Nolan opened the door.
Billy was completely focused on Dede. He was waiting for her face to show something, her eyes to widen or tear up or her mouth to twist. Something. He wanted to see his mark on her before he killed her. He wanted to know that she was afraid, that she knew who was doing this to her. In her next life, she’d take more care, he had thought, but that didn’t make sense. God wouldn’t let her out of hell once he sent her there.
Billy had been doing methedrine for three weeks. He had slept no more than two hours any night in weeks. He knew his boss was going to lay him off. He knew his daddy thought he was a damn fool. Margaret Grimsley had told him he was sick in the head, and ugly besides. His mama had suggested that he talk to their preacher, and this morning when he had stood in the bathroom looking at his face in the mirror, the solution to everything had become crystal-clear. He would shoot her. He would. And afterward he would shoot himself. Then he would sleep. Then he would sleep forever. I want to sleep, Billy thought. God, I want to sleep. He felt the air move behind him, the door opening.
“You have to decide what you treasure,” Mr. Reitower had told Nolan at four in the morning a few months before he died. They were at Biscuit World and the ovens had just made the low booming sound that signaled the gas was flowing and heat would soon start pouring against the baking racks.
“You need to take the time when you have the time, ’cause things happen sometimes so suddenly you won’t have time to think. Like your mama and me.” Mr. Reitower had leaned over the flour-dusted counter and given his son a slow inclination of his head. “I knew what she was like. I knew she had a temper. I knew that being married to her wouldn’t be no bed of lilies, no easy thing at all, but I took the time to look close at her. I knew her. You understand what I’m saying?” He had nodded hard once as if everything he meant were plain. “That woman would take all of me and I was ready. It sure is something wonderful to know that—to know the woman you love as well as you know yourself. And the thing is, to know a woman deep, you got to know yourself. You got to know what you need. I needed someone just like your mama.” He smiled wide. “Someone to kick my ass and keep me moving. Which she has, Lord knows. She has.”
Nolan nodded back at his daddy, unsure of himself a little. Did he know himself deep? Did he know what he needed? It was a hard thing to be sure about when what he wanted had always seemed so far from possible. Was Dede the right woman for him? She would never be a bed of lilies, that was sure. And she would be hard, she would be demanding. She would surely be a woman who would kick his ass and keep him moving. Was that what he needed? Never mind what he wanted, was that what he needed?
The moment before Nolan stepped through that door behind Billy Tucker, that conversation with his daddy replayed in his mind. The tone of his daddy’s cheerful fatalistic assessment, the certainty and the rueful self-knowledge it implied—all that replayed and altered. Nolan knew then for the first time what his life was worth, what he would give it up to save. Maybe Dede Windsor would never love him the way he had always loved her, but loving her was the best of him. It shaped him and made sense of his life. Loving her validated the decisions he had made about his music, his mama, and Cayro. She was the measure and the purpose and the standard he had set himself. Dede was his deep knowledge. Dede was his treasure. If Billy Tucker killed him, it would be worth his life to save her.
“Confidence,” Emmet said later. “You didn’t hesitate, did you, son?”
“No sir.” Nolan was shaking and trying not to let it show too much. He had started shaking once it was all over, once Billy was on the floor, mouth spurting blood and hands clamped to his wounded face, another wound slowly seeping down the front of his jeans where Dede’s box cutter had slashed him as he fought them.
“Well, that’s how you do it,” Emmet wrote in his little notebook, his head bobbing as he spoke. “You got to move fast, no hesitation. Take ’em down fast and mean, and don’t let nothing slow you in the process. I’d say you did it exactly right. Though coming in here in the first place was crazy. That gun was loaded and Billy sure looked ready to use it. Coming in here was the craziest thing you could have done, but if you were going to do it, well, you did it the right way.” He slapped his little book against the flat of his hand.
“You understand what I am saying?”
Nolan nodded, thinking of his daddy and how he had asked the same thing. You understand what I am saying? Yes, he surely had. Nolan looked out at his car where Dede was sitting, smoking non-stop and doing her own version of the shake dance. God, he thought. What if I had not come in here? What if I had gone home? He shuddered once and saw Emmet smile.
“It’s all right, son. No reason to be ashamed. I’d shake too. First time I faced a gun, I lost my lunch. You go home, son. Everything here is going to be fine. We’ll take good care of little Billy. He an’t going to be waving no guns around here no time soon. He looks like he learned something here today, just about passed out in the ambulance. You know, that boy looked like he hadn’t slept this year.”
Dede sat in Nolan’s car and smoked a Marlboro. She kept looking up at the trees and feeling the sun on her lap. She had talked to Emmet twice already, and was finally slowly relaxing. Nolan, bless his heart, had brought her a Coke and left her alone. When her relief had shown up to take over the store, Nolan had even brought out the register slip for her to sign. Smart boy, she thought as she signed it. She never trusted anyone with her receipts. Then she watched Nolan walk away. He looked different, she thought. Hadn’t he used to be smaller? When Nolan came back, she offered him a sip of her Coke.
“You all right now?” he asked her.
“No.” Dede lit another Marlboro from the one that had almost burned down. “I just nearly died, you know.”
“Yeah.” Nolan nodded.
Dede took a drink from the Coke and grimaced. She only drank diet Coke, she’d have to tell him that. She looked at Nolan again. He was just sitting there looking at her. No moon eyes, no sweat, just grown-up and steady and calm.
“Didn’t you think he would kill you?” she asked.
“I was too busy thinking he was going to kill you.” Nolan looked up the street. “I called home. Nadine said to bring you up to the house. Said there is beer if you want some.”
“Beer.” Dede watched Nolan’s face. His mouth, she thought. It used to be soft, lips always wet and bubbly, skin damp. Eyes. She looked up into his eyes. Dark amber and deep as night, they looked back at her. His mouth was set, closed and steady. God, she thought. Goddamn.
“I want more than beer.”
“I could get that for you.”
“Could you?”
“I could get you any damn thing you need.”
“I bet you could.” Dede looked at Nolan’s hands where they rested on the steering wheel. Big and strong, with long fingers, they rested easily on the frayed rubber covering on the steering wheel. She remembered the way he had held Billy, the way he had spoken into Billy’s ear. “I could kill you,” he had said. “Don’t make me.”
“I’m glad you didn’t kill Billy,” she whispered.
“He’ll be all right.” Nolan opened his fingers and pressed his palms on the wheel. “He was just crazy for the moment. He’ll be all right in time.”
“Yeah, probably. Or not. At least he an’t dead.”
“No.” Nolan let his breath out and Dede could hear his shoulders letting go. He settled in his seat and shook his head. “No,” he said again. “He an’t dead and neither are we.” He looked into Dede’s face and smiled. Dede smiled back at him.
“Nolan?” His name sounded funny in her voice, but right. It sounded right to speak his name. “Nolan, do you ever get drunk?”
He hesitated. “Mostly not,” he said, “but I could right now.”
“So could I,” Dede said. “I could get happily stinking drunk.”
“You want to?”
“Yes.”
The way she said it sent a little tingly
shock through Nolan, a vibration that centered somewhere just beneath his heart. Dede was looking straight at him, her glance level and dark. She was really seeing him, he could tell. She was seeing him as she never had. In that moment, it didn’t matter to her that he was younger, that he was the boy from up the street she had joked about from the first day she had met him. Finally, she was seeing him clear.
Nolan did not smile. He just returned her look, his face wide open and alight.
“Yes,” he told Dede. “Yes. Let’s.”
When Tacey was a girl, before her brothers left home and things with her mother went to pieces, the family kept dogs. Althea raised them and sold them, mainly hounds and beagles and a few selected mixed breeds noted for loyalty, size, and demeanor. There was always a litter of puppies in the yard, and Tacey dreamed sometimes of being a girl again—five or six years old and rolling in the grass with armfuls of squealing little dogs.
In the weeks after Billy Tucker tried to kill Dede, she and Nolan reminded Tacey of those puppies, sleepy-eyed but always watching, and jumping up happily when the other approached. There was no doubt they were in season, tuned to each other and vibrating to the same measure. They were like dogs and children in summer, their tongues always hanging loose and their hair smelling sweet and slightly acrid at the same time, like sugar and piss and love. Sometimes Tacey would take a breath of them and laugh despite herself, but once in a while, coming in on them while they were pressed to each other, she would feel as if something hit her in the heart, stopping her utterly and making her whole life feel useless and uncertain. No one affected her like that, no one speeded her heart or altered her breathing. No one in her life had ever even made her think of changing anything. Watching two who in one moment had been remade rendered everything she had ever known questionable. Tacey pulled out some of her stories and read them through. With the smell of all that lust in the house, the stories seemed thin and bloodless. Tacey rocked on her mattress and tried to imagine what it felt like, the reeling passion that had overtaken Nolan. She felt cramped, uncertain and fearful that there were things she had not yet prepared herself to face.
Worse was that Tacey was not at all sure what to make of Dede—the cranky white girl who was all Nolan’s heart. Dede was no romantic heroine that Tacey had ever read about. Skinny, barefaced, and almost always sweaty and dressed in jeans and a thin white T-shirt, Dede was shameless, caustic, and seemingly as surprised by what was going on as Tacey herself. To Nadine’s delight, Dede did not sneak out of the house or pretend that nothing had happened; she gloried in the affair, spilling out of Nolan’s bedroom while Tacey was fixing Nadine’s breakfast, with her hair all tangled and her sneakers in her hand. Dede smelled moist and ripe. There was sleep in her eyes and a satisfied glaze on her features. She giggled at Nolan’s mama and shrugged when Tacey frowned, pulled on her faded denim jacket and hopped out the front door with only one shoe on.
“Shameless trash,” Tacey called her, and Nadine bobbed her head happily.
“Oh yes,” the old woman agreed. “She sure is.”
Tacey took to addressing Dede as “wildlife” and drawling the word rudely. Coming home from school in the afternoon, she would pick up Nolan’s damp shorts from the bathroom floor, purse her lips, and sniff loudly. “Uh-huh, smells like a little wildlife around here.” Nadine would giggle and Nolan would blush. Unlike Dede, Nolan was not sure that he should acknowledge what was going on. He kept thinking they should be more discreet, but when Dede was close enough for him to smell, his thoughts blurred and a happy buzz took over his brain. He would lean into her and lose hold of any conviction. They were in love. Love would make everything all right.
Dede’s spoor was all through the house. Beer cans appeared in the trash along with wet cigarette papers and used condoms. Makeup was stacked in the upstairs bathroom. There was a set of combs, a new toothbrush, three kinds of colored hair gel, and a little box of shells for the pistol Craig Petrie sent over after he heard about the incident at the store. The girl was at the house constantly—at lunch or after work, early evening or late, showing up at midnight to sleep over after her late shift and getting up at four in the morning to drink coffee with Nolan before he drove over to Biscuit World and she could climb back into his bed until Tacey got up. The house smelled of heat and sweat and sodden clothing. Nolan altered daily, his face swelling with sensual satisfaction and his belly and thighs shrinking away as he forgot to eat or sleep or keep to any regular schedule. Some days he forgot to play his clarinet, and twice he arrived late for Nadine’s medical exams. “Sorry,” he said, his ears tipped with scarlet and his cheeks flushed only a shade lighter. He seemed in a constant state of shock, his lips chewed and swollen, his eyes watery and his pupils large. “Sorry,” he began every sentence, though there was no sorrow in him. He was swimming in an ocean of his own making, riding a tide of yearning and delight, bubbling happy promises to his mama, and blushing hotly at every glance from Tacey’s dark eyes.
“Sorry, I’ll get to it. Sorry, I forgot. Sorry, I was busy.” Nolan was never home except when Dede was with him. If he was not at work or asleep, he was at Delia’s eating vegetables Dede had chosen, or helping her sort stock at the convenience store, or in the tiny silver Airstream mobile home that Dede had rented over at the trailer park where the two of them were always stopping off for an hour or two. Everywhere he went, Nolan trailed the scent of carnal desire.
“Damn, Mama,” Nolan whispered to Nadine one evening. “I never understood.” His eyes flooded with tears until Nadine patted his head and agreed.
“It’s the life force,” she told him. “It’s why we are here.”
Tacey glared at them. It was not why she was there. It was not enough reason for all the extra work that was falling on her, so much laundry it had to be done twice a week or the whole house reeked. Tacey did not dare stay late to talk to teachers or friends, or even to wander home slowly making up stories in her head. There was no guarantee Nadine would not be alone and covered in sugary grease when she arrived.
“I understand,” Tacey complained to Nolan one afternoon. “You are living out one of the world’s great love stories, but could you please buy the groceries before falling back into bed with the queen of heaven?” Nolan flushed and promised, and promptly forgot his promise as soon as Dede called to ask him to drive her over to Goober’s for a plate of fried vegetables.
One afternoon Tacey came home to find a beaming Nadine sitting on the floor sucking a stick of beef jerky. “Dede gave it to me,” Nadine told her. Tacey hauled the woman back up into the wheelchair. Nadine smacked her lips and grinned at Tacey’s angry face.
“I suppose Nolan said that was all right,” Tacey snarled.
“He said it was better than fried pies.” Nadine had the grace to look shamefaced.
“Did he?” Tacey kept her face expressionless. “Did he?”
Nadine’s eyes flooded with tears and she extended her hand, holding out the beef jerky to Tacey. “Don’t be mad,” she pleaded, and leaned her head forward into Tacey’s stomach.
“Oh, don’t cry.” Tacey patted Nadine’s crown. “I’m not mad. I’m not mad.” She hugged the old lady tight, smelling the salty beef and the sweet apple smell of Nadine’s shampoo. I’m jealous, she thought. I’m jealous of something I don’t even want. This must be how people go crazy. For the first time in months, she thought of the way her mama had looked when Tacey had been throwing all her stuff in her bags. Behind the anger there had been a kind of awful patience. At the time, it had just made Tacey even more angry, but her mama had been in love at least twice that Tacey knew about—with her daddy for sure, and with the silly man who was living there now. I wonder what Mama would say if I told her about all this, Tacey thought.
Nadine sniffed and put both her arms around Tacey’s hips. “He never thinks about us anymore,” she mumbled into Tacey’s dress.
“Oh, he thinks about you,” Tacey told her, and smoothed down Nadine’s tangled hair. “M
ama love is permanent. It’s just different from that other stuff.”
Nadine looked up at Tacey with a serious expression. “Oh, it is,” she agreed. “It surely is.” Solemnly she put the frayed end of the stick of jerky between her lips. Unable to help herself, Tacey grinned at the sight. After a moment Nadine grinned back at her, as mischievous and sincere as a little girl.
Chapter 17
The dirt cradle, God’s country and the devil’s backyard. Cissy breathed in the cool, damp air belowground and chanted the words to herself. They were four hours down into Little Mouth, and she felt completely loose and happy in her body. Above her was not the dome of sky but a dome of earth, a tabernacle of mud and rock and pulverized stone that felt safely close and comfortingly familiar. I love it down here, Cissy thought. Down here, I know who I am, what I can do. Oh, this is the hillbilly hiding place, the secret haunt of haunts. This is where I belong. “I guess I’m just a cave dweller,” Cissy told Mim. And one seriously demented child of God, she told herself. She laughed out loud and saw Mim frown.
“I’m glad to be here again,” Cissy said, not hiding the intoxicated happiness in her voice. Mim smiled, only a little puzzled. She doesn’t love it like I do, Cissy thought. She does it for the adventure. If there were mountains near here, she and Jean would climb them, but there are none, so they climb down here. Of the three, Cissy knew, only she would go out of her way to search out the holes in the ground.
“Yuck.” Jean lifted her hand and shook thick, powdery algae from her glove. “Disgusting crap.”
“Bat shit,” Mim said.
“Or rats.” Cissy gestured to the torn and scattered remains of paper wrappers in one of the hollows of the rocks. Near the surface small animals used the cave as a refuge. They hauled garbage in for warmth and left spoor on all the loose surfaces. Algae and fungus grew wherever the temperature rose above the usual chill. The cave was a laboratory of corruption. Sweat left on a rock layered with bacteria that might grow even in the chill. Things underground altered, underwent a terrestrial change. Without sunlight or heat to dry it out, the rocks grew phosphorescent and took on the gleaming imprint of handfalls and finger grips. In some of the deeper passages the bacteria ate at fragments of sandwiches, pickles, and butter. The residue went on gleaming and growing for years after the cavers were gone. The idea charmed Cissy. Sometimes she reached up and planted her sweaty palms on the rock above her, just on the chance that long after she passed through, that place would hold her imprint.