The Cold Spot

hell.

The whiskey reek coming off them filled the room like smoke from a three-alarm fire. Chase couldn’t handle the smell anymore, not since the days when his father had taken bottles to the cemetery. His stomach tumbled and he began to breathe shallowly.

The cute Lou turned out to be Louise, who gave Chase the eye and licked her lips. She got up and lurched toward him, saying she wanted to dance. She hummed in his ear and pressed her huge breasts to him, where they wobbled proudly. She whispered how she liked younger men because they could ride in the saddle all night long. He’d never heard it called that before, but he was a bright kid and could pick up on the metaphor. It tightened his guts and scared the shit out of him, but the heat rising through his body seared away any doubts.

The much less cute Lou was Lulu, who was nearly unconscious but still making the effort to hang in there. She gave Chase an unfocused gaze where her eyes mostly crossed. Her chin fell to her chest as she struggled to stay awake. Her teeth were smeared with red lipstick.

Chase looked at Jonah and realized his grandfather, who never drank on a job, was stone sober.

It was only when cute Lou was about to dance off to the bedroom with Chase that Jonah put his arm around her in a blatant territorial gesture. No subtlety there, no mistaking the meaning. He held up a hand to Chase’s chest, not quite touching him, grasping the girl tightly under his wing.

So there it was. Chase got the chick who was nearly out cold for his first lay. Before he could do anything he made her brush her teeth and gargle. It still didn’t kill the whiskey smell, and for the eight minutes he was in the saddle he had to keep his face turned away from hers.

It was terrible, but at least he didn’t have to take the blame for the general lack of success all by himself. In the morning, it didn’t seem to matter. Lulu didn’t remember much. They went for a second bout on the couch that was much better than the first go-around.

At Lila’s dinner table, thinking of Lulu made him realize all the more what he’d been missing for so long.

After they’d finished eating she said, “Let’s have wine in the den.”

He looked around the place. “You don’t have a den.”

“Sure I do, there’s even a fireplace.”

“Most folks call that the bedroom,” he told her.

Holding up the bottle of wine, easing him along as she pressed forward, she said,” That right?”

Afterward, while he was catching his breath, she asked him again about his past.

It was getting a little spooky now, always talking about the worst things that had ever happened to him while her chest was powdered with salt and his neck burned with her teeth marks.

He slid aside and stared into the cold fireplace, wondering why anybody in Mississippi would ever need one in their house, much less in the bedroom. It was October and nearly eighty degrees outside.

“I always wondered what it would’ve been like,” he said, “if my old man had been able to hold on. If he could’ve ever bounced back from being so broken. But Jonah told me I would be better off without my father. Maybe he was right.”

Lila tensed and reared up, giving him the pout, and brought her small, hard fist down on his belly. It hurt and he gasped.

“Don’t you say that.”

“Ouch.”

“Don’t you ever say such a thing, you hear me now?”

“All right.”

“Fathers are important.”

She was so powerful in her presence, standing up for people she’d never meet, who were already nearly ten years dead. He’d never shared so much with anyone before.

As the sun went down, the shadows lanced the bedroom, growing thicker second by second, stabbing across the sheets. The window was open, a breeze stirring the lace curtains. Despite having shoved his childhood behind locked doors, he could still hear an occasional noise come through. Now he heard the sound of his old man chopping at the ice with an ax, needing to die so badly.

“I hope he’s not dead,” Chase said.

“Your daddy?”

He let out a small snort of surprise. “No, the man who murdered my mother and the baby. I can’t let go of the idea that one of these days I might get a chance to kill him.”

Part II

***

1

L ila introduced her father as Sheriff Bodeen. A woman introduces her father as something other than Dad or Daddy and you know you’ve got a situation on your hands.

Sheriff Bodeen hated Chase’s guts from the first minute. Bodeen smiled like a three-day-old corpse and kept chuckling under his breath, trying to be a good ole boy. Going, Heh heh heh. Eh heh heh. The sound lifted the hair on Chase’s neck.

Bodeen stood about five-foot-two and had short-guy syndrome, needed to prove he was the toughest son of a bitch in any room he walked into. He had arms thick as tree trunks and with every step he sort of exploded across the room. All rip-tide energy.

His brown uniform was immaculately clean and pressed, buttoned to the throat. He kept his gun belt on. The strap over the butt of his.45 had been snapped loose. This for Sunday dinner, meeting his daughter’s boyfriend for the first time.

When Bodeen hugged Lila he made a spectacle out of it, like he hadn’t seen her for years. Swept her up, twirled her around, kept calling her his little girl, his buttercup. She went with it. Finally he put her down and she left the room to check on the chicken-fried steak she was making for dinner.

Her mother was the quietest woman Chase had ever met. Really big, burly actually, with a lot of muscle to her. She hugged him hello. He couldn’t get his arms all the way around her, it was like grabbing hold of the front end of a Toyota. She squeezed him until he thought his ribs were about to go.

These people, he thought, Christ, there’s a lot of undercurrent here, forget that Southern hospitality shit.

Lila flashed in and out of the living room, either giving him time to get used to her parents or really busy cooking. He had stared at the stuff stewing and boiling in the pots and pans and had no idea what side dishes they’d be eating tonight.

She’d told him to call her mother Mama, but Chase couldn’t do it. He went with her first name. Hester.

Keeping up the friendly front, Bodeen called Chase “son” a lot, but there was serious ice in his eyes, a lot of rage and resentment. It would come out eventually, Chase knew, he just had to wait for it.

The man asked a lot of questions about Chase’s background. Started off casually but got more and more personal while they sat and waited. He drank a lot of whiskey with a lot of ice and appeared a little put off that