On the way home from Mrs. Friedman’s, though it was only four o’clock, Jeb Taylor thought about stopping at the local watering hole for a drink. After all, he told himself, he was almost nineteen years old, and if he wanted to stop and have a beer he ought to be able to do it. They would serve him without a fuss; his money was as good as anybody else’s, and nobody much cared about the drinking age around here. To be truthful he had been thirsting for a good drink since the night before, and the only thing that had stopped him all day was the watchful eye of Mrs. Friedman herself, who came out every five minutes to check on him and make sure he was “doing things right.” She would watch him work until he felt her eyes burning through the back of his neck, then finally she would sigh and go back inside, only to come back out again later to say some other meaningless thing. I wonder what it’s like to live with her, he had thought, as he dug through the rocks and old roots in the back garden and dumped fresh manure on the soil. Mr. Friedman was a big-shot lawyer in town, and worked long hours. Jeb always figured it was a way to avoid his wife more than anything else. Her husband probably thinks about killing himself every day of his life.
The local watering hole was a one-room bar on Route 27 called Johnny’s, located just beyond the town square and across from the grocery. The place used to be an old schoolhouse, and the red brick and small wooden windows had survived through several minor renovations. The owner thought the windows made the place look more distinguished, and in fact the building was listed on the historical landmark map or some such fool thing. There were four places of historical interest in White Falls; three were old houses on the square, built by founding members of the town, and the other was the schoolhouse, which had come to Johnny Berden in 1974 with a dirt-cheap price from the previous owner who eventually declared bankruptcy. The town council asked him to keep the place empty as a museum for tourists, but Johnny had laughed at them. The least he could do then, the council said, was preserve the “flavor” of the place. So Johnny put a horseshoe bar in the center of the room, a few cheap plastic booths around the edges, planted a jukebox in the corner, and hung a few pool lights from the ceiling, and Johnny’s was born, such as it was. A lot of people still called it the schoolhouse.
Right now Jeb didn’t give a damn what the place was called. He hadn’t slept well last night, and today had been a long hard day digging in the dirt. It had been unusually hot for the middle of April, and so humid Jeb’s shirt stuck to his shoulders with sweat. That was no job for a grown man. Now that he was turning nineteen he ought to have something better. His back had begun to ache and his knees crack a little too loud when he bent down, and for seven-fifty an hour, he thought he could find better things to do. He had begun lately to think of ways he could get out of the job and still keep gas in his car.
But now he wanted a shot of whiskey and a beer to wash it down, for starters. He couldn’t remember when he’d craved a drink so bad. He’d never much cared for whiskey before, but right now it seemed like the perfect thing.
Jeb took a stool at the bar and ordered the whiskey, downed it and ordered another. Johnny’s was empty this early in the evening and the bartender left him alone. Jeb sat and studied his hands, which were black with grime. He considered going to the bathroom to wash them and thought better of it. This kind of ground-in dirt wouldn’t come out for a long time. What a lousy fucking job; Mrs. Friedman, with her shit-eating grin and hands on her hips acting like she was better than everyone else, as if just because she was paying him it gave her the right to order him around like a servant. With this kind of dirt under his fingernails he would never make it in politics. They would laugh at him when he tried to shake hands and kiss their babies. Stupid white trash. What could you possibly do for us? And a Taylor, too. We haven’t forgotten your daddy, boy, and what he did.
Jeb sat in misery and downed his third shot. Damned if he couldn’t see what they all were doing. He might not be the brightest spoke on the wheel, but damned if he didn’t see how they were all shutting him out, making him into a clown, laughing at him behind his back like those two guards at the Thomaston Prison. If he could find a way to get back at them all he would do it. He would do it in a second.
He stayed at Johnny’s for another hour and a half, and the bartender kept serving him shots, and by the time he stumbled drunkenly out to his car it was getting dark again. He was mildly surprised at that. Seemed as if he had just walked in the door a second ago, and then it had been full light. He would have to give Ruth some dinner, unless she had felt up to fixing it herself, and that hadn’t happened too often lately. Jeb had begun to feel the burden of caring for his grandmother, and he didn’t like it. The way he felt, his life was just getting started, and why should he waste any time farting around with someone whose life was about done? Ruth had one foot in the grave, and half the time her mind was a thousand miles away. Christ, just two days ago he had caught her mumbling to herself like she was talking to her dead husband. Told him she “had his shirts done” and if he was needing them they were in the hall closet. Crazy old bird.
He started the car and backed out of the small parking lot. By this time there were several cars parked there. He just missed clipping the bumper of a Mercedes that looked vaguely familiar, and somebody shouted at him as he drove off. He paid them no attention, speeding down past the cemetery, where his mother and grandfather were buried, past the white Catholic Church, turning along the green and turning to go up the long hill toward his grandmother’s house. He passed the drug store and Thelma’s Gifts and the hardware store, and all were dark, their doors shut for the night. White Falls went to bed early.
But the Taylor home was ablaze with light. Jeb parked in the driveway and stumbled up the walk, cursing Ruth who had surely left all the lights on before falling asleep in the living room chair. Probably spooked herself, thinking dead Grandpa Norman had come back to life again.
But when he went in she was awake and sitting in a kitchen chair. “Christ,” he said. “What’re you doing up?”
“Don’t you swear in this house,” Ruth said smartly. “I won’t have it.” Her eyes were especially bright, and Jeb thought for a moment she had been into the liquor cabinet, which didn’t sound like such a bad idea. Wasn’t much there, but a little would do just fine now. Take the edge off.
“You’ve been out running around,” she announced. “And in the middle of the week, too.”
Ruth peered at him and he got that odd feeling like she was looking straight through his skull and reading his thoughts. “Just stopped at the store,” he said sourly.
“It’s eight o’clock at night and I smell whiskey. You’re all dirty and sweaty. Bet you stopped in at the schoolhouse right after work, didn’t you?”
“I don’t have to answer to you.” His words were slurring together in spite of his best efforts. He made a move as if to go upstairs. His head was pounding now, and it was either find another bottle to take the edge off or go straight to bed.
What she said next stopped him short. “Your father used to do that after a long day. Drinking whiskey at the schoolhouse.”
“So what?”
Ruth suddenly seemed agitated. She cocked her head to one side as if listening. Jeb got the uncomfortable feeling he used to get around crazy Annie when he was a kid, not really sure how to react to her and always wondering what she was going to do. Because with Annie, you could never be sure what was coming; she kept you off balance.
Finally Ruth looked at him again, her eyes still holding that spark of life he recognized and was coming to hate. “What did you do with his things from the jail? Did you throw them away like I asked?”
Jeb Taylor stood in the shadows just outside the kitchen, his head a mass of pain, and considered how to answer. The suitcase was still upstairs in his closet, hidden under the clothes, and though he knew he didn’t want to open it, he hadn’t been able to get himself to throw the thing away yet.
He wasn’t really sure what finally made him lie. “Yeah. I threw ’em in the river, Gramma. Okay? I threw ’em in the river last night.”
“Did you look at them?”
“Just a bunch of clothes and some books.”
“Come here.” When he came, reluctantly, she reached up and patted his neck with her gnarled old lady hands. The anger welled up within him and he had the sudden urge to strike her, slap that wrinkled, sagging face, push in her eyes with his thumbs, choke her throat. He held himself tightly together and closed his eyes. She gave a great sigh, and it was as if something left her all at once, like a flock of birds had taken wing. She patted his chest. “That’s good, Jeboriah.”
Jeb nodded and went upstairs, leaving the crazy old woman in the kitchen. What was wrong with her, anyway? She’d really lost it this time. He’d come that close to hitting her. He balled his hands into fists, and slowly released them as the nails cut into his palms. The pain cut through his pounding head, clearing it. She would have to find her own dinner tonight. He wasn’t hungry anymore.
He would throw away the suitcase tomorrow, he decided. No sense keeping it around, anyway. Or maybe he would keep it just to spite her.
The upper floor of the house was dark and he stumbled into his bedroom, too tired to wash up. He fell into bed and was asleep almost instantly.
He dreamed of circles floating in front of his face, rings of blazing light. At first he thought he was looking into the sun, but slowly the circle became clearer, until he could see the snakes wrapped around each other with their tails in their mouths.
The Mercedes Jeb Taylor had almost hit in the parking lot of Johnny’s belonged to Pat Friedman, forty-eight years old, husband of Mrs. Julie Friedman and partner in the firm of Friedman and Soule located next to the bookstore on the square. Pat had also been the man who shouted in surprise as the big Chevy with the loud side pipes had spun out of the parking lot; he had been standing by the door to the bar as Jeb came stumbling out.
Though it had been a warm day, there was a cold wind blowing tonight. Pat stood on the front steps and stared down the road in the direction of town. In the distance he could see a glow from the lights that dotted the walkways along the square. Across the street from Johnny’s he could see the dark windows of the town grocery and the single floodlight mounted on the corner of the roof, and behind him in the darkness he could hear the muffled voices of the falls, deep white water tumbling down the hole in the river. People came from a good distance around this time of year to see the falls and the place where the river seemed to flow uphill after the hole. Right now the water level was rising. The river would be at its greatest volume in another month, and the town of White Falls would have its festival on the green.
Pat Friedman felt the wind against his cheek, and pulled his collar up. He was not ready to go home yet. The truth was, his wife did drive him crazy (as Jeb Taylor suspected). He had married her because she was the sexiest thing he had ever seen, but he had found over the ten-plus years of their marriage that she was a flirt and a control freak. He suspected her of having an affair, maybe more than one. But he was eleven years older than she was, and a shy man around women. She had been the one to ask him out when they met. He was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to find another suitable wife, and so he had given everything up to her long ago. Besides, a messy divorce in a small town would ruin his law practice.
He often wound out the hours at Johnny’s instead of at the office. He hadn’t expected to see Jeb here, though. That was certainly strange. Jeb wasn’t old enough to drink yet; couldn’t be much over eighteen. Pat used to see Ronnie Taylor tying one on at Johnny’s years ago, and damned if his boy wasn’t starting to look just like him. In fact, when Jeb had come stumbling out tonight and sped away in that big car, Pat had felt as if he were seeing a ghost.
Jeb hadn’t looked well. That Ronnie Taylor had been a bad seed, but he was the boy’s father. Pat hoped Jeb was taking his death okay. One of the reasons he had agreed to hire the boy in the first place was he had felt sorry for him. And Julie seemed to like him.
As he stood in the near darkness, Pat had a moment of sudden clarity, as if everything around him had come into sharp focus. He glanced at the market across the road and the light was so bright it hurt his eyes, and the sound of the falls was like the roar of a great beast breathing down his neck, and he thought, Something’s in the air tonight. Something horrible.
He stood there frozen for a minute. A car drove by the bar, and Pat watched as its brake lights blinked once, twice as it went around the corner and out of sight.
Silly, he thought to himself. It’s just a cool night in April, that’s all. Julie would have told him he was drinking too much.
Pat Friedman turned quickly and returned to the warmth of the bar, and left the people of White Falls to settle in against the sudden cold and an uneasy sleep.