Chapter 10 – GLENNA #3
“You can’t be classy and down to earth,” Cash objects.
“Well, you can’t.” Deja turns and says to me conspiratorially, “Cash is very one-dimensional. Like those standing cutouts of racecar drivers at the Sandwich Shack.”
“You’re hurting my feelings, Deja. I’m a deep guy.”
“You’re a derp guy.” Deja snorts. Brice sips his tea, enjoying himself.
“Deja,” Mrs. Carroll says, even though she’s laughing. “Don’t make fun of Cash in front of his girlfriend.”
Deja rolls her eyes and wiggles in her chair.
“Yeah, Deja,” Cash tacks on well past when he should have dropped it.
“Don’t you start,” Mrs. Carroll says to him. “Unless you want me to start telling stories. Or better yet, get out the photo album.”
“Get the photo album!” Deja stands.
“No.” Finally, Brice has something to say. “No pictures. Deja sit back down.”
“They used to skinny dip in the river in their superhero undies,” Deja stage whispers to me.
“Who didn’t, right, Glenna?” Cash waggles his eyebrows and winks at me.
My face blazes, and I actually press my hands to my cheeks. Everyone busts out laughing. Granger howls along, and then Red Tail joins in, and Fancy starts yipping.
There’s a moment when no one’s talking, but everyone’s smiling, and it’s like a whole other world. Not lonely like my dad and I with our TV dinners. Not strained like at Toby’s parents’—he and his father argued like it was a sport. And not fraught and awkward like the Walls’.
It’s nice.
I’m full.
I scoop the rest of my last piece of fish up with my fork and slide it onto Cash’s plate. His eyes widen in surprise, and a huge smile breaks across his face. I resist the compulsion to shrug like it’s nothing. Instead, I smile back.
“Thank you,” he says low, for my ears only.
“You’re welcome,” I say back.
The others busy themselves, giving us the moment. Mrs. Carroll excuses herself after taking a count for coffee, and Deja says she needs to get back to studying but to call her for dessert.
Mr. Carroll takes out a thin cigar, but he doesn’t light it. He taps it against the table.
“So how is your father holding up with this Del Willis business?” he asks me.
Instantly, the mood sobers. Cash tenses.
“He’s good,” I say. “He’s getting a lot of phone calls.”
“I bet. He better watch that van of his. Maybe park it somewhere else for a while. Tell him he can bring it up here if he wants. There’s room in the garage.”
“Thanks.” I’d meant the phone calls from the TV stations and reporters, but yeah, there were a lot of hang ups and cuss outs today, too. And everyone in town knows Dad’s van. “I’ll let him know.”
“It’d be no trouble. We owe him, right?”
I don’t know what he’s referring to, but I’m not surprised. Dad’s friendly with everyone, except the blowhards he beefs with for fun, and he’s done everyone a solid at some point, even them. He’s that kind of guy.
Mr. Carroll must see I don’t know what he’s talking about. “You don’t know the story?”
“No, sir.”
“It involves your Del Willis.” Mr. Carroll nods to Cash, as if Del Willis is his. Cash’s face has tightened. His brow knits. He must not have heard this story, either.
“It was only, what, two years ago?” Mr. Carroll asks his wife.
She hums agreement. “Couldn’t have been a month after Deja got her license.”
Mr. Carroll goes on. “She was driving home after a game. She was in the marching band then. It was late, past midnight, and we had one of those November rains. Came out of nowhere and poured buckets.”
I can picture it. It’s been unseasonably warm this fall—and last—but that’s the kind of November I’m used to, wet and dark.
“She was going ‘round the bend on Bank Street where it comes to Route 7. Hydroplaned off the road and got stuck in mud. She didn’t know what to do.”
“She thought her daddy would be mad that she wrecked the car.” Mrs. Carroll measures coffee into the percolator basket.
“I don’t know why.” Mr. Carroll frowns. “I’m not a bear. I only stuff ‘em for a living.” And then he laughs full-bellied at his own joke.
Mrs. Carroll rolls her eyes and flips on a stove burner. I haven’t had coffee from a percolator since my grandma passed, either. I can smell it already.
Brice doesn’t even seem to be listening. He’s leaning back in his chair, eyelids a tad droopy from the food coma, whittling. Paper thin wood curls fall on the table in a pile. I can’t quite make out what he’s carving. It’s an animal of some kind. Maybe a porcupine.
“Anyway, she didn’t call me or Brice or Cash.” Mr. Carroll sounds hurt.
“She was figuring out what to do.” Mrs. Carroll sticks up for Deja. “She didn’t want to wake anyone up.”
“She was panicking. I don’t blame her,” Mr. Carroll adds when he sees Mrs. Carroll’s expression. “Well, Deja says it was only a few minutes before Del Willis pulled up, lights flashing.”
My stomach knots.
Everyone has a Del Willis story. Lord knows I’ve heard them all repeated since the article came out. But this one didn’t start the same as the others.
“He got out. Saw how she’d gotten her front wheels stuck. And he said to her she better stop laying on the gas, or she’d flood the engine. And she’d best call someone to help her. Then he left.”
Mr. Carroll taps his cigar. Once. Twice. A third time. “He left a kid alone on the side of the road, after midnight, in the pouring rain. Didn’t wait until help came. Didn’t make sure she had a phone. He just went on his merry way.”
Cash’s face is grim; his eyes flicker. He didn’t know this happened.
“He was probably late to a rendezvous with a drug cartel to move a few armored cars.” Mr. Carroll tucks his cigar in his vest pocket.
“Lucky for Deja, your dad came by. Laid some branches down and helped her get back on the road. Took five minutes of his time. Then he called me. Let me know what was going on, father to father.”
Mr. Carroll’s jaw is tight. “Never thought that man would get what he deserves.” He glances up at the ceiling. “It comes to it, he still might not. He’s gotta go to trial.”
“Joe,” Cash says, his voice gruff, the tone unfamiliar. “I didn’t know.”
“I know,” Mr. Carroll says.
“I wish you’d told me.”
Mr. Carroll looks at him, and the expression is a cross between pity and exhaustion and exasperation. “What would you have done, son?”
Cash doesn’t know what to say. Anything would sound like bluster, if not a lie, and he knows it.
“I’ll ask you a different question, maybe an easier one. What would Del Willis have done if he came on Dina on the side of the road? Or Glenna?”
Cash is stricken. He looks at Mr. Carroll as if he’s waiting for the answer, not to what Del Willis would’ve done if Dina or I was stranded—we all know the answer to that—but to why he didn’t know what his own godfather was in his heart.
And why Mr. Carroll wouldn’t have made him face it.
The moment is heavy between them. Mr. Carroll is handing Cash a truth—about his people and about himself—and he’s waiting, patient and gracious at the head of his own table, to see what Cash does with it. To see if Cash is a man or a cutout.
We’re all quiet. There’s no sound except the gentle scrape of Brice’s knife on the wood.
“I should’ve seen it myself. Way before. Shouldn’t I have?” Cash’s eyes are in tumult. His fists flex in his lap.
“Well, there was a whole article in the damn newspaper,” Mr. Carroll says.
The tension breaks. He’s letting Cash off the hook. This answer is yes, of course, and we all know this is about more than the article, but it’s also after a good dinner, and we’re full of good food, and there’s genuine fondness at this table.
The conversation will wait.
Mr. Carroll shakes himself and looks to me. “So, Glenna, do you want to see the workshop?”
“After coffee,” Mrs. Carroll says.
The percolator’s bubbling now. She pours us all a mug, and we drink and chat about Dad’s van and Deja’s Buick and Phat Thom and what other critters we’ve seen up on the mountain lately.
It’s warm again around the table, but it hadn’t gotten cold just now. Only real.
I never would have guessed that Cash Wall could get called out and that he’d actually listen.
I won’t say he’s different than I thought he was. He’s still the guy who made a joke out of me in front of the entire A lunch shift. But I guess we all grow up. Or at least we can .
As Mr. Carroll leads us out to the low building behind the house, I wonder.
What about me? Have I grown up?
Am I any different than I was?
* * *
Mr. Carroll’s workshop is like the set of a horror film, but a cult film, the kind that’s too hokey to be scary. There’s a jar of eyeballs made of glass. There is also a jar of teeth. Those are real.
There’s a big table with vises in the middle and a section with steel gray shelves in rows. One wall is entirely pegboard, and there are several mounted bucks, elk, bison, fish, and a jackalope. It smells—a lot.
“Come over here and see this,” Mr. Carroll urges, and while I’m looking where he’s pointing, an alligator snout eases into the periphery of my vision. I scream. Brice and Cash lose it.
The alligator’s wearing a plaid newsboy cap.
Mr. Carroll laughs. “Go put Mom’s dowry down, Brice.” He grins at me. “I got my father-in-law’s collection when I married her. She’s from Florida.”
He walks me around and shows me his vintage pieces and the buck he’s working on now.
It’s creepy but fascinating. Dad doesn’t hunt, and neither did Toby, but my grandpa did, and so did Toby’s parents and the Walls and almost everyone else in town.
I’m not unaccustomed to trophies, but their stillness is unsettling. Sad. Beautiful, too.
I’m relieved when Cash leads the way to check out Brice’s studio. Mr. Carroll stays behind to do some work. Brice trails along, quiet, hands in his pockets.
His studio is the building I mistook for a barn. It’s the furthest from the house, nestled on a rise above. There’s a clearing in front with wood shavings and thick trunks in a stack.