“I’m from Rathlin Valley? Down on Bromont Creek? You know where that is?”
“Might just about as well be Timbuktu to us,” she said. “What’s your business here?”
“My dad, Jessup, he’s pals with Little Arthur, and I got to find him. I been here before. I know which house is where Little Arthur lives.”
The woman lit a crooked yellow cigarette, flicked the match into the snow. She kept her eyes on Ree and her breath and the smoke spun white into the air. The dogs had climbed the steps to sniff her feet and she nudged them back with her boots. She said, “You stand right there ’til I get my hat. Don’t go nosin’ ’round anywhere.”
Houses above looked caught on the scraggly hillsides like crumbs in a beard and apt to fall as suddenly. They’d been there two or three lifetimes, though, and cascades of snow, mushes of rain, and huffing spring wind had tried to knock them loose and send them tumbling but never did. There were narrow footpaths wending all about the slopes between the trees, along the rock ledges, from house to house, and in better weather Ree thought Hawkfall looked sort of enchanted, if a place could be enchanted but not too friendly. Up the road she saw tire tracks that left the hollow in the other direction. It was the long way to get to most useful places but there was no hill of snow to climb before the blacktop in that direction.
The woman came out the door and down from her porch, careful of the crusty steps, wearing a pearl-colored cowboy hat with a blue feather in the band. Her joint had smoked small and she held it to Ree, who took it and inhaled. The woman said, “I do know you, really. I seen you at some of the reunions at Rocky Drop.”
“We don’t always go.”
“You one time smacked fire out the ass of a fat Boshell boy who flicked a booger on your dress, didn’t you?”
“You saw that?”
“Knocked his plate of deviled eggs flyin’, then made the boy say uncle with his mouth in the dirt. And you got the momma who went daffy in her head, too, right? Live close by Blond Milton out there?”
“Yup. That’s all me.”
“My name’s Megan. And I knew Jessup when I seen him, too, but never did talk with him none.”
“You knew him?”
Ree had smoked the joint down to scrap and held it to Megan. Megan popped it into her mouth and swallowed, then said, “Knew him when I seen him around, I mean. He does stuff I hear about.”
“Oh. Well, he cooks crank.”
“Honey, they all do now. You don’t even need to say it out loud.”
Ree and Megan began to walk toward Little Arthur’s, boots squeaking into snow, and the dogs rallied about them, flicking tails against their shins, then bounding ahead to break the drifts. As they passed other houses folks opened their doors to look. Megan would wave to them and they’d wave back and the doors would close. The stone faces of the houses had caught snow in their burls and creases and looked like small ideal cliffs in the wild.
Little Arthur’s place was up the slope, nearly to the top of the ridge. His house was built more of wood than stone but there was plenty of stone. On the steepest side of the house there had been a porch outside the kitchen door but the stairs and pilings had broken away to leave the floor unsupported above a hellish plummet, a beguiling bad idea lying in wait for somebody high to give it a try. Two bullet-riddled barrels and other metal debris rusted near the house and a battered beige car seat had been set against the wall as a summer bench. A silhouette moved in the front window as the women approached.
Megan said, “If he’s been runnin’ on crank for a day or two, you should just leave, honey. Don’t try’n make sense to him when he’s like that, ’cause he just can’t do it behind that much shit.”
“I know Little Arthur. He knows me. I got to find Dad.”
The door opened and Little Arthur smiled at Ree and said, “I knew it—I been in your dreams, ain’t I?”
“She’s lookin’ for Jessup—you seen him?”
“You mean she ain’t lookin’ for me? Ain’t you really lookin’ for me, Ruthie?”
“It’s Ree, you asshole. And I’m only out to find Dad.”
“Asshole? Hmmm. Now, I like a girl that calls me bad names, like her a lot, like her a whole precious bunch, right up ’til I don’t like her none at all no more. That’s always a weepy fuckin’ time when that time happens.” Little Arthur was a little-man mix of swagger and tongue, with a trailing history of deeds that vouched for his posture. He had a mess of dark hair and dark bristly eyes, with sparse curly whiskers and bitter teeth. Even without crank in his blood he always seemed cocked, poised to split in a flash from wherever he stood. He wore a couple of checked shirts, one tucked, one open, and a black pistol grip showed above his belt buckle. “Come in, ladies—or’re you leavin’, Meg?”
“Think maybe I’ll stay a bit. Kind of cold.”
“Suit yourself. Sit anywhere.”
The house smelled of old beer, old grease, old smoke. No fresh light made it through the windows at this time of day and it was as shadowed as a sinkhole. The main room was long but narrow and a big square table had to be edged past to go from one side to the other. Pie pans had been used as ashtrays and sat full of butts on the table, the floor, both windowsills. A glistening pump shotgun lay broken open across the table.
Megan sat on an edge of the table and Little Arthur did the same. Ree skinnied past them to stand near a window and said, “This don’t gotta take long, man. I need to find Dad and thought maybe you’d been seein’ him, maybe you two had got up to stuff together again.”
“Nope. Not since in the spring, babe. At y’all’s place.”
When he said “spring” Ree turned away, looked out the window onto the gray view. Dad had let Little Arthur, Haslam Tankersly, and two Miltons, Spider and Whoop, lay low at the house for a springtime weekend. Dope of many kinds and an air of excitement came with them. Little Arthur helped Ree make sandwiches for lunch once, and seemed sort of cute going about it, then gave her a handful of mushrooms to eat, saying they’d make fried baloney taste the way gold looks, and she ate them.
“You ain’t seen him nowhere since then?”
“Huh-uh.”
“He kept leavin’ the house goin’ someplace, though—you don’t know where?”
“Got cat shit in your ears, girl?”
When the mushrooms took hold she sensed some of the gods calling to her from inside her own chest and followed their urging outside into the yard and up the sunny slope into the trees. She felt all gooey, gooey with the slobbered love of various gods gathered within, and smiling full-time went about the woods looking to collect butterflies and pet them until they gave milk, or maybe roll in dirt until she felt China through her skin.
“I’ve got to find him—he signed over all we got to go his bond. If he runs, we’ll be livin’ in the fields like fuckin’ dogs, man.”
“If I see the dude, I’ll tell him that. But I ain’t seen him for quite a spell now.”
He’d come along behind her on the slope, and they’d bounced smiles off each other in the forest shade for a bit, then he’d hugged her to the ground and she’d felt a tremendous melting of herself, a leaking from one shape into some other form, and she’d been turned about by his hugs to kneel, and her skirt flipped up and Little Arthur knelt to join in her puddling embrace of gods and wonder.
“I got them two boys and Mom to tend, man. I need that house to help.”
Little Arthur tapped a cigarette loose from a pack and struck a match.