“Wait a minute-Chief?”
“Deke. I’ll call Deke.”
“Oh, right.” He had a dim memory of someone else calling Deke the Chief. “Try to get some sleep, Doc.”
The next morning Pax heard a deep argo voice vibrating through the walls, and thought, Deke. He sat up quickly, and his eyes blurred with tears. Jesus, tears? What was that about?
He quickly got dressed and made his way to the reception area. He felt stronger than yesterday but still shaky. He’d finally eaten, finishing off a granola bar and a bottle of orange juice that Dr. Fraelich had brought him.
In the reception area Deke leaned on the counter talking to the doctor, a collection of orange prescription bottles on the surface between them. Doreen, the charlie girl who’d bathed him, sat at a desk behind the doctor, staring down at an open magazine, pretending to ignore the conversation. She looked up as Pax entered and quickly looked down again, embarrassed.
Deke abruptly stopped whatever he was saying to the doctor and said to Pax, “Hey there, sleepyhead.”
Pax smiled faintly. “Howdy, Chief.”
Dr. Fraelich seemed upset, the blotches on her face angrier. She picked up the bottles and put them into a plastic bag.
Pax said, “Do you need my insurance or something? I remember signing a lot of papers.”
Deke looked at Dr. Fraelich, and she said, “You’re covered. Courtesy of Aunt Rhonda.”
“Really?” Pax said.
“Just drink plenty of water,” Dr. Fraelich said to him. Whatever familiarity they’d developed last night had been packed away.
“That’s it?” Pax said. “Three days of drug-induced coma and all I get is water?”
“A coma would have been a lot quieter and a lot easier on all of us,” she said. “You’re detoxing. Eat some fruit if you want. Just stay away from male charlies of a certain age.” She took the plastic bag of medicine and walked away before he could respond. Doreen kept her head down.
“That was… weird,” Pax said. He felt like everyone was moving at double speed, flashing signals he couldn’t detect.
“Come on, man,” Deke said. “Let’s get you home.”
Home. Which was where, exactly? Sure as hell not Chicago. He knew now that it had never been his home. He’d spent ten years marking time.
Pax followed Deke outside. It was midmorning and humid as a greenhouse. Gray clouds hid the top of Mount Clyburn, promising rain.
“You look whupped,” Deke said. “You need help getting in? You’re walking like an old man.”
“I got it. I’ve just been smacked upside the limbic system.” Pax pulled open the door and after a false start managed to hoist himself into the cab. He fell back in the high bucket seat and gazed up through the roll bars at the gray clouds.
“Thank you, man,” Pax said. “For coming to get me. For everything.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“No, seriously. Thank you. You’ve always been-you and Jo-you were the only people I…” His voice trailed off.
“It’s okay,” Deke said. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“I was inside his head, Deke.”
“Whose head?”
“At the church. I was next to him in the water, and I saw what he saw. He was hallucinating about the church, the way it used to be. I could see it.”
“You were doing some hallucinating yourself, P.K.”
“I don’t regret it happening, though. Okay, the hangover is hell, but I’m glad it happened.” He rolled his neck to look up at the man. “My father loves me, Deke.”
“Of course he does. He’s your father.” A strange thing for him to say, Pax thought, considering what an asshole Deke’s father had been.
“You don’t understand,” Pax said. “I know he does. I could feel it. I felt what he felt.”
“You’re still high,” Deke said. “Just a second.” He reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a cell phone pinched between thumb and index finger. It was a bulky, old-fashioned thing that looked tiny in his hands. He held it in front of him, not even trying to fit it to his ear. “This is Deke.”
A deep argo voice buzzed from the phone’s speakers. “Deke, this is Amos. I think we’ve got some tourists over at the Whitehall place. I just saw someone pull in. Nobody from around here.”
“You sure it’s not the police?” Deke asked.
“It ain’t that kind of car,” the voice said.
Deke looked over at Pax. “You got a minute for a detour?”
“My day is wide open,” Pax said.
Chapter 9
DEKE DIDN’T TURN on a siren or flip on a light, but the drivers in town seemed to recognize that he was on business and stayed out of his way. Once Deke cleared the curve at the elementary school and turned onto Creek Road he hit the gas. Mount Clyburn rose up ahead, shrouded in mist. They seemed to be driving straight into it.
“So you’re chief of what, exactly?” Pax said.
“Pardon?”
Pax raised his voice over the wind. “Police? Fire? The Cherokee tribe?”
Deke shrugged. “It’s just a nickname.”
“Right.”
“I helped set up the VFD, the volunteer fire department. Plus I do other, uh, community stuff. Keeping the peace.”
“You mean cop stuff.”
“County cops don’t like to patrol here. People don’t like the cops much either. They need somebody local to step in and help out sometimes.”
At least that explained the police scanner. “So do you get paid for this?”
Deke laughed. “It’s more of a barter system.”
“Sure. Chickens, goats, that kind of thing. Do you have a gun?”
“Hell no.”
“Deke, it’s Tennessee! Every hillbilly out here has a gun.”
“That’s a stereotype, man.” Pax laughed, and after a few beats, Deke said, “But yeah, everybody’s got a shotgun in the closet, and that’s why I make sure everybody knows I don’t carry. You see a twelve-foot mother walking up to your house it’s bad enough, but carrying a shotgun to boot? Last thing I need is some drunk chub so shit-scared he has to shoot me. Any more questions?”
“Yeah,” Pax said. “What do you do in this thing when it rains?”
“Rain is not allowed to enter this vehicle. I’m the fucking Chief.”
They reached Jo’s house and turned onto the steep, curved drive. Deke parked in front of the house. Tucked around the side of the house, as if trying to hide, was the back end of a light blue Prius.
“Amos was right,” Pax said. As if he had any idea who Amos was besides a voice on the phone. “The cops would never drive a hybrid.”
Deke stepped out of the Jeep and said, “Why don’t you stay here a second while I talk to these folks.”
He walked toward the car in the slumped stroll of the argos, long arms swinging slowly. He bent to look inside the back window of the vehicle, then stepped around the corner of the house and out of sight.
Pax looked up. The oak loomed over the house.
He unbuckled his seat belt and stepped down out of the Jeep, his knees a bit wobbly. Of course tourists would come here, he thought. In your tour of Monster Town, why not visit the place where the tragic blank girl lived, the tree where she died? He took a few steps toward the side of the house and then the front door banged open.
A white man in a T-shirt and cargo shorts burst through the doorway and leaped off the steps. He landed awkwardly, and a palm-sized chunk of silver flew out of his hand and landed in the grass. He looked up at Pax with a shocked expression, then sprang to his feet and ran pell-mell for the Toyota.
Pax looked back at the house, expecting Deke to come charging out the door, but the big man was nowhere to be seen. “Deke?” Pax called. “You okay?”
The Prius backed up, then swung around so that the nose was pointing at the Jeep. Pax thought about stepping into its path, then thought better of it. He moved to the driver’s side of the Jeep, leaned over the door, and pressed on the horn.