I cast a quick glance at the whore before standing, both knees crackling loud enough to make me wince. “I’ll get you there in a minute,” I let her know by way of an apology. “Just hang on.” That damn spied-on feeling grows stronger, until it makes my skin crawl. I have to wonder if it’s the rain after all. Maybe it’s just gotten colder. Maybe the fire’s finally admitting defeat. Maybe Brody’s throwing daggers at me from my truck. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It’s all bullshit. My way of trying to pretend I’ve gone through all I’m going to for one night.