John Hart: Down River

Something hot flared in his eyes, and I felt a deep anger stir as memories surged back. I relived the old man’s pettiness and disregard, his quick and ready hands when his son made some innocent mistake. “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you go fuck yourself.” I stepped even closer, and as tall as the old man was, I still rose above him. His eyes darted left and right when he saw the anger in me. His son and I had cut a wide swath through this county, and in spite of what he’d said, it had rarely been me bleeding on some barroom floor. “My father’s business is no business of yours. It never has been and it never will be. If you have something to say, I suggest that you say it to him.”

He backed away, and I followed him out into the molten air. He kept his hands up, eyes on me, and his voice was sharp and harsh. “Things change, boy. They grow small and they die. Even in Rowan County. Even for the goddamn Chases!”

And then he was gone, walking fast past the flaking doors of his roadside empire. He looked back twice, and in his hatchet face I saw the cunning and the fear. He gave me the finger, and I asked myself, not for the first time, if coming home had been a mistake.

I watched him disappear into his office, then went inside to wash off the stink.

It took ten minutes to shower, shave, and put on clean clothes. Hot air molded itself around me as I stepped outside. The sun pressed down on the trees across the road, soft and low as it flattened itself against the world. A mist of pollen hung in the yellow light and cicadas called from the roadside. I pulled the door shut behind me, and when I turned I noticed two things almost at once. Zebulon Faith leaned, cross-armed, against the office wall. He had two guys with him, big old boys with heavy shoulders and thick smiles. That was the first thing I saw. The second was my car. Big letters, gouged into the dusty hood.

Killer.

Two feet long if it was an inch.

So much for hope.

The old man’s face split and he pushed words through the smile. “Couple of punk kids,” he said. “They took off that way.” He pointed across the empty street, to the old drive-in parking lot that was now a sea of weed-choked Tarmac. “Damned unfortunate,” he finished.

One of the guys elbowed the other. I knew what they saw: a rich man’s car with New York plates, a city boy in shined shoes.

They had no idea.

I moved to the trunk, put my bag inside, pulled out the tire iron. It was two feet of solid metal with a lug wrench on one end. I started across the parking lot, the heavy rod low against my leg.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” I said.

“Fuck yourself, Chase.”

They came off the porch, moving heavily, Zeb Faith in the middle. They fanned out, and their feet rasped on hard-baked earth. The man on Faith’s right was the taller of the two, and looked scared, so I focused on the man to the left, a mistake. The blow came from the right, and the guy was fast. It was like getting hit with a bat. The other followed almost as quickly. He saw me droop and stepped in with an uppercut that would have broken my jaw. But I swung the iron. It came up fast and hard, caught the man’s arm in midswing and broke it as cleanly as anything I’d ever seen. I heard bones go. He went down, screaming.

The other man hit me again, caught me on the side of the head, and I swung at him, too. Metal connected on the meaty part of his shoulder. Zebulon Faith stepped in for a shot, but I beat him to it, delivered a short punch to the point of his chin and he dropped. Then the lights went out. I found myself on my knees, vision clouded, getting the shit kicked out of me.

Faith was down. So was the man with the broken arm. But the other guy was having a time. I saw the boot arcing in again and I swung with all I had. The tire iron connected with his shin and he flopped onto the dirt. I didn’t know if it was broken, didn’t really care. He was out of it.

I tried to stand up, but my legs were loose and weak. I put my hands on the ground, and felt Zebulon Faith standing over me. Breath sawed in his throat, but his voice was strong enough. “Fucking Chases,” he said, and went to work with his feet. They swung in, swung out. Swung in again, and came back bloody. I was down for real, couldn’t find the tire iron, and the old man was grunting like he was at the end of an all-night screw. I curled up, tucked my face down, and sucked in a lungful of road grit.

That’s when I heard the sirens.

The ambulance ride was a blur, twenty minutes of white gloves, painful swabs, and a fat paramedic with sweat hanging from his nose. Light flashed red and they lifted me out. The hospital solidified around me: sounds I knew and odors I’d smelled one time too many. The same ceiling they’d had for the past twenty years. A baby-faced resident grunted over old scars as he patched me up. “Not your first fight, is it?”

He didn’t really want an answer, so I kept my mouth shut. The fighting started somewhere around age ten. My mother’s suicide had a lot to do with that. So did Danny Faith. But it had been a while since my last one. For five years I’d moved through my days without a single confrontation. No arguments. No hard words. Five years of numbness, now this: three-on-one my first day back. I should have gotten in the car and left, but the thought never occurred to me.

Not once.

When I walked out, three hours later, I had taped ribs, loose teeth, and eighteen stitches in my head. I hurt like nobody’s business. I was pissed.

The doors slipped shut behind me, and I stood, bent to the left, favoring the ribs on that side. Light spilled out across my feet, and a few cars passed on the street. I watched them for a couple of seconds, then turned back to the lot.

A car door opened thirty feet away, and a woman climbed out. She took three steps and stopped at the hood of the car. I recognized every part of her, even at that distance. She was five eight, graceful, with auburn hair and a smile that could light a dark room. A new pain welled up inside me, deeper, more textured. I thought I’d have time to find the right approach, the right words. But I was empty. I took a step and tried to hide the limp. She met me halfway, and her face was all hollow places and doubt. She studied me from top to bottom, and her frown left little question of what she saw.

“Officer Alexander,” I said, forcing a smile that felt like a lie.

Her eyes moved over my injuries. “Detective,” she corrected me. “Bumped up two years ago.”

“Congratulations,” I said.

She paused, looked for something in my face. She lingered on the stitches in my hairline, and for an instant, her face softened. “This is not how I thought we would meet again,” she said, eyes back on mine.

“How then?”

“At first, I saw a long run and a hard embrace. Kisses and apologies.” She shrugged. “After a few years with no word, I imagined something more confrontational. Screaming. Some swift kicks, maybe. Not seeing you like this. Not the two of us alone in the dark.” She gestured at my face. “I can’t even slap you.”

Her smile failed, too. Neither of us could have seen it happening like this.

“Why didn’t you come inside?”

Her hands settled on her hips. “I didn’t know what to say. I thought the words would come to me.”

“And?”

“Nothing came.”

I couldn’t respond at first. Love dies hard, if at all, and there was nothing to say that had not been said many times in the far past of that other life. When I did speak, the words came with difficulty. “I had to forget this place, Robin. I had to push it down.”

“Don’t,” she said, and I recognized the anger. I’d lived with my own for long enough.