The driveway followed the curve of a dry creek bed, then up a small rise, to a three-story farmhouse surrounded by various outbuildings. From the slight elevation, Worth could see jagged shadows of the scrap yard in the clearing, spreading back to the trees. Yellow light spilled from the open entrance of the largest of the buildings, a corrugated machine shed down the slope from the house.
Worth took a fork in the driveway and followed it down the hill, rocks crunching beneath the tires.
As he rolled up to the machine shed, a burly silhouette appeared at the edge of the big bay door. Thick shoulders, shaggy hair and beard, heavy Carhartt coveralls stained with grease. The man raised an arm, shielding his eyes from the glare of the GTO’s headlights. Worth braked to a stop, idling in the pond of light from inside the building.
The guy gave the car a long once-over.
When he finally stood aside, Worth pulled in, off the rock and up onto smooth concrete. The sound of the engine changed pitch as he entered the shed, doubling back on itself, gaining an echo in the hangar-size space.
He parked behind a super-duty pickup, a snow blade braced up on jacks. The bay door closed behind him, a cavernous rumble that drowned out the growl of the GTO.
As he cut the motor, it was as if a cinch strap loosened. Neck, shoulders, hands—all suddenly ached with relief, as though he’d carried the car here on his back.
But he was here.
And now there was that. Worth killed the lights, took a breath, and got out of the car.
“You found the place.”
If they’d seen each other on the street, Worth wasn’t sure he’d have known him.
“Vince,” he said. What else? Nice to see you? How have you been? “You look like Charles Manson.”
Vince Worth, Jr., stood a few feet away, hands shoved deep in the pockets of the Carhartts, expression hidden behind the overgrown shrub of beard.
Matthew said, “How’s Rita?”
“In Phoenix,” Vince said. He looked past him, toward the GTO.
The quick-and-dirty paint job had taken a beating on the way out of town. The sleet had scoured the front end back to the air intakes on the hood, leaving the car with tattered hide and a slick black snout.
But the half-assed camouflage had served its purpose. It had gotten him here—out beyond the storm, across the state line, past two Iowa state troopers, and into the hills, miles and miles removed from Gwen Mullen and the scene of Russell’s demise.
Vince said, “Bad goat, huh?”
Christ, Worth thought.
Just then realizing, after all the rigamarole, that he’d never once considered swapping out the personalized license tags on the goddamned car.
Vince Junior used his thumbnail to scrape soft paint away from the trunk lid, revealing the decal beneath. He opened the driver’s door and poked his head inside. He grabbed a hook light and got down on a knee with a labored sigh, head disapearing beneath the undercarriage for a minute or two.
He eventually hauled himself back to his feet, nodding vaguely, as though everything checked out.
“Not custom,” he said, answering questions Worth hadn’t asked. “’71 Judge. Last year they offered the option.”
“Vince—”
“Four hundred bucks got you the four-fifty-five high output, ram air hood, the suspension and wheels. Fin on the back, the decal set. Less than four hundred made. BadGoat here’s got the original factory build sheet.”
“Vince, forget about the car a minute.”
“Guess it’s sorta custom now,” he said. “Where’d you find it?”
“That’s what we need to talk about.”
With that, Vince gave him his full attention. Worth didn’t know quite what to do with it. He groped for a way to get this off the ground, finding that he had no idea how to explain himself to this grizzly, middle-aged ex-con.
He finally stepped to the car, keyed the lock, and popped the trunk lid. After a moment, Vince ambled around the back bumper, face still unreadable. A glowing industrial heater warmed the immediate area; Vince tugged the zipper of the coveralls to the waist as he moved, showing the cracked tongue and chapped red lips of an ancient Rolling Stones concert T-shirt beneath.
Standing in proximity, amid the shop smell of grease and gasoline, Worth caught a vague, not-unpleasant body odor—a day’s work mingled with the cling of stale cigarettes, a hint of Old Spice, a thread of whiskey breath. It took a moment before he placed the strange familiarity: Vince smelled like Dad.
They stood together, looking into the open trunk of Russell James’s one-in-four-hundred GTO. Worth’s mind returned again to the muffled snap he’d felt, throwing his weight against the job, straining to cram the cumbersome roll into the space.
From where he stood now, the way the rug had ended up in the trunk, bent at a sickening, lumpy angle, he could see into one end through the fringe. Gwen’s cheap garbage bags hadn’t held; in the overhead light he glimpsed a crown of dark sticky hair a few inches down. For some reason he flashed on the childbirth video he and Sondra once watched together, immediately wishing he could unthink the image. Or that he’d double-bagged.
“Guess now would be the part where you explain why you called.”
When he looked up, he found Vince watching him, casual as a vacation day.
Worth forced himself to meet his eyes. “I need help, Junior.”
“I got that,” his oldest brother said. “Skip to the part about needing a goddamn incinerator.”
10
When Worth was a kid, maybe seven years old, he’d jumped off the rail of the deck in back and taken a header into the concrete footing of the nearest clothesline pole.
He’d been trying to catch the crossbar, imagining a fluid, Spidey-style vault. Maybe landing somewhere over near the peony bushes in a precision crime-fighting crouch.
Primarily he’d been trying to impress Kelly, four years older, only that summer deemed old enough to stay home in charge. They’d been horsing around in the backyard, weekday bored, thinking up dumb little ways to outdo each other, not exactly keeping score. Worth hadn’t known to start bawling until he’d seen the look of stricken panic on Kelly’s face. Completely unaware, until that moment, of the blood pouring out of his own.
To this day, he had a clear memory of Vince showing up as if by magic, wading into the chaos, sorting them up and herding them both into the back of his dented Thunderbird. Two hours later, an ER nurse walked Matthew back out to the waiting chairs at UNMC with his first set of stitches: six tight black whiskers across the bottom of his chin.
He remembered Vince scruffing his head and telling him he looked like a tough guy. Matthew had smeared blood all over the seats getting in and out, but Vince hadn’t seemed to care. On the way home, he’d stopped at the Goodrich on Saddle Creek and bought them all ice cream cones.
Thinking back, Worth guessed Vince must have been dropping in on Mom, knowing Dad rolled second shift, not knowing she’d taken a day job looking after Mrs. Stillmock up the street.
All he could say for sure was that it was the first time he could remember hearing his mother lie. She’d changed the names and times on the accident report she filed with the old man later, editing herself into the story, Vince out, describing their trip to the hospital down to a fabricated mix-up with the insurance card.
He and Kelly had listened through the air vent upstairs and gone to bed grateful for the fib.
Thirty years down the line, Mom and Kelly were gone. The old man might as well be. Junior was into his fifties by now. And Matthew still couldn’t grow real whiskers over the scar he’d earned that day he’d opened his face in the backyard.