was at home, on the phone with her drunkard brother’s partner. C.W. Roark had once loved Raymond Turner like a real brother, but the man had carved too many worry lines around Rennie’s eyes. Now he could crawl into a Jack Daniel’s bottle and stay there, for all Roark cared.
She’s seen it before, he said.
You want me to handle supplies?
Roark clapped him on the back. Yep. My accountant will call you with the budget specifics. But first, get a crew on that there shed.
Morlon glanced at it. Tear it down?
Hell, no. Get it in usable shape. That’s our storage overflow.
Redheart crossed his arms, his expression cold. Storage, he said. You’re gonna leave that abomination standin. Worse, you want me and my wife to go in and outta there a dozen times a day.
Didn’t take you for a superstitious man.
It’s a bad place. You know what happened there.
I’m countin on it. People love Old West stories. The bloodier, the better.
It ain’t gonna make your family look good.
Or yours. That Comanche runnin with the Piney Woods Kid was a Redheart.
My ancestor was an outlaw, but he wasn’t no blasphemer like yours.
Roark laughed. Back then it wasn’t called blasphemy. They called it frontier justice. Red Thornapple’s gonna write an article about it for the Warrior-Tribune. We’ll hang a copy on our wall. Make it part of the place’s ambience.
Redheart shook his head. Ambience. Well, it’s your money. But me and Silky ain’t goin in that shed.
After Redheart left, Roark turned back to the depot. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. It’ll be nice to have a place of our own where we can eat a bite and drink coffee with our friends after we retire. Maybe Rennie and me can talk Will into workin here on weekends. Get his hands dirty before college. Who knew? The boy might even want to run the place one day.
C.W. started toward his truck as the wind kicked up, blowing grit from the yard.
Near the old storage building, the air shimmered for a moment, like heat wafting off a summer highway. Then the shimmer faded, and everything lay in shadow. Somewhere nearby, the first cricket chirped.
Chapter Four
October 7, 2014—New Orleans, Louisiana
Rennie Roark sobbed. The sound seemed to imbue Darrell LeBlanc’s Samsung with physical weight. He had just told her that Raymond had refused professional help again. It had been about eighteen months since her brother had admitted his drinking problem, but in that time, he had fallen off the wagon twice. Whenever LeBlanc found Raymond unconscious under the tree or face down on the floor or slumped over the toilet, the agency had to close while they played cards or checkers or watched television cooking competitions. Raymond shook and trembled and groaned and sometimes upset the board or threw the remote at LeBlanc’s head and dashed for his car, intending to find the nearest liquor store and drink himself into a stupor. LeBlanc tackled him, fought him hand to hand, and sat on his chest until the fit passed. Today Raymond slept in his easy chair, an old episode of Gilligan’s Island on TV, as LeBlanc gave Rennie the details. She wept and offered to fly out and beat Raymond’s ass like their momma should have done. LeBlanc told her it would be all right.
When they hung up, Raymond still slept, his brow furrowed, his nails digging in to the armrests. He was coming to the worst of it again. LeBlanc might be forced to restrain him, which could technically be called kidnapping. That, or try to have him committed.
No. Underneath his grief, he’s still strong. I hope.
LeBlanc sat on the couch, the springs creaking under his six-foot-three, 260-pound defensive end’s muscular frame, and changed the channel to ESPN. Soon a game of some sort would come on, and for as long as Raymond slept, he would watch a lower-stakes contest play out according to a set of defined rules and a clear time limit, a moment in which everyone would know it was over and who had won.
In the easy chair, Raymond twitched and groaned, his unkempt dark hair sweaty and plastered to his forehead. He was probably six inches shorter than LeBlanc but only thirty pounds lighter. The booze had gone to his belly, which distended over his belt. A graying, three-day, patchy beard covered his sallow cheeks and chin. Hard living made you old. Nightmares did not help either.
The dream never changed. Raymond tried to save Marie. He failed.
Marie had been driving on the Mississippi River bridge in Baton Rouge when a truck tried to change lanes and clipped her rear bumper. She spun and crashed into the railing, the grille crumpling all the way into the back seat, crushing her. The truck had never been found, and for a long time, Raymond wept and thought about the vanished vehicle and its faceless operator and drank himself to sleep. It was as if God himself had plucked the driver and the truck off the earth. Witnesses could not even agree on whether the truck had been maroon or navy blue or black, brand-new or an early ’90s model. Raymond had no one to punch, no one to shoot, so he dove into every bottle of booze he could find. He took cabs to Armstrong Park at 2 in the morning and sat against the statues, watching the ebb and flow of forgotten people with no place else to go. Friends told him it was just a matter of time before he joined Marie in the family mausoleum.
Well, yeah, he thought. That’s the point.
Still, no matter how blackout drunk he got, the dream visited him at least three times a week. In it, he stood on the bridge as traffic zipped by. He leaned against the railing, the same one that would drive the engine block through Marie’s abdomen. The winter wind screamed off the water. The night sky was pitch black. When Marie’s Pontiac shimmered into view, Raymond recognized the truck that would kill her, even though it was never the same one—sometimes a Ford, sometimes a Chevy, sometimes an amorphous blob. He tried to warn her, but nothing ever worked. His feet were lead, fused to the bridge, and his arms might have weighed three tons each. His voice disappeared, too. No matter how he tried to shout, nothing came out except a shrill whine.
Tonight, as he stood on the dream bridge again, Marie’s car appeared just as the truck, dark green this time, struck it. She spun and careened straight for Raymond, her face floating above the steering wheel. Just as she was about to run him down, she opened her mouth and said, Ray.
When he jerked forward, awake and roaring, tears on his face, LeBlanc had already reached him. The big man gave him a bottle of water and rubbed his shoulders and held him as he wept, until he fell asleep again.
A week later, after Raymond returned to work, he studied some financial documents at his desk. LeBlanc goofed around on the computer. It was nearing five o’clock. They would have to grab dinner soon, or LeBlanc might start eating the drywall.
Raymond dropped the papers on his desk and sighed, rubbing his bleary eyes.
I can’t look at this shit anymore, he said.
LeBlanc did not look up. You called Rennie lately?
Raymond stood up and stretched. Not since the last time you made me.
Reckon
