The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 Read online

  “He’s probably hungry,” Sam said.

  Henry cut a piece of chop. “When he wakes up I’ll give him some pork, if he wants. Whose turn is it to scrub?”

  “Yours.”

  “I hate scrubbing.”

  “Me, too.”

  Sam pushed his corn around on his plate, fork tines scraping.

  “Henry?”

  “What.”

  “You think we should get the doctor?”

  “Not tonight,” Henry said. “It’s too cold, and I’m not leaving you here alone.”

  The man cried out, and the boys ran into the living room to find him sitting upright, glassy-eyed, the front of his shirt soaked with sweat. His hair stuck up at odd angles. He was shivering.

  The man dragged his gaze across the room and stopped at Henry.

  “Did I yell something?” the man said.

  Henry nodded.

  “What’d I say?”

  “Nothing. You just yelled.”

  The man coughed. “Am I in a yellow farmhouse?”

  “You are,” Henry said.

  “Is your father home?”

  “He’s at market.”

  “What’s he doing there?”

  “Selling cattle.”

  Sam stood by Henry’s side, holding his arm. The man smiled at Sam. His left eyetooth was missing.

  “Hello. I’m Jacob.”

  “I’m Sam Beasley.”

  “You scared of me, Sam Beasley?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jacob slid back down, rested his head on a bolster pillow, and held his wounded leg.

  “I couldn’t find the bullet,” Henry said.

  “You dressed it all right.” Jacob closed his eyes. “Will one of you boys fetch me something I left in the woods?”

  Henry and Sam looked at each other.

  “I might,” Henry said, but Jacob was asleep.

  Cort sat in a booth, sipping coffee thick with sugar and cream. He dumped a handful of coins on the table and watched the diner’s parking lot through the window. A week of Indian summer had melted all the snow; now the cold wind returned. The pavement glittered with frost, and car windows reflected the moon. Fields across the road were spiked with broken stalks.

  He pondered what had gone wrong. He’d kept it simple, as always—stand in the middle of the road, wait for the bank truck, and level the sawed-off when the driver gets close. But Jacob hadn’t frisked the guard properly, and the guard pulled a Chief’s Special from his boot, popping off two shots before Cort leaped on him and plunged the blade into his eye. Jacob limped into the woods with the sack of money banging against his side. He moved fast despite being wounded; Cort tracked him until leaves swallowed the blood trail.

  Even if the shots proved fatal, Cort figured Jacob was at least a few miles away from where they’d left the truck, and he wouldn’t be dead yet. He knew if Jacob was going to come anywhere, it would be someplace like this. A friendly spot, where he could tie off his wounds and ask for a doctor. There would be questions, but Jacob wouldn’t care—he was weak, and frightened, and he’d probably confess the world in exchange for a warm bed.

  “More coffee?”

  Cort looked away from the window. His eyes were small and dark, his black hair cut short. He had thin lips and a thin nose.

  “No, ma’am,” he said.

  The waitress smiled. “We got some fresh pie. Apple and pumpkin.”

  “Apple’d be nice.”

  “Whipped cream?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She smiled again and walked away. Cort stared at her back, wondering what she smelled like up close and in the dark. Then he returned to the window and waited.

  Jacob woke in the middle of the night. Sam was upstairs, awake in bed, but Henry sat in the living room chair. His father’s shotgun lay across his thin thighs. In the dark room lit by the moon, Jacob looked like a dead man, his face drawn, eyes sunk behind large black circles. He moved his hand to the wet, sticky gauze laid over his wound.

  “You been sitting here all night?” Jacob said.

  “I have.”

  Jacob grinned. “Watching over me.”

  “Just watching,” Henry said.

  “You’re being smart. You’d be even smarter if you got my bag from the woods. It’s near that old well.”

  Henry nodded at the bloodied sack sitting on the floor. “I got it.”

  “Finders keepers,” Jacob said.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Your father might.”

  “He won’t.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “We will. He comes back Friday.”

  “Friday?” Jacob winced and drew in a deep breath. “You don’t have that long.”

  “There’s a doctor ten miles south,” Henry said. “Our tractor’s broke, but I can send Sam first thing. The doctor is good. He fixed my arm a few years back.”

  “Do you have a phone?”

  Henry shook his head. “The lines haven’t made it out here yet. They were supposed to have them done by last year.”

  “Goddammit.” Jacob rested his arm over his eyes and sighed.

  Henry waited. He heard the kitchen faucet dripping into the sink.

  “I’m sorry,” Jacob said.

  “For what?”

  “For not dying in a ditch, far from this place.”

  Henry gripped the butt of the shotgun.

  “You know, I killed a woman in Litchfield,” Jacob said. “Six months ago. She was young. Younger than me.”

  Henry imagined his father driving back home, through the night, gripping the steering wheel and staring ahead. It’s just a feeling I got, his father would say. My boys are in trouble. I couldn’t sleep. Saw their doom in a nightmare.

  That’s not how life works, Henry told himself. Stop thinking like a child all the time.

  “Funny thing about that woman,” Jacob continued. “Wasn’t what I expected. You ever watch Death Valley Days?”

  “We don’t have a television.”

  “Well, that’s good. Nothing about it is real. Makes everything look clean. I shot that woman in the throat, and she flopped around for a full minute. The worst thing I ever saw, swear to God. She made these noises.” Jacob paused. Then he uncovered his eyes and looked straight at Henry. “Take your brother and leave.”

  “Why?”

  “You have to. He’s coming.”

  “Who is?”

  “He’s looking for his money.”

  “Who?”

  “Goddammit,” Jacob said, and that’s all he would say, no matter how many times Henry asked.

  Ed’s Bar was dim and quiet, the sort of bar Cort preferred because it reminded him of his youth, when he’d sit at a corner booth with a pint of cheap beer and watch the crowds until closing. Now a small scattering of men sat along the bar and at tables pushed against the rough plank walls. Cort ordered a beer and took a seat in the back. He sipped and waited.

  After an hour, Cort approached a man seated in the far corner.

  “You ever make it down to New Haven?” Cort said.

  The man glanced up. He wore a baseball cap pulled low and a felted sweater. Years of farm sun had creased his face. His nose looked like it had been broken several times.

  “I’m certain I’ve seen you there,” Cort said. “At Charlie’s Tavern. Am I right?”

  “Never been to Charlie’s,” the man said. “Nor New Haven.”

  “My mistake.”

  “No harm.” The man tipped back his beer and smacked his lips.

  Cort sat down and rested his elbows on the table. “I’m just passing through. Selling watches, if you can believe that.”

  “You should keep passing. Nothing here except dogs and ditches. Couple of farms still trying to make it, but give them time. They’ll suffer, just like the rest.”

  “Does that include you?”

  “It does.”

  Cort grinned. “I wonder what our wives would think of
us now. Wasting our days.”

  The man held up his left hand. Cort held up his own ringless hand.

  “Only way to go,” the man said.

  “You know it.”

  “I got close, once.”

  “I didn’t,” Cort said.

  The man looked at Cort.

  “What was it you came over here for?”

  “A ride,” Cort said. “My transmission dropped.”

  “I thought you were selling watches.”

  “I am. Selling other things, too.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “That all depends on what you need.”

  The man paused, glass held in midair. “I might help you, provided one of them watches looks good enough.”

  Cort grinned. “It all looks good.”

  The man finished his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked over his shoulder at the shadowed room. Everyone sat with their heads down.

  Cort followed him to the parking lot. He retrieved his shotgun from a stand of weeds, tucking it under his coat. The man drove a blue Chevy sedan, rust spots over the wheel wells and a long crack across the windshield. They pulled onto the main road and Cort rested his head against the window. He stared at the pale morning sky.

  After a few miles Cort said, “I have to piss. You mind pulling off somewhere?”

  The man slowed near an elm with a scarred trunk and killed the engine. He looked in the rearview, at the empty road.

  “Bit public for my tastes,” the man said. He dropped his hand to his crotch and left it there.

  “I’ll be careful,” Cort said. He reached into his boot and withdrew a short blade. He turned and thrust it into the man’s throat. The man grabbed Cort’s arm. He kicked and gurgled as blood streamed down the front of his shirt. Cort pulled out the blade, watched the pump of blood slow to a trickle, then hauled him across the seat and switched places.

  After he’d dumped the man by the side of a pond and covered him in a loose scab of leaves and twigs, he rinsed his hands in the icy water and looked to the cloud-covered sun. He walked back to the blue Chevy, drove to the main road, and found the first farm within minutes.

  Two men worked in front of a red house; a dog loped across the yard. Cort crept through the bare woods, shotgun low and ready, white breath rising above his head. He didn’t mind if the dog smelled him—he figured he could shoot the thing and get back to his car before the owners knew what had happened. Cort sat on a crumbling stone wall and watched the men work, one pushing a wheelbarrow and the other walking in and out of the barn. The scene was perfectly normal, he decided, so he got back in the Chevy.

  Before dawn Henry felt better, but Jacob’s breathing had turned ragged. Sam stood at the end of the couch and pressed a cool cloth to Jacob’s forehead. Henry left the shotgun on the floor and waited by the window, for what he didn’t know—he just felt like staring at the frost-covered fields still lit by the moon.

  “I shouldn’t have fought with you,” Sam said to Henry. “I should have hurried up and helped you carry him.”

  “You did.”

  “But I didn’t want to.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Sam.”

  “It does. He’s real sick. Is he dying?”

  “I think so.”

  “We should go for the doctor.”

  “Not until the sun’s up. It’s too cold.”

  “But he’s dying.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t you care?”

  “I do.” Henry continued staring out the window. “We’ll leave at sunrise. I promise.”

  Sam eyed the bloody bag sitting on the floor. “What’s in the bag?”

  “Money,” Henry said. “Don’t touch it.”

  “I shouldn’t have poked him with that stick.”

  “It wasn’t your stick that hurt him. He was shot.”

  Sam started to cry. Henry stared at the floor. He heard the rattle in Jacob’s lungs and remembered the same sound at his mother’s side, when Sam was a baby sleeping in the other room.

  “Minute the sun comes up,” Henry said, “we’ll head out.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise. And after Doc fixes him, we’ll finish hauling those rocks. Everything will work out just right. Now go on and take a bath. Make the water good and hot. We got a long walk ahead of us.”

  Sam glanced at Jacob.

  “He’ll be okay,” Henry continued. “I’ll change his bandage and make more tea.”

  Sam frowned. “Are you just saying this to make me feel better?”

  “No.”

  “Swear?”

  “I swear.”

  Sam inhaled deeply and scratched his head. “You call me back in if anything happens?”

  “I will.”

  Sam wiped his cheeks and ran upstairs.

  This is how it should be, Henry thought, and he picked up the compress. This is what men do for each other.

  He wrung the compress into a bowl and resoaked it. He laid it on Jacob’s forehead; the man groaned and opened his eyes.

  “Told you to leave,” Jacob said. He started to say something else, but his voice caught; he coughed and whooped. He inhaled once more and fell slack, mouth open, hands twitching. Henry scrambled back and tripped over the bowl of cold water. He crashed on the floor. The room smelled of shit and sour sweat.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I said I’m looking for a man. Brown hair, big eyes, young face. Might have a limp.”

  The woman with her hair in a tight gray bun looked past Cort’s shoulder to the blue Chevy parked in front of her porch. She drew in her robe and shivered. The living room felt warm at her back, but far away.

  “Well, I haven’t seen anyone fits that description,” she said.

  “You sure, ma’am?”

  “Of course I’m sure. What kind of silly question is that?”

  “It’s not silly if you’re standing where I’m standing.”

  Cort narrowed his eyes toward the living room, the warm house, the sound of children playing upstairs. The porch felt small and confining.

  “Where’s your husband at?”

  “He’s on a job,” she said.

  “What’s he do?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I’m just curious. This is a fine home. Looks like a man of great care lives here.”

  “He’s a carpenter.”

  “Like Jesus.”

  “If that’s how you want to put it.”

  “That is how I’m putting it. You checked your barn this morning?”

  “Every morning,” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

  Cort stepped forward, boot toe knocking against the threshold. He stared at a strand of gray hair that had fallen across her forehead. It waved in the cold wind, inquisitive-like.

  “Something about my car interests you,” Cort said.

  “No, sir.” Her voice quivered.

  “Go on. Tell me.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Rather doesn’t enter into it. Tell me.”

  The woman drew in a sharp breath. Her daughter squealed upstairs.

  “That’s Ed Dobber’s Chevy,” she said.

  It was late afternoon and the boys had cleared the rest of the rocks, letting Jacob cool in the living room because they didn’t know what else to do with him. For a few hours Henry almost forgot what was waiting for them back in the house. When they’d dumped the last of the stones, Henry squatted on his heels and looked up at the sky. Sam stood near him, breathing hard in the cold.

  “Tomorrow we’ll dig a grave with Dad,” Sam said, and he sniffed and put his hands on his hips.

  They walked back to the house. Sam fetched the good sheets from the linen closet while Henry stripped Jacob to his underwear and sponged his legs clean. He bundled the soiled jeans into a paper bag and set them by the front door. Sam combed Jacob’s hair, slicking it back with some of their father’s pomade. Then he wip
ed Jacob’s ears with a washcloth and folded his arms across his chest. They finished covering Jacob with a sheet when Henry spotted someone walking up the driveway.

  The man stopped in front of their house. He wore a long black coat and narrow boots. His eyes were small and dark, like a doll’s eyes.

  “Get upstairs,” Henry said to Sam. “Wait in my room, and don’t come down until I call for you. No arguing this time. Just go.”

  Sam ran up the stairs as Henry picked the sack off the floor. He spotted the Browning, leaning against the old china cabinet. The man knocked, sharp and loud.

  Henry opened the door. Cort stood on the porch, hands in his pockets, eyes narrowed.

  “Your father home?”

  “No, sir. He’s out back.”

  Cort glanced at the driveway, at the rusted tractor sitting in the field. A cluster of sparrows sat huddled on its hood, chests puffed against the wind.

  “Maybe you could go get him for me,” Cort said.

  “He’s working. I’m not supposed to bother him when he’s working.”

  Henry saw a fine spray of dried blood on Cort’s neck and a spot of blood in his ear.

  “I’m looking for someone,” Cort said. “Might have come this way.”

  “I haven’t seen anyone.”

  “Let me finish. He’s about yay tall, may have a limp.”

  “No, sir. It’s been me and my brother all day.”

  “And your father.”

  Henry nodded. “That’s right.”

  Cort looked back at the driveway. Henry wondered if the man could hear his heart pounding. It was the loudest thing he’d ever heard. It drowned out the wind and everything else. Just his heart, running fast and hard.

  “I did find this, though,” Henry said, and he grabbed the sack from behind the door and held it out for Cort.

  Cort smiled slightly and opened the sack while Henry held it. Then he took the bag and pulled the sawed-off from underneath his coat. He leveled it at Henry, tilting his head to one side.

  Henry stood, frozen.

  “You had me fooled,” Cort said.

  “Take the money.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  “Just remember I didn’t have to give it to you.”