always had a tell. A way for them to see inside you.
“A bank robber named Jeffie O’Rourke used to work for him in the office. As a secretary, an assistant sort of, but really they were lovers. Jeffie used to write him long, affectionate letters. They both liked to paint. The warden did seascapes, masted ships on the ocean. Jeffie did watercolors of children. Puppies. Flowers. The warden would tell him about the garden in his backyard, the hot tub, and the satellite dish. How he’d introduce Jeffie to the family when Jeffie got out.”
“How you know all this?” M’am asked.
“I was his cellmate.”
She let out a disapproving grunt. “Oh, you must’ve seen a lot.”
“No, nothing like what you mean. But the warden fell for a new inmate, a straight guy called Mule. Mule was doing time for statutory rape, but he used to brag about how he would beat women, how much he hated them. The warden wasn’t only gay but a misogynist too, and Mule appealed to him. He liked hearing the stories. He thought he could sway Mule’s preference, bring him around. One night he came by the cell to break it easy to Jeffie and tell him it was all over. He probably did love the kid, in his own way. Didn’t want to hurt him, said he’d help with his parole and hoped they could still be close friends.”
“Uh-yuh.”
Thinking back, Shad’s voice dipped. “Jeffie O’Rourke had an easel with a self-portrait of himself looking serious. Fist under his chin, thoughtful, with his eyes very dark and deep. Maybe it was supposed to be sexy. He was painting it for the warden’s birthday, which was coming up in a couple of days. He took the news about Mule poorly. Snapped his paintbrush and jammed it through the warden’s eye and into his brain. Took half a second. Killed him on the spot.”
Her disproportionately large head bowed to the right and the furry white chin bobbed, as if she’d heard the story many times before and was being tolerant by listening one more time. “What happened then?”
“They carried Jeffie away to solitary and he vanished.”
Shad let it hang in the air like that, unsure of which way M’am Luvell might take it. Sounded like he was saying the guards killed Jeffie and buried him in secret. But the reality was, Jeffie truly had disappeared. He’d broken three prisons before and probably could’ve gotten out of this one anytime he wanted. He’d only stayed locked up because he was in love.
“And what lesson do you get from that?” M’am asked.
“I’m still working on it,” Shad said.
A weighty silence passed between them, but neither looked away. It was a comfortable moment upset only when she beckoned him closer.
“And what if you find out it was Zeke Hester that done harm to that sweet child? Or some other mad dog fool on the loose?”
“I’ll kill him.”
“Without no regret?”
“Not too much.”
He’d already decided that if events repeated themselves, he’d lie this time and do whatever he had to do to stay out of the joint. He considered any further dealings with Zeke to be an extension of what had already gone on before. He’d paid his price and wouldn’t give up anything more.
“Without feeling?” she asked, prodding him a touch.
“There’s always feeling.”
“Not everybody can say that.”
“Not everyone would want to.”
She trembled at that, holding in the rancid laughter, but that sharp, clacking noise still rustled and rattled from her chest. Her hands came up in small balled fists and made him think of an excited child wanting candy. “But what if nobody killed your baby sister up on that bad road, Shad Jenkins? What if sweet Megan did go to sleep in the Lord’s arms like they say? What if you never got nobody to blame?”
“When I’m satisfied I’ll let it go.”
“And if it’s not to be?”
“Do you always ask this many questions of the people who come to ask you questions?”
She pursed her gray lips. “Yuh.”
Okay, she was finally getting under his skin a little. “Do you accept it, M’am? That a seventeen-year-old girl’s heart just stops out in the low hills? In a spot she’s got no reason to be?”
The question took her back with a hint of sour amusement. “Asking my opinion, are you?”
“I suppose so.”
“Heh. Been a while since anyone asked me my consideration on a subject. They want answers and blessings and ways to fend off spells. And fatter calves.”
So maybe it threw her, having somebody in front of her who didn’t bootlick. “Tell me about that place.”
M’am fidgeted in her chair like she might want to hop off. Shad didn’t know whether to help or not. He heard her ancient knees pop and winced at the sound, but she soon settled.
“I used to go up there with my ma and pa on Sunday afternoons after church. Dressed in pink with pretty bows in my blond hair. Hard to picture now, but so it was. Mama’d sing ‘Gather at the River’ while Daddy praised the Lord the whole ride up the mountain. In an ox wagon.” She smiled, and he saw that, brown and crooked as some of her teeth were, she still had all of them. “But those hills were cross. Peevish. The land’s got a taste for us.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Quiet now, you asked and I’m saying. So listen.”
M’am Luvell pulled a wooden match from beneath her afghan and snapped her jagged thumbnail against it. She relit her pipe and allowed the seconds to roll by while she drew in a long, wheezing lungful of weed.
“We fed the gorge our ill and our hated, and now the ground’s sick and full of scorn. It’s hungry, but fickle. Storms come out of nowhere. Winds that’ll take a man off his feet and hurl him into the chasm. There’s outrage up that way, in those woods. It took my ma when I was but a girl a’four.”
“Wraiths?” Shad asked. “That played with you first before they chased and bit your legs?” He said it without judgment or presumption.
“It’s the reason why I never grew none. The young’un spoke out of turn. But she did no more than declare the truth. As do I.”
Shad stared at her.
“You understand what I’m telling you?”
“Yes,” he said. “I think so.”
“But don’t that threaten you none, boy? What you might find if you go digging in bitter soil?”
He shrugged. “There’s evil everywhere.”
The bullfrogs kept roaring, finding a nice contrapuntal harmony. Shad studied the old woman, trying to figure out if he was missing something here or if maybe she was. It didn’t much matter one way or the other. She tilted her head again, this time in the opposite direction, waiting for him to ask something else, but he didn’t see a point anymore. He walked out.
Chapter Six
YOU LEARNED TO PAY HEED TO THE DEAD breath on your neck.
Shad had gotten away without much trouble in the slam, but he’d still tapped into the sensibility of always having danger at hand. Knowing it was always out there, an inch to your left. You always had to be careful, never think you were one of the blessed, like you couldn’t be touched. You could only be so stupid before you deserved to get taken out. Some cons thought their silver-tongued charm might be a defense, as if the charisma that made women giggle and bat their eyelashes on the outside could actually make the gen pop
Usually the violence wasn’t aimed at Shad, but it sometimes got close enough that another man’s blood wound
