Sitting in the opposite corner with Sydney’s cousin Jenna on his lap was Scott. He raised his cup to Evan to salute his arrival. “Welcome, friend. Will you join us?”
Somehow Evan had known that the cigarettes and free-flowing booze would lead back to Scott. Scott hadn’t been in the community long, but rumour had it that he was the man to go to if you’d run out of smokes or alcohol. He had somehow concealed a decent supply of vices in those hard cases he towed from the South. Desperate to keep his cool, Evan scanned the room. Sydney sat on the love seat to his left, leaning over the coffee table to knock the ash of her smoke into one of the empty red cups. Her younger sister Tara leaned back on the dark couch on the opposite side of the room closest to the light.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded through gritted teeth.
“Well, nice to see you too, friend,” Scott replied sarcastically.
“I don’t have time for your bullshit, Scott. What are you doing in my brother’s house?”
“Your brother welcomed me in. I saw Nick by the band office the other day. He said they were having drinks here tonight. I figured I deserved to cut loose.”
“Get your hands off the girl. She’s too young for you.”
“Evan, just chill out,” Sydney muttered, rolling her glassy eyes.
Sensing the tension, Jenna stood up. “I gotta go pee,” she said and made her way across the room. She flicked up her long black hair as she passed Evan. It smelled faintly sweet.
“Happy now?” Scott asked, his free hand clenched in a fist on his thigh. “I’m just here to make friends, Ev.”
“I don’t give a shit. You’re too old for this crowd.”
“Seriously, chill out, Evan,” Sydney commanded.
“I’m not gonna chill out. This visitor has to respect our ways.”
Scott’s head snapped back in a fit of laughter, his big teeth catching the lamplight. “Your ways? You talk a big game about your so-called ways, Ev, but your brother tells me you enjoy the old firewater too.”
Evan lurched towards Scott, his anger making him clumsy enough to knock cups off the coffee table. The bald man shot up to square up against him. They faced each other inches apart, staring each other down.
Scott leered into Evan’s eyes and gritted his teeth, whispering, “Try it, tough guy” so that only Evan could hear. Even in the dim light Evan could see fading scars on the big man’s forehead and cheek. He knew he was no match. These useless fucks are all too drunk to back me up, he thought as he took a step back.
Cam appeared in the doorway of the living room. “What’s going on in here?”
“Ask your brother,” said Scott.
Evan turned to look at his younger brother with a despairing affection. His face softened as he remembered just how naive and vulnerable Cam was. He remembered the sweet boy that he once was. He never really grew up. Soon his life would depend on it.
“Nothing, I was just heading out,” said Evan. “Take care of each other.”
He stepped around his brother and walked out of the house. He could hear Scott’s booming laughter from inside as he opened the door to his truck.
Twenty-One
He could barely hear the pounding on the front door from his burrow in the safe, warm confines of the bedroom but the boom reverberated through the house. A muffled voice yelled from outside and Evan jumped out of bed.
He rounded the corner and saw Isaiah standing at the door. Evan unlocked the bolt and let him in. “Izzy, what the fuck, man?”
Isaiah was trembling, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the pre-dawn darkness. “Get dressed. We gotta go,” he said. “We got a real bad scene on our hands. I’ll explain on the way.”
Evan rushed back to the bedroom and looked for jeans and a sweater to put on over the long underwear he slept in.
“What’s going on?” Nicole asked.
“Some kind of emergency,” he said. “Izzy’s here to take me somewhere.”
“Damn. I hope everyone’s okay,”
“Me too.” He remembered the drunken scene at his brother’s the night before and he was struck with foreboding. He rushed into his clothes and leaned over to kiss Nicole. “I’ll be back as soon as I can to let you know what’s up.”
“Okay, be safe. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
He ran out to Isaiah’s truck, threw open the door, and hopped in. They were peeling out of the driveway before he had a chance to shut the door.
“What’s going on?” he huffed as Isaiah tore down the road.
“Fucked up news, man. Jenna and Tara Jones froze to death last night.”
“What?”
“Yeah, Amanda found them in the ditch just down the road from her mom’s place.”
“Holy fuck.”
“Yeah, I know. Terry and Amanda are both there. She went and got him. He got Walter, who came by my place to tell me to get you. Walter’s figuring out what we’re gonna do with the bodies.”
Evan felt like he was sinking into the hard foam of the truck’s seat. It took all his will not to heave up whatever was left in his stomach. “I saw them last night.”
“What?”
“They were drinking at my brother’s place. I stopped in there to check on him.”
“Jesus Christ, man.”
“Scott was there too.”
It was the fastest drive through the rez Evan could remember. Soon they were pulling up to a small cluster of trucks and people on the side of the road. The sun was clearing the horizon, blazing orange light into the grim ditch.
Terry, Amanda, and Walter watched their approach with stricken expressions. Evan wasn’t quite ready to look at the bodies yet, so he put an arm around Amanda, who turned to give him a tight hug, her eyes bloodshot.
Evan steeled himself and stepped to the edge of the road. The two young women lay side by side in the ditch. Their brown faces were frozen blue and white. Tara’s hood concealed most of her head, but Jenna’s was down and her head was nestled into the snow with her long black hair splayed across her cousin’s face. Evan remembered the fruity smell of her hairspray as she walked past him the night before. He looked at Tara and thought of Sydney. His heart broke for her.
“I don’t know what they were doing.” Amanda began to sob, grieving her young neices. “They must have been walking home and just didn’t make it all the way.”
Terry turned to Evan. “It looks like they stuck to the road, wherever they were coming from.”
Evan cleared his throat. “I know where they came from. They were drinking at my brother’s place. I saw them there last night.”
“What?” Amanda yelped.
“Yeah, I was worried about Cam’s boy, so I stopped in to make sure they had food and wood. Except Jordan wasn’t there. He was at Sydney’s mom’s. I guess they decided to have a party.”
“Fuck sakes!” Terry stomped his foot and looked away.
Walter held up a hand. “Let’s not jump to any conclusions yet. They musta got drunk and couldn’t walk all the way home. We can’t argue now. We gotta figure out where to take them before everyone gets up and sees us here.”
The sun cut shadows across the snow. Soon it would shine into the windows of the homes that lined the road, rousing the inhabitants for another day. Amanda began to cry again.
“Amanda, get in my truck,” commanded Walter. “Terry, sit in there with her.” When they were in the cab and out of earshot, he turned to Evan and Isaiah. “Right now, our only option is to take them to the health station. We have no way of getting anyone up here to do a fuckin’ post mortem, and the ground’s too frozen for a proper burial. So we’ll have to keep them locked in the shed there while we sort all this shit out.”