And Mavis took a long swig of her own beer and said nothing.
Then suddenly Waylin kicked out at the table so hard, a couple of empties clattered to the floor. Next thing he was on his feet and grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair. Cramer slid into the shadows around the side of the house.
“Where you going?” shouted Mavis.
“Out!” said Waylin.
The screen door flew open, and he marched across the yard toward the Taurus.
Mavis appeared at the door. “You’re in no condition to drive,” she shouted.
“Oh, yeah?” he said, turning as he walked, stumbling backward, getting his balance again, then fishing out the car keys from his pants pocket. “Well, you’re in no condition for nothing else,” he said. “So I’ll just have to find someone a bit more lively.”
“How you gonna get lucky without your automatic weapon?” she shouted. Then she started laughing, cackling like a witch.
Cramer sank to the ground and leaned against the wall as the car engine roared and the headlights came on. The lights swept the front of the house as Waylin turned out of the yard and down the drive. There was a mighty thunking sound as he hit the road, and then he was gone, his fist pressed to the horn in a final noisy display of rage.
Cramer waited, barely breathing until he heard the screen door close. Then he waited some more, sitting in the dark as the sound of the car horn disappeared into the night. He waited until there was no sound left but the buzzing in his head.
When he entered the house, his mother was cleaning up, dropping empties back in the carton in a desultory way.
She turned to look at him. “Where you been?” she said, but she didn’t sound angry, just weary.
“Out,” he said.
“Out,” she said, and chuckled. “Men,” she said. “Always out.”
On the counter Cramer found the remains of a casserole, which he picked at with a fork. There were a lot of remains; it was burnt, the contents dry as sawdust.
“You want to see something?” she said.
He turned. She was holding something shiny between her thumb and forefinger. He walked over and she handed it to him. It was a nugget of gold the size of a marble.
“It’s real,” she said. “Waylin gave it to me.”
Her voice didn’t sound tired anymore.
“Where’d he get it?”
“Where do you think?” she said, taking it back from him and holding it up to marvel at its luster. Then she bit on it. “That’s how you can tell it’s real,” she said. “You bite it.” She didn’t bother to explain how that proved anything and Cramer didn’t really care.
“He told me once the miners have to strip and get hosed down before they leave the mine each day,” said Cramer.
“Uh-huh, I know.”
“It’s so the miners don’t get to take home even any gold dust.”
“I know, I know. What’s your point, Cramer?”
“Well, the only way he could get this out of the mine is by shoving it up his ass.”
Her fist closed around the nugget and she glared at him. “That is so gross,” she said. “I really don’t know what’s happened to you.”
He turned away and picked up the case of beer, now full of empties, and carried it over to the pile by the door.
“It may be gold, but it’s not a wedding ring, Mom,” he said.
She glared at him and there was a gleam in her eye that was just plain mean. “You been seeing your girlfriend?” she said.
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Come on, Cramer, fess up.”
He stared at her. There was something disturbing in her expression, as if she wasn’t just playing with him.
“You got something to tell your mama?” she said.
Cramer shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to say to you anymore. So, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just go drown myself in the creek, which is what you should have done the moment I was born.”
Cramer waited only long enough to see it dawn on her face that he was quoting Waylin, then he turned and left.
She called to him from the door. “You were eavesdropping. That isn’t nice!”
He didn’t look back.
“And it isn’t funny, Cramer. Cramer?”
The yard light was on, but he walked right through its wide circle of illumination out past the drive shed to the lip of the hill and looked down over the creek.
“I know about her, Cramer,” his mother shouted. “You think I don’t know nothing, but you’re wrong.” Then she cackled again. “If you only knew,” she said.
He didn’t turn right away. When he did, she had gone back inside. He was tempted to go back and ask what she was talking about. Demand it. Shake it out of her. But he was afraid to go back, afraid that in his anger he might do something he would regret. So he stood there and dug deep inside, with what strength he had left after a day that had gone on for years, and found not one glimmering nugget of sympathy for her.
I know about her, Cramer.
He stood until even in the moonlessness he could make out the shape of the boulders and saplings that dotted the hill down to the creek. His mother must have followed him to the snye. That’s what she meant. That’s where she’d been going in the old canoe. It was the last straw. The very last straw.
He turned toward the panel truck. He tried the back doors. Locked. Good, that meant the cargo was still on board. She was low on her springs, heavy with contraband. What was it this time? He didn’t care. He tried the driver’s door. Unlocked. Good again.
Everything was suddenly going his way. What a change!
There were no keys, of course. But he didn’t really need keys. He let out the emergency brake and put the truck in neutral. Then he climbed out and went to the back of the big truck. He put his shoulder to it. Nothing. Not at first, but Cramer was patient and Cramer was strong. Stronger than anything. You could move a mountain if you were patient and strong. It was all about getting the thing rocking. Once you had the thing rocking, gravity would do the work for you. And he was strong not just from free weights and chin-ups and endless push-ups, but from years of paddling upstream. That’s what his life was, paddling upstream. He heaved and, despite his fatigue, soon enough the truck was moving and moving, and then, finally, it was out of his control.
Foolish of Waylin to park it like this on the lip of a hill, he thought. Cramer watched the truck smash down the slope, bouncing and swerving. He hoped no tree was big enough to stop it, hoped no boulder would catch a wheel and hold firm. What a noise it made, all its innards crashing around. And then finally- splash!
Gravity had finished his job for him, and the rest was up to the creek. It was sad, thought Cramer, that Butchard’s was only four or five feet deep. Then he turned away. There were other important things to do now. This was just the beginning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It was unlikely anyone at the Lee household would check the mailbox on Sunday, but Mimi wasn’t the only one at the snye who made regular trips to the window to peer through the curtains out toward the bridge.
Monday dawned cool and overcast. There was a front moving in. Iris left for work before nine but promised to return that evening. Around noon Jay got a call from his mom. They had been trying to get high-speed Internet
