He was always trying to see what he could get away with—that was why a man was dead. He was always trying to game it. See how far he could push. That was in the bloodstream and why he ever thought he’d escape it, who the fuck knew? Hiram Poe, his grandfather, the Valley’s biggest poacher, had shot himself, no one knew why, because he was a crazy old fuck is how Poe’s father put it. Don’t worry, you ain’t like him, is what his father told him, but Poe hadn’t even been wondering. It hadn’t even occurred to him that he was anything like batshit old Grandpa. Now, though. Now things were going downhill.
His father had a talent for making things go his way, he’d worked on the towboats when Poe was younger, then gotten fired because he hadn’t lashed the barges right and a storm came up and a fucking barge full of coal went floating off down the Mon, nearly causing a wreck. But still that weaselly old fucker, weaselly Virgil had managed to come out on top, something had happened to him on the boats, he jammed his back somehow, so he managed to collect a little disability from it, claimed he had something permanently wrong with his back when really it was fine. He still lost his job but now he got a permanent paycheck from it. He was always moving around, he’d come into town once in a while for a piece of pussy, mostly from young girls, but occasionally from Poe’s mother. It was not something Poe liked to think about, his mom in that position, but it was true, you did not have the luxury of thinking otherwise when you lived in a trailer. As for Virgil, he worked odd jobs once in a while, sat in the bars reading books so the girls would believe he was a great thinker, a rebel, when really he was just a lazy bastard who didn’t give two shits for anyone. Probably holding the books upside down. Put his mind up against someone like Lee or Isaac, they’d crush him.
He looked around—outside, it had already gotten dark. His cell was big for a jail cell, maybe ten by twenty feet, but the floor was soaking wet. And now that no light was coming in from the outside, it was even darker—the light fixture in the hallway did a poor job—you would have gotten eyestrain if you’d tried to read. He had nothing to read anyway. He tried to keep his mind moving so the boredom wouldn’t set in, the death spiral. What got old Hiram—sit around long enough with nothing to think about eventually your mind locks into it—fact that this here, your breathing, is a temporary situation, and why bother pretending otherwise.
Hiram had got what was coming and he was not sorry Hiram was gone. When Poe was seven, he and his father and old Hiram had been sitting in a deer blind, and Poe had fallen asleep, and when he woke up there were deer in front of the blind, and he’d said look, a deer, and spooked them all, including a big twelve- pointer, and Hiram had missed his shot. Later he’d heard his father saying
He stood up and banged on the cell door until his hand hurt, knowing the whole time no one would come. When he got bored with that he stood looking out the window, there were things moving but he couldn’t tell what, a bird, a truck, a person walking. He himself was not going anywhere and he never had been. As for college the whole idea was a joke, if there was one thing he was bad at, one thing he’d never been good at in his life it was book learning. Let him do it with his hands no problem, rejet a carburetor, gut a deer, he was good at those things but stick him in a room with chairs and desks and he blanked out. He couldn’t see the importance. He couldn’t distinguish between what was important to know and what wasn’t, he remembered the wrong things. It had always been that way.
It was only when he was playing ball, competing against others and living outside himself, something happened then, it was like information coming through a firehose but he took it all in, he would literally float above the others, he knew more about people than they knew about themselves, the exact patch of grass where their foot would land, the holes opening and closing between the bodies, the ball hovering in the air. It was like seeing the future. That was the only way to describe it, a movie where he moved in real time and everyone else moved in slow motion. Those were the times he liked himself best—when he was not really himself. When it was some part of him in control that he didn’t understand, when others couldn’t see him.
That was the truth—he was fucked. When it came down to it, when it came down to making life decisions, either his fire got going or he froze. He either went ballistic or came to a full stop, dead in the water, he needed to think about things too long, examine them from every angle. Like going to Colgate, it seemed they had not given him enough time to think, and then everyone telling him to go for it just go for it. And he froze—two years later he was still thinking. He should have just gone, then none of it—the boy from Donora losing his mind or the Swede being dead—none of that would have happened. If he had gone off to Colgate, it would not have been physically possible for any of that to have happened. It was a mistake and he had made it, only it had not really been. It was inevitable. There were men who would die heroes but he was not one of them. He had always known it.
4. Harris
He chose the worst cell for Billy Poe and decided to leave him overnight so the boy would figure out what was in store for him. Lying on that piece of butcher block. Which, when you thought about it, was fitting. Something big was going on at the DA’s office, it wasn’t clear exactly what, but Harris had a suspicion that however it turned out, it was not going to benefit Billy Poe. He locked his office and went to say good- bye to the night guy. It was Steve Ho.
“You again?”
“Miller called in.”
Harris made a mental note to check how many times Ron Miller had called in.
“You look like you ought to call in yourself, boss.”
“I’m just tired.”
Ho nodded and Harris walked out of the station and got into his old Silverado. It was a nice evening and there would be several hours of daylight left still, even by the time he got home. That was something to be thankful for. Another advantage of being chief—you worked the day shift.
As he made his way south and west, eventually the paved road gave way to a rutted paved road and then a gravel road and then it was just dirt. His cabin was perched on top of a ridge, a thirty- acre inholding surrounded by state forest.
Getting out of the truck and looking at his house, it never failed to make him happy. A squat log cabin, stone chimneys, a forty- mile view. You could see three states from the deck. No one had ever accidentally come up the road, not once in the four years he’d lived there.
Fur, his big malamute, was waiting for him inside; Harris stepped aside to let the dog run but Fur just stood there, waiting to be petted. Fur’s hips were getting stiff, his back sagging a little, the dog was shameless for attention, a prince. In the wild, Harris told him, affectionately shaking his neck, you’d be bear meat. Fur was too big for his own bones and there were nights Harris would sit in front of the T V, drinking whiskey and massaging the dog’s hips. He gave him a final pat on the head and the dog leapt off the side of the deck, a five- foot drop, and took off full speed into the woods. Maybe he wasn’t that old after all. Maybe he just has your number.
After pouring himself a club soda he went back out onto the deck and leaned against the railing, just looking. Nothing but mountains and woods—Mount Davis, Packhorse Mountain, Winding Ridge. The land dropped steeply away from the house and continued descending to the valley floor, fourteen hundred feet below. It was a good place. His Waldo Pond. His Even Keel. Walden, he thought. Not Waldo. He grinned at himself. There were plenty of other squares he could have landed on, such as his brother’s, a computer programmer in Florida, four children and a Disney subdevelopment. Harris had one word for that: hellhole. Got into computers early, mainframes, the old UNIVACs, made six times what Harris did. Still down on himself—might be that runs in the family. He was no Bill Gates. Those were his own words:
He turned on the grill and took a steak from the refrigerator, though he knew what he had to do first. There were two messages on his machine, both from her. It was not a conversation he wanted to have. Well, he thought.
