The White Road

“Mr. Poveda, are you feeling okay?” It was kind of a redundant question. Phil Poveda appeared to be feeling better than okay. Unfortunately, I figured Phil Poveda felt that way because his sanity was falling down around his ears.

“Yeah,” he said, and for the first time a twinge of doubt crept into his voice. “Yeah, I think so. You were right: Elliot’s dead. They found his car. It was on the news.”

I didn’t reply.

“Like you said, that leaves just me and Earl and, unlike Earl, I don’t have my daddy and my Nazi friends to protect me.”

“You mean Bowen.”

“Uh-huh, Bowen and that Aryan freak of his. But they won’t be able to protect him forever. Someday, he’ll find himself alone, and then…”

He let himself trail off before resuming.

“I just want it all to be over.”

“You want what to be over?”

“Everything: the killing, the guilt. Hell, the guilt most of all. You got time, we can talk about it. I got time. Not much, though, not much. Time’s ru

I told him I’d be right over. I also wanted to tell him to stay away from the medicine cabinet and any sharp objects, but by then the glimmer of sanity that had briefly shone through had been swallowed up by the dark clouds in his brain. He just said “Cool!” and put down the phone.

I packed my bags and checked out of the hotel. Whatever happened next, I wouldn’t be back in Charleston for a while.

Phil Poveda answered his door wearing shorts, deck shoes, and a white T-shirt depicting Jesus Christ pulling back his robes to reveal the thorn-enclosed heart within.

“Jesus is my savior,” explained Phil. “Every time I look in the mirror, I’m reminded of that fact. He is ready to forgive me.”

Poveda’s pupils had shrunk to the size of pinheads. Whatever he was on was strong stuff. You could have given it to the folks on the Titanic and watched them descend beneath the waves with beatific smiles on their faces. He shepherded me into his neat oak kitchen and made decaf coffee for both of us. For the next hour, his coffee sat untouched beside him. Pretty soon, I’d laid mine aside as well.

After hearing Phil Poveda’s tale, I didn’t think I’d ever want to eat or drink again.

The bar, Obee’s, is gone now. It was a roadhouse dive off Bluff Road, a place where clean-cut college boys could get five-dollar blow jobs from poor blacks and poorer whites out among the trees that descended in dark concave down to the banks of the Congaree, then return to their buddies, high-fiving and gri

The Jones sisters used to drink in Obee’s, though one of them, Addy, was barely seventeen and the older sister, Melia, by a quirk of nature, looked younger still. By then, Addy had already given birth to her son, Atys: the fruit, it appeared, of an ill-fated liaison with one of her momma’s passing boyfriends, the late Davis “Boot” Smoot, a liaison that might have been classified as rape had she seen fit to report it. So Addy had begun to raise the boy with her grandma, for her mother couldn’t bear to look at her. Pretty soon, she wouldn’t be there for her mother to ignore, for on this night all traces of Addy and her sister were about to be erased from this earth.

They were drunk and swaying slightly as they emerged from the bar, a chorus of whistles and catcalls sending them on their way, a boozy wind in their sails. Addy tripped and landed on her ass, and her sister doubled over with laughter. She hauled the younger girl up, her skirt rising to reveal her nakedness, and as they stood swaying they saw the young men packed into the car, the ones in the back climbing over one another to catch a glimpse. Embarrassed and not a little afraid, even in their drunke

They had walked only a few yards when they heard the sound of the car behind them and the headlights picked them out among the stones and fallen pine needles on the road. They looked behind them. The huge twin eyes were almost upon them, and then the car was alongside and one of the rear doors had opened. A hand reached out for Addy, grasping. It tore her dress and drew ragged parallel cuts along her arm.

The girls started ru

“We used to call them whores,” said Poveda. His eyes were still u

He was in his own place now, no longer Phil Poveda, a late thirty-something software engineer with a paunch and a mortgage. Instead, he was a boy again. He was back with the others, ru

“Hey, hold up!” he cried. “Hold up, we got money!”

And around him, the others cracked up laughing, because it was Phil, and Phil knew how to have a good time. Phil always made them laugh. Phil was a fu

They chased the girls into the Congaree and along Cedar Creek, Truett stumbling and falling into the water, James Foster helping him to his feet again. They caught up with them where the waters began to grow deeper, close by the first of the big cypress trees with their swollen boles. Melia fell, tripping on an exposed root, and before her sister could pull her to her feet they were on them. Addy struck out at the man nearest her, her small fist impacting above his eye, and Landron Mobley hit her so hard in response that he broke her jaw and she fell back, dazed.

“You fucking bitch,” Landron said. “You fucking, fucking bitch.” And there was something in his voice, the low menace, that made the others pause; even Phil, who was struggling to hold on to Melia. And they knew then that it was going down, that there was no turning back. Earl Larousse and Grady Truett held Addy down for Landron while the others stripped her sister. Elliot Norton, Phil, and James Foster looked at each other, then Phil pushed Melia to the ground and soon he, like Landron, was moving inside, the two men falling into a rhythm beside each other while the night insects buzzed around them, attracted by the scent of them, feeding on the men and on the women, and probing at the blood that began to seep into the ground.

It was Phil’s fault, in the end. He was getting off the girl, breathing hard, his face turned away from her, looking toward her sister and her sister’s ruined face, the import of what they were doing gradually dawning on him now that he had spent himself, when suddenly he felt the impact at his groin and he tumbled sideways, the shock already transforming itself into a burning at the pit of his stomach. Then Melia was on her feet and ru