Casey has gone porky and bald since you went away. He wears little crosses as earrings now and doesn’t like making it known that he hangs out with you. He and Levi Bassett are still tight, and Levi wants to put your head through a wall because of what you did to him outside the bowling alley. For you and Casey, hunting trips into the forests south of town make the most sense. Together you ride on his rumbling Arctic Cat. It seems unlikely you’ll sneak up on many deer with the Cat coughing gas, but you’re outdoors and the air tastes clean. As the good reverend says, “At least you’re alive and got all four limbs.”
At the end of a trail, you and Casey leave the Cat and make your way into the cold winter woods. The snow has mostly melted, and it’s slushy business going forward. Casey has a new Remington and lends you his old Mossberg for the afternoon. You sit in the box stand for twenty minutes and get bored. Then you walk for an hour, not saying much, and not seeing anything bigger than a squirrel.
“Gotta be better than dog,” says Casey. “That’s some fucked up Korean shit Rocky’s doing to you.” Rocky is, for some reason, what Casey has taken to calling Raquel.
“This is worthless,” you say.
“Yeah, I told you these woods was empty. Everyone with the same idea. Best we’ll get is a raccoon or opossum.”
“My feet are fucking soaked.”
Both boots have holes. You come to a felled tree not far from a small lake and stop to sit on it, leaning the rifle on a tree, and tearing off your boot and sock to rub warmth into your right foot. Then the left.
“How hard up are you?” Casey asks.
“Pretty fucking hard up.”
“You got that gig with the church.”
“That’s about a hundred bucks a week, Casey. Ain’t enough but to make me feel like I’m starving my kid. Plus, I can’t do nothing but under the table or those fuckers’ll just take the wages right out of the check.” You explain how you still owe Prion Security Solutions thousands for your own incarceration, including shoes, uniform, your PRCC gear, phone calls, even the electricity you used.
“Least you wanna work. I’ll tell you, if a man refuses to work, let him starve. Government’s giving away food to Haiti or wherever and there’s nothing left for anyone else.” Casey appears to consider something, and though you don’t dare let yourself hope, you can tell he has some kind of idea. “You remember Dick Underwood, of course.” He drapes his rifle over his shoulder and removes a glove to blow into his fist. “He’s gotten deep into this Patriot League stuff. You know they got a compound up by Sugarcreek?”
You’ve heard this. Underwood and his butt buddies playing like they’re going to start the next American Revolution. Overthrow the government. Not enough of them had seen what the government could do if it got real with you.
“They’re always looking for recruits. Guys to work. Get trained up and all that.”
“Ain’t it all volunteer?”
“Nah, they got money coming in now. A lot of it, I guess.”
“Not really into politics.”
“Hey, it’d be a job, though. Part of one, at least. Don’t tell Rocky, obviously.”
You were going to point into the woods to change the subject, but a small mammal materializes, like you conjured it into being. It’s an opossum scuttling through the soggy muck, whipping its scaly tail. Casey takes up his rifle, aims.
The crack of the bullet echoes, sharper and clearer because the snow and ice don’t absorb the sound. It chews into the dirt beside the animal, just enough to scare it and send it scampering into the forest.
“Goddamnit.” Neither of you has the energy to give chase. “Don’t want to eat opossum anyhow,” Casey mutters.
By the time you trudge out of the woods, dusk has fallen. Casey drops you in town, after a white lie about why you aren’t going home yet. With the five dollars in your wallet you buy a fistful of candy from the gas station. All you’ve had to eat in the last twenty-four hours is a ham and cheese sandwich, an apple, oatmeal, and now the candy. At least in prison you were never hungry.
You notice how many homes on Cassingham Hollow are empty now. Abandoned. Roofs caved in, windows boarded up. Feral cats roam the lawns. While you were busy pulling people out of debris during the Great Eastern Flood, the Muskingum River had topped its banks and soaked and splintered dozens of homes. But there’s one with the lights on. That old Queen Anne. Gray with dull pink trim that hasn’t been touched up in a generation. Battered chairs on the porch and the table with a dirty coffee mug. That mug packed with dead cigarettes.
When Tawrny shows up at the door, it’s a little bit shocking. He’s lost a lot of weight. He’d always been a big dude, barrel-chested and beer-gutted. He still has the gut, but it’s dwindled to a sad fleshy pouch that rides ahead of him, stretching the fabric of his long johns. He still has the salt goatee, but the flowing white hair is not so flowing anymore. There’s a brittle quality to it. Like his head would be crisp to the touch.
“Come on in, Keeper.”
He offers you hot chocolate, and you sit at the kitchen table, which is burdened with the weight of dirty dishes and unopened mail. You recognize what a bill from a collections agency looks like. Stained long johns hang from a lamp.
“Your wife home?”
He looks up from the stove, where he sets a pot of water to boil. “Betsy passed. Two years ago now.”
“Ah, T. Sorry to hear that.”
“For the best.” He reaches a frail arm to the cupboard where he snatches two mugs and empties a packet of hot chocolate powder into each. You can see his collarbone suddenly sharp against the weathered skin. “She was in agony at the end. Couldn’t bear to watch it.”
“Real sorry,” you repeat, and abruptly you’re thinking of Raquel. How she met you at the prison with Toby, a balloon tied to his wrist that said WELCOME HOME. Never in your life had you seen two more beautiful people, and you wanted to run back into your cell all the same.
“You finding any work?” Tawrny asks. He lights a cigarette. Spirals of smoke drift to the ceiling and collect in the room.
“Nope. Casey just tried to get me to go see the APL affiliate up in Sugarcreek.”
“Buncha crazy fucking rednecks, you best stay well away from them.”
“What I figured.”
“You don’t know the half. The League’s been terrorizing folks. Claim they’re cleaning up the streets, but they put an old Mexican in the hospital. Beat him half to death. Cops won’t do nothing about it.”
“So is this about product you need moved?”
He raises a dandruffy eyebrow. “You using again?”
“No,” you say quickly. “Course not. But I can work.”
The pot begins to whistle and Tawrny removes it, dumping steaming water over chocolate powder.