Tom Piccirilli - November Mourns

ELFIE TOOK HIM INTO TOWN AND DROPPED HIM OFF at the end of the road leading to Pa’s house. He leaned over to kiss her good-bye. Although their mouths met with some passion, he couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d gotten whatever she might need from him and there was nothing left. He shut the door and she stomped the pedal getting away. The tires spit dirt across his knees.

Shad slowly walked home. Pa wasn’t there. Wherever he’d gone, he’d taken Lament with him. The ’Stang sat out in front, freshly waxed. Dave Fox must’ve found it weeks ago and had it brought over to Tub Gattling’s shop. This time, Tub hadn’t been able to control himself. The car now had an enhanced carriage and augmented suspension. Tub must’ve been certain that Shad was running moon again. The window had been fixed and Tub’s bill sat on the dashboard. It was reasonable.

The keys were in the ’Stang and he started the engine, listening to it thrum until some of his strength and calm seemed to be returning to him.

Shad shut off the car and moved from it with a heaviness he hadn’t felt when leaving Elfie. On the porch, he was surprised to see that Pa’s chessboard was missing. He stepped into the house. The always loaded shotgun rested in the corner.

He stood in Megan’s empty room for a while before telling her, “I’m sorry.”

Everything he’d done since getting out of the can had been botched right down the line. The snakes were loose. There was blood on his hands. The hollow was getting crazier, and so was he.

Shad looked through Megan’s bedroom again, hunting for any clue. Her clothes, magazines, schoolbooks. Dave Fox had done all this as well. Searched through her things wearing a pair of latex gloves. Inspecting different parts of the house, looking around the yard some. If Dave had found nothing suspicious, what chance did Shad have?

There wasn’t any choice. When you hit the wall you backed up a few steps and ran at it again. Shad checked the floorboards, the back of the closet for secret panels, and the molding around the doors. Teenage girls would have their hiding spots, their special places to keep their treasures. He searched for the pad she’d used down at Tandy Mae’s farm, where she wrote her love poems and notes and set them loose on the river.

He was so careful that it took over two hours to cover every inch of the entire room. He turned up nothing.

A knock at the front door spun him around as if he’d been mule-kicked. The silence of the house had gotten so deeply inside him that he barked Megan’s name. You didn’t know how far you’d gone until something pulled you back a half inch.

Shad opened the door and there stood Dave Fox, dressed as always in his sharply creased gray uniform, with his massive arms hanging at his sides.

“Been looking for you.”

“You already found me, though, didn’t you?”

“I ran into Doc Bollar a week or so ago passed out with his feet in the river. He’s going to get hypothermia that way, you just wait. Frostbite, and he’ll need his feet amputated. Anyway, I prodded him a touch, and in his stupor he mentioned you were at the Patchee place.”

Of course, Dave would know it wasn’t really called the Lusk farm like Shad had always thought. “Were you skulking around up there?”

“A little. Peeked in the windows some. Since he didn’t know anything except that you’d been shot, and since you weren’t going anywhere and appeared to be recovering, I let it go.”

Dave Fox drew his line in the sand and kicked the shit out of everybody to one side and let everyone on the other side slide. “Thanks.”

“He kept calling you the luckiest son of a bitch ever, the way the bullet missed all your internal goodies. I figured you’d show up at Mrs. Rhyerson’s when you were ready.”

“So you watched her place and spotted me there last night.”

“On my night patrol. I didn’t want to ruin your reunion with Elfie Dansforth, so I didn’t bother you then.”

“You waited until now. Don’t you ever sleep?”

“No.” Dave shifted, and the porch slats creaked beneath his weight. “I thought we could chat.”

“Come in and pull up a chair.”

Dave didn’t sit. Shad felt compelled to stand and face the deputy despite the weariness settled heavily in Shad’s shoulders. Dave saw the exhaustion in him and put a wide hand on Shad’s chest and pressed him back until he was seated on the couch.

“Goddamn Doc,” Dave said. “He should have insisted you go to a hospital.”

“He did.”

“Then he should’ve come got me or the sheriff.”

“Doc wanted to.”

“And you’re the damn fool who talked him out of it.”

“You’re going to hurt my feelings soon.”

“To hell with that. Red and Lottie Sublett suffered through a couple of weeks of guilt, then came down into town. They thought their eldest boy had shot you and you crawled off into the woods to die. That weirdo kid had them half-convinced you were an FBI agent and the bureau was planning a full-scale attack on Red’s still. That what happened?”

“No, I’m not an undercover Fed,” Shad said.

“I mean about him shooting you.”

“No, Osgood missed.”

With the gun belt rasping, Dave did a slow turn, his gaze steely, making sure Shad realized this was a serious moment. “We’re not going to play it this way. None of this going around in circles showing how cute and witty you are. Out with it. The snake handlers do this?”

“No.”

“All of them up there, they live the same way. They’re disassociated. They think killing a man is no different than skinning a hare.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

Not exactly, but how was he going to explain it? You could only go so far with the truth before you had to talk about Hellfire Christ. And the ghost of your mother. And the fact that you had killed a man with your bare hands.

“I think you’re lying to me,” Dave said. “And I haven’t heard a whisper of what actually happened.”

“You going to take me in for getting shot?”

“It’s a crime not to report it.”

But Dave wouldn’t play it that way, dragging Shad into Increase Wintel’s office for something so crappy. Not the guy who’d broken up the Boxcars ring in Okra County in two hours, all on his own. Killing three men and the madam, shot twice in the thigh by a.22, and not slowing up a step.

“Was she smiling?” Shad asked.

It almost made Dave frown. “What’s this?”

Maybe it was Shad’s enunciation. He was always repeating himself, so maybe he wasn’t speaking clearly enough. Right now, his tongue felt too large and sharp for his mouth. He had to sound the words out slow and carefully, the way he used to make Tushie Kline do it. “Was… she… smiling?”

“Are you talking about Megan?”

“I want to see her.”

“Shad Jenkins, she’s been buried for-”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I want to see a picture. You cops must’ve taken plenty of photos, even if it was a death by misadventure. I need to know if she was smiling.”

Turning his back, Dave Fox shambled across the room for the door. “You can live without knowing something like that. I’m going to pay my respects to Megan and your ma. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Use the time to reflect on how you want this to play out.”

“Sure.”

Shad got up and watched Dave walk down the road and up the knoll toward the graves. Pa would have Megan’s unfinished headstone somewhere out back, where he poured his pain and misgivings and loneliness into each blow of the chisel. If you cut your grief and anguish into something from the earth, would it be taken away? Or did it just taint the world around you with human weakness?

Maybe both.