James Burke - Swan Peak

“Hi, little darlin’,” he said sleepily.

“You sleep okay, baby?” she said.

“You never called me that before.”

“You mind?”

“I’ve answered to a lot worse.”

She propped herself on her elbow and looked straight into his face. “You want me to rub your back?”

“I think the world of you, Candace. I just got problems sometimes.”

“Did you get hurt in the war?”

“I worked at a jail outside Baghdad. The army sent me back home ’cause of some things I did there. It wasn’t a dishonorable discharge but right close to it.”

“What things?”

“Giving some prisoners the worst day I possibly could.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

He picked up a pack of cigarettes from the nightstand, then replaced it. “I was raised by an uncle who ran a truck-repair shop on the highway outside Del Rio. When I was about eleven years old, him and a couple of his friends come back from drinking all night in Coahuila. One of the friends took me in the bedroom and entertained me proper while my uncle and the other guy was playing cards. Then my uncle and the other guy had their turn. I can still smell them in my sleep sometimes. It’s like a fog in the darkness, like stale sweat and mechanic’s grease. I run away the next day, but my uncle brought me back, and the next week two different guys did it to me.”

She laid her head on his shoulder and picked up his right hand in hers. “You like me?” she said.

“Sure I do.”

“You trust me?”

“Ain’t many like you, Candace.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“I trust you ’cause you don’t want anything. ’Cause you accept folks for what they are.”

“I want you.” She took off her top and placed his hand on her breast. “You feel my heart? You feel how it beats when your hand touches my skin? It’s going too fast to count the beats, isn’t it?”

She could see the surprise, the puzzlement, in his face as he held his hand to her breast.

“You know what that means? It means I can never lie to you,” she said.

“No, I don’t believe you ever will.”

“People like us are different, Troyce. It’s in our hardwiring. It doesn’t mean we’re bad. We didn’t get to vote about the kind of homes we grew up in. But here’s the big joke. People taught us the homes we grew up in were normal. It’s like somebody doing a double mind-fuck on you.”

“What’s that got to do with you and me?”

“It means I’m here whenever you want me.”

He brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I ever tell you you’re always pretty when you wake up in the morning?”

“I got to ask you something, Troyce.”

“About Baghdad?”

“Did you come out here to kill a man?”

“There’s things I keep hid around a corner in my mind. When I get to them, I can make my choices and do what I need to do. It beats fretting your mind about events that ain’t real yet. Would you not like me if I told you I got a long memory for people who do me harm?”

“Who hurt you so bad, Troyce?”

“A fellow who’s right around the corner, just waiting for me to get to the end of the street.”

Now she was in a breezy gas station shaded by pine trees, filling up the SUV, gazing at mountain peaks that looked like they belonged on a postcard. Twenty feet away was an unshaved man filling a five-gallon plastic fuel container. He was wearing a flannel shirt and laced boots and canvas work pants, obviously overdressed for the mild weather in the way that men deliberately overdress to indicate their indifference to their own discomfort. “Can I help you with something?” he said, catching her stare.

She didn’t reply. She glanced through the window of the convenience store, where she could see Troyce counting out coins next to the cash register.

“Did you hear me?” the unshaved man asked.

She could feel the gas humming through the hose and handle into the SUV’s tank. She heard the unshaved man drop his five-gallon fuel container onto the floor of his vehicle and slam the door. But he was still standing on the concrete slab, his eyes probing the side of her face, his hand squeezing his scrotum. Troyce came out of the store eating a candy bar. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“Check it out,” she said, her eyes on Troyce’s.

“What?”

“The guy from the revival.”

“What about him?”

“Nothing. He’s here, that’s all.”

“He crack wise or something?”

“I wouldn’t call it that.”

“What’d he say?”

“He’s a jerk. Who cares?”

Troyce dropped the paper bag containing his candy bars and chocolate milk through the open window of the SUV and walked over to where the man named Quince stood by the pump. “You make some kind of remark to Miss Candace?” he said.

“She was eyeballing me, so I asked if I could help her.”

“You been in the pen?”

“What?”

“You said she was eyeballing you. That’s an expression that convicts on the hard road use.”

“I got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“At the revival I showed you a photograph of a man I’m looking for. You said you’d never seen him. But that’s not the truth, is it?”

Quince brushed at his nose and huffed air out of one nostril. Then he surprised Troyce Nix. “Maybe it’s the truth, maybe not.”

“How am I supposed to read that?” Troyce asked.

“What’s in it for me?” Quince asked.

Troyce looked around and seemed to think about it. The breeze was blowing through the pine trees. His face looked cool and untroubled inside the shade. “I don’t like talking out here. Go in the restroom and wait for me.”

“You hold your negotiations in the shitter?” When Troyce didn’t reply, Quince said, “I’ll move my car.”

Quince went inside the convenience store, looking once over his shoulder.

“Troyce, don’t get in trouble. Not because of me,” Candace said.

“Ain’t gonna be no trouble, darlin’,” he replied.

“Troyce, I don’t want to lose you.” She said this without emotion, as a fact, in the way women know facts that men do not, and he knew he had entered a new stage in his life. “You’re a good man. You just don’t know how good you are.”

He looked at her for a moment, as though seeing her more clearly than he had ever seen her before. Then he winked and went inside the restroom. Quince was relieving himself in a urinal.

“You seen the man in the photograph?” Troyce asked.

“What kind of finder’s fee we talking about?”

“Finder’s fee?”

“Yes sir,” Quince said, zipping his pants. He began touching at his face in the mirror, feeling the stubble, without washing his hands.

“How about you don’t get charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive?” Troyce said.

“You aren’t a cop.”

“No, I’m not. But can I tell you a secret?”

Someone tried to open the door. “I got a sick man in here. You’ll have to wait,” Troyce said, squeezing the door shut again, shooting the bolt.

Quince stopped touching at his face and looked at the locked door.

“You know why you don’t get a finder’s fee?” Troyce said. “It’s ’cause you’re for sale. A man who’s for sale suffers the sin of arrogance. What he don’t understand is that nothing he’s got is worth the spit on the sidewalk. You remind me of the tramps down at the blood bank. The blood you sell has disease in it, but you pass it on to other people to put wine in your stomach. You ain’t no different from a whore, except your skinny ass ain’t worth the time it’d take to kick it around the block… Where you think you’re going?”

“I’m finished talking with you,” Quince said.