The Line That Held Us Read online

  Bury it inside. Keep your eyes forward.

  The boy stared straight ahead, expressionless and empty.

  The kid with tight jeans jerked his head to the side to flip his hair out of his eyes. He fit his hand inside the shoe and pressed the sole against the boy’s face. The boy didn’t move or say a word. He kept his eyes on the boxes of shoes in front of him while the other boys taunted him. The longhaired boy shoved him hard in the side of the head then and Dwayne’s blood rose up into his eyes. He could feel his fists clenching tight and he took a long slug of cool Budweiser to try and ease that feeling. The bully hesitated for a second, testing the water. When he saw the kid wasn’t going to react, he shoved him again, harder this time, so that he fell onto the floor. They stood there chuckling and the kid climbed back onto the bench and gazed straight ahead until they walked away with wide-set smiles, their eyes aglow with arrogance and pride.

  Dwayne watched the boy on the bench for a long time. The boy didn’t cry. He didn’t lash out in anger. He went right back to what he was doing, trying on a pair of kicks, like nothing had happened at all. Dwayne wanted to go over to him and tell him that things didn’t have to be that way, tell him he needed to stand up for himself and bash that little motherfucker’s head in next time, that then they’d learn, but he didn’t. He wandered on back toward the sporting goods, hoping they might have a brick or two of Winchester white box.

  He finished his third beer at self-checkout while the attendant verified his ID and plugged his birth date into the computer. At first she seemed like she wanted to say something about him drinking in the store, but in the end she shook her head and stamped away because it’s hard to give a shit for $7.25 an hour. He fed a twenty-dollar bill into the machine and waited for it to spit out his change.

  There was a commotion by the entrance, and when Dwayne looked up he saw those same two boys strutting along, the one with long hair hobbling pigeon-toed with his hand limp at his chest, making a face like he had some sort of mental defect. Dwayne looked behind him and that’s when he saw the woman the boy was mocking, a handicapped greeter with a bowl cut and tinted glasses staring on like she was witnessing a miracle. The longhaired boy tossed a set of keys to his buddy and turned into the bathroom as his buddy headed for the far exit.

  Dwayne set the suitcase of beer by the opened men’s room and stuck his head inside long enough to make sure the kid was alone. The boy was facing the ceiling with his eyes closed at the urinal, and Dwayne knelt down to make sure there weren’t any feet in the stalls. There was no one in the bathroom but the two of them. A CLEANING IN PROGRESS sign was stashed behind the door and Dwayne barred it across the jamb to stop anyone from interrupting. He walked inside and stood directly behind him, the boy not having a clue he was there until he turned.

  Dwayne Brewer was a giant of a man, six-foot-five and two hundred sixty if he weighed an ounce. When the boy turned around, there he stood, and the boy jumped back like he’d walked onto a snake. “Shit, mister, you scared the hell out of me.”

  Dwayne didn’t say anything. He stood there for a moment, silently studying him.

  The boy had on a black T-shirt that read YOUNG & RECKLESS. A pair of mint-green jeans painted his legs. He had long hair that cut down his face and he kept flipping it out of his eyes like some sort of nervous tick.

  “How old are you, boy?”

  He looked at Dwayne funny. “Sixteen,” he said.

  Dwayne scrubbed at the back of his head with his knuckles, squinted his eyes like he was weighing a tremendous decision. “That’s old enough,” he said. He pulled a 1911 pistol from the back of his waistline and aimed it square at the boy’s forehead.

  The boy’s face immediately fell and his arms came up instinctively, hands raised as if by strings.

  “You scream and I’ll blow your little pea-headed brains out. You understand?”

  The boy’s mouth sagged open and he nodded.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Brett,” he said.

  “Brett what?”

  “Starkey.”

  “Starkey? I don’t believe I know anybody named Starkey.”

  “I live up Clarks Chapel.”

  “Where up Clarks Chapel?”

  “Sunset Mountain Estates.”

  “Your family from around here?”

  “What?”

  “I said is your family from around here?”

  “My mom and dad are from Saint Pete.”

  Dwayne pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and closed his eyes for a second, then nodded his head. He looked down at the boy’s clean pair of high-tops. He wore the shoes loosely with the laces untied and stuffed inside, the tongues pulled over the bottoms of his jeans. “How much them shoes cost?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I mean, I don’t, I don’t know,” the boy stuttered. He had one of those faces that turned beet red when he was about to cry. His eyes were almost crossed as he stared down the gun.

  “You mean you don’t know because you don’t remember, or you don’t know because your mama and daddy paid for them?”

  The boy gaped dumb and speechless.

  “Which is it?”

  “My mom bought them.”

  Dwayne grunted and nodded his head. “Well, I’m going to need you to go ahead and take them shoes off.”

  The boy didn’t move.

  “This is the last time I’m going to say it, boy. Take them shoes off your feet.”

  Toe to heel, the boy slid his shoes off and stood on the wet floor in bleach-white socks.

  “Now, pick them up,” Dwayne said.

  The boy did as he was told.

  Dwayne nodded toward the beige metal partition sectioning off the stalls. “I want you to go over there to that first stall and open the door.”

  The boy walked over and pushed the door open with his elbow.

  Dwayne followed and stood with his back against the tile wall by the sinks, the gun still raised and steady. He peered around the boy and saw what he expected: a commode backed up with toilet paper and tinged water. “Go ahead and put your shoes on in there.”

  The boy looked at him in disbelief. Tears glassed his eyes. He hovered over the commode and set his shoes down gently.

  “Don’t just float them on top. I want you to put them down in there.”

  The boy pushed them slightly so that water lapped at the soles.

  “I said push them down in there!” Dwayne growled through clenched teeth. He lurched forward until the gun was less than a foot from the boy’s face, and the boy dunked his shoes underwater, his arms wet above his wrists.

  He cried hard now. His cheeks were slicked with tears and his breath sputtered from his lips.

  “Don’t go getting soft now,” Dwayne said. “You were a tough guy a few minutes ago with that boy, wasn’t you? I saw how you were shoving him around. You was tough with him, so be tough now.”

  The boy’s eyes were squeezed shut and he looked like he was going to be sick. He had his head turned away from the toilet and his face shone like a moon lit by the yellow light above the stall.

  “That’s good,” Dwayne said. “Now put them on.”

  “What?”

  “I said put them on.”

  Setting his shoes on the floor, he slid his feet inside like he was putting on a pair of bed slippers. A puddle widened around him and his feet squished inside.

  “Go on and tie them now,” Dwayne said. “We wouldn’t want them falling off your feet, or you tripping over the laces. That’s no way to walk.”

  Again, the boy did exactly as he was told. Dwayne found himself thinking that the kid might’ve been all right if it had been a gun to his head every second of his life. The boy hovered there like he was trying
not to put all his weight down. He looked like it was the first time in his life he’d ever been put in his place, and that made Dwayne proud. Everyone needs to be broken, he thought. Empathy’s not standing over a hole looking down and saying you understand. Empathy is having been in that hole yourself.

  “I want you to remember this,” Dwayne said. “All your life, I want you to remember this day. What could’ve been and what was.”

  The boy stared at him, confused.

  “The two of us, we crossed paths for a reason. It was fate that brought me here. You understand?” He tucked his pistol in his waistband at the small of his back and flipped his white T-shirt over the grip to conceal what he carried. Checking himself in the mirror, he strolled toward the door and took down the sign, heading out the way he’d come and picking up his beer as he passed. Outside, things were the same as they were a few minutes before, but inside, inside felt different.

  One man could not even the hands of Justice, but he could tip the scales for a moment, pin down the privileged at least long enough to smile. The sun was going down and Sissy had said he’d be home by seven.

  Dwayne couldn’t wait to tell his brother the story.

  THREE

  Temperatures were dropping as fall came on, and by the middle of next week the weatherman expected the mountains would see heavy frosts. Calvin Hooper thought it was about damn time. He hated summer as much as anybody with half a brain who worked outside for a living. The den where he sat flashed bright as the nightly newscast cut to commercial, only the television for light, and Calvin reached for what was left of a Jack and ice, the whiskey watered down but cold.

  He swirled his drink around the bottom of a faceted jelly jar, threw what was left down the back of his throat, and walked into the kitchen to pour another. It was almost midnight, but he wasn’t tired. Truth was, he never slept worth a shit anymore. About ten o’clock every night he reached a point where he was more awake than any other time of the day. If he lay down when his girlfriend, Angie, went to bed, he’d toss and turn four or five hours before he finally dozed off. Most nights his feet would get to killing him and he’d have to get up and take a couple Advil to find any rest at all. His mama told him to rub witch hazel on his legs and believe it or not that helped, but when his feet quit hurting his brain ran wide open and either way he didn’t sleep a wink.

  The little light in the freezer shone white against his bare chest while he filled the jar to the brim with ice. The whiskey bottle sat nearly full on a Formica countertop and he poured himself another drink in the half-light offered from the other room. When he’d capped the bottle, he rattled his glass, the ice tinkling against the sides. Aside from tying one on maybe once a month, he never drank to get drunk. Most nights he didn’t even catch a good buzz. The two glasses he drank those last two hours of a night brought a dreamless sleep so that he could catch enough shut-eye to get up and do it again.

  The phone rang in the living room and Calvin walked back toward the couch with one hand down his sweatpants, the other holding his drink against the center of his chest. No one ever called this late. The cell phone lay faceup on the side table by the couch and he glanced down to check the caller ID. The screen read DARL, and Calvin considered letting it go to voicemail, figuring Darl was probably drunk and would talk his ear off about God knows what with Calvin having to be up at six to work another Saturday. In the end, guilt got the better of him. Darl was Calvin’s best friend, always had been, so the thought that he might actually need something outweighed anything else.

  Calvin pulled the power cord from the cell phone so as not to be tethered to the wall when he answered. “Hello.”

  “You asleep?” Darl asked. There was something strange in his voice, his breath heavy in the phone as if he was winded.

  “I’m sitting here watching the news.” Calvin sat down on the couch and dug a pack of cigarettes from between the dark vinyl cushions. He lit a smoke and moved a small glass ashtray from the coffee table to the arm of the couch, tapped the first bits of ash over a pile of stubbed-out butts. “What you doing?”

  “Your trackhoe at the house?”

  “That old eighties model’s down there in the back pasture. All the big machines are up at a jobsite, why?”

  “I was going to see if you might ride over to the house and dig me a horse grave in that back pasture.”

  “‘A horse grave’?” Calvin chuckled. It was just like Darl Moody to call somebody at midnight wanting help to dig a hole for a dead horse. “What the hell’s wrong with the bucket on your tractor?”

  “Boom’s busted.”

  “Well, yeah, I can help you. I got to meet with some folks down there at the Coffee Shop tomorrow morning about eight, but I can swing by on my way back through.”

  “No, I need it done now.”

  “Now? It’s almost midnight you son of a bitch. I ain’t digging no horse grave in the middle of the night.” Calvin laughed and took a long drag off his cigarette. He blew the smoke toward the popcorn ceiling above. “I’ll be by there in the morning.”

  “It can’t wait till morning.”

  “What the hell you worried about? Coyotes? Hell, Darl, if the damned coyotes get after that horse it’ll be less to bury.” He took a sip of whiskey and brushed the thigh of his sweatpants where the condensation on the outside of the jar had left a ring.

  “Look, I ain’t worried about no damn coyotes, okay? But this can’t wait till morning. So can you go over there and do that for me or not?”

  “No, Darl. It’s midnight. Angie’s in there asleep and I got to be up at six. I’m going to finish this drink and hit the hay.”

  “It won’t take you an hour.”

  “An hour my ass. It’ll take me an hour to get loaded up. I ain’t piling up and going to dig a hole in a field for a goddamn horse. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Then let me come over there and borrow your trackhoe. I’ll have it back before you wake up.” Darl’s voice was frantic. Calvin knew something was wrong by the tone, the way you recognize those things in the voices of the people closest to you.

  “This ain’t about no horse.”

  “Don’t worry about what this is about. All I need to know right now is whether you can come dig me a hole in that back pasture?”

  “I ain’t doing anything unless you tell me what’s going on.”

  “I can’t do that, Cal.”

  “Then I’m not coming.” Calvin took a final drag off his cigarette, the last of the tobacco burning down into the filter, and mashed the cherry out into the glass.

  “Goddamn it,” Darl said. “Goddamn it.”

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Can you get over to Coon Coward’s place?”

  “Coon Coward’s?”

  “Can you get over here or not?”

  Calvin thought about Angie asleep in the back. He hated to wake her up and try to explain where he was going, hated even more for her to open her eyes and him be gone, but she slept like a rock. Probably won’t even wake up, he thought. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew Darl needed him, that he wouldn’t ask if he didn’t, and he knew Darl would do the same for him if the time ever came.

  Family didn’t ask questions. Family offered hands. And that’s how their friendship had always been, like family.

  “Yeah,” Calvin finally said.

  “How long?”

  “Just let me put some clothes on. Twenty minutes.”

  “All right, then,” Darl said.

  “All right,” Calvin said.

  When Darl was gone, Calvin reached for his pack of cigarettes and lit another smoke before he stood. He stared at the television, though he didn’t see or hear what was being said, his head full of questions as he reached for his whiskey and drained it to ice.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE
PICKUP RATTLED over a washed-out section of Coon Coward’s driveway, and as the truck crept up a small incline, the headlights climbed from Darl’s feet to his chest, on up to the top of his hat. His head was bowed and, as he looked up, the light made a moon out of his face, his eyes aglow like an animal’s.

  Calvin cut the headlights, killed the engine, and stepped out into the night. There was a chill to the air and he flipped the hood of his black sweatshirt over his head and fit his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. The last cries of summer crickets chimed from dew-covered grass, but their calls were overshadowed by the crunch of gravel underfoot.

  “Where the hell’s Coon?” Calvin asked as he came to the back of Darl’s truck where Darl sat on the tailgate, his feet swinging free of the ground.

  Darl grabbed a plastic soda bottle from beside him, unscrewed the cap, and spit a line of tobacco inside. “He’s out of town,” Darl said. “His sister died.”

  “Oh,” Calvin mumbled. “Well, what in the world you doing out here?”

  Darl rested his hand on the walnut stock of a Savage 110 that lay across the truck bed. A climbing stand was loaded under the truck box. Camouflage pants rose on the necks of his logging boots, his T-shirt a different brush pattern from his trousers. “Hunting,” he said.

  “Poaching,” Calvin corrected him.

  Darl nodded and scratched at the corner of his eye with the side of his hand. He had a steep brow that cast his eyes in shadow, an underbite that jutted his chin, pushing the thick wave of his beard even with his nose.

  “Well, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t want to get you involved with this,” Darl said.

  “I’m here, ain’t I?”

  “Yeah, but you ain’t got to be.”

  “You know, in all these years, every time I needed something, you was right there, now wasn’t you?”