Twenty-One
THERE’S NOTHING TO be done in the fields the next morning because of heavy overnight rain, blowing in sheets as if it wanted to blow the whole place all the way to Tennessee, making the soil too waterlogged for planting until further notice.
Charlie Hall starts to explain why, and I tell him, “Too much information.”
I work out in the gym early now that I have an unexpectedly free morning, punishing myself a little more, and even a little harder than before.
After lunch, I go for a long walk, listening to my music on earbuds, losing track of the time, no real destination, pushing myself on my creaky wheels, not even sure any longer which is the good leg.
But even when I’m back at the house, EJ off getting her nails done, I’m still feeling restless. Feeling the need to move. And trying to tamp down solid the sudden feeling I have to hit somebody.
So I climb into the F-150, hoping that going for a drive might help me clear my head better than my walk did, even knowing that’s probably not going to happen, not today, and maybe not in the near future.
Just the possibility that the Crocketts are behind what feels like all the trouble in the world has made me mad as hell.
Even the hint of a thought that they might know something about what happened to Holly Ridenour, Allie Gonsalvo, and Molly from the diner.
I’ve got no proof of that. Neither does Leamon.
And I can only assume that if the police had any real leads involving the Crocketts, they would have acted on them by now, even if it meant going up against the Crocketts.
But what I know for certain, and for real, is that these are bad things happening in Cross Rivers, and that the Crocketts are bad to the bone, and maybe all I’m doing is connecting the damn dots.
“Briar Crockett will never hear a moral alarm going off,” EJ said to me one time, “because none has ever sounded with that son of a bitch his whole life.”
When I told her to watch her language, she said, “Just did.”
I know in my gut that Leamon is right, that even if the Crocketts didn’t have a hand in the girls going missing, they might know who did, just because everybody’s business in this town seems to be theirs as well.
Starting with the drug business, whether the authorities have ever nailed Briar for that or not.
I drive the back roads aimlessly, the way I would sometimes after a tough loss in high school.
No music today. Along the way I see a few school buses that they use for camp kids in the summer, because Cross Rivers is a hub for camps like that, and good ones—one of the very best things it does, having places for the children of working families to go and be safe when school’s not in session, though it’s not as safe in these parts as it used to be.
I wonder if I might see Taylor, who drives a bus during the school year and had told me she was doing it part-time in the summer, too, since she still likes being around kids.
Of course she does. So much has changed in this town, I’m finding out fast. Just not the fact that Taylor McCarter Webb is still the best of it, like its true beating heart.
But I don’t see her as I wander aimlessly and finally make my way into town, toward a high school that was always my father’s pride and joy as much as I was.
I leave the truck on the street and head to the big back parking lot between the school and the football stadium now known as Silas Tucker Field.
Not in my honor.
My father’s.
But I slow, just a little bit, as I notice two vehicles over near the stadium, one a pickup that looks older than the earth, the other a compact car.
Then I see two young stringy-haired guys in hoodies next to the car, one of them passing something inside to the driver before being handed some money back.
Obviously thinking they’re all alone enough to carry out a business transaction like this.
Like they’re hiding what they’re doing in plain sight.
I press myself against the side of the main building as I feel my breath catch, knowing I’ve just witnessed a lousy little drug crime against this school. Another one.
It’s like the two guys—I’m sure in my bones they’re drug dealers—think they’re invisible in the shadow of Silas Tucker Field.
Or bulletproof. Or both. According to author Dan Jenkins, invisible and bulletproof are the last two of the ten stages of drunkenness.
That’s how he told it in Baja Oklahoma, his novel I really liked about country music.
Maybe these two punks are drunk with power. And under the impression that even with school being out, this is still their office because no one has ever stopped them from doing what they just did.
We had spent a whole semester in one of my college civics classes focusing on the rampant problem of substance abuse in Appalachia.
So I know full well, better than I’d like, that overdose-related mortality rates in this part of the country are sometimes 70 percent higher on average than the rest of the United States, opioids topping the charts, as much a menace in a place like western Carolina, especially to the underclass, as lack of housing or access to cars or steady employment.
Now here it is, happening right in front of my eyes, the two punks pushing poison in broad daylight.
Maybe even Briar Crockett’s poison. At my father’s school.
Just outside the field named after him.
One more time, I head for that field.