John Brandon - Further Joy

Barn Renfro had made a bad investment, sure enough, an illegal one. He’d been planning on selling a bunch of the boats at his shop and slipping away, going into hiding. Barn’s debt had nothing to do with Reeve, but it was the reason Barn had a loaded gun in arm’s reach when Reeve came over in search of his dog. Sofia had all this intelligence and she didn’t feel a bit strained, just very awake. She was breathing easily. She wasn’t losing any time. It was all here before her, like a light had been switched on in a dark room.

Reeve lived on the opposite side of the lake from Barn, which was the reason he was being questioned. He was Barn’s only neighbor and his alibi, according to Uncle Tunsil, was nothing special. Sofia saw why. Reeve had been carrying on a feud with Barn since the day he’d moved in, a feud he hadn’t mentioned to Sofia’s uncle. There’d been a dispute over the property line, and Reeve was hoping the paperwork from that dispute was buried by now. Reeve was not pleased to be attending this interview. He was not being open. Like so many, like his wife’s aunt, he was a great actor.

When it became clear that Reeve was going to win the property dispute, Barn had cut down a pair of sprawling live oaks that, in another forty-eight hours, would’ve belonged to Reeve. Reeve had called the county once about Barn dumping his shop waste in the lake, and after that Barn had begun dumping everything in there — even grass clippings and bacon grease. Now there were no fish in the lake and the live oaks were history. Barn had called the fire marshal when Reeve’s family had visited and were roasting marshmallows in the backyard. Reeve’s young nephew had wandered over to Barn’s side of the lake early one morning, curiously examining all the dry-docked boats, and Barn had come around the corner with a filet knife in his hand, telling the boy exactly what happened to people who got caught sneaking around where they didn’t belong.

And then there was Reeve’s dog. The animal liked to wander. He’d never destroyed Barn’s property or even growled at him, but Barn hated the dog. A couple times he’d yelled across the lake for Reeve to come and get his goddamn mutt before he carted him off to the pound. The day of Barn’s death the dog had gone missing. That’s why Reeve had gone over to the shop. He’d surprised the fear-racked Barn, who’d stayed awake the whole night before on alert against his creditors, and who had been subsisting on pork rinds and beer. Reeve had been prepared for a confrontation. He had begun, in the hour before he’d strode around the mucky lake, to consider the prospect that Barn had killed his dog, that his pet was dead by the hand of this stupid backwoods grease monkey, this man who was a scourge of Reeve’s well-earned early retirement. If Barn had pushed the feud to a new height, Reeve would need to push back or be less than a man.

Barn could’ve killed the dog or he could’ve driven him out to the middle of nowhere and left him. Reeve had been breathing raggedly when he’d barged into the dim shop out of the blaring sun and stopped short at the gathering sight of Barn pointing a gun at him. He couldn’t even see Barn’s face, except the bulging, bloodshot eyes. Then the barrel of the gun was advancing, Barn’s fingers squeezed fat around the handle, his face coming into focus, merciless but full of something like, it seemed to Reeve, relief. Reeve could smell the man when he came close, could almost make out the curses and oaths he was reciting.

When Reeve thought back on the ungainly grunting struggle that followed, as he was doing right now, sitting across from Sofia, he thought of how the gun had felt once he had it in his hand, the foreign coolness of the grip soothing him in that steamy shop in the wilds of this steamy county, the gun’s perfect balanced weight and perfect incuriosity. Barn was slobbering, vanquished and separated from his pistol, gathering himself as well as he could, staggering, spitting. Reeve watched him read the situation, injured and beyond all reason, watched him grab an outsize wrench off his worktable and lumber forward, grinning now, saying Reeve would never do it. Reeve remembered wondering if Barn was right, the man raising the wrench overhead into the dusty air of the shop, his intent simple and evil, and then there was a bright roar all around them, a shudder running through the walls.

Reeve had regretted the act immediately. He’d regretted the entire feud, regretted leaving Jacksonville, regretted letting his wife walk away. His entire past was a mess. He could smell blood through the sour gunsmoke. He should’ve gotten the hell out of the shop the second he had possession of the gun. But he hadn’t. He’d wanted to be dared, had wanted to stand the ground he’d gained, to push his advantage. Reeve had stalked onto another man’s property, a native’s property, half expecting an altercation, and that man had wound up dead.

He wiped off the weapon as he’d seen done in a thousand movies and returned home and scrubbed his kitchen. He dusted every piece of furniture in his house and swept his garage. He kept washing his hands, he didn’t know why. He started a commonplace grocery list — eggs, milk, bread.

Now he had to hope the animosity between himself and Barn was not unearthed. He’d been asked nothing about his dog, Salvatore, who was still missing. Reeve wasn’t aware that Barn was mixed up with criminals. He could easily get away with this, but he didn’t know that. His mind was a stew of worry but he looked to Sofia like a man on a demanding vacation, a man who’d ordered a complicated drink and was awaiting its arrival. He was a murderer, this guy across the table. He’d taken a man’s life.

After the interview, Sofia drove out along the Hargreaves Trail, toward Barn Renfro’s place. She’d driven past it before, maybe a half-dozen times — the nondescript boat shop that was twice the size of the house it sat next to, the lake you barely caught a glimpse of as you passed. There was a wide spot in the gravel just past Barn’s spread, and Sofia parked her Datsun and got out. The air was laden with the odor of burnweed and the only animal life present was the many varieties of small dark birds — on the fences and power lines and pecking about like chickens near the road. Sofia could feel the heat from the gravel right through the soles of her shoes, her keys jingling in her hand. She turned up Barn’s drive and headed straight for the shop. The front of it was hung with a single orange ribbon, across the regular door and the big bay doors. The structure was very tall now that Sofia was close to it, to accommodate the boats Barn worked on in there. Used to work on. Sofia figured the door was locked. She didn’t want to try the knob. She just needed to see inside, so she kept on around the side of the shop, looking for a window, and when she saw one she went up and rested her fingertips on it.

The surprise would’ve been if this wasn’t the place she’d seen in the interrogation room, but when she pressed her nose to the glass it was all there. Right on the other side of the window was the table where Barn had grabbed the wrench. Same table. It was covered with iron files and sockets and screwdrivers and pliers. Beside the table was some sort of press — Sofia couldn’t tell what it was for but she remembered it. She kept her face where it was and after a minute she could see more, a familiar red toolbox, and a miniature fridge. A bookshelf full of manuals. A rack of fishing rods suspended from the rafters. She turned her head and checked behind her. Everything was quiet. The pines that marked the other edge of Barn’s property were perfectly still. She imagined Reeve’s dog running out of those pines, bounding toward her and barking lightheartedly. She had no clue what had happened to that dog. Maybe Barn had happened to the dog. Or maybe the world had simply taken it away.