“Jeff’s been a good friend Danny we’ve been friends with Jeff since we were all little boys.”
“I know it. How about Mr. Wabash. You like working for him?”
“Sure I like working for him. He could give you a job too Danny.”
“Yeah, I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think he likes me very much.”
“He likes you Danny everybody likes you.”
“No, they don’t, buddy. You know that’s why I went away. Why I always have to go away.”
Marky looked down at his hands in his lap. “It’s because of Holly Burke.”
“It’s because of Holly Burke.”
“That was a long time ago Danny.”
“I know it.”
“And it wasn’t your fault you didn’t have nothing to do with Holly Burke going into the river.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I know that Danny,” Marky said, “we used to play with her when we were little she was our friend.”
Danny sat looking into his brother’s eyes in the light of the farmlight, Marky looking into his. And then Marky looked at Danny’s clothes, his heavy winter shirt and his jeans and his socks, and he said, “You’re leaving again aren’t you Danny.”
“I’m leaving again. I’m all packed up. I just wanted to say good-bye.”
“What about Momma?”
“I don’t want to wake her up—she’ll just start crying and she’ll be up all night worrying. You can tell her for me in the morning. All right?”
“All right but she’s gonna cry anyway Danny she always cries.”
“I know it.”
“I wish I could go with you Danny.”
“I do too. But you got your job, and you gotta take care of Ma.”
“I know it,” said Marky.
They were silent. Marky’s eyes gleaming in the dark. Danny leaning forward, his forearms on his knees and gripping one hand in the other.
“What?” said Marky.
“What what?”
“You’re gonna say something Danny.”
Danny smiled. “Yeah, all right. I’m gonna say something. But it’s just between you and me, OK?”
“OK.”
“I don’t want you telling anybody else I told you this.”
“I won’t tell anybody Danny.”
“Especially Ma.”
“OK Danny.”
“Swear on a monkey’s uncle?”
“Swear on a monkey’s uncle.”
“All right then. I’m going to call you tomorrow, Marky. Or later today, Monday. I’m gonna call you on your cell phone later today and I’ll be far away by then.”
“Where you going Danny?”
“I don’t know but I’ll call you when I get there.”
“OK Danny.”
“But if I don’t call you… Are you listening?”
“I’m listening.”
“But if I don’t call you by tomorrow night—by tonight—it means something happened to me, Marky, and—”
“Danny don’t say that.”
“Keep your voice down, will you? Marky, I gotta say it so you know. I can’t tell Ma because she’ll just start freaking out. You’re the only person I can tell. You’re the only one. All right?”
“All right Danny.”
“And if I don’t call by tonight, if you don’t hear from me, then I need you to do something for me.”
“All right Danny.”
He reached for the envelope on the desk. It was one of his mother’s envelopes, light blue and birthday-card-shaped, but it was never a card when you saw it in your mailbox, whenever you’d stayed somewhere long enough to have a mailbox, it was a letter, two or three pages of her neat handwriting on matching stationery. On the envelope she’d write your name formally and with a kind of flourish, Mr. Daniel P. Young, and seeing it written that way on that blue envelope always made your heart stumble a little.
“What’s this?” Marky said, taking the envelope.
“It’s a letter, you knucklehead, and it ain’t for you.”
“You’re the knucklehead who’s it for?”
“You can read, can’t you?”
“It’s dark in here.”
Danny picked up the cell phone from the desk and thumbed the button and held its light toward the envelope and Marky’s face. Marky held the envelope close to his face and bunched his brow as he read it.
“Sheriff Wayne Halsey.”
“Sheriff Wayne Halsey. You know him, right?”
“Sure I know him Danny we service the sheriff department’s vehicles every spring they got three Chevy Tahoes and one Chevy TrailBlazer and—”
“All right, all right. That letter’s for the sheriff and the sheriff only—and only if I don’t call you by tonight. Are we clear?”
“We’re clear Danny.”
“You put it someplace top secret that only you know about, all right?”
“All right.”
“And I don’t mean your sock drawer.”
Marky dipped his head to give him a look. “Give me a little credit Danny.”
“Give you a little credit? Where’d you get that from—Jeff?”
“No I just said it.” He sat studying the face of the envelope as if by doing so he could know all that was inside.
“Well, get up outta that bed a minute,” Danny said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m not hugging a grown man good-bye while he’s lying in his goddam bed, that’s why.”
“Don’t cuss Danny.”
“That’s not cussing. Come on, now.”
MOST OF HIS gear was already in the truck—he’d never taken it out—and so he only had to go down the stairs once with a duffel in each hand, the old steps creaking but if she woke up she did not get out of bed, and when the duffels were packed into the cab he shut the passenger door quietly and stood looking at the farmhouse, lit up by the farmlight, and the light casting shadows on the snow. The clothesline post stood at its tilt and its shadow lay like a second post on the snow, the two of them conjoined and bent where they met in a trick of the eye—like it was all one continuous piece that was not planted at all but stood upright from its own T-shaped base, like sculpture. Like a demonstration of some principle. He saw two boys swinging there, one on each side of the T, dropping to the ground when the post began to give under the turf, Oh shit oh shit…
We used to play with her when we were little she was our friend.
But Holly Burke had not been their friend, exactly. More like a cousin, forced into closeness with them not by marriage but by business, by that hyphen in the Burke-Young Plumbing & Supply sign. Nice enough when she was little, fun enough, but you had to be careful. Moody, your mother said. Like the time you were playing tag in the yard and Marky tagged her on her chest and she shoved him hard and called him a retard and you could’ve hit her, you could’ve just about gut-punched her like she was some dumb-ass boy on the playground. By middle school there was no goofing around with Holly Burke and no saying hello in the halls even, and if you ever told anyone you’d once wrestled with her on the living room floor she’d call you a liar and a pervert, and by high school you wouldn’t even believe such a thing yourself—suddenly it was hard to believe she’d ever been a little girl at all.
You can say it, Danny. She was a good-looking young woman and you desired her. You wanted Holly Burke.
No, sir… No, sir.
He saw that night again—the dark road winding through the dark woods, the bending limbs, the boughs that dipped and swayed. What if you’d left the bar a few minutes earlier? What if you hadn’t stopped to let the dog out? You’d been drinking. Hell, you were drunk. Taking those turns. The trees tossing and you are in your truck and you are nineteen and nothing can touch you, and you come around the bend and suddenly…