“And why’s that, convict?”
“Because I won’t let you off so easy this time.” Shad gave him the killing gaze so there’d be no doubt in Zeke Hester’s mind at all.
“You think I’m scared of a jailbird like you?”
“You should be after last time. You’re going to answer my questions or I’m going to hurt you again.”
“You ain’t got the brass,” Zeke hissed, with a hint of fear in his dull voice. He was an idiot, but he had sense enough to know that everything Shad said was genuine. He tried to smile, putting some snarl into it.
They squared off and Zeke let out a nervous chortle, shrugging his shoulders, loosening up as if this might be a twelve-rounder. He slid out of his jacket and threw it wildly over Shad’s head. He had on a sleeveless black T- shirt and hit a pose so his biceps bulged. He kept tightening and opening his fists, making his blood rush so the veins would stand out on his arms, hoping to look cut and strong. He scanned left and right to see if any girls might be around, but there was nobody except seventy-year-old Griff staring out the window, his lips covered in beer foam.
It was going to be tough getting through to Zeke Hester if he thought he was on a movie set, about to be the next action hero star. Already you could see he was hoping to come up with some snappy, sarcastic patter. Something they could use for the trailer and highlight on the poster.
Shad said, “Did you do anything to my sister?”
“What’s that?” Zeke was still flexing, scared and unwilling to face the real context of the situation.
“Answer me.”
“You-”
“I don’t have all day. I won’t ask you nicely again.”
Zeke bolted up straight and his crude features, already cloyed with ignorance, grew even more moronic. “Megan? Your sister? You think… so you think I had something to do with what happened to her?”
“I’m asking you.”
“I reckon you can just turn yourself around right now and go find yourself a knothole for you to stick your rod in ’cause I ain’t-”
Shad flowed forward and covered the ground between them in one step. He brought his hand up from low and backhanded Zeke with a solid shot, but Zeke’s unkempt head didn’t even turn aside. He wasn’t all flab. Beneath the matting of beard that chin was pointed stone.
“Goddamn you, Jenkins!”
“None of your usual posturing for the next five minutes, Zeke. What happened to her?”
“How the hell should I know!”
“You made a grab for her once.”
“Now you listen to me ’bout that! You done sullied my good name-”
Again Zeke checked left and right, really hoping somebody would come along and listen to his script. He’d worked hard on it for the last two years. The word sullied wasn’t an easy one to pull off, but Shad had to admit it sounded pretty natural. Zeke had been practicing.
“Did you try again?” Shad asked.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
The longer they went without tussling, the more time Zeke had to fan his anger and keep himself worked up. The fear was draining out of him too. “That ain’t it at all, you son of a bitch!”
“Then why were you bothering my father?”
“Me? You blame me? That bastard’s been putting the devil in folks’ ears for weeks, telling ’em I had a hand in Megan’s murder.”
Shad tensed and stood straighter. “You think she was murdered?”
Zeke screwed his face into about as much of a pout as he could pull off. His fingers fluttered about like he was in front of a chalkboard trying to map out Sherman’s March. “You’re a damn fool. She was only seventeen. No young girl like that dies for no good reason, up in them foul woods.”
“That’s right.”
“Don’t you glare at me like that no more neither. You want to scrap, we’ll have it out right now. But don’t you give me that eye no more. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with what happened to yours. No matter what you and your miscreant daddy’s got to say about it. And you better not be spoutin’ gossip like that ’round town no more!”
Zeke Hester didn’t have the temperament for any real slyness. Shad felt a small surge of shame even though he’d been attacked. He had known better. Zeke didn’t have anything to do with Mags’s death. He would’ve left marks.
“Get out of here,” Shad told him.
“You don’t tell me to move on, boy.”
“It’s time for you to be quiet now.”
“You go on and stay the hell away from me, if you have any consideration for what’s good for you. Or I’ll beat you down and leave your ass out on the highway like week-old roadkill.”
Shad sighed. Pa was right. Zeke didn’t have a good memory. Already he was starting to flex again, weighing his odds, getting ready to push a little harder. You could see how he tongued his rotted tooth and the raw nerve gave him a painful kick that lifted him up onto his toes.
Whatever Zeke was going to say would be immensely unwise. It would be mean and it would be about Mags. Shad took a step backwards, as if urging the insult toward him.
Here it comes.
Zeke Hester smiled through that wild thatch of hair, and muttered, “The way she threw it around, driving guys crazy, I’m surprised it didn’t happen no sooner. Now, you dwell on that some.”
“Sure,” Shad said, and he went for Zeke’s bad arm, grabbing it at the elbow and wrist and giving it a vicious twist.
The snap was clean and loud as a gunshot. Zeke instantly went into shock and didn’t even scream. He sat down heavily, twitched a few times, and started to cry.
Chapter Seven
HIS FATHER’S PICKUP WASN’T IN THE YARD when Shad finally decided to visit Megan’s grave.
A trace of storm grew heavier in the air as the wind rose and gusted through the pastures. Crimson-tinted clouds swarmed across the sky, darkening it to the hue of trailer-trash bruises.
The rain let go for a while, stopped briefly, and began again, fitful and hesitant and cold. Stands of pine jerked and swayed, bowing as if determined to groan in your ear and confirm every apprehension. As he drove up the wet dirt road the Mustang hit every rut.
He parked at the base of the foothill and got out. The hound pup crawled free from beneath the house and trotted up the road to greet Shad. Lament’s collar was old and oversized, but he’d grow into it. The tags were scratched and they jangled together as he began to lope.
“Come on,” he said.
The dog followed as Shad worked his way up the knoll toward the graves of his mother and sister.
The sun had begun to hemorrhage in the west as the late afternoon cooled even faster. The nearest church, four miles away along the bottoms, crooned a despondent tune he’d heard before but could only remember while it played. The breeze in the boles of the oak trees hummed and occasionally drowned it out.
Standing in the weeds, he noticed again how stricken the land had become. The groves had thinned until they were little more than brushwood and briar patches.
His cool and calm seemed to come and go lately, and he knew he had to work on that before it got him killed. You played games as a kid that became the discipline of your adult life. He’d never realized it years ago-lying there in the darkness at the back of his closet, covered in sweat with his cheek pressed to the smooth hardwood floor, as the silence heaved around him, and he kept going further inside himself, hoping to talk to his mama, demanding it to be-that he was developing a skill that would come in handy in prison.
