We followed 257 for a quarter-mile, blowing by a hardware-and-bait shop lit only by a John Deere sign in the window. Then Billy abruptly veered left off the interstate, onto a roughly paved, unlit road that swept up into a grove of high shrub and pine, then ope vhimaded ned to acres of flat field.
“Where we goin’? I thought April’s property was off Two-fifty-seven.”
“It is. Mount Victoria road parallels Two-fifty-seven. We’ll come back out onto it at Tompkinsville.” Billy winked. “Watch this, Greek,” he said. Then he cut the headlights of the Maxima.
For a couple of seconds Billy and I were green, and everything outside the car was black. I grabbed the handle of the door and gripped it until the road ahead began to appear, slowly, in a bluish light. The moon was bright and almost directly overhead.
“You sure you want to do this, man?”
“Like we used to do, on that stretch of Oregon Avenue, down in the park.”
“We knew that road.”
“I know this one,” Billy said. “Roll your window down, man, it’s not too cold. Enjoy it.”
I did, as Billy maxxed out the heater fan, then rolled his own window down. Maybelle came forward and laid her head partly on my arm, partly on the door, leaving her face out, letting the wind blow back her ears. She closed her eyes.
The sound of the heater meshed with the wind. I had a slug of bourbon and passed it to Billy. Through the glass of Billy’s roof the moon shimmered above as if it were submerged in water. We passed a small gas station with an old Sunoco sign lit and suspended from two chains at the corner of a two-lane intersection, then moved on. No headlights approached from ahead or from behind.
Low trees began to appear on either side of the road, and the road grew darker. Billy saw something just ahead of his path, or maybe he didn’t, and he laughed piercingly and swerved, and we drove onto a shoulder of loose gravel. There was a sharp, screaming metallic scrape. Maybelle yelped, and there were sparks, and I drew back my face just as something shaved it like a quick, cold razor. I turned and looked through the rear window, and saw a roadside mailbox uprooted and tumbling back onto the shoulder in the fading rouge glow of our brake lights. I checked Maybelle and she was all right, though now she was lying bellyflat on the backseat, her head resting firmly between her two front paws.
Billy’s laughter was softly manic. I cackled with him and rubbed my right cheek, feeling raw skin but no blood. Then we were in a forest of pine, and there was almost total blackness, except for the light through the space between the tree line above, a light that snaked parallel with the road. Billy’s laughter ebbed and he shifted his sight from the road to the tree line and back again, navigating the course while negotiating the serpentine curves. At the bottom of a steep incline the road seemed to end in a finality of shadow, but Billy turned the wheel sharp right just as we seemed on the edge of the chasm, and then we were suddenly out of the trees and on the flat blue road again, the vast, open, moonlit fields on either side.
After another mile Billy tapped on the headlights, and we merged back onto 257, turning left. I cracked two more beers, handed one to Billy, and lit a cigarette for myself. We passed a Methodist church and several bungalows with screened porches set back from the highway, Ponti {ighettacs and Buicks parked in the yards. A couple of markets that sold gas and liquor and lottery tickets slid by. Both the markets and the houses were closed and unlit.
Two miles later Billy turned right at 254 and accelerated down a straight stretch of highway toward the lights of Cobb Island. He slowed as we neared the water and drove by two crab houses and bars on opposite sides of the road. The bar on the right had lit Christmas lights strung around its low-rise white facade, with lights that ran along the dock as well, out into the channel beyond a gas pump and boat ramp. The road rose as we crossed a bridge with cement rails that arced over the channel and connected the mainland to the island. When we rolled onto the island, Billy pulled the car into a lot past an IGF grocery store and killed the engine in front of a small bar called the Pony Point.
“A nightcap?” Billy said.
“How’s my face?”
Billy grabbed my chin and turned my head into the light. “You’ll make it.”
“Let’s go.”
We chugged the rest of our beers and put the empties in the backseat, where Maybelle now slept. Out in the lot I tripped stepping up over a concrete divider and felt Billy grab my jacket and yank me back into balance.
“Keep your shit,” he said. “Let’s have some fun.”
We stepped into the Pony Point. The place consisted of one small room paneled in knotty pine with a U-shaped bar extending out from the wall that divided the front of the house from the back kitchen. The bar was nearly filled. “Tight Fittin’ Jeans” by Conway Twitty was shrieking out of the tinny jukebox. I felt heavy and slow as I moved toward the bar, but by now I had acquired that singular glow of imagined invincibility that is bestowed upon certain drunks during particularly blessed binges.
Billy and I found two empty red vinyl stools on the west end of the U and bellied up. A large jar of pickled pig’s feet rested on the bar between us. I signaled the barmaid, a woman in her sixties with steel gray hair flipped on one side. She moved slowly to our curve in the U as she wiped an aquamarine bar rag across her hands. When she reached us she kicked her chin up just a bit to signal for our order. One of her spotted hands, with short, hard nails painted apple red to match the color drawn across her lips, rested on her hip. That hip, which still had a shape distinct from the rest of her, was slightly cocked. Grandma, with a fistful of rolled nickels.
“What can I get you fellas?”
“Two beers and two whiskeys,” I said. “Make the beers Budweisers and the whiskeys Grand-Dad.”
“I suppose you take your bourbon straight up,” she said, and tilted her chin up once again to let her eyes look us over.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She served the beers at once and rooted around the rack for a couple of shot glasses. While she did that, Billy and I tapped bottles and drank deeply. Then I had a look around the Pony Point.
On the east curve of the U sat three drunken men, their shoulders touching as if joined. The man in the middle was young, with a flattop and pale skin and an over-the-lip wisp of light brown hair masquerading as a mustache. He was bookended by two older men, one of whom was a well-worn version of flattop. Several beers sat in front of the three of them. The two older men looked quickly over to flattop and sang, in ravaged unison, “I’m gonna stick… like glue.”
Flattop looked into my eyes from across the bar and yelled, with a crooked smile, “Tomorrow ah’m a fuckin’ marine!” The Pony Point was filled with noise, but I could have heard the kid from out in the parking lot.
Our bourbons were served, and I raised my glass to Flattop before tapping Billy’s and tipping the shot to my lips. The warm liquor slid down with slow-jazz ease. I savored the afterburn, then asked the barmaid her name.
“Wanda,” she said.
“Wanda, buy those two older ones their next round. And give the soldier in the middle whatever he wants.”
“Sure thing.”
Billy said, “And we’ll take a couple of those pig’s feet, honey.”
Wanda said, “You got it.”
A hand wrapped around my arm. It was attached to a little man in a Cubs cap who was sliding onto the stool to my right. The man was not very old, but he had lost his teeth and on this night at least was not wearing the replacements. He used my arm for support as he adjusted his butt to the center of the stool.
“Thanks,” he said, and removed the cap to wipe a fuzzy, rather bullet-shaped head.
“No problem.”
“I see you’re buyin’,” he said matter-of-factly. He was trying to look up at me, but his gray eyes were missing the mark, shooting up toward the beamed ceiling.
“Why not? What are you drinking?”
“I’d love some whiskey. You like Conway Twitty?”
“No. But I dig Merle Haggard.”
“My name’s Ken.”
I shook his hand and said, “Nick.”
Wanda served our pig’s feet on paper plates set next to plastic forks and then poured Ken a shot of rail whiskey. Ken knocked back half of it posthaste and cupped his hand protectively around the glass as he set it down on the bar. Billy ignored the fork, picked up the pig’s foot, and began to chew meat off the bone. I tasted a sliver of mine, rejected the texture, and pushed the plate in front of Billy. The juke was playing Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” I lit a cigarette and ran my hand back through my hair.
Two men stood by the kitchen door at the far side of the room. One was heavy and dark-skinned and wore an eggshell apron stained brown around his waist. The other was tall and lean and wore Wrangler jeans and {ler heavy a brown flannel shirt unbuttoned once to expose a triangle of white T-shirt at the base of the neck. Both of them stared at me until I looked away. When I looked back their attention remained fixed. I turned to Ken.
Ken said, “You like Randy Travis?”
“Uh-uh.” I said. “You ever listen to Gram Parsons?” Ken’s eyes traveled back up to the ceiling as he thought it over and shook his head. “How about Rodney Crowell?”
“That’s that boy married to Johnny Cash’s girl, right?”
I nodded. “Had a great single on the country charts, seven or eight years back-‘Ashes by Now.’”
“Yeah,” Ken said. “I remember it. He’s pretty damn good.”
I turned my head to the left. Billy dropped what was left of the pink-and-yellow pig’s foot to the plate and wiped a paper napkin across his mouth. He chin-nodded the two by the kitchen door. The tall one nodded back without emotion.
I said, “I don’t think those two like us.”
“They’re all right.”
“You know ’em?”
Billy had a long, even taste of the bourbon and winced. He set the glass back down on the bar. “Black dude with the apron’s named Russel. Local boy, knew April when they were young. The tall hard guy’s Hendricks-a state cop. Grew up in Nanjemoy on the other side of Three-oh-one. Rides out of La Plata but spends a lot of time around the island. Don’t take it personal. It’s me they don’t like.”
“Maybe I should talk to ’em.”
“Suit yourself. Want an introduction?”
“No.”
I killed my bourbon, stubbed my smoke, and picked up my beer. Ken suggested another round, but I ignored him as I pushed away from the bar and followed the curve of the U. I swerved by two old guys with winter sunburns and dirty hands and was clapped on the shoulder by one of Flattop’s crew as I passed his back. His crossed eyes zeroed in on my chest as he sang, “I’m gonna stick… like glue.”
The one with the apron, Russel, turned on his heels as I approached. By the time I reached the end of the bar, he had retreated into the fluorescence of the kitchen. That left me and Hendricks.
Hendricks looked in my eyes evenly and for a long time. I studied his as he did it. He had the clean, open face of a man who works hard every day and likes it. His eyes were dark blue, framed by short bursts of lines and set wide; his broad mouth stretched out across a stone jaw. I put him at about my age, though weathered by the elements.
“How’s it goin’?” he said.
“It’s goin’ good.”
“You about done nursin’ that beer?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s have another.”
“Sounds good.” I finished off the bottle. “But I’m buying, okay? Makes sense to buy the local cop a beer when you’re in his county.”
Hendricks grinned just enough to lift one cheek. “I won’t stop you,” he said.
“My name’s Nick Stefanos.”
“Hendricks.”
I signaled Wanda with a sweeping victory sign and had her serve another shot to Ken. Billy was off and talking to a huge bearded man in a Red Man cap who stood blocking the front door like a bear in overalls. The bearman’s narrow eyes were obtusely pointed to the floor as Billy talked. When the beers came I raised mine to Hendricks and had a swig. The floor tilted somewhat beneath my feet. I wrapped a hand around the curved lip of the bar.
Hendricks said, “Which one of you lovers is drivin’?”
I pointed the neck of the Bud at Billy. “We’re not going far. Sleeping at April Goodrich’s farm tonight.” I closed one eye a bit to focus on Hendricks. “You know her?”
“Knew her before she was named Goodrich,” he said.
“Seen her lately?”
“That what you came down here for? Lookin’ for April?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s it about. Personal?”
“It is for him.” I glanced quickly toward Billy and back to Hendricks. “For me it’s a job.”
Hendricks said, “You’re no cop.”
I shook my head. “Private.”
Hendricks thought about that over a long, slow pull of beer. He placed the bottle softly on the bar, looked my way, and relaxed his shoulders. “So what happened to your face?”
I rubbed it and felt the swell. “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember. We made a night of it, I guess.”
“It’s not a bad face,” Hendricks said frankly. “But you can’t tell a thing about a man when you meet him on a drunk. And right now I don’t know nuthin’ about you but your name. You want to talk to me, I’ll be around the island tomorrow.”
“Fair enough.” I shook his hand.
“You take care, now.”
Just then Hank Williams, Jr., roared out of the juke and Ken began to yell, from across the bar, “Bocephus! Boceeeephus!” He was pointing at me and smiling and with one hand keeping the cap on his head as he bucked like a rodeo clown on the red vinyl stool. I weaved recklessly across the smoky bar, past Flattop and his send-off crew (his uncle or father appeared to be holding {o bn the young man upright now at the bar), and made it over to Billy. Ken was off his stool and at my side by the time I reached Billy and the bearman.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
Billy tried to focus one eye. A block of his blond hair had fallen over the other. “Had enough?”
“Yeah.”
“One more stop, though.”
“Where?”
“Place called Rock Point.”
Ken let out a small whoop and I thought I saw the bearman break a tobacco-stained smile. I handed Billy some bills and he put those together with some of his own and left them all in a leafy heap on the bar. Wanda flicked her chin at him and then at me by way of thanks. Hank Williams, Jr., was still pumping out the bar-band jam as the four of us proceeded to fall out the front door. When I turned around for one final glance at the joint, Russel and Hendricks were standing in the entranceway to the kitchen. They were talking to each other, but they were looking dead straight at me.
The four of us crashed like a wave into Billy’s Maxima and headed north on 254. I handed a tape I had lifted from the Spot over the seat to the bearman and had him slip it into the deck. Steve Earle’s “I’m the Other Kind” immediately boomed out of the rear-mounted speakers like some Wagnerian, biker-bar anthem. The bearman turned up the volume and clumsily moved his head to the beat. I watched it bob from behind like a hairy, floating melon. Ken sang the romantic wind-road-and-bike chorus (in between screaming praise about Earle’s band, the Dukes-he called them the “Dee-yukes”) and passed beers all around.
At 257 Billy turned sharply right, spit gravel, then recovered his course onto a crudely paved road that soon narrowed to one lane. We passed a shack of a general store-an old man in a down coat sat in a lighted telephone booth and waved as we drove by-and some screened bungalows set far back on properties bulkheading the Wicomico. The road ahead, veined now with deep fissures and cracks, seemed to narrow even further. And then, without warning of any kind, the road simply ended.
We parked the car in front of a steel guardrail serving as a barrier. To the right, on a raised plot of dirt and naked turf, stood a post office the size of a tollbooth. Billy and the bearman got out of the Maxima, and Maybelle scrambled over my legs to follow. Ken was next out, and then me. I felt the temperature drop sharply as my face met the winter wind that was coming out of the southeast and off the river.
Billy cut the engine and the lights; the music still played. I trailed the group-Maybelle had trotted off into a wooded area to the right-and climbed over the barrier, on which was posted a NO TRESPASSING notice peppered with buckshot. What was left of the concrete road continued, buckled and in pieces, on a downward slope to the river. The swells of the Wicomico shimmered from the light of the moon and moved diagonally toward the shore in rough cadence with the wind. South beyond the point the Potomac merged with the Wicomico in cold, deep current. I zipped my jacket to the collar.
Ken and the bearman stopped at the waterline; one of Ken’s fists dug into his jean pocket, the other gripping the neck of the Bud. The bearman appeared to be rolling a joint-he was carefully twisting it now, his muttonchop hands working the papers very closely to his small eyes-and Billy, with the cheesecloth bladder that had plagued him since childhood, was pissing like a filly near a grove of sycamores on the edge of the gravelly beach. I drew the pint from my jacket and knocked back an inch of bourbon.
Down on the beach I joined Billy and passed him the bottle. He had his taste and then we both followed it with beer. The wind was lifting Billy’s hair off his scalp and blowing it about his face. Music came from the road and through the trees-Steve Earle had yielded now to Neil Young on the tape. The feedback and grunge of twin Les Pauls and Young’s wailing vocals pierced the rush of the wind.
“The road ends at Rock Point,” Billy said out of nowhere, stating the obvious and pointing his beer bottle toward the river with uncharacteristic dramatic punctuation. “I used to come here all the time, that first summer when me and April got together. She didn’t understand the attraction-to her it was the place where she and her friends came to smoke pot and drink and screw when they were growing up-but there was something to it for me. Something about the road running right into the fucking sea.”
“What about now?”
“It went to seed,” he said, adding, with a bitter edge, “like everything else in this life.” Billy drank his beer and wiped the backwash on his jacket sleeve. “Rubbers and beer cans, and gooks fishing for spot. That’s all this place is now.”
I nodded in the direction of our new friends. “You know those guys?” The bearman had lit the joint and was stooping low as he shotgunned Ken, the Cubs hat now set far back on the little man’s head. Ken had cupped his hands around the bearman’s face to get it all, and the cloud of smoke emanating from their union was great and wide. Ken’s head appeared to be on fire.
“I’ve seen ’em around the island before. Barflies.” Billy looked at them and chuckled. “That’s just what April’d be doing right now, if she hadn’t met me. Gettin’ high and hangin’ out.”
“There’s more to this place than that. After all, she keeps coming back.”
“Most people don’t have enough sense to stay away from home, even after they outgrow it.” Billy finished his beer. “Come on, man, let’s get out of here.”
“What about those guys?”
“They’ll want to stay down here,” he said. “Come on.”
Billy and I walked back up the buckled fun house road and climbed over the barrier. Neil Young was shouting “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown,” backed by the primal electric rage of Crazy Horse; the wind kicked at our backs. I looked back to see if the bearman and Ken were following, but Billy was right-they had drifted. The bearman was doing a slow shuffle on the beach, and Ken had leaped out into the river to a slab of concrete that the tide had not yet covered. He was dancing some sort of whacked jig, and he appeared to be singi {d ta sng toward the sky.
We climbed into the Maxima, Maybelle appearing suddenly from the trees and taking her place in the backseat. Billy lowered the music and cranked up the heat, rolling the windows up as he did it. I looked back through the rear window. The music no longer reached his ears, but Ken continued to dance out on the concrete slab in the river. The bearman stood with his hands buried in his pockets, a stoned stare focused up at the full December moon.
The gravel road to April Goodrich’s property was at an unmarked turnoff two miles back up 257. We followed it straight into a wooded area, and then it turned to hard dirt as it continued out into several acres of plowed field. The road ran through a field bordered by woods on three sides and on the fourth by a wide, still creek. In the center of the field stood a hickory tree, under which a small trailer was mounted on concrete. It had a poured concrete patio in front and a corrugated Plexiglas eave hanging over it. The road from there went back through the field and down to a dock that ran out and into the creek. We passed the trailer and drove down to where the road ended at an open boathouse that stood near the first planks of the dock.
Billy cut the engine and the lights. I could hear Maybelle’s tail excitedly thumping the backseat, but beyond that there was just the deep silence that exists at night and only in the country.
“What now?”
Billy said, “Let’s get out and feel the water. Finish the whiskey.”
We exited the Maxima. Maybelle bounded out before us and ran out onto the dock. I waited for Billy to lead the way and then stepped out onto the vertical planks that bridged the severely eroded bank to the dock. Beneath my feet the wood was white with the excrement of gulls. The wind had abated here, though the air was damp and bitter.
The dock ended in the head of a T. I sat on a piling and buried my hands in my jacket pockets. Maybelle lay on her stomach to my right. Billy climbed down an aluminum stepladder that had been halved and lashed with thick rope to the pilings on the eastern corner. He was out of sight now, but I heard his hand splashing in the freezing water.
“Ice cold,” his voice said. “Not frozen yet, though.”
“I’m not comin’ in for your ass if you fall in.”
Billy climbed back up the ladder and said, “Sure, you would. If there’s one thing I know, that’s it.” Billy rubbed his hand dry on his jeans and had a seat next to me. He leaned back on one elbow and pointed at my jacket. “Let’s have a drink and a couple of those smokes.”
“Sure.”
I brought the pint and the Camels out from my jacket and rustled the pack in his direction. Billy drew one from the deck and put it to his lips. I fired his up, put one in my mouth, and lit it off the same match. The tobacco hit my lungs and I kept it there. I watched the silver exhale drift slowly in the motionless air like a ghost and spread out over the creek.
Billy took the Beam off the dock, uncap {e deekped it, and had a drink. He sighed comfortably and stretched like a waking animal. “Good night,” he said.
Across the creek one prefab rambler stood in a clearing in the woods. Mounted atop a pole in front of the rambler was a spotlight that illuminated the property. A horse stood beneath the spotlight inside a small grassy area framed by a split-rail fence. The horse’s breath, backlit and haloed, poured from its nostrils and widened into two even streams.
Some time passed. Billy pitched his cigarette out over the dock and into the creek. I followed the orange trail and listened to the quick, dull finality of the fire hitting water. Then I had a last drag of my cigarette and threw what was left of it in the direction of his.
“Your head’s rolling,” Billy said. “Let’s go on up to the trailer.”
I looked around at the dock. “Where’s the dog?”
“You’ve been noddin’. I was waiting for that smoke to burn down into your fingers-would have let it too. But you woke up.” Billy stood and reached for my hand. “Maybelle ran off. She’ll be all right.”
I stood with Billy’s help. “We ought to find her. She’ll freeze.”
“Not cold enough. Come on, let’s turn in.”
We walked off the dock and onto the dirt road that cut through the field. Some clouds had drifted across the sky; the darkness seemed denser now. At the trailer Billy jiggled a key in the lock and opened the door. I followed him into the narrow space and closed the door behind me. Billy found a candle in a drawer and forced it into the neck of an empty bottle of Rolling Rock. He struck a match and lit the candle.
The trailer appeared smaller lighted. An old double-barreled shotgun rested in the hooks of a rack mounted above a narrow kitchenette. I thought I heard something move beneath one of two bunks that end-capped the trailer’s interior, and raised an eyebrow in Billy’s direction.
Billy smiled and shook his head. “If there’s snakes in here, they’re sleeping. Field mice, if anything.”
“Oh.”
“Here.” Billy tossed me a rolled sleeping bag and pointed to the bunk where I had heard the noise. I ignored his direction and spread the bag out on the other bunk. Then I stripped naked and zipped myself in. I balled up shivering, waiting for the ache of cold to subside. The objects on the kitchenette and then the kitchenette itself began to move and float. I fell into an open-mouthed sleep.
I awoke some time later. A dull throb had entered my temple, and my mouth was glutinous and dry. There was a bit of natural light in the cabin now; dawn had begun encroaching on the night. I looked over at Billy.
He was up on one elbow, half out of his sleeping bag, smoking one of my cigarettes and staring into my eyes. His eyes reflected the flame of the candle that still burned in the green bottle. The lower right portion of his face was in shadow. We kept each other’s gaze for a while-then I drifted back to sleep. When I opened my eyes, Billy was {es, face w still staring. Now there was a cool smile across his smooth face. He dragged off the cigarette and thumb-flicked some ash onto a piece of foil set on the Formica counter that held the candle.
I said, “Something’s not right, Billy. Let’s talk about it.”
“You’re coming down off a drunk, that’s all. You gonna be sick?”
“I don’t mean that.”
“What, then?”
“This whole thing.” I sat up in my bunk and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. “Who’s Tommy?”
“Tommy?”
“The guy April talked about on the answering machine.”
“Tommy Crane.” Billy sighed. “Fuckin’ pig farmer. Lives up Two-fifty-seven a few miles. April used to do him and maybe she still does. She said on the tape she was coming down here to kiss him good-bye. That’s what we’re doing down here, remember?”
“An old boyfriend, right? Like Joey DiGeordano. And that guy at the Pony Point, Russel-another old boyfriend. Maybe Hendricks too. All these old boyfriends-and you don’t seem too shook about it, Billy. That’s what the fuck is bothering me, man. It’s been gnawin’ at my ass since you hired me.”
Billy squinted against his own smoke. “What’s your point?”
“Do you love her?”
He looked down at the table as he butted the cigarette in the foil. His face had fallen into shadow, but when he looked back up again it was lit by the fork of the flame. “No, Nick, I don’t love her. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been in love, to tell you the truth. But I’m sure I never was in love with her.”
I struggled against a curtain of alcohol that now pushed down upon my consciousness. “I don’t mind being a sucker, Billy-it’s happened to me before-but I don’t want to be your sucker, understand? We’ve got too much behind us, man, too many years.”
“Sure,” he said. “Let’s clear it.”
“You put April onto the DiGeordano heist, didn’t you?” Billy nodded with hesitation. “Joey called it the first time I sat with him. He said you were pimping your own wife. I didn’t want to believe him. Now I do.”
Billy nodded again and lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry, man.”
“You two wer e going to split the two hundred grand down the middle, then April was supposed to disappear. But April got wise. She booked with the full take and left you out in the cold. Now you want to find her and take back your share. That’s what you really hired me for-right, Billy?”
“That’s right, Greek,” he said. “That bitch took what was mine, understand? And now I want it back.” The shadow of the candle’s flame danced across Billy’s smile.
My eyes closed, watching him. The trailer darkened, and then it was black. I dreamed of high school, Billy, me, our teachers, our friends. Dead now, all of us.