Chapter 13
SPARK
The half-hour click comes through the radio before first light, soft as a knuckle brushed down a door. Cole answers it with two clicks and never moves his arm from under my head.
He hasn't slept. I can tell from his breathing, which never once went heavy, and from the warmth of him. He's spent the whole night with me in one arm and the county in the other. If I asked, he'd say the arrangement suited him fine.
I lie still and take inventory of the situation. What he wanted last night would've filled the barn, and he never once put his want ahead of mine. Then he tucked the quilt, took the watch, and let me sleep. I wake up the same size I went down. Bigger, if anything.
"You're awake," he says to the ceiling.
"You're not smug."
"About what?" There's a smile in it somewhere, buried deep, but he keeps his voice as level as a floor jack. That's the whole answer, and it's the right one. I kiss his jaw and get up. He lets me go without a single instruction.
Downstairs the morning's already working.
The hens are loud about breakfast before I'm off the bottom step.
Coffee's going. Out the kitchen window the farm looks half true, half theater.
The true part is the prospect on the porch rail with a cup, honestly bored.
The theater is Brick's carburetor, back together and gleaming, which means he ran out of pretend work.
Whiskey says he came down off the laurel at first light moving like his knees needed grease.
He handed his blanket to a brother I barely know and went hunting a bed.
Cole comes down buckling his cut, radio in his back pocket. I put coffee in front of him and the thought I woke up with right beside it.
"From what you heard last night, that pump's still leaking," I say.
"Wherever that truck's parked this morning, there's a red stain under it the size of a skillet.
A leak that bad, you're topping off every time you drive.
He's buying fluid by the case, and unless he wants to drive an hour, there's two places in this county to buy it.
" I sit down across from him. "Parts counters remember a repeat problem longer than they remember a face.
Somebody at the co-op in Caulder Mill has sold that man a case of fluid and a joke about his truck to go with it. "
Cole holds his coffee and looks at me. I watch the no come up in him and get put down again, same as it did on the ridge.
"Cross drives you," he says at last. "He stays in the store. The prospect sits the street. You carry a radio, you're back in two hours, and if anything sours you leave mid-sentence, whatever you're holding."
"Deal."
"I mean it, Spark. Mid-sentence."
"I heard you." I finish his coffee for him. "Two hours."
The co-op in Caulder Mill smells like feed dust and fan belts. Earl's behind the parts counter, same as he's been since before I could see over it.
"Wade's girl." He says it gentle, and his face does the county's whole condolence in one crease. "We were sorry. Whole aisle of us."
"Thank you, Earl." I put my list on the counter, a real one, because nothing buys cover like honest business. Points and a condenser for the generator, fuses, a fan belt for Wade's truck. Cross drifts to the oil rack and reads labels like a man with nowhere to be.
Earl pulls my parts, and while he's ringing the belt I lean on the counter the same as I have a hundred times.
"You got power steering fluid in? I've got a whine I can't kill."
"Whine or a leak?"
"Both. I keep topping off and it keeps singing."
"Then it's your pump or your pressure line, honey, and fluid's a prayer, not a fix.
" He runs the belt through his fingers, pleased with himself.
"Second one this month treating it like groceries.
Dewey Ledbetter's been in three times for a case.
That old Ford of his comes off the highway squealing like a gate hinge in church.
I told him to bring it in before the pump seizes and takes the belt with it.
He'd rather feed it. Some men court trouble. "
"Ledbetter." I take my change, slow as Sunday. "He still out west of the river?"
"When he's home." Earl's voice drops into the register the county saves for other people's business. "Runs with that crowd from over the line these days. Them Hounds hangarounds. His mama'd die a second time if she saw his yard."
"Mm." I sign Wade's account card, and my hand stays steady clean through the signature. "Tell your wife I said hey."
Cross pays for two quarts of oil and says nothing at all.
Outside, the prospect's across the street with a paper he isn't reading. I'm setting the box in the truck bed when a sound comes from somewhere past the square, two streets over, maybe three. A belt-and-pump squeal, climbing through a turn, high and hurt.
My hand stops on the tailgate. My whole body wants to follow it wrong, and I give my hands the tailgate chain to work instead.
Cross doesn't look toward the sound. He comes around the truck easy as weather talk and puts himself on my road side, checking his watch like we're late for nothing much.
"You heard it," I say.
"Heard it."
"Same pump?"
"Same song." He opens my door. "Get in, and don't look for it."
The squeal fades off toward the highway and takes some of my spit with it. I get in. In the mirror the prospect folds his paper, crosses to his bike, and falls in three cars back like he was born knowing how.
Cole comes off the porch before Cross has the truck in park.
I give it to him over the tailgate, all of it, in order. The case-a-month habit. The old Ford that screams coming off the highway. Dewey Ledbetter, west of the river, running with the Hounds. The squeal we heard leaving town and didn't chase.
"Say it again," Cole says. "Slower."
Not because he missed it. Because he's putting every piece where it lives, and because the brothers drifting in around the tailgate deserve to hear it whole.
Nobody talks over me. Brick stops pretending to check a tire strap.
When I get to the name, Cross has his log book out already, flipping backward.
"Ledbetter," Cross says. "Squares with an old Ford I logged twice on the county road last week, running behind that panel truck. Never stopped. I wrote it off as a farmer."
"He's nobody," Brick says. "Dewey Ledbetter's a hangaround. He's wanted to join a club his whole life. The Bastards turned him down so I'm not surprised he asked the Hounds. He's not the smartest tool in the bin. I wouldn't trust him to do anything more complicated than fetch beer."
"Well, the Hounds thought different since he's pulling watch shifts on their project.
" Cole says it slow, turning it in the light.
"Either the Hounds run deeper in this county than we thought, or Warden's using boys off the books.
Either way, it's a problem." He looks at Cross.
"Quiet eye on Ledbetter. Nobody touches him. I want to know who pays for his fluid."
"Done," Cross says.
The circle breaks up. Nobody tells me I did well, any more than anybody tells Whiskey he sat a cold hill right. It's better than praise. It's just the job. That job is mine too now.
A little more than three weeks ago I was Wade's girl, then I was Boulder's worry, then I was a name on Warden's paper.
Cole looks at me across the tailgate a long beat, and his face says all of it. He doesn't tell me to be careful. He doesn't say anything at all. He reaches into the cab and hands me a radio of my own.
Two clicks means all quiet. I know the language now.
Warden's had eyes on this ground for weeks. He still doesn't know what it grows.