Poor Boy Road (Jake Caldwell #1) (4 page)

Willie drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for Howie in the clearing where the Skaggs' trailer slumped. Shane wanted to meet at four o’clock and they only had five minutes to make it. He eyed the disarray around him. A rusted Coleman grill next to a makeshift fire pit holding the blackened aluminum shells of dozens of Old Milwaukee cans. Sonic and McDonald’s wrappers spilled from ripped and scattered trash bags, cardboard beer cases and empty cartons of cigarettes resting in front of the trailer where they were thrown.

Howie Skaggs, skinny with auburn hair he probably cut himself using rusty scissors and no mirror, stumbled toward Willie’s truck, his hangover apparent as he squinted against the descending afternoon sun. He stuffed his lucky Green Lantern T-shirt into the front of his jeans before climbing into the back of the truck. Bennett, Howie’s brother and trailer mate, waited in the truck bed, chain smoking generic cigarettes and flicking his zippo lighter open and closed. A third character named Artie Thomas sat next to Bennett. Willie went to high school with Artie and occasionally used him, but he wasn’t a regular crew member. Willie didn’t trust the shifty-eyed asshat, but sometimes they needed a body for grunt work.

Willie headed deeper into the country down Poor Boy Road. The wet winter had taken its toll on already marginal roads, and he bounced off familiar ruts for a few miles. They crossed Miller’s Creek with a splash, and darted along a partially hidden path marked by a rusted blue, fifty-five gallon barrel hiding in the weeds. Fifty yards of winding, narrow path led to Willie’s trailer. The double-wide slunk back in the trees behind a dirt expanse adorned with a red picnic table on one end, and a rusted, steel A-frame swing from the sixties on the other. Worn chains without seats dangling in the breeze. Trash Willie had yet to burn neatly piled in bags next to a scorched drum.

A new Lincoln Navigator waited for them, shiny and black save for streaked mud splashes on the lower frame. Willie parked under the shade of a gnarled oak. Shane came around the trailer by the picnic table, zipping up the fly of his black slacks. His biceps and pecs bulged through a thin, gray shirt two sizes too small. A used car salesman’s smile blazed through his black goatee and dark sunglasses. Willie put the truck in park and climbed out as Shane’s giant bodyguard, Antonio, emerged from the Navigator. Shane was a compact ball of muscle, like a pitbull. In comparison, Antonio was a black mountain who scared people into submission just being there.

“Willie,” Shane said, offering a solitary, bone-crunching pump. Shane sat at the picnic table. Willie and Bub joined him as the three other mopes headed inside the trailer. Shane lit a cigarette, took off his sunglasses and set them on the flaking wood.

“How you been?” Willie asked.

“Good. Business is picking up a bit, money rolling back in as you know.”

“Not as fast as I’d like.”

“Not as fast as any of us would like, Willie. Patience.”

“You must be doing better than us,” Bub said. “Nice Navigator.”

Shane’s thick eyebrows drew together and he inclined his head slightly toward Bub. Willie’s lips tightened.

“Was I talking to you, Bub?”

“No,” Bub whined, like a six year old who got his hand caught in the cookie jar.

“Then keep your mouth shut until I ask you something. Nod that fat fucking skull if you get me.”

Bub nodded and scratched at the table with a yellowed thumb nail, red faced and abashed. Shane’s clenched jaw released.

“I got two things,” he continued. “One is the deal I mentioned. The other is a loose end we need to deal with.”

At the mention of a loose end, Willie tensed, his asshole puckering shut like a time lock vault at the bank. Bub’s hand gripped the edge of the table. Willie and Bub had both witnessed the bloody way Shane dealt with loose ends.

“Relax,” Shane said. “It’s not either of you. First though, the deal. We have an opportunity to supplement our product supply. Get back in the manufacturing business instead of playing middleman to the Mexicans.”

“How?” Willie asked.

“Got a connection out of St. Louis. He scored some bulk supplies we can use to make a ton of product.”

Bub’s hand released and he raised it to ask a question, like a third grader in class. “What about Bear?”

“Don’t worry about Bear.” Shane stubbed out his cigarette in a clay pot. “This is a finite supply we’ll set up in a temporary lab. We’ll cook it quick in a secluded area, and have the stuff bagged and ready for distribution. I take half of the haul for my other dealers, you get to keep half since you’re my biggest base of users anyway.”

“Who cooks?” Willie asked. Willie could cook decent meth in small batches, but it wasn’t the quality of Shane’s chefs.

“I bring up my guy from Kansas City. You, Bub and the Skaggs’ boys assist. My cook brings me my half, you guys sell the rest and I take my usual cut minus five percent.”

“Minus five?”

“Yeah,” Shane said. “You’ve been doing good work here, Willie. Times have been tight, but you stayed the course and didn’t bitch. Thought I’d give you a little bonus for this batch as a thank you.”

“Appreciate it, Shane,” Willie said, allowing a smile to appear. “Where’s the cook going to be?”

“Got an old house picked out on Poor Boy Road. Saw it on a helicopter tour over the area last month. Antonio checked it out a couple weeks ago and says it looks good. Even has a back door trail outta there in case shit goes bad.”

Willie was pretty familiar with the inhabitants of Poor Boy Road and couldn’t think of any abandoned house. It had to be hidden pretty well. Much needed dollar signs flashed. If it was a big enough haul, he could get the hell out of this racket and Warsaw.

“Sounds good,” Willie said. “When?”

“Tomorrow,” Shane said. “We get the lab set up, and cook all day and night. My guy bails by Thursday night and you’re set with product for a while. We use the Mexican product to build up a little surplus so the demand doesn’t outrun the supply.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Willie took a deep breath. “And the other thing?”

Shane’s piercing black eyes bored into Willie’s soul. Made it like every thought he ever had was laid out on the table; one reason Willie never played poker with the man. That and Shane was the world’s worst loser.

“You got somebody who can’t keep his mouth shut,” Shane said. “My insider says he’s feeding info to the narcotics task force Bear set up.”

“That group’s done,” Bub said. “Cleared out last fall.”

“You don’t know shit about shit, Bub. The task force didn’t go away. They’re just lying in the weeds, waiting to pounce.”

“You trust your insider?” Willie asked.

Shane pursed his lips. “More than most. I got a pretty deep hook in. Your guy is negotiating. He hasn’t given them names yet, but it’s close.”

Willie considered his crew. Bub wouldn’t say anything to anybody. Howie and Bennett would be loyal up until the point where they got seriously squeezed by the cops and neither had shown a sign of that. There were a couple of guys who worked with them last summer, but one got locked up for stealing cars and the other moved out west somewhere. The one guy left with knowledge about anything was the one he never fully trusted.

“Artie,” Willie said.

Shane winked. “I knew you were smart, Willie.”

“Shit.”

“That’s exactly what he is right now,” Shane said. “He’s mine.”

Bub shrugged off the demise of one of his cohorts, the fat rolls of his neck bulging out with the effort. Artie was a douche bag. If he disappeared, the machine would keep running. Willie didn’t want to think about Artie’s fate, but it wasn’t like he could do anything to stop it.

“Fine,” Willie said. “He’s all yours. We can manage with the four of us. Gives us a bigger cut anyway.”

Shane winked and stood. He brushed the dirt from the seat of his black slacks and pointed to Antonio, who opened the trailer door and disappeared inside. There were shouts and a rock of the trailer as someone smashed against the wall. A terrified Artie spilled out the front door and crashed to the dirt with a face full of blood. Shane bent over him and spoke in a low voice. Artie shrank back and screamed “no” over and over, scrambling away from Shane. He backed into Antonio who boxed his ears and slapped a dark bag over his head. He secured the bag in place with a couple wraps of duct tape. Antonio hauled Artie up by the arm pits and carried him to the back of the Navigator, throwing him inside like a sack of potatoes.

“So, you start the cook tomorrow. Go get the place ready.” Shane wiped his hands with a handkerchief, then handed Willie a local map with directions to the cook house. “I’ll call you to make sure everything’s set and we’ll be ready to roll.”

Shane and Antonio climbed into the Navigator. They rolled out of the clearing and out of sight. Bub headed to the trailer leaving Willie by himself wondering how many pieces they would cut poor Artie into.

Jake turned off Poor Boy Road and up the lane to the house. He ignored the old mailbox stuffed with envelopes and fliers and rolled up the tree-canopied drive, wincing as overgrown branches scraped along the roof of his truck.

The old homestead was a snapshot of when he left at eighteen. The brown ranch still needed paint and still gave off a “go the fuck away” vibe. Curtains drawn on the windows, porch light clinging for life by the wires, and a screen door hanging askew by the top hinge. The front door stood open, but it was dark inside. Jake parked behind a maroon Taurus, probably Janey’s, and got out.

A late afternoon breeze rustled through the trees and across the face of the house, sucking the air from inside. A dead leaves smell of death and decay. Probably why Janey had the front door open. He climbed the cracked concrete steps to the door, stopping short of the last one. He still had time to get back into his truck and bust ass out of town before he got wrapped up with his father’s situation. But, even then, Keats’ two day deadline wasn’t going away.

Janey emerged through the door, a freshly lit cigarette in hand, as if she read his thoughts of bolting. Coming out to lasso him inside. She looked thin, even for her, in blue jeans and a white T-shirt under a red plaid button down. A pang of guilt stabbed his gut. His baby sister looked ten years older than he did. Her face brightened. She hopped off the front porch and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his chest.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” She stepped back, taking him in. “You look good, big brother.”

“Thanks…” Jake said. He started to say “you too,” one of those automatic programmed responses people gave, but he didn’t want to start the reunion with a bald-faced lie so he stuck with the truth. “It’s good to see you, Janey.”

“It’s been awhile.” She dropped the cigarette and stubbed it out with a scuffed brown shoe. Jake last spoke to her a year ago, a few awkward moments at best when the tax bill on the family property was due. They used to be close before he split and left her stuck in that shithole.

“Still working at the sheriff’s office?”

“Still,” she said. “A monkey could do my job, but it pays the bills.”

“And Luther?”

“Same. Getting fatter,” she said. “They took him off the loading dock and stuck him in the office at the lumber yard. Assistant manager. A little better pay and hours. Gives him more time to make the rounds at the bars.”

The arduous chores of taking care of her father and bailing Nicky out of trouble locked her fate in place at too young an age. Janey ended up marrying Luther Tully, a pot-bellied lug of marginal intelligence who managed to hold a regular job at the lumber yard in town. Luther hated to bathe as much as he hated to shave. They had a couple of snot-nosed little delinquents running around town: Eli and Willis. Jake couldn’t tell his nephews apart since he’d only seen their pictures from Janey’s sporadic Christmas cards. Though Janey could’ve done better than Luther, she also could’ve done worse.

Janey used to be pretty. Not like she would ever grace the cover of Cosmo, but she was a natural beauty. Straight, white teeth and bouncy natural, red curls that compressed and released with every stride like dozens of little springs. In the wee small hours in his Kansas City apartment when he lay in bed counting the headlights from passing cars flashing across the bedroom wall, his thoughts would drift to her. The guilt of leaving his little sister behind with Stony lay across him like a suffocating blanket he couldn’t shrug off.

Their names ran along those lines of hard living etched in her face. Luther, Nicky, Eli, Willis, Stony, Warsaw, Jake. The curl had disappeared from her bouncing mane over the years, like the hair straightened on its own from the weight of despair, the weight of knowing she would never leave Warsaw.

“So how is he?” Jake asked.

Janey pondered the question. Her eyes were dark and heavy, once full of life, now full of something else. She kicked the cigarette butt into the overgrown grass.

“Cancer is eating him alive,” she said. “We keep pumping him with drugs to deal with the pain, but he moans when he’s awake and groans when he’s asleep. Every third day or so he actually knows what the hell is going on. Ain’t any way for anyone to go.”

“Some would say he deserves every ounce of pain he’s in.” Janey cringed as if he slapped her. Damn it. Why did he say that out loud?

“Some would say that. I wouldn’t,” she said.

Janey saw some of the shit he and Nicky had gone through, but didn’t experience it herself, which must have made it easier to fudge the memory and forgive. Stony didn’t necessarily like having a girl. Bitched about it all the time. But through the bitching and moaning, he treated her more humanely than his sons.

“Where is he?”

“In his chair in front of the TV. He seems to like having it on, like it gives him something to focus on besides the pain in his gut. I just need some help.”

“Why don’t Gramma and Grandpa haul their ass up from Louisiana and help?” Jake asked.

“They died years ago. I left you a message.”

“Ahh, sorry,” he said. Asshole. “I don’t know anything about what to do.”

“There’s a nurse who comes in the mornings, monitors his meds, changes him. Gives him a sponge bath every few days.”

Jake sniffed the air wafting through the front door.

“Doesn’t smell like she’s done it in a while.”

Janey shifted, a hint of controlled impatience. He had no idea what she’d been through the last few years, and especially the last few months. He didn’t want to know then and was pretty damn sure he didn’t want to know now.

“He’s dying, Jake,” she said. “He’s past the point where the home nurse and I can do much more for him. Maybe he needs to go somewhere. One of those Hospice Houses? Then again, I have trouble seeing him in one of those places on his last days. Hell, I don’t know. He doesn’t have much time.”

“How much longer?”

“The doctors won’t say. Anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks.”

Jake leaned his head inside, then took a step back at the powerful smell. A musty mix of looming death and antiseptic cleaner. Maybe a hint of some lilac air freshener, its sweetness only adding to the nausea factor. He stepped inside and scanned the living room, memories washing over him. The fireplace where he and Nicky used to sit playing with their action figures, battling to the death on the brick mantle. The rocking chair where Mom would sit, sipping her tea, reading the Westerns she loved so much, occasionally knitting doilies that would adorn the coffee tables of her friends. Her brown eyes flitting between what she worked on and the front door. Waiting for Stony to come home from whatever bender he was on. She might sit for days at a time. Stony disappeared like that. He’d go to town on some errand and disappear for a week.

The old man’s tool belt, covered in dust bunnies, lay abandoned in the corner by the fireplace. Stony used to build houses, the one thing at which he excelled other than drinking—and beating his wife and kids. Jake still had a scar on his temple from the ring. His tenth birthday when he had the gall to wear Stony’s tool belt for a school project. Most fathers would actually help their kids build a bird house, maybe swell in pride at the sight of their son wearing the tools of their trade. Most fathers.

Jake resisted the overwhelming urge to run again. He didn’t need to be here, didn’t want to be here. To hell with the old rotting bastard. That wasn’t his father in there, Jake never had one as far as he was concerned. The feeling coursed through his veins, screaming and lighting his brain on fire, the same urge that raged through him at eighteen. He might have bolted had Janey not stroked the back of his arm, anchoring him. Besides, even if he bailed on Stony, he still had to fill his obligation to Keats.

In the far corner of the living room rested the old brown recliner, the Styrofoam stuffing peeking through the worn armrests. Dad’s chair that nobody but him could sit in. You might manage a spell in it while he was gone, but he’d know. The second he dropped his bony ass in his chair he’d sense some change in the cushion or smell something funny. His eyes would fire up and dart from family member to family member until he found the guilty party. He’d give a tight-lipped smile, and nod, a bobblehead on a tight spring. He wouldn’t do anything then, but he would remember.

An old floor lamp cast a glow on to the yellowed skeleton in the chair. The legs and torso covered with a thick afghan blanket, howling, white timberwolves on it. One of those blankets spied in a thrift shop with wonders of why the hell anyone would buy something like that. The hands twitched on the armrests, scratching at the emerging stuffing; mere bones covered by paper-thin skin. His thick, red hair replaced with white wisps hanging limply against a sunken face. His once lively eyes cast a dull, uninterested gaze toward the television sitting in its usual place against the wall. The five o’clock news from Kansas City on the tube with no sound.

The shock of his father in this helpless condition pulled Jake across the threshold. Janey placed her hands on either side of the doorjamb as he approached. With each deliberate step, the old man’s labored breathing grew louder, a rattling sound as the air bounced off his mucus-lined lungs. His jaw hitched open and shut, lips pulled in against toothless gums. Jake stopped at the chair and squatted, unsure what to do.

The memory movie rolled, flashes of times long ago. Over the years he only focused on the bad times, the beatings and the verbal rants. Lashes with the belt, a tree switch, or whatever else his father could get his hands on. As he took in what remained of his father, other things surfaced. Helping Stony fix the car of a couple with a young baby who couldn’t afford to get it towed to town. Playing catch with Jake and Nicky in the back yard, showing them how to throw a curveball. Patiently helping Jake thread a worm on a hook when they went fishing at the pond, not even getting angry at Jake’s squirms as the worm drew back on itself when pierced with the hook. A high five and a rare hug when Jake shot his first deer. Another one when Jake broke the school record for touchdowns in a single season in high school.

His father struggled to breathe and Jake’s mind drifted to the comic books he had as a kid. One of Batman’s arch enemies. A split personality. One side of the villain’s face was the dashing district attorney do-gooder Harvey Dent. The other side, the scarred and crazed villain Two Face. You could look at Harvey Dent and try to justify the things Two Face did. Stony had his share of Harvey Dent moments, but his Two Face moments greatly tipped the scales. The bad always outweighed the good. In the end, the bad was all that mattered.

Stony’s head stirred, shaking almost imperceptibly from side to side. A few rapid blinks over the vacant eyes. They moved to his lap and slowly to Jake. Jake’s heart beat fast as those eyes pulled focus and saw him, really saw him there. His father’s thick, eyebrows furrowed together and recognition flickered. Jake was unsure if he wanted to reach out and touch his hand, or walk out and drive back home. Maybe he had a little Two Face in him as well.

“Hey, Stony,” he said at last, hands clenched tightly together on top of his knees. What else could he say?

Stony grunted and whatever electrical circuits fired in his brain to bring him briefly to life clicked off and the vacant gaze returned. His head rested back against the tattered recliner and the rattled breathing started up again.

“I gotta get to work, Jake,” Janey said behind him. “There’s food in the fridge and he shouldn’t need any medication for a while. I wrote the meds down on a list on the table. I’ll swing back on my dinner break to check on you.”

Jake focused on the howling wolves on the blanket covering his dad’s legs.

“Call if you need anything,” Janey said.

It wasn’t until her car started and crunched over gravel did the tears roll down Jake’s face.