Tom Piccirilli - November Mourns

The dark eyes softened. “Megan’s brother?”

“That’s right.”

“You were in jail.”

“Yes.”

“And you just got out.”

“Yes.” So it was going to be like this.

“You’re not looking for Joe?” It wasn’t really a question, more like a topic of conversation already rejected the instant it was touched on. “You’d like to talk with me.”

“Yes.”

That sweet girlish voice was pure tallow in the winter, creamy and thick, smooth and somehow feathery. It reminded him of how young she truly was, and he felt oddly upset with Luppy.

“To speak about her. ’Cause you were away for so long.”

You could only nod so many times before you started feeling like a moron, so he just waited until he got an invite to take a step off the welcome mat.

“I don’t know what you expect from me.”

“Neither do I,” he told her.

“Come on inside then.”

On the mantel sat a large framed photo of Luppy Joe and Callie on their wedding day. Luppy looked happy but uncomfortable in a short-sleeve shirt and bolo tie. His huge belly hung low over his belt, the button there straining to keep shut. Callie had on a half veil that came midway down the bridge of her nose, obscuring her eyes though you could still discern them under there, black like punctures through the cloth. She wore a long white silk dress, almost antediluvian in style. The kind they wore while strolling their plantations before the War of Northern Aggression. She was at least six months pregnant in the picture.

Shad didn’t see any kid’s toys around. No crib, no bottles or jars of baby food. He didn’t know if maybe her parents were taking care of the child or if she’d lost it. You could never ask certain questions.

“You’re the one who bought the Mustang that Joe’s cousin died in, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Way Joe tells it, the guy’s hair killed him.”

“Chuckie Eagleclaw’s mother killed him, though you could say it was the receding hairline that caused his death.”

It nearly brought a smile to her lips, which was enough for the time being. “How’s that?”

“He kept checking himself in the rearview and took his eyes off the road.”

She grabbed the top of a ladder-back chair and squeezed until the muscles of her neck stood out. Shad tried not to stare at the tightly angled curves packed into the well-fitting clothes, the meaty crook of her throat. It wasn’t easy.

“I heard you’re scrambling for trouble,” she said. “Causing discomfort everywhere you go.”

It stopped him cold, the way she put it. “Who’s saying that?”

“Everybody knows it. You think hollow folk got something better to talk about than an ex-convict who comes home to find his baby sister dead?”

So much for tiptoeing. It proved she was astute, already in tune with his purpose, and didn’t mind laying it out on the line. “I suppose not.”

“You’re not going to bring any of that distress and annoyance into my house, now are you, Shad Jenkins?”

“I only want to talk.”

“All right. Come sit.”

Moving across the house was no different than traveling through his own life. He remembered returning here late at night after delivering liquor to the roadhouses and parish bazaars. The guys would be playing poker with their watch fobs and silver dollars in the pot, the same as their fathers and grandfathers. Shad would know he was connected by a real but intangible trail leading back across the dim leagues of his own ancestry.

On the counter sat a jug of moon, a bottle of wine, and a freshly made pot of coffee, but she didn’t offer him anything.

“I’m not sure what to ask,” he said.

“I’m not sure what I can tell you.”

Now that he had someone who might help, every question he came up with sounded faint and weak. “Like you mentioned, I was out of touch for the last couple of years. I missed a big part of her life as she grew from a girl to a woman. I’m trying to find out the kind of things my father wouldn’t know.”

“Okay.”

“What did you do? Where did you go?”

She gave a rough scowl. “What the hell kinds of questions are these?”

She was right, he had to focus. “You were in the Youth Ministry together.”

“We went visiting around the county. In the hollow alone there’s four Christian churches, including Reverend Sow’s room in back of his dry goods shop where he’s got a couple pews. Some of them like wine and dancing, some prefer more puritan behavior with the occasional all-night gospel sing. Then there’s others who stick to the old ways, around the bottoms. You know how it is. Reverend Dudlow would ask us to talk to them, hand out literature, try to get them to come into town more often and listen to his sermons.”

In a movie, the guy playing Shad would’ve reached out about now. Maybe brushed her on the wrist or the back of the hand, and the audience would’ve sunk into their seats, feeling the sexual tension building on the screen.

Christ, he was as bad as Zeke, always thinking about a camera going in for a close-up.

It was too easy for your vengeance to blur into something like hope. Shad pawed at his chin some, trying to get a bead. “So you girls went visiting.”

“Don’t call me a girl, please. You might not mean it to sound offensive, but it is. I’m sensitive to that tone. My mother often gives it to me.”

“I apologize. So you both, ah, did what exactly? Knocked on doors?”

“Handing out pamphlets. We sometimes went out as far as Enigma, Poverhoe City, and Waynescross.”

A thread of sweat worked down his collar. “Did you go to the Lusk farm?”

“Which one’s that?”

“Place out on Route 18 in Waynescross. A sad few acres with a dying cherry orchard and ill children. Two that have flippers instead of arms, another who’s hydrocephalic. Kid with a big head, shaped like a pumpkin.”

“I know what it means, Shad Jenkins. We had a couple of drop-offs along Route 18. But I don’t recall the name Lusk or anything like those children.”

“Are you certain?”

She frowned again and a crease appeared between her eyes. “I’d remember a kid with a pumpkin head, don’t you think?”

It couldn’t be a coincidence, that Megan should be in the area where her own mother lived and not see her.

“Was there ever any trouble? Handing out Preacher Dudlow’s brochures? Two young ladies like yourselves?”

“Sometimes we’d get shooed off. Folks aren’t very open-minded in praising God some different way than they’re used to. Or not at all, as it mostly turns out. A truckful of the Sweetwater haulers give us a hard time once, hootin’ and fallin’ down in the street and such, but nothing a woman doesn’t have to deal with almost every day in this town.”

“Zeke Hester?”

“What about him?”

“He ever bother Megan?”

“After she smashed his mouth and you busted him up the way you did? No. He cut a wide path around us.”

Lament gave a prolonged honk, and Jake shouted, “I do believe that dog might be asking for a job as a blocker. You boys think we should give him a trial run?”

The flat of Shad’s hand began to creep along the table and he realized he was reaching for her, like he had the right. He stood and put his fists in his pockets, leaned against the wall. “Did you ever go up to Gospel Trail Road?”

“No. Nobody needs go up that way.”

“There are hill families beyond the ridges. The Johansens. The Taskers. Burnburries and Gabriels.”

“I never heard of them before. Besides, it’s too far. We usually walked.”

“You walked to Waynescross and Enigma?”

“No, Joe gave me his truck on those days, of course.”