The Last Exit to Normal Page 16

  A few minutes later, Dirk pulled up and I got in. He was fully camo’d from head to toe, and Skeet hopped around anxiously in the bed of the truck. Dirk glanced at me in my shorts. “Nice outfit.”

  “Thanks. You look pretty, too.”

  Dirk put the truck in gear and drove, setting his coffee mug in the cup holder. “We’ll be hunting pheasant.”

  Like I knew what a pheasant was. Sure. I knew what a pheasant was. It was a thing with wings that probably had feathers. “Awesome. Want some coffee?”

  He nodded, glancing at his almost empty mug. “Sure.”

  I poured. “I put sugar in it. Hope you don’t mind.”

  He sipped, then drank. “Nope. Pretty good.”

  “Miss Mae grinds her own beans. Old-fashioned, you know?”

  We drove, and I wondered what separated Dirk and me. He was nineteen years old, but he seemed . . . older. Like you would never question what he was doing. I slouched down in my seat. A few minutes later, Dirk smacked his lips: “Good stuff.” He shifted in his seat, speeding up a bit. “I hear Ron Jamison’s been giving you hassle.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I got ears.”

  “Kim.”

  He nodded. “He’s a punk.”

  “You know him?”

  “Yeah. I worked with him out at his uncle’s place when I was fifteen. Before I left.”

  “He would have been like thirteen.”

  “Fourteen. He’s a year behind in school because he’s a dumb shit.”

  “I take it you don’t like him.”

  He shrugged. “Not worth my time. Kim don’t like him one bit, though.”

  “I know.”

  He shifted in his seat again, letting out a large fart. He grunted.

  I cracked a window. “Nice one.”

  “Damn.”

  I breathed through my mouth. “Why doesn’t Kim like him?”

  “Hell if I know, other than there’s not much to like in the first place.”

  I didn’t want to talk about it, because just thinking about it made me nervous. “Jerks are a dime a dozen, I guess.”

  Dirk pulled out another fart.

  “Dang, you got ’em this morning.” I laughed, waving my hand in front of my face.

  He grimaced. “Musta ate something bad.”

  “Smells like you’ve got something dead up there.”

  He smirked. “Just a raccoon I was saving for lunch.”

  I spun the lid on the thermos. “Want some more? It might settle your stomach. My mom used to say hot liquid settles things.”

  He shrugged. “Hell, I’m fine. Just a gurgle.” He held his mug out and I poured another cup.

  Dirk drove on, and we didn’t say much until we’d turned off onto a dirt road. Dirk was the kind of feller that didn’t say more than was needed to be said, I’d learned, and I was fine with that. Silence was uncomfortable between most people, but he was the type that you didn’t feel weird around. We listened to music and got to where we were going, and there were no expectations.

  A few minutes later, Dirk set his mug down and pulled over. “All right.”

  I looked around. The fields looked like every other field we’d passed for the last fifteen minutes. “This is it?”

  “Yeah. To the south.” He hopped out, and Skeet jumped from the back of the truck, wagging his tail. Dirk scratched him between his ears. I got out and came around the truck. Dirk winced. “Do me a favor, huh? Grab the shotguns from the cab. I gotta take a shit.” He reached in the cab and brought out a travel-size packet of tissues.

  “You all right?”

  He headed off, toward a gully. “Be fine. Just gotta get it out, is all.”

  As Dirk disappeared into the gully to take a huge dump because of the quadruple dose of laxative I’d put in my thermos, I smiled to myself. Payback is a bitch. This would be an experience he’d remember for a long, long time. Skeet wagged his tail. “That’s right, boy. You tell your master that if he wants to tangle with the King, he’d better be ready for some fun.”

  A few minutes later, Dirk reappeared and shook his head. “Sausage this morning must’ve been ripe.”

  “I hate that.”

  Dirk spent fifteen minutes explaining how we’d hunt and what Skeet would do to flush the birds out of the wheat, warning me three times to keep my barrel up and away from the dog. We’d be walking, and he showed me how to properly hold the shotgun while doing so, warning me twice more about shooting the dog and three times about staying parallel to him and being aware of your partner. Then he excused himself to go take another crap, mumbling about the sausage.

  I didn’t have the heart to offer him more coffee before we headed across the fields, and as we entered the wheat, excitement coursed through me. Dirk called here and there for Skeet, prodding him in different directions, and five minutes later the dog flushed the first bird, scaring the hell out of me.

  I didn’t even have a chance to get my gun up. I just stared at this big and beautiful and colorful thing flying up over the wheat. Faster than the clay pigeons we’d shot. Dirk’s rifle was up in a flash, and he let go with a shot, missing. He grunted, cracking the breech of the shotgun and reloading the first barrel. “Fast, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dirk shuffled his feet. “Dude, I gotta go. Like I got a water cannon up my ass.” With a pained look on his face, he laid his weapon down and hurriedly unbuttoned his camos, squatting where he was.

  I turned around, walking off a few yards and chuckling under my breath. “You got them bad, that’s for sure,” I shouted.

  “Holy shit,” came the reply, between grunts. “Like a faucet, man.”

  A few moments later, he was up and tucking the tissue packet in his pocket. He walked a little funny when we started again. I shook my head, laughing. “A little raw?”

  He nodded. “You don’t know it, man.”

  Guilt spread through me. Not enough to feel that bad, but enough to muster up some compassion. “Want to head back?”

  “Hell, no. I’m fine. Gotta be empty soon.”

  Ten minutes later, we swung south and Skeet flushed a pair. I got my shotgun up in time, flipped off the safety, and both of our weapons fired at once. A bird fell. Skeet bounded to it, and a few seconds later appeared with a pheasant in his mouth. Dirk praised him. “You go for the left one or the right one?”

  “Right,” I said excitedly.

  “You got it. I went for the left. Nice shot.”

  I stared at the dead bird, and an uneasy feeling swept through me. “Pretty.”

  “They are. Taste even better, though.”

  “You eat them?”

  He smiled. “I don’t hold with killing things for no reason.”

  That made me feel better. “I’ve never killed anything before.”

  “Sure you have.”

  “Well, maybe a spider or two and some ants or bees or something.”

  Dirk smiled. “Every time you put a piece of meat in your mouth, you killed something. Might not a pulled the trigger yourself, but you killed it.”

  I’d never thought about it that way. “I guess it’s just different.”

  Dirk laughed. “Doing the dirty work yourself is always different. Come on, let’s hunt.”

  So we did. Dirk squatted three more times, and by the time we got back to the truck, he was walking bowlegged. Every time I felt guilty about what I’d done, I remembered my shoulder. Fair is fair, and I smiled when he told me that he’d be damned if there was a drop left in him.

  He’d snagged two birds, and I missed every time after the first. That I missed on purpose wasn’t exactly public knowledge, but I had fun. And I had to admit I was proud of my first shot. It was hard to do.

  By the time Dirk dropped me off, he was empty. We’d stopped one more time on the way home, and when he got back in the truck, he finally showed some pain, shaking his head. “Battery acid, man. Pure battery acid.”

  “I heard Wal-Mart sells butt
holes cheap.”

  He laughed and I went inside, the pheasant I’d shot in my hand. Miss Mae was in the kitchen, and when she saw it, she smiled. “Well, look what the cat dragged in. Get over here.”

  I walked over to the counter. “How do you cook it?”

  “You dress it first.” She took a knife from the butcher block and proceeded to show me how to take the feathers off and then gut it. Let me tell you, bird guts stink like all get-out. I almost puked.

  Half hour later, Miss Mae had the bird in a baking dish, seasoned and ready to go. She skedaddled me out of the kitchen and told me to clean up, so I did, calling Kim after I got out of the shower. “Hi, Kim. It’s Ben.”

  “Hey. How’d hunting go?”

  “Great. I got one.”

  She giggled. “That’s what Dirk said. He stopped by to use the bathroom before he went out to Uncle Morgan’s.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “He said he ate something bad.”

  I laughed. “Never know.”

  “Was it that bad?”

  I busted up, unable to control myself. “He was squatting like every ten minutes.”

  Silence, then, “Ben . . . don’t tell me you . . .”

  “I did. Miss Mae has this stuff in the bathroom. Superlaxative to the rescue.”

  She laughed, then laughed harder. “He’s going to kill you. You do know that, right?”

  “Worth it. Totally and one hundred percent worth it. His butthole is going to be raw for just about as long as my shoulder was trashed.”

  She laughed. “You are a bad, bad person.”

  “Let him know, okay?”

  “Ben . . .”

  “It’s not a joke unless he knows. You’ve got to tell him.”

  “Okay.”

  Later, over a dinner of stuffed pheasant, I decided one thing as I wolfed down the last of the best fowl I’d ever eaten in my life. Bird-hunting wasn’t all that bad.

  CHAPTER 21

  “I’m going to find her.”

  Kim looked at me. “How?”

  I’d been thinking about Billy since our last conversation, and I couldn’t get him out of my head. We sat on Kim’s front porch, and there was no moon after a Monday-afternoon scorcher. A breeze rustled the leaves on the maple tree over us. “I’ve got a buddy in Spokane that’s a computer whiz. Like a hacker.”

  “A hacker, huh?”

  “Yeah. He also deals smoke.”

  “You hung around some interesting people, didn’t you?”

  I laughed. “I guess.”

  “How can he help?”

  “I don’t know, but he’ll know. Everybody leaves a trail.”

  She took my hand. “What if she doesn’t want him?”

  “That’s up to her.” Silence folded in around us for a few minutes, and my mind wandered. “Why don’t you want me around Ron Jamison?”

  She hesitated. “I just don’t like him. That’s all.”

  I told her about him following us to the cemetery, then digging up the cats and leaving them on Billy’s porch. She shook her head. “Just stay away, Ben.”

  “Tell me.”

  She sniffed, then took her hand away from mine. “You really want to know?”

  I was sure I didn’t. “Yes.”

  “Ron had a thing for me. For a long time, I guess. When Greg and I dated, he . . . let me know how he felt.”

  “What happened?”

  “Ben . . .”

  “Tell me.”

  She looked at her lap, wringing her hands. “He set the whole thing up. Everything. We went to a party at the Pond one night, and Ron challenged Greg to a drinking contest. Ron won, but he wasn’t drunk. He acted like it, but he wasn’t. I could tell. He’d fixed it somehow, and Greg was so drunk he couldn’t even stand. He blacked out. Ron carried him to the Bronco and piled him in the backseat. I thought . . . I was mad at Ron, and he just laughed it off, saying it was a good practical joke and that Greg would no doubt get back at him somehow. They’re cousins, you know? And Ron always did stuff like that to people. I got in the Bronco and told him to take us home, and he did. But he stopped on the way. Greg was passed out. That’s when Ron told me he liked me.”

  My stomach sunk. “He didn’t . . .”

  “No. He tried, and I fought him. He didn’t get what he wanted, and he knew he wouldn’t, so he backed off. Then he told me that if I said anything, he’d hurt me.” She was starting to cry now. “You should have seen his eyes, Ben. They were crazy. I knew he’d do it.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders. Threatening to gut the sonofabitch wouldn’t make anything better for her right now, so I swallowed my anger. “I’m sorry.”

  She must have noticed the tone in my voice. She squeezed my knee. “Ben, stay away from him. There’s something wrong with him. Seriously wrong. He’s done other things, too.”

  “Like what?”

  She sniffed. “I don’t know. Just . . . things. It’s like he doesn’t know when to stop. He just pushes things way too far.” She stopped for a moment, then went on. “There’s a guy at school named Nathan Tibbs, and Ron didn’t like him. I don’t even know how it started, but they would go back and forth with each other all the time, you know? Just verbal stuff. Then things started happening. First it was Nathan’s car getting keyed. Then somebody dumped bleach in Nathan’s gym locker and ruined his baseball uniform. Then Nathan’s dog disappeared, and a month later, somebody lit the Tibbses’ barn on fire and killed two milk cows and a horse.”

  “He did all of it?”

  She nodded. “Greg told me Ron killed the dog, but I don’t know about the rest. The sheriff couldn’t prove anything.” She looked at me. “The Highway Patrol came in and did an arson investigation. They said whoever did it tied up the animals so they couldn’t get out.”

  “Holy shit.”

  She folded herself into me. “Promise me, Ben. Promise you’ll stay away from him.”

  For the first time in a long, long time, I lied. “I promise.”

  Back home, the van was gone and I found Miss Mae in her room. Dad and Edward were probably working on the restaurant. I’d heard something about painting. Miss Mae sat in her favorite rocker, reading. She looked up when I knocked on the doorjamb. “Can’t an old woman get a bit of peace around here?”

  “No.”

  She closed her book. “Well, spit it out.”

  “What do you know about Mrs. Hinks?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Who wants to know?”

  “Me.”

  “You ain’t nobody, and it ain’t nobody’s business.”

  “Come on, Miss Mae. I just want to know.”

  “That’s a half answer if I’ve ever heard one. I smell trouble all about you.”

  “No trouble. At least not with this. I promise.”

  She eyed me. “Tell me a story and I’ll tell you a story.”

  I sighed. “Okay, I want to find her. For Billy.”

  She shook her head. “Trouble.”

  “No trouble. He needs her. Every kid needs a mom, right? You said that when I got here.”

  “It ain’t my business to let on about such things.”

  I stared at her, my eyes wide. “You know, don’t you? She told you!”

  “She certainly did. In order to find her if Billy had an emergency or Mr. Hinks died or some such thing of importance. A seventeen-year-old whelp sticking his nose where it don’t belong is not such a thing of importance. I still think she’s a no-account, but I gave her my word.”

  I was getting mad, but I knew she was keeping her promise to Mrs. Hinks. “Mr. Hinks abuses him. He does.” I told her about the Can. “He puts him in there long enough that Billy doesn’t even know how long. He has to pee in a jar.”

  She frowned. “In a closet?”

  “Yes. No light, no nothing.”

  She stared at me hard, then pointed a crooked finger to her dresser. “Second one on the right.”

  I slid the drawer open. Ten letters lay
stacked in the corner, all addressed to Miss Mae. The sender was Jennifer Lindy. “This is her?”

  “Well, it ain’t Mickey Mouse. She feared Norman would come after her, but she wanted to keep after Billy. See how he was doing.”

  I stared at the return address. Las Vegas, Nevada.

  Miss Mae spoke up. “She moved some time back. My letters started coming back ’round six months ago, and she hasn’t written since.”

  I studied the envelopes, memorizing the address. “Why’d she leave without him?”

  Miss Mae’s eyes softened. “Ben, sometimes things happen that don’t give a woman many choices.”

  I nodded. “What happened?”

  “Norman Hinks is a hard man. Bitter. Born bitter and will die bitter. Now, mind you, I never saw that man harm his child other than work him hard and strap him every once in a while, but I did see Jenny’s bruises.”

  “He beat her?”

  Miss Mae winced. “She’s a tough woman, and he came away with a few himself, but when she had to go, she had to go.”

  “Why didn’t she take him, though? Wasn’t she afraid that he’d hurt Billy?”

  “She was.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because Norman told her that if she ever took his boy, he’d hunt her down and kill both of them. She believed him.”

  “I’m finding her.”

  “I know you are.”

  “You think I’m making a mistake?”

  She looked at me. “Why, I don’t know. I don’t think a boy stuffed in a closet is a good thing, though.”

  “Well, if she can disappear once, she can do it twice.”

  “I don’t know, Ben. You read those letters and you’ll find she has a new husband. Good man, too. He owns a restaurant.”

  “Can I take these?”

  “Return ’em when you’re done.”

  Up in my room, I jumped on the bed. I dialed a number on the cordless. It rang four times, then someone picked up. “Hey, Quaverly,” I said.

  “Ben? Is this the troubled youth of my past or a manifestation of my imagination?”

  Quaverly, besides being my pot supplier, was a computer freak. Illegal computer freak. “You don’t have imagination, dude. It’s the pot cloud around your head.”