South of Shiloh Read online

  They had discussed adoption; Paul had determined that the risk of taking on someone else’s wild-card genetics outweighed the benefits.

  Jenny wiped off the hair on the T-shirt she wore to bed, lay back, and studied the pebble-beige ceiling, so subdued and easy on the eye. She and Paul had an upper-medium income and upper-medium expectations. Her life was set on medium cruise control. The scenery going by was a slow, comfortable smother in medium beige. Abruptly, she composed a vision of another ceiling. Older, yellowed like the thumbed pages of Paul’s paperback, stained with watermarks and fissures intersecting like the lines on an open palm.

  For one instant, she could feel and taste the tickle of their cooling sweat and the taboo smell of the cigarette smoke rising in sinuous curls.

  This was where her daydreams degraded into a version of Crossfire.

  Forget it. He walked out on you.

  You let him walk away. You weren’t willing to take a chance…

  He was kinda a mess at the time, you’ll recall; back from the war, in trouble with his police job…

  I thought that was your thing, wanting to deal with hard cases. You could have tried to get through to him…

  Enough.

  She switched off the light and reclined in the dark, listening to her heartbeat, to her lungs take in air, then let it out. She imagined parking the Subaru on Laurel Street, getting out, and walking up the cracked concrete steps. Raising her hand. Knocking on the door.

  A teeter-totter of anticipation in the dark.

  She pictured herself parking the car, getting out, and walking up those steps, over and over, until she fell asleep.

  7

  IT WAS MITCH’S HABIT TO STAY UP LATER THAN his wife, so it wasn’t unusual for him to escape the house at eleven thirty for a walk around the neighborhood to have a last smoke before turning in. These days, he slept on a narrow bed he kept in the scrupulously clean downstairs den that served as his office.

  After packing his travel bag for tomorrow, he eased out the front door and walked slowly down the darkened street. Promptly at half past eleven, the white Escalade slowed and pulled to the curb.

  She’d turned the dome light off, so when he opened the passenger-side door, her bold eyes were concealed in shadow. And that’s how he thought of her, this irresistible shadow out of mythology almost: half Sphinx, half bitch in heat.

  She cut hair in Corinth.

  Marcy had learned her basic haircutting skills in jail, when she was barely out of her teens. Since then she’d put a lot of distance between the women’s correctional facility in Jackson and her spotless, airy beauty shop with ferns in the windows. It started normal enough, just making eyes at the few Leets’ family affairs he’d attended, their arms and hips grazing when they met. Then he’d stopped into her shop to buy some shampoo at closing time and next thing they were tearing each other’s clothes off in her back storeroom.

  “Jesus, I don’t know. Darl’s gonna catch us,” Mitch had muttered, liking the combination of being more scared and turned on than he’d ever been in his life.

  “Me and Darl’s got an arrangement,” she’d said in that deceptively bored, passive-aggressive voice. “Like the army and the faggots. Don’t ask don’t tell.”

  “…gonna put a gun to my head.”

  “Darl don’t put a gun on nobody unless I say so,” Marcy had said, slightly annoyed, like she didn’t care to repeat herself for the benefit of slow listeners. “We got two rules: no diseases and come home in time for breakfast, for the kids.”

  For over a year they’d been meeting like this. Mitch found it a maddening joke, the way she could steer a man into sex that practically bent the laws of physics. And both of them married to people they hardly slept with anymore.

  “When this is over we should go off together,” he said.

  “Won’t work,” she said.

  “Why the hell not?” he wanted to know.

  “You ever watch flypaper,” she said.

  “What?”

  “They put scent on it to attract the flies. The smart fly’s gonna get close enough to catch a buzz off the lure, then keep going. The ones who venture in too close get stuck,” she said.

  Mitch shook his head and placed his hand on her lap. “Flypaper,” he said.

  “Sweet and sticky. Where to,” Marcy Leets said.

  “Let’s drive down to the depot,” he said.

  A few minutes later they were standing in the deserted parking lot next to the Crossroads Museum in the warehouse district. Mitch lit a cigarette, passed it to her, and then looked up. The night had flipped warm, with an errant south wind driving black, stringy clouds.

  As he scanned the empty streets past an old red railroad car, he thought to tell her about Beeman stopping him on the road, then decided not to. Somewhere he heard kids running on skateboards, the rattle of wheels echoing off the old brick buildings. The breeze carried a whiff of something pungent. Marijuana maybe? Or the keen scent Marcy dabbed behind her ears, on her wrists, and the cleavage of her breasts, which always managed to be on display?

  “What’s that you’re wearing?” he asked.

  “You always ask that. Patchouli.” Spill from a streetlight caught on the whites of her eyes, her teeth, and described a nimbus in her tawny-blond hair. Fast nights like this she wore a loose cotton dress. When she dragged on the cigarette, the coal flared and he saw her clean, even features briefly illuminated. She’d pearl-dived in the sewage of Memphis and come up as coldly beautiful as carved ivory…

  …and just as hard.

  “It’s cold,” she said simply, handing back the cigarette.

  Mitch, thinking it was warm out, cocked his head. “Huh…?”

  “What you’re doing. You and Dwayne. I think you’re making a big mistake,” she said.

  “How’s that again?”

  “You want to destroy Beeman you should corrupt him, buy him, bankroll his run for sheriff down the line. That way you kill his Boy Scout heart and make him keep walking around with it gone bad in his chest,” she said.

  “Jesus.” Mitch shook his head. Once, he had heard Darl describe Marcy with pained awe, how when she got riled she was so damn mean that black widows carried her likeness on their stomachs. Well, I guess…

  “C’mon, walk with me,” Mitch said, wanting to change the subject. He flipped the smoke away, watched it skitter on the asphalt in a tiny shower of sparks. He took her hand and led her into the dark, around the side of the building.

  “Where we going?”

  “Out to the tracks.”

  “I’ll mess up my shoes.”

  “No you won’t.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in so their hips glided together.

  “What are you up to, Mitchell Lee?” she asked, watching her step.

  “Symbolic deal-making gestures, asking for a blessing,” Mitch said. He nuzzled her hair and savored the patchouli like a lingering whiff of the life she’d lived on the Memphis streets, where the sex came with a boost of drugs and murder. “You listen to blues?” he asked.

  “I guess.”

  They’d stepped over the railroad tracks and now stood face-to-face, in front of the depot. He whispered in her ear: “You know how down in the Delta the old black blues singers tell it? How you trade your soul for success? You gotta take your guitar down to the crossroads at midnight?”

  “You ain’t exactly got a guitar, honey,” Marcy said, toying with his belt buckle. She moved her hand. “’Bout now I suspect you’re praying for a harmonica…”

  Mitch sighed. “And for a crossroads, look where we’re standing.”

  “In a bunch of nasty old railroad tracks coming together.”

  “Exactly. X marks the spot, where the rails of the Memphis & Charleston and the Mobile & Ohio railroads intersect, in front of the old depot. Marcy, we are standing right on the fabled crossroads of the Western Confederacy.”

  “You lost me, sport,” Marcy said.

 
“All we need now is for the devil to open shop,” Mitch said.

  “Don’t go complicating a thing, Mitchell Lee,” Marcy said with an edge coming into her tone. “And don’t expect my blessing…”

  His hands eased down the sides of her hips. “If I can’t find me a proper devil to initial a contract, I figure you’re the next best thing…” Gathering and sliding up the loose cotton, searching for the band of the panties. “…Once you hike your dress up in the dark…” He felt her belly dry up, tighten, and pull away.

  “Just humor me,” Mitch said.

  “Maybe I ain’t in the mood to humor you,” she said.

  “Aw c’mon,” he whispered as he moved his hands to her shoulders and pressed down, insisting, guiding her.

  Marcy resisted, flung off his hands, and stepped back, tripping on a rail, catching her balance.

  “I’ve had about enough of this. Being taken for fuckin’ granted. You and Dwayne dragging Darl into this bullshit,” she said evenly, straightening her dress.

  “Whoa, wait a minute,” Mitch protested. “We talked…”

  “We talked about things changing. But this now—it’s way over the line,” she said firmly. There was just enough light off the street lamps to see the cold witchery come into her eyes.

  Damn, but Marcy’s moods and her favors balanced on greased-lightning divots and could turn on you quick.

  “Mitchell Lee,” she jabbed her finger at him, “I am not exactly pleased with you bringing in Dwayne and his Memphis crowd. I been there. They eat the cripples and the strays. I spent half my life getting Darl and the kids away from that bastard brother of his. We was just about living normal.”

  Mitch’s mouth dropped open. “This? You and me is normal?”

  “Best I can do,” she said doggedly. “My boys need a father.”

  It occurred to Mitch she could be dangerous, going off like this. He fished another fact from memory: how black widows mate, then sting the male to death and wrap him up so the babies can eat him.

  “C’mon, Marcy, don’t be like that,” he said, his voice reasonable, soothing. He reached for her. She parried his hand.

  “Knock it off. Truth is, I think what you’re doing is pretty damn shitty. I told Darl as much.”

  “Oh right. And you never did anything shitty?” Mitch came back at her.

  Marcy sniffed, looked away. “Whatever I might have done was when we were in the game. We all took our chances. And we had to learn it step by step; not all of a sudden overnight like you.”

  Mitch took a moment to control himself, to lower his voice. “Damn it girl, whose side you on?”

  Marcy raised her chin and the witch was back, looking him right in the eye. “I told Darl he goes through with this, I just might leave him. Something trips weird I got two kids to raise; that’s whose side I’m on.”

  Mitch stared at her, momentarily confused. Like she’d dumped a basket full of pink mice at his feet and now they were scurrying all over. What the hell’s going on here; phases of the moon, the tides, PMS? Who do you ask about this, the perils of a woman being a career criminal? What do you do? Hide the guns once a month?

  “You’re in one of your moods,” he said finally.

  “I’m telling you one last time, Mitchell Lee. Call it off and just walk away,” she said, drawing herself up.

  When he didn’t respond, she said, “Okay, that’s it.”

  And then she walked away; striding away in the darkness, back to her car, getting in, starting it, and leaving him alone on the tracks. He looked down and saw his belt buckle dangle, half unfastened, like the leavings of folly. Nobody was getting laid at the crossroads tonight. He exhaled, tidied up his belt, thought to curse, and finally just muttered, “Women.”

  Then he began the long walk home.

  8

  JENNIFER EDIN WOKE UP FEELING CROSS AND foolish, showered, and then stared in the bathroom mirror. The light coming off the bank of forty-watt vanity bulbs, while not harsh, was not exactly kind either. Jenny saw a thirty-five-year-old elementary-school teacher with tidy but slightly sagging boobs and suggestions of stretch marks on her flat tummy. Not exactly an airbrushed desperate housewife, are you, girl?

  Over breakfast she admonished Molly for not finishing her orange juice and then reprimanded her for not clearing her plate. By the time Jenny was positioned at her desk at school and had finished her second cup of coffee, she had made up her mind.

  Molly was out of sight, behind a partition in another homeroom. Jenny’s fifth-graders were starting to assemble; the girls talking, heads close, the boys plunging with more explosive energy.

  Spring weather. Short sleeves. Out of old habit, she checked their arms for signs of bruising and remembered her last bunch of city kids. The day she quit. Just three of them; one rode the bus from a homeless shelter, one was happy because he’d visited his dad the night before in Stillwater prison. The third, Andre, came to school hungry, so Jenny fixed an extra lunch every morning.

  She thought she might actually be getting through to Andre, gaining his trust, and so left him alone for just a minute with the bagged lunch. When she came back he was gone. So was her purse. She called the cops, who told her to call her credit card companies.

  She’d handled a lot worse: fistfights, knives pulled. Blood. But she’d reached her tipping point.

  Now she surveyed the bright eyes and ruddy faces assembling around her desk. Like a clot of ants joined by a shared-antennae wavelength, they sensed that Mrs. Edin was looking more serious than usual this morning.

  She could purge the daydreams with a simple, direct plan: sit down with Rane and propose setting up a meeting with Paul when he returned. They’d figure out an equitable way to structure breaking the news to Molly. Paul was good at stuff like that.

  No more drive-bys. Play it straight.

  Sitting erect at her desk before class began, she opened her cell, tapped in directory assistance, requested Rane’s number on Laurel in St. Paul, and selected the connect option.

  ONCE, AT AN AWARDS CEREMONY, THIS FULSOME PROFESSOR FROM the University of Missouri had compared John Rane, with a camera in his hands, to Odysseus: a man who was never at a loss. Rane picked up the phone on the second ring, heard the voice on the other end, and immediately sagged.

  I’m not ready for this.

  “John,” Jenny repeated, “it’s Jenny Edin.”

  “Yes,” Rane said, keeping his voice level.

  “It’s time we talked. About Molly. I’m in St. Paul tomorrow afternoon. I could drop by your house at, say, two. Would that be convenient for you?”

  “That would be fine,” Rane said, blinking through a bout of dizziness.

  “Good. See you then,” Jenny said in her best crisp Voice.

  What was yesterday, he wondered, a practice run? “Good-bye,” he said, but she had already ended the call. He sat at his kitchen table, wearing his old silk bathrobe, unshaven, unshowered, halfway through his first cup of coffee. He stared at the telephone like it was hot and still potent with Jenny Edin’s voice.

  And where’d she get that voice? Deeper than he remembered. With an unself-conscious authority that reminded him of an IRS collection agent who’d once interrogated him about a misapplied estimated-tax payment.

  Rane ran his fingers across his bare chest. They came away dotted with nervous sweat.

  Jesus.

  HER DECISION MADE, JENNY GLANCED AT THE WALL CLOCK. NINE thirty. Mississippi was in the same time zone. Dutifully, before the school day began, she wondered where Paul was and if they’d really driven all night.

  9

  MITCH DIDN’T NEED THE ALARM. HE WOKE UP covered in sweat, seeing Marcy’s hex eyes peering into him, felt them throb behind his forehead like a dull metal wedge.

  Goddamn her anyway.

  He eased from bed, taking care not to wake Ellie sleeping in the master bedroom upstairs, took a fast shower in the downstairs bath, shaved, and dressed quickly. Then he grabbed the bag he’d packed la
st night and quietly slipped from the house into the rain. Darl would be out in the Kirby woods about now, stringing the wind dangles, sighting with his range finder.

  On the way out of town, he stopped at KCs Espresso to pick up a large dark roast with a shot of espresso. By the time he turned off West 72 onto the access road to the Magnolia Regional Health Center, the jolt of caffeine had softened the headache.

  He entered the building, padded down the corridors, and, approaching the intensive care unit, smelled the cloud of orchids, lilies, tulips, carnations, and roses drifting from Hiram’s room half a ward away.

  “Immediate family,” Mitch said to the nurse at the desk.

  Like he’d told the AA group, Hiram Kirby had the outward aspect of a frail astronaut geared up in medical countdown for launch to inner space. One gnarled, liver-spotted hand marked with IV tape jutted from the soft, green sheets. And just a corner of his gaunt cheek showed above more tape that held the intubation tube inserted in his throat. Under a fluff of white hair, his watery blue eyes moved to and fro in wrinkled sockets pointed up toward, but not seeing, the fluorescent ceiling lights.

  The funeral scent of carnations and roses combined with the electronic beep of a Dash 4000, twelve-lead heart monitor, and the bubbly whoosh of the square gray respirator beside the bed.

  Two people kept vigil on chairs along the wall. The nurse had to stay, but Mitch glowered at the attorney from the Watts firm. The slick young vampire with a notary stamp and power of attorney request was ready to leap forward the moment Hiram regained consciousness.

  “Do you mind?” Mitch growled at the lawyer.

  The young guy folded a page to mark his John Grisham novel, shrugged, stood up, stretched, and walked into the hall. The nurse smiled and also stepped out, giving him a private moment.

  Mitch turned back to the bed where, amid the snarls of tubing, digital readouts, and graphing trace lines, it seemed that Hiram was being sent off by a chorus of blinking R2D2s. Mitch stared down into the wandering blue jelly of Hiram’s eyes.