The White Road

“You got to watch their hands. Those boys, they think their money buys them beer but their tip buys them mining rights, you get my meaning.”

“I take it that it doesn’t.”

Remembered hunger flashed in her eyes, then was softened by the memory of her appetite’s satiation. She took a long drag on her cigarette.

“Not every time.”

“You ever see her with Atys Jones before that night?”

“Once, but not in here. It ain’t that kind of place. It was back at the Swamp Rat. Like I said, I go there some.”

“How did they look to you?”

“They weren’t touching or nothing, but I could tell they was together. I guess other folks could too.”

She let her last words hang.

“There was trouble?”

“Not then. Next night she was back in here and her brother came looking for her.” Again there was a shudder, but this time her feelings were clear.

“You don’t like him?”

“I don’t know him.”

“But?”

She looked around casually, then leaned in slightly closer across the bar. The action forced her shirt open a little, exposing the sweep of her breasts and their dusting of freckles.

“The Larousses keep a lot of folks in jobs around here, but that don’t mean we got to like them, Earl Jr. least of all. There’s something about him, like…like he’s a faggot but not a faggot? Don’t get me wrong, I like all men, even the ones that don’t like me, you know, physically and all, but not Earl Jr. There’s just something about him.”

She took another drag on her cigarette. It was almost gone after three puffs.

“So Earl Jr. came into the bar looking for Maria

“That’s right. Took her by the arm and tried to drag her out. She slapped him, then this other fella came forward and together they managed to get her out.”

“Do you remember when this happened?”

“About a week before she was killed.”

“You think they knew about her relationship with Atys Jones?”

“Like I said, other folks knew about it. If they knew, it would get back to her family in the end.”

The door behind me opened, and a group of men entered, shouting and laughing. It was the start of the evening rush.

“I got to go, hon,” said Euna. She had already declined to sign a written statement.

“Just one more question: Did you recognize the man with Earl Jr. that night?”

She thought for a moment. “Sure. He’s been in here once or twice before. He’s a piece of shit. His name is Landron Mobley.”

I thanked her, and left a twenty on the bar to cover my OJ and her time. She gave me her best smile.

“Don’t take this wrong, hon,” said Euna as I stood to leave, “but that boy you’re trying to help deserves what he got coming.”

“ Lot of people seem to think that way.”

She blew a steady stream of smoke from her cigarette into the air, pushing out her lower lip as she did so. It was swollen slightly, like it had been bitten recently. The smoke dissipated. I watched it go.

“He raped and killed that girl,” continued Euna. “I know you got to do what you’re doing, asking questions and all, but I hope you don’t find out nothing to get that boy off.”

“Even if I find out that he’s i

She lifted her breasts from the bar and stabbed her cigarette out in the ashtray.

“Hon, there ain’t nobody i

I told all of this to Elliot over the phone.

“Maybe you should talk to your client Mobley when you find him, see what he knows.”

“If I can find him.”

“You think he’s skipped?”

There was a pause.

“I hope he’s skipped,” said Elliot, but when I asked him to explain what he meant he laughed it off. “I mean, I think Landron’s facing serious jail time if it goes to trial. In legal terms, Landron’s fucked.”

But that wasn’t what he meant.

That wasn’t what he meant at all.

I showered, then ate in my room. I called Rachel and we spoke for a while. MacArthur had been true to his word in calling by regularly, and Klan Killer was staying out of sight when the cops came by. If Rachel hadn’t quite forgiven me for springing him on her, she seemed to be finding something vaguely reassuring in his presence. He was also clean and didn’t leave the toilet seat up, factors that tended to weigh heavily in Rachel’s formation of opinions about people. MacArthur was due to go out with Mary Mason that evening, and MacArthur had promised to keep Rachel posted. I told her that I loved her, and she told me that if I loved her I’d bring her back chocolates. Sometimes, Rachel was a simple girl.

After we had talked, I called to check on Atys. The woman answered and told me, best that I could understand, that he was a “spile chile. Uh yent hab no mo’ pashun wid’um.” Clearly, she was less sympathetic to Atys’s plight than her husband. I asked her to put Atys on the line. Seconds later, I heard footsteps and he answered.

“How you doing?” I asked.

“Okay, I guess.” He lowered his voice. “The old woman is killin’ me. She’s hard.”

“Just be nice to her. You got anything more you want to tell me?”

“No. I done tole you all I can.”

“And all you know?”

He didn’t answer for so long I thought that he had simply put the phone down and walked away. Then he spoke.

“You ever feel like you been shadowed all your life, like there’s always someone there with you, someone you can’t see most of the time, but you know, you just know that they’s there?”

I thought of my wife and my daughter, of their presence in my life even after they had gone, of shapes and shadows glimpsed in darkness.

“I think so,” I said.

“The woman, she’s like that. I been seein’ her all my life, so’s I don’t know if I dream her or not, but she’s there. I know she is, even if there ain’t nobody else sees her. That’s all I know. Don’t ask me no more.”

I changed the subject.

“You ever have a run-in with Earl Larousse Jr.?”

“No, never.”

“Landron Mobley?”

“I heard he was looking for me, but he didn’t find me.”

“You know why he was looking for you?”

“To kick the shit out of me. Why you think Earl Jr.’s dog be lookin’ for me?”

“Mobley worked for Larousse?”

“He didn’t work for him, but when they needed they dirty work done for them they went to Mobley. Mobley had friends too, people worse than him.”

“Like?”

I heard him swallow.

“Like that guy on TV,” he said. “The Klan guy. Bowen.”

That night, far to the north, the preacher Faulkner lay awake in his cell, his hands clasped behind his head, and listened to the night sounds of the prison: the snores, the cries from troubled sleepers, the footsteps of the guards, the sobbing. It no longer kept him awake as it had once done. He had quickly learned how to ignore it, reducing it, at worst, to the level of background noise. He could now sleep at will, but this night his thoughts were elsewhere, as they had been since the release of the man named Cyrus Nairn. And so he lay unmoving on his bunk, and waited.

“Get them off me! Get them off me!”

The prison guard Dwight Anson awoke in his bed, kicking and wrenching at the sheets, the pillow beneath his head soaked with sweat. He leaped from the bed and brushed at his bare skin, trying to remove the creatures that he felt crawling across his chest. Beside him, his wife, Aileen, reached out and switched on the bedside lamp.

“Jeez, Dwight, you’re dreaming again,” she said. “It’s just a dream.”

Anson swallowed hard and tried to slow down the beating of his heart, but he still found himself shuddering and brushing aimlessly at his hair and arms.

It was the same dream, for the second night ru