Ain't Nobody Nobody Read online

  RANDY MAYHILL SINGLE-HANDEDLY

  SHUTS DOWN DRUG RING

  ***

  One month later, the day Van died, Jimmy Cason, the game warden, would sit on the corner of Mayhill’s desk.

  “A bunch of dead fish washed up in the Trinity,” he said. “Gator too.”

  Something about the way Cason said it unnerved him.

  “I went to take a look because that’s my job, and I do my job.” Jimmy Cason got up from Mayhill’s desk and paced the room. “What do you think I found when I went down to the Trinity and started poking around for a bunch of dead carp and a belly-up gator?”

  Mayhill’s hand trembled under the desk. Was it possible? The spilled poison? He leaned back in his chair and looked up, the ceiling tiles still conspicuously silent.

  “We know about Van,” the game warden said. “If what I heard is true, you were alerted to the situation about a month ago.”

  No words came to Mayhill.

  “A month ago, Randy.” Cason slammed his hand on the desk.

  He didn’t understand how the game warden knew about the hog hunter. Had he contacted Jimmy too? Mayhill rubbed his hand over his mouth and searched for any excuse, any reasonable cover-up, but none came.

  “If this is true…” Jimmy Cason said. “And I’m not saying it is. If this is true, it puts me in a precarious situation. I can’t imagine what you must have thought when you found out what Van was doing. I can’t imagine what you were thinking…not taking care of it right there.”

  That was me taking care of it right there.

  The game warden didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “I mean, Van’s my friend too. I mean, I’m loyal. He’s looking at a twenty-year minimum sentence as much as he got going. Twenty years.”

  Jimmy Cason, you know nothing of loyalty.

  “You know how something like this is gonna go. It’s your word against his if this hunter wants to press it.” He stopped pacing and leaned against the desk. “There will be charges. Won’t be pretty. Embarrassing for you, embarrassing for the office. Newspapers. TV crews. Whole nine yards.”

  “The newspaper…” These were the only words Randy would say.

  “If what I heard is true, you could be looking at jail time. You! Not just Van. If we did a full investigation…if we asked Gabby if she knew anything…if she could attest to the man being here…”

  Randy waved a hand in the air to cut him off. “Stop.” He rubbed his palms flat against the desk, the cool wood grain. His head dropped low toward the desk to where he could almost smell the wood.

  “Officially, Randy, because of your unique relationship with Van’s family…” The game warden continued, his voice much too gentle for Mayhill’s taste. “We have to bypass the Sheriff’s office. It’s an official investigation now. We will be working with DPS. I just thought you should know.”

  ***

  Later that morning, a narcotics team would raid the land and find Van dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound (Smith & Wesson .357). He faced a twenty-year sentence for gardening a plant that makes people eat too many Doritos.

  SHERIFF RANDALL MAYHILL CAUGHT IN

  COUNTY COVER-UP!!!

  ITS’ SHAMEFUL! SAYS LOCAL RESIDENCE

  Van had been wrong. They spelled Randy’s name correctly.

  CHAPTER TEN

  But that was the past. Today was for redemption! Ye shall be born anew! Verily, verily.

  Mayhill left Bradley’s mother, dropped his new dog off at his house, and watched her drink a half-gallon of water in twenty seconds flat. For a moment, Mayhill felt jealous of the dog because she had a need that was met so fully. She was delivered from hell to heaven by simply sauntering into the sun at the right time. Oh, to be delivered! Oh, to have a half bucket of tepid hose water set in front of one’s dry snout! The dog flopped down next to Pat Sajak on the porch, with Boo and Atticus on the other side, and Mayhill realized then her name was Vanna because dog names are revealed; they are not chosen.

  Mayhill then drove to Birdie’s and Onie’s house and knocked on their door, and was pleasantly surprised when Birdie opened it unarmed. Their house was an old barn that Van’s father had converted. Inside the door was a large open room with a piano against one wall and a television on the other. A large couch divided the space down the middle like Communist Berlin. Onie had chosen the side of the oppressive television regime.

  She turned her head toward him. “Randy!”

  He walked over and side-hugged her in the chair. “I’m sweaty,” he said, but Onie leaned in anyway.

  Birdie had taken a seat at the dining table at the other end of the room, making a Herculean effort not to look at him, lest she turn to stone. He had sat there with Van and Onie and her on a thousand occasions, the table much too large for the space so that they had to shimmy along the wall to sit. Now, he carefully chose one of the dining chairs as far away from Birdie as possible as he stretched out his knee. He took off his hat and placed it on the table.

  “Who is he?” he asked. “You know that man, Birdie, and you’re not telling me.”

  She stared out the window, gripping her coffee cup like a lifeline. He could see in her face she was holding something close.

  “Where were you last night?” he asked.

  “You tell me.” Birdie held up her hands to make binoculars around her eyes.

  She was right. He knew they had been home.

  “Talked to Bradley’s mama. She hasn’t seen him in a few days,” Mayhill said. “Had a big bruise on her arm, just like Bradley. Said he doesn’t sleep there at night anymore.”

  Birdie’s face slowly registered concern. “Where’s he sleep, then?”

  “Thought you might know.” Mayhill watched her closely. “He have a girlfriend?”

  “No, he doesn’t have a girlfriend! I mean, we don’t really talk like that.”

  “He’s here all the time,” Mayhill said. “Aren’t y’all friends? Y’all the same age about.”

  “And you’re friends with all the fifty-year-olds? And all the Mexicans in town are friends with each other?”

  “I’m forty-five,” he said. And Mayhill wanted to point out that the few Mexicans in town were all friends with each other because they couldn’t afford not to be in that town. And if there had been albinos or Icelanders, they’d best be friends with each other too. It was important to stick together in a place like that—except women, because he noticed that women in this town inexplicably couldn’t be friends with other women for too long.

  “Who’s he hang out with?” Mayhill asked. “Where do you see him?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not in school, remember?” Birdie had never actually told him she dropped out of school, but her truck had still been parked outside their house when school started.

  A revelation hit Mayhill, and he leaned in close across the table. “Birdie, is Bradley here now? Are you hiding him here?”

  “You figured it out!” Birdie slung her arms to the sky. “He’s been here all along! He’s under the stairs with Anne Frank!”

  “You argue like your daddy. You’re like a rabid dog. Your mouth is foaming.”

  “And you’re talking like a jackass.”

  “Your daddy said that before.” Mayhill snickered.

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” She finally looked him in the eye. “You’re honest-to-God enjoying this.”

  Mayhill didn’t argue. Onie glared at them and turned up the television. The screen showed a Matlock rerun, a classic in which Ben marches a horse into the courtroom.

  “The man’s a trapper. I need to know if you hired him,” Mayhill said. “Because maybe this has all been just a terrible accident. Maybe just a bizarre hunting accident. One fella shoots the other and you had nothing at all to do with it.”

  “Name one place that’s ever happened before ever.”

  “It’s happened,” he said.

  Birdie nervously tapped on
her cup.

  “Could Bradley have hired him?” Mayhill asked. “Onie?”

  “Onie loves the hogs. I’m surprised she’s not leaving food out for them.” She paused. “Did you hire him? Did you hire a trapper?”

  “You know I’d never outsource such a thing,” Mayhill said. “But for the sake of argument, let’s say Bradley—”

  “Stop it!” Her eyes threatened to cry but she somehow willed any wetness back in her head. “He didn’t do anything.”

  “Then where—”

  She looked at him with a kind of desperation that made his heart stop. She was terrified. Mayhill finally got it. She really didn’t know where he was, but the thought of him not being okay was too much to entertain right now. Bradley was fine because he had to be fine, because Birdie couldn’t live in a world with more tragedy. There was no other option. Mayhill just didn’t know what else she needed Bradley for.

  “Did you tell Onie about…?”

  She shook her head again.

  “That’s probably best,” he said, then leaned in and whispered, “How is she these days? I mean, how is she in the…?” He pointed to his ear.

  “Quiet mostly.” The bags under Birdie’s eyes hung heavy like a laundry line. “She went to the store the other day for milk and came back with a bunch of junk food. She doesn’t even let me drink Coke.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t drink that anyway.”

  “Please do share your dieting tips, Randy.”

  Onie laughed from the couch—a distinctive cackle that made Mayhill and Birdie look wide-eyed and guilty at each other. Had Onie been listening, or was it the courtroom horse? Birdie softened for a moment, curls bouncing out of her ponytail, the hint of a smile on her mouth. For that second, Birdie was seven years old again and he was Uncle Randy sneaking her sips of Dr Pepper when Onie wasn’t looking.

  “Why do Bradley and his mama have bruises on their arms?” Birdie asked.

  “Coincidence.”

  Birdie nodded in the way of someone trying to convince herself of a lie. “Maybe,” she said, and took a sip of her coffee. It was the first time she had not disagreed with him.

  Mayhill got up and grabbed his hat. “Know anybody who drives a black Datsun?”

  “How should I know?”

  He was about to say, “He looked your age,” but he stopped himself because a man learns, a man corrects his course. And miracle of miracles, she was starting to thaw.

  “Just stay in the house for now,” Mayhill said. He feigned an authority over Birdie he didn’t quite believe himself, like the pointless bobby pin trying to tame her hair. “Don’t be stupid. Don’t go into the woods or anything. Not until we know what’s going on.” He opened the door to leave and stepped over a congregation of shoes just inside the doorway. “I’m guessin’ you already do though.”

  “Jesus,” Birdie said. “People think what they gonna think.” She stretched her arm out on the table and rested her head upon it, then traced the outline of the wood grain with her fingers. “A dead body shows up on your land and people automatically think it’s yours,” she sighed. “That’s the problem with neighbors.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  People think what they gonna think. It was true.

  It was also true that Birdie knew something, but as is often the case with memories, she didn’t know what she knew. She wasn’t withholding information from Mayhill. She just didn’t want to experience the wrath of Mayhill’s finger jabbing at her in the air, demanding she make meaning out of something that, as far as she knew, had no meaning at all. She had met the dead man with her father, and their meeting had held little significance at the time except to signal that Van was fraternizing with a different sort of man. She didn’t even know his name.

  Bradley had met him too.

  “That man…” Bradley had said quietly as they walked away from the body Wednesday morning, his hands shoved in his pockets. “You and me. We—” But Bradley stopped himself and walked quickly ahead. He might have been crying.

  Watching Mayhill drive off now, she desperately wanted to ask Bradley about it again, a conversation to make the memory crystallize, in which she could just pick up the phone, the way she imagined other girls calling their boyfriends. That man who what? You and me what?

  Birdie had called Bradley’s house incessantly all morning, but she called again now. A woman picked up, groggy and irritated. “Who keeps calling!” she yelled.

  "Oh! I wasn’t expecting…is Bradley there?"

  "Nope!"

  "Has he been home today?"

  "Hell nope!"

  "Could you have him—"

  "You call again, I’m callin’ the sheriff."

  Dial tone.

  She angrily pecked Bradley’s number into the keypad again because she was Van’s daughter after all, and an order to stop was always an invitation to keep going. She wrapped the slack of the long cord around her wrist, cutting off the circulation to her hand, and watched her fingers throb white and red. She pressed the receiver to her ear, but the call rang and rang until it disconnected. Birdie slammed down the phone and then poured herself another cup of a coffee, guzzling it down like a Columbian drug lord. She paced the house, heart racing, breath like a funeral pyre, then stepped outside and craned her neck to see if Bradley were anywhere in sight until the mosquitos and heat drove her back inside.

  Birdie thought of Bradley’s bruises, his mother’s bruises, Bradley not sleeping at his house anymore. She was tired of waiting around. She wrapped up in one of Van’s flannel work shirts (red and white plaid), tucked the pink note in her pocket like a lucky charm, and racked her brain for any inkling as to what Van would have done in a similar situation, as if the shirt and note would give her insight. But they remained as tight-lipped as Onie, and she knew at that point, if she needed to think, all she could do was drive.

  ***

  Bradley had shown up every Wednesday and Saturday for the last few years. Van had brought this awkward young man to their ranch, rumors swooping around him like cowbirds, and from then on, he would be there every Wednesday and Saturday until Armageddon. Even after Van died, which was on a Wednesday with a waxing gibbous moon, Bradley showed up three days later on a punishingly humid Saturday to clear brush and to feed the ducks in the tiny pond near the woods.

  A week after Van died, Bradley burned the garbage since it was stacked halfway up the barn with the remnants of casseroles and cards. He waved to Birdie and Onie, who sat on the porch numbly, dumbly, taking in the cool fall weather as if they were waiting for Van to come back with the migrating geese. Three months in, Birdie and Onie realized that nobody had been paying Bradley because Van had always done that, and Onie walked out to the pasture in her shirtdress and tennis shoes with a sizable check that Bradley politely declined even though he was the poorest person they knew. In response, Onie returned to the house and emerged with her shotgun and marched back out to the burn pile and said that if Bradley was not an employee, he was a trespasser, and if he did not want to be treated as such, he would take the money and all additional payments moving forward. Bradley, simultaneously touched and threatened by her hostility, agreed.

  The memory had always moved Birdie. Bradley was technically the help, but he was also more than the help as the help always is. They were friends in the way of convenience, but he spoke to her with a nervous deference that made her unsure of where they stood. Bradley spent as much time with her father as anybody she could remember, which meant that he knew Van well. Bradley knew his stories and had heard Van speak of the trees and the birds and the moon so much that he would forever look at life through that lens. Bradley could never again look at a tree and simply think "tree." He wouldn’t even see pine. Like it or not, for the rest of his days, Bradley would see a loblolly pine in its second year of flowering, twenty feet tall, eight years old and still growing. He would see all of this in a flash of a second, a hundred times over when he walked through the w
oods. Bradley would never again see a moon. He’d see the anemic smile of a waning crescent or the sleepy sideways eye of the waxing gibbous.

  No more birds. Mockingbirds became gossipers, the Patsy Fullers of the avian world. Shrikes became tormentors, guards at Gitmo…

  ***

  Birdie turned onto the main highway from the tangle of the backwoods and spotted Mr. Boudreaux’s truck edged onto the side of the road. In the past year, she visited with her neighbors less and less because a death like her father’s invited as much unsolicited commentary as a pregnant belly or a face tattoo, but Mr. Boudreaux’s rusted old farm truck drew her in. The backend brimmed with watermelon, and on the bumper of his truck rested a cardboard sign the size of a watermelon that read, unironically, WATERMELON. She wondered how many people actually stopped on this highway, how many cars sped by to begin with.

  Clet Boudreaux was a Louisiana transplant—half deaf, half senile, skin like a saddle—and Van had conservatively estimated him to be a hundred and fourteen years old. But a real virile hunnard plus. Despite his age, Mr. Boudreaux sat out on the main highway all summer, every one-hundred-degree day until the last watermelon went home with somebody. Van would buy half of them just to get Mr. Boudreaux out of the heat faster. “He’s gonna die out there if I don’t,” Van would say, a sweat mustache sprouting on his lip. They would try to help him load Van’s truck, but always the professional, Mr. Boudreaux waved them off, insisting that it was his job as the sole proprietor of his establishment, and this proved to be an exercise in patience, not unlike watching an elderly ant haul twenty acorns up a tree.

  Mr. Boudreaux waved his crushed cowboy hat as Birdie pulled into the ditch behind him.

  “Hey, angel! How's Onie?” he shouted, all gums, his Cajun and Texan accents a brawl in his mouth.