Dark River Road (40 page)

“I’m not going back to the house,” he told Cinda when she said she’d go with him, “I can’t.”

Nothing felt real right now, not even being with Cinda, standing beneath the canvas tent while people drifted away, feeling more alone amidst half the town than he ever had before. The strong scent of gladiolas and carnations filled the air, dozens of flower wreaths stacked up behind the casket that gleamed with a silvery mist in the damp light.

Dempsey came up to him, his hand holding on to Mikey, his eyes sad. “Mikey’s goin’ with me for a little while. It’ll be crowded at your house.”

Mikey. It’d been so hard these past few days, but somehow Mikey had been the strong one this time. He’d cried, holding on to Chantry and bawling until he hiccupped, then threw up, but after that, he’d accepted the inevitable. At the funeral home, Mikey was stoic and polite. He’d sat for hours in a chair near Mama, and everyone said what a good child he was, so brave in his sorrow. No one had mentioned Chantry, and that suited him just fine. He didn’t cry, couldn’t cry. He was too angry. It was all tight inside, and sometimes he felt like a Coke bottle when it’d been shaken real hard, the pressure building up so high and fierce he was afraid he’d just explode if the top came off. So he’d stayed outside the room all he could, unable to look at Mama lying on white satin in her pretty Sunday dress with the tiny lavender flowers. She’d loved lavender, and before they closed the coffin lid, he’d tucked a spray he’d bought at the flower shop in with her, his last gift, silent and too late.

Now he knelt down in front of Mikey, looking into his deep blue eyes. “You’re gonna be okay, sport.”

“I know. We’ve got sharks.”

Chantry didn’t know what to say. He felt sometimes like Mikey existed on a far different level, one that was made of wishes and dreams instead of harsh reality, but maybe that was better. It had to beat this.

“Right.” He stood up, looked at Dempsey. “I’ll be by for him later. I just don’t think I can be at the house right now.”

“We’ll be fine.” Dempsey glanced at Cinda, then back at him. “Mikey already knows how to grieve. In this world, that’s a gift.”

“What did he mean by that?” Cinda asked when Dempsey and Mikey left, the man lifting the child into his arms and carrying him, Mikey’s arms going around his neck to hold on.

“That Mikey’s luckier than I am.”

It didn’t matter that she didn’t understand. He wasn’t real sure that he did either, he just knew that Mikey would be okay, and right now, that was enough.

“So where’s her savings? I’ll find out. You know I will. That’s not your money. That’s for Mikey. You better not spend it.”

“I’ll put it back when the insurance money comes in. Wasn’t that much anyway. Just a few thousand, and I only spent some of it. Old man Quinton said I had to give an accounting anyway on account of you boys bein’ minors and s’posed to collect Social Security benefits.”

Heat rose up in Chantry’s throat. Rainey was the one who benefitted most, it looked like to him. No wonder he hadn’t been in a bad mood much lately. He had more money and no wife looking over his shoulder telling him how to spend it.

“So what does old man Quinton get out of this?” he wanted to know, and narrowed his eyes when Rainey didn’t look at him. “Damn you both to hell. He’s got his hand in this, doesn’t he. Sure he does. He never misses a trick.” Rainey’s silence was an answer.

He was so mad he hitched a ride out to Six Oaks with Doc that afternoon when the clinic closed for the day. Mikey was over at Mrs. Rowan’s trailer since she kept him after school when Chantry had to work. He always paid her out of his own money for it, but she never charged that much, just enough so he felt like he’d done what he should and Mikey wouldn’t be resented.

“You going to take long?” Doc asked when he pulled to a stop on the shoulder of the road in front of Six Oaks. “I can wait and give you a ride back.”

“Thanks, but that’s okay.” Chantry opened the door and got out. Afternoon light stretched to the edge of the oaks in front of the house. “I know you got stuff to do.”

“So do you, it seems.”

He looked at him through the lowered window. Doc could read him pretty well. Or maybe it was just obvious he was mad as hell.

“Yeah. Guess I do.”

The same maid answered his knock on the front door, and the look she gave him told him she recognized him. She hesitated, then showed him into the entrance hall when he said he’d come to speak to Bert Quinton.

“I’ll see if he’s available to visitors.”

“Tell him I said he’d better be,” Chantry replied, and she made some little sound under her breath but headed for the back of the house and Quinton’s office. In a few minutes she returned to tell him he could wait just outside the office door.

“He’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

Chantry recognized the ploy. He was to cool his heels outside the door a while. Typical. He passed up the bench where Mikey had sat that day they’d come with Mama after his fight with Chris, then opened the office door and went on in despite the maid’s faint protest.

Quinton looked up. He stood behind his desk, light coming in through the windows, the dry creek bed a white dotted line against bright green grass outside. His eyes narrowed at Chantry but his voice was calm.

“You seem impatient today, Mr. Callahan.”

“Just how much is Rainey giving you out of my mother’s money?”

If the question caught him by surprise, he didn’t betray it. He returned Chantry’s hot stare so coolly ice should have formed between them. After a moment, he motioned him to a chair and sat down behind his desk, fingers end-to-end like he’d done before, looking at Chantry over his hands as if he was an interesting species of insect.

“You’ve been misinformed, Chantry. Rainey Lassiter has given me nothing.”

“That’s a lie.” Chantry still stood, staring down at Quinton. “You don’t do anything unless there’s something in it for you. So what is it this time? What kind of fee are you charging to help Rainey settle Mama’s estate?”

“Ah. So that’s it. Money. It usually comes down to that in the end. Few people are immune to the lure of profit. Everything, and everyone, has a price.”

“I don’t.”

Quinton smiled. “Don’t be naïve. Of course you do. Currency isn’t always based on gold bullion or greenbacks. There are more
 . . .
intangible
 . . .
forms of remuneration. Such as that ridiculous dog you raised a fuss about, for instance. You went to great lengths to keep him, yet in the end, it didn’t really cost money to get him back, did it. All it cost was his potential. I wonder, do you find that worth it?”

Chantry just stared at him for a minute, then said, “I’m not here to talk about the dog. I asked you a question. What are you getting out of Mama’s estate?”

“Only a minor fee for my accountant’s involvement. No more than is customary. Not that I owe you any explanation, you understand. I’m simply giving you the courtesy of a reply due to the fact that she was your mother and now you’re orphaned except for a stepfather. You should be grateful I’ve taken the time to get involved. Rainey Lassiter is not known for his business acumen. It could be much worse, Chantry. You’re still on probation. The court could decide that if you’re not thriving in your current environment, it’d be to your best interests to be removed from the house and placed in a more suitable home.”

He knew what was meant by that. His heart pounded fiercely in his chest. Around the tight ache in his throat he said, “So what was my mother’s price?”

“Excuse me?”

“My mother’s price. The reason she stayed here in Cane Creek and married Rainey in the first place. I’m sure you had the same kind of conversation with her that you’re using on me right now, this fake concern you’re spreading like poison. What was it? It had to do with me, I’m willing to bet. There’s not much else you could have used against her to make her do what you wanted.”

Light and shadow played behind Quinton, sunshine flirting with trees and clouds, and for a minute Chantry thought he wouldn’t reply. Then he leaned forward, his tone soft. “You still don’t know, do you? Carrie never told you. Well, I won’t either. She took that secret to the grave with her. It’s best to leave it there. Dead and buried.”

“How many secrets do you think you can hide up here before they stack up too high? It’s got to end one day.” He leaned forward to put his hands on the desk, staring straight into the old man’s eyes. “Be careful, because someday you’ll end up buried under all your lies.”

Quinton’s eyes narrowed slightly. “That could be misconstrued as a threat if I were a less tolerant man. However, I understand that you’re still grieving your mother. Be forewarned that I am not always so lenient.”

Chantry straightened. He wanted to say
Fuck you
, but that’d only provoke Quinton into acting on his threat. While he may not care for himself, he had Mikey to think about. And the dog. So he just stared at Quinton without saying anything, then turned around and walked out.

He passed Chris standing in the entrance hall but didn’t speak, just went out the front door and back down the long, curved driveway and to the highway that ran parallel to the river’s course. It followed the river all the way up to south of the highway going to Helena, Arkansas. Sometimes he felt like he should just keep going, too.

It wasn’t a big surprise that Doc caught up with him less than a mile down the road, and he got in when the Suburban braked to a halt, not speaking until they were almost to Sugarditch.

“Why are you here, Doc?”

“In Cane Creek? Hell, I don’t know. Born here, but went off to the service then down to Auburn to study veterinary medicine. Somehow I found my way back. My family’s all here. Scattered, but close. Maybe that’s why.”

“Don’t you get tired of living in a place owned by one man?”

“Quinton just thinks he owns everything. He doesn’t own me, and he doesn’t own Dale Ledbetter. He’d like to, maybe, but he doesn’t. Of course, we were born here and we knew we had choices, so we never got caught in Quinton’s pocket. That’s where trouble usually starts—in a man’s pants, either his pocket or his pecker. Leads to disaster most of the time.”

Chantry couldn’t help smiling at that. “Country wisdom, huh.”

“I’d say it’s pretty universal.”

Yeah, that sounded about right.

Chantry went back to school the next day.
The teachers treated him differently, as if he might just break at any minute, and most of the kids looked at him without saying much. No one knew what to say, he guessed, and he didn’t either. He kept to himself, focused on making up all the work he’d lost during three weeks of absence. At lunchtime he went outside instead of sitting with Donny and the other boys. There were only a couple more weeks of school left. He could stick it out until then. He didn’t intend to give Quinton any excuse to send him to a foster home.

Lately, he’d thought a lot about Tansy, and wondered where she was and if she was okay. No one had heard from her since she’d left. She didn’t even know about Mama. He wondered if she felt like he did right now, alone and uncertain and not sure where to go or what to do. It’d all seemed like the right thing to do, staying with Rainey and not telling what had happened, but most of the time it just felt like a betrayal. Like Tansy must have felt when Chris Quinton didn’t stand by her. Mama was gone, but he knew what he’d done. What he’d not done. And it was the not doing that felt so much worse than anything he ever had done.

A sin of omission, Mama had once called it when he’d not done what he was supposed to and she’d caught him. Sometimes those could be the most deadly, she’d said, and because she’d looked so sad that he’d failed her, he hadn’t asked what she meant by that. Now he knew.

Mikey took to going down to Dempsey’s house on Sunday afternoons after Chantry took him to church and waited for him to get out. He wouldn’t go inside the church and he wouldn’t even glance toward the cemetery. Sometimes he walked around, sometimes he just sat under a tree across the street and waited. But he took Mikey because Mikey wanted to go, and he would have carried Mikey down the gravel road to Dempsey’s house, too, except that Mikey insisted on walking by himself.