The Forsaken

Qui

“You want a spanking, Qui

Jason found the idea of Uncle Qui

“Well, I bet you didn’t know this,” Jean said. “I once went up to Graceland to meet him. This was only a few months before he died. When we got up there, he was upstairs in his bedroom and wouldn’t come down. I heard his voice at the top of the steps, but when I turned to look, Elvis was gone. All of it very strange. Hard to remember.”

“With Dad?” Qui

“Your dad was friends with some of Elvis’s bodyguards,” Jean said. “When he found out I how much I loved Elvis, he took me to Memphis on his motorcycle. We stayed down in the Jungle Room and listened to music. We played pool downstairs until dawn. He had the kindest old black woman who cooked for him. She made your father and me some eggs and bacon. At Graceland. Can you imagine?”

“You’re right,” Qui

Jean took a big sip of wine. She shrugged back at Qui

Qui

“Leave it.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Leave it.”

“You made di

Soon, Qui

Halfway into his cigar, a truck pulled into the driveway by the house and he heard the telltale squeak of Boom’s old door. He was a hulking shadow, making his way from the hill, where the farmhouse was perched, down to the stone pit, taking a seat on a log across from Qui

“Watching a fire sober isn’t as much fun as when you’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” Qui

“You like to think on things,” Boom said. “I used to drink to turn all that shit off.”

The right arm of his coat had been neatly cut and pi

“You got a smoke for me?” he asked.

Qui

Boom got the cigar going, blowing out the warm smoke into the cold air.

“I tried you at the office,” Boom said, “but Mary Alice said you were out with Lillie.”

“Went out to see E. J. Royce.”

“That motherfucker is crazy.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Left you a message,” Boom said. “Guess you didn’t get it.”

The logs had started to smoke and flames started to rise high off the dry oak as Qui

“I was working on Ke

“Working on it.”

“Well, I had my head up under the hood, doing my thing, minding my own business.”

Qui

“Well, I heard Chuck McDougal out in the lot talking to Mr. Dupuy,” Boom said. “I had the bay door open and they didn’t even know I was there or I could hear them.”

“Dumbasses,” Qui

“They go

“Son of a bitch.”

“Both of ’em,” Boom said.

“Sometimes I wonder why I came back.”

“Sometimes?” Boom said. “Shit, I wondered that from the first moment you stepped foot back in Jericho.”

Boom clenched the cigar in his teeth and gri

•   •   •

On the front porch of her old bungalow two blocks from the Jericho Square, Diane Tull kept a collection of wind chimes, now tinkling and twirling in the January wind. Diane was getting ready for bed after spending the last hour talking with her son Patrick, who’d just moved back to Phoenix and found work at a bookshop in Scottsdale. Her other son, David, didn’t call as much. He lived in Nashville, waiting tables during the day and singing for tips outside Ernest Tubb Record Shop at night. Her second husband, their father, had been a frustrated singer/songwriter who thought of himself as the James Taylor of the Southwest, singing about Indians and sunsets. At first, he’d seemed charming to Diane. Later, she knew he was completely and utterly full of shit.

Diane was glad to be in her own home, one of the fortunate folks who’d gotten through the storm with a place to live. A big oak had crushed the roof over her living room, but she’d never had to move out, all the repairs going on under a blue tarp while she was at the Farm & Ranch. She’d even gotten a few improvements to her kitchen with the insurance money: new counters, new sink, and a brand-new dishwasher.

When did her life get so boring that she got excited about a damn dishwasher?

The wind chimes clicked and spun outside, cold wind whistling through windowsill cracks and under the doors, making a bad racket, enough to make people in town nervous, the way they were now, whenever a storm blew through. Diane took off her wet towel and changed into some gray sweatpants and a white tank top, finding a spot on her bed to read a new novel by James Carlos Blake until she fell asleep. She’d be back at work at seven a.m. to sell that feed and seed.

Diane heard the creak of the slats on her front porch and the clunk of boots.

Diane closed the book and stood, listening to the soft-thudding footsteps outside, and then turned off the bedside lamp to see a little better in the dark.

The front porch light had already been turned off and at first she thought it was Hank Stillwell again, drunk as a goat and not having any sense of decency about the time. But even in the darkness, she could tell it was a young man with long hair and a beard, walking from end to end on the front porch, reaching up and touching a glass wind chime, making the sound stop for a moment and then start again as he moved away. He leaned toward the window to her living room and peered in for a long moment.

Diane Tull kept a loaded J. C. Higgins 12-gauge under her bed and knew how to use it. She got to her knees, reached through the boxes to find it, and pulled it up on top of her thighs, squatting there and listening.

The man walked off the porch and down the steps. She stood and peered through lace curtains again, seeing nothing of him, wondering if maybe he’d been at the wrong house looking for the wrong person. Since the tornado, lots of folks didn’t know one end of town from the other, all the wayfinders and landmarks ripped out in a few seconds.