Chapter Thirty-Two
THIRTY-TWO
IT’S THE SMELL OF my dad’s car, like candy and gunpowder, that brings me back. That old Volkswagen hatchback. The soft feel of the fabric. The high growl of the engine. I shift my feet and push old soda cans and potato chip bags around.
“Annie-Girl,” my dad says. “Annie-Girl, wake up.”
“What?” I ask him. We’d left the carnival and he said he wanted to go for a drive. Now we’re on the back roads, headed home. It’s just one twisty hairpin after another, after another.
The windows are down and the scenery slips by in a blur.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh …
“Annie-Girl,” he says. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“Huh?”
I realize my arm hurts. Why does it hurt?
It burns like the time I brushed against a wood stove, my skin sizzling.
I look down at it. It is a strange purply-black color.
The same shade as my granny’s hollyhocks.
But it’s slick as a pool of oil. Shiny. Like a Japanese beetle. There’s a buzzing in my ears.
“I have a surprise for you, Annie-Girl,” he repeats. “When we get home. You’re gonna be so tickled when you see.”
But, as my stomach lurches, I realize I already know the surprise. I’ve known it for days. Ever since I heard him on the phone with her.
Faster now, the whoosh whoosh whoosh sound is replaced by a Fwit! Fwit! Fwit!
The pain sears through my hand again and I suck in air through my teeth. I keep my eyes open. Keep them on the road. But my vision still goes dark.
“Annie…” my dad says from the darkness. “Can you hear me? Annie—Come on, now. I need you to wake up. Can you hear me?”
I open my eyes.
The world is red-hued, like someone’s slipped a mask of crimson gauze over my face.
“Annie?” my dad says again. “You awake?”
The rain pounds the windshield. The wipers make a Sheek! Sheek! Sheek! sound as they slosh the deluge from side to side.
“Yeah…” I answer, turning my head to look at him.
Not my dad. Dishman.
I blink and the red moves over my eyes like a liquid. Not like a liquid, I realize. My eyes are hemorrhaging. I’m seeing the world through a veil of my own blood.
“You killed him,” I say. “And then you lied to me about it.”
He keeps his eyes on the road but nods, a soft smile on his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I only punched him. And he went backward … I was just so angry because he … Annie, there’s things you don’t know.”
“Your daughter,” I say. “Janey-Beth. You should’ve told me.”
Another nod. He takes his eyes off the road for a moment, long enough to glance at me, and he winces at what he sees.
“I know…” he says. “I wanted to tell you. I almost did. But … I also wanted to keep what I had, for everything to stay the same. Annie, I was greedy.”
“Like Shepherd,” I say, closing my eyes. They’re so heavy. My body is so heavy. “Like Ezra. Like Bradley. King of your kingdom and … your kingdom … your kingdom is no more…”
“Annie—” he says, alarmed. “Annie, you’ve got to try and stay awake, all right? Don’t go drifting off. Listen, I wanted to tell you. I was going to. But then you found Nickels’s body and then it was clear that Bradley was involved and—”
“Will,” I say. “Will … and Coroner Bradley.”
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s why I came back.
The guys at the station pulled Roman Bradley’s financials and called me while I was on the road.
There was no evidence of him taking a bribe.
So, I figured it must’ve been blackmail instead.
There was talk a while back that Roman and Will’d had some kind of relationship but … Will was just a kid.”
“Just a kid,” I repeat, my eyes closing again.
“Annie, come on now,” he says. “Stay with me. You listening?”
“Yeah,” I say. But the air feels too thin, too hot. I close my eyes again.
“Nope,” Dishman says. “Nope. Come on. Stay with me.”
Whiiiirrrrrr.
The window goes down. Cold rain pelts me in the face.
He’s torturing me, I realize, my mind running wild. Before he gets rid of me, throws me down in the Hell Hole, he’s going to torture me with this cold, pelting rain. The thought seems ludicrous and I laugh.
He ignores me and says, “Back when the rumor about Will and Roman Bradley got to me, I talked to Will. Asked him if Bradley had done anything, said anything, taken advantage of him. He told me no. And then he went away for a while, and when he came back, he was all set on going to Bible college and … I should’ve tried harder, maybe.
But he denied it. Annie? You still with me? ”
“Yes,” I say. “I can’t sleep for this rain, you asshole.”
He nods, like that’s all he needed to hear. He says, “We’re almost there.”
I close my eyes. “Whatever.”
The car slows down, comes to a stop, and then speeds up, but the rain just goes on slapping me in the face.
Dishman says, “I realized Will must’ve been the one to dig up that coffin. Remember how neat that sod was? How it looked just like it did before? It’s something he must’ve learned working with the Bradleys. Spending time with Roman. It was only that one summer but…”
I keep my eyes closed against the pelting rain, the blood in my vision.
“He took Nickels’s body,” I say to the darkness. “It was Will.”
“Yes. And after we’d been to the Hell Hole, he put Nickels down there, figuring we wouldn’t go back.”
“And Bradley…” I say.
“I think he couldn’t take it anymore,” Dishman says. “The stress of it was killing him. He knew it was only a matter of time until it all came out.”
“He would lose it all,” I say. “He was ashamed and he couldn’t face it.”
My voice sounds distant. Small. Like I’m a child again.
“Yeah,” he says.
“And that’s why you didn’t tell me,” I say. “That’s why … You were ashamed because you’d believed in Ezra and you were…”
“Yes,” he says. “I was ashamed. I believed his lies. I fell for it. I really thought he was a good man, a great man, a man of faith. I never meant to…”
“Okay,” I say. “Okay … okay…”
“Annie, come on. Stay with me. You’re tough, you can do this. Just hold on.”
“Where’s Gavin?” I ask him, my eyes suddenly open, remembering. “Where is he?”
“Back there,” Dishman says, gesturing toward the back seat.
I try to turn my body and realize it’s just too much effort.
Instead, Dishman maneuvers the rearview mirror so I can look.
Gavin is lying in the back seat. A black police jacket is tied tight around the pad I’d put on his wound.
He’s lying still, breath coming in shallow gasps.
“I looked you up,” Dishman says after a moment. “When you came to town? I checked up on you.”
“Air Force,” I say. “Special investigator. Muay Thai. Private…”
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I saw all that. But I also looked up who you were before, where you came from.”
“Cleberg County,” I whisper, closing my eyes again.
“And who you came from.”
I shake my head but he keeps going. “Johnny and Rochelle Gore. I saw your dad’s record, made a few calls. Annie, I know about your dad’s arrests, your mom’s too. I know they’re still together.”
And what he doesn’t say is—I know you come from people who beat the shit out of each other for thrills.
And I know you were always the one who had to clean up after.
You’re the one who drove your mom to the emergency room, to the urgent care, to the veterinary clinic when there was no money.
You’re the one who put stitches in your dad’s arm when she went at him with a knife.
You’re the one who ran away from all that.
First to your granny’s. Then to the Air Force.
Then to Louisville. You’re the one who’s never spoken to them again.
Because you can’t face who you are. Who you came from.
Still together, he’d said.
I hadn’t even known. I’d guessed. But I hadn’t known for sure.
“Annie,” he says, looking over at me, his expression pained. “I know you ran away from there. Annie, I…”
Pssshhhhh, I say.
And the windshield wipers go Sheek! Sheek! Sheek!
And the rain slaps me in the face, mixes with my own bloody tears.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there today. When you needed me.”
My eyes close again. The rain finally stops.
I remember that summer again. That night. That road. That little Volkswagen.
My dad was there beside me. His voice had gone from laughing to pleading.
“Annie-Girl … Annie-Girl, what are you doing? Stop!”
My hands were shaking, but I pressed my foot down harder. Turned the wheel.
It wasn’t my father driving, after all. It was me.
He’d got out on the roadside, on the way home, and tossed me the keys and said, “Annie-Girl, why don’t you drive us home?”
But I’d known what was waiting at home. Who.
And I’d started out slow. Cautious. Timid.
“I have a surprise for you, Annie-Girl,” he’d said as I drove. “When we get home. You’re gonna be so tickled when you see.”
And I knew that it was all over. My summer with my dad. Both of us like feral kids, running rampant, no supervision. I’d heard him on the phone and knew my mom would be at home. Waiting for us.
And it would all go back to the way it was before.
And suddenly all I wanted was to feel the wind in my hair. I wanted to feel my heart race. I wanted to feel the bottom drop out of my stomach as we crested the hill, as we went round one bend and then another, tires screeching as we veered into another lane.
I wanted the thrill. I wanted to live as much as I could in this time because this time was about to end.
We can’t choose our parents, Katie had said. Or the qualities we inherit from them.
Her voice mixes with my own.
I need to understand him. So I can understand myself.
How could I ever explain what happened that night in the car with my dad? How could I explain the impulse to put both our lives on the line? One last hurrah before we went home. One last hurrah and maybe we’d never have to go home. One last hurrah and maybe this would be the end of it all.
“Annie-Girl!” my dad’s voice screamed. “Stop! Goddamn! Stop it!”
And I laughed at him. The same way he’d laughed at me.
Scaring him. The same way he’d scared me.
Because after all we’d been through together that summer, after all my hungry nights and useless prayers and the realization that my mom being back was even worse than her being gone, I’d understood, at the end of that night, that I wanted my heart to hammer in my chest. I understood that you never feel more alive than when you’re close to death.
I understood that it was their blood—my parents’ blood—running through my veins, a dangerous cocktail of desperate wanting and crushing powerlessness.
Katie’s voice swims in my head again. She says, All we can do is make the most of who we are. Try to turn our worst impulses into something useful.
And I remember realizing that there were tears on my face. I’d let my foot off the gas, pulled over. The car came to a stop. I left the keys in the ignition, got out, and started walking. Back down the road. Back in the direction we’d come. Away from home. Away.
“Where the hell are you going?” my dad spit, his voice trailing after me.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t know.”
And now I grab my arm as the pain rushes through my shoulder, up my neck, into my head, across my chest.
“Annie,” Dishman says. The car is stopped now.
Dishman has the passenger door open and he’s pulling me out.
His arms are strong and sure. The smell of his laundry detergent, his soap, fills my nose.
I realize there are other people around.
They’re shouting things, racing around, working.
We’re not outside anymore. We’re inside.
I blink. It’s all fluorescent lights and bleach smell. I’m lying on a bed, I realize. Dishman is standing beside me. He’s holding my left hand. He’s soaking wet.
“You came back,” I say.
He nods.
“You came back to catch Will,” I say.
Dishman leans down, kisses the top of my head, and says, “No, Annie. I came back because I knew you’d be in trouble. Because you’re always in trouble. Stay alive, okay? Stay alive.”
“Sure,” I say. And then I close my eyes.