Chapter 12: The Road Work Pays
The county covered its tracks. The ditch didn’t.
The hospital’s down
to rubber soles,
cart wheels,
and machines fussing
behind shut doors.
Jude’s lawyer comes
soon after,
tie pulled loose,
a paper evidence sack
tucked beneath his arm.
Evidence tape bulges
from his coat pocket,
a black marker
the other.
He shuts the door
and looks first
at the coat
folded across my chair.
“Hat still in there?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“Who’s touched it?”
“Me.”
“Anybody else?”
“Raylene saw it.
Took pictures.”
“Touched it?”
“No,” I say.
Della shakes her head.
“Neither did I.”
The lawyer looks
at the bandage
around my hand.
“You were bleeding
when you found it?”
“Not then,” I say.
“I cut it
getting through the window.”
“You handled the hat
again after?”
“By the brim,” I say.
“I lifted the sweatband
with my good hand.”
“So your blood
could be on the outside?”
“Could’ve.”
He pulls on
a pair of blue gloves
and studies the pictures
on his phone.
“I don’t see any blood
on the outside,” he says.
“And under the sweatband?”
“Already dry
when I found the hat.”
“Raylene photograph it?”
“Before Vance arrived,”
Della says. “Both pictures
went with my message.”
“The store video
you sent me—
that come straight
off the recorder?”
“No,” I say.
“I held Raylene’s phone
up to the monitor.”
“So it’s a recording
of the playback.”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the store’s
original recording?”
“On the recorder
Vance carried out,” I say.
“Any online backup?”
“I asked Raylene,” Della says.
“Roy never paid
to put it online.
Whatever that box caught
stayed in the box.”
“The recording you made
is still on Raylene’s phone?”
“Yes.”
“Anything besides that
and the hat pictures?”
“One picture
of Vance carrying
the recorder out,” Della says.
The lawyer nods.
“Tell Raylene
not to change a thing.
I’ll have the phone
properly imaged.”
The lawyer sets his phone
beside the chair
and starts the camera.
A recording timer
ticks forward
in red.
“From here on,
nothing changes hands
without being seen.”
Then he lifts my coat
clear of the hat—
the crown crushed inward,
Wade’s county star
taking the hospital light
and giving back
nothing.
“Footage shows Wade
wearing this?” the lawyer asks.
“At ten-fifty-six,” I say.
“And three minutes later?”
“He gets back in
through the passenger side.
Unit One turns
toward Cane Creek Road.”
“Vance’s cruiser?”
“Yep,” I answer.
“Who was driving?”
“The recording doesn’t show,” I say.
He lifts his eyes
from the hat.
“Keep saying that.”
The lawyer shakes
the evidence bag open,
then draws the black marker
from his pocket.
“And you found it at Old Monty’s?”
“The hat was there,” I say.
“I can’t say Wade was.”
“Then don’t carry him there—
the facts are where the facts be.”
He lowers the hat
inside and folds the top.
“Does it help Jude?” I ask.
“It keeps his truck
from being the last word.”
“Even with what could be
Wade’s blood beneath
the sweatband?”
“Blood ain’t a verdict,” he says,
his thumb finding
the tape’s loose end.
“If the lab says it’s Wade’s,
the hat carried his blood
somewhere Vance’s story
never went.”
The tape rasps off the roll,
drawn tight
across the sack’s mouth.
The marker bears down—
Wade Larkin.
Old Monty’s.
Cal Mercer.
The black ink pins the hat
to Wade,
the burned house—
and, now, me.
“Where’s it going?” I ask.
“I’m notifying
the district attorney
and state investigators
at the same time,” the lawyer says.
He sets the sealed paper sack
on the chair
where my coat had been.
“Vance won’t get
a private handoff,” he tells me.
I open my good hand.
The lighter squats
in my palm,
its bent lid
hanging half-shut.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“Lorene found it
on Jude’s porch
after Wade died,” I say.
Della reaches inside her wool coat
and brings out
the brown envelope—
torn in two,
folded small.
“That’s what Lorene
kept it in,” Della says.
“She called the bar
after she couldn’t reach Cal.
I stopped by her place
on my way here.”
“What’d she want?” I ask.
“To straighten out
what she told you.”
Della unfolds the two halves,
fits the torn edges
back together,
then turns them over.
A date sits on the back
in Lorene’s hand,
the numbers pressed deep
into the manila envelope.
I’d seen the envelope
on Lorene’s table,
but not this side.
She’d laid the date
face-down against the wood,
and when the lighter spun
between us—
every question I had
went after the brass,
and the date stayed buried.
“She got two visits
crossed,” Della says.
“The week she stayed
with Jude was a month back.
The date here
is after Vance took him.
“She’d gone back for clean clothes.
That’s when
she found the lighter.”
The lawyer bends close
without touching the paper.
“Lorene write that?” he asks.
“Dr. Bell’s had her
dating things
since the wreck,” Della says.
“She give you this?”
“Told me to bring it,” Della says.
“I’ll need her statement,”
says the lawyer.
“You’ll get it, I’m sure.”
The lawyer catches
the gloves at the cuffs
and peels them inside out—
whatever Wade’s hat left behind
folded into the blue rubber.
He pulls on a clean pair—
the cuffs snapping
against his wrists.
He holds out a gloved hand.
I lay the lighter there—
old brass lays on blue nitrile.
The lawyer examines it closely.
“W.L.,” he says. “Wade Larkin’s?”
“Nope,” I say.
“Wayne Lott,” Della says.
“You’re certain?” he asks.
“Open it,” she says. “Knock the bottom
against your palm.”
He does. The lid kicks open.
“Wayne’s done that
at my bar for years,” Della says.
“Bragged one night
Vance gave it to him
after his first election.”
“Put that
in your statement.”
The lawyer nods to her.
“Every damn word.”
He takes a clear sleeve
from inside his coat,
eases the lighter in,
and seals it.
The torn envelope
goes into a second sleeve.
He dates and initials
both seals,
then sets them
beside Wade’s hat.
A call comes through
on Della’s phone.
She checks the name
and nearly spits it.
“Neal.”
I guess Neal’s spent
enough nights bent
over Della’s bar
to know which number
she answers after closing.
“What you want, Neal?”
She listens.
“No. You got something
to tell Cal,
you tell him yourself.”
Another pause.
“Road barn?”
Her eyes find mine.
“What’s the stone
got to do with it?”
She listens again.
“Both loads?”
The line goes dead.
“He wants to meet.”
“When?” I ask.
“Before Vance
comes looking for him.”
“What did he tell you
about the loads?” the lawyer asks.
“Only that there were two,”
Della says. “Said the rest
don’t belong on a phone.”
“The stone was there
when I found Wade,” I say.
“I want to know
when the other load went down.”
###
A man in a gray suit
comes through the door
before the nurse
can cut me loose.
Road dust chalks
the toes of his polished shoes—
the back roads
ground into the leather,
county dirt
that won’t wipe clean.
He opens a badge—
Mississippi Bureau
of Investigation—
then shuts it again.
The lawyer rolls
the bed table between them—
one sealed paper bag,
two clear sleeves:
Wade’s hat.
Wayne’s lighter.
Lorene’s torn envelope.
The state man
doesn’t open a thing.
The MBI agent tests
every sealed edge.
The tape holds.
He reads the names,
numbers each piece,
then signs the receipt
hard enough
to mark the sheet beneath.
The lawyer signs below him
and tears off his copy.
Vance’s name ain’t anywhere
on the page.
Only after the state man
carries the evidence out
does the nurse bring
my discharge papers
and tell me not to drive.
Della takes them
before I can lie.
The road barn sits dark
except for the security light
above the equipment shed.
The chain hangs
through the county gate
without a lock.
Della eases us through—
the hinges dragging
a groan behind us.
Neal’s pickup waits
beside the fence.
The clean square
in the windshield
shows where
the club decal used to be.
County trucks sit
nose-first in a row,
their dump beds black
against the sky.
An underbody scraper
hangs beneath one—
pale clay dried
to a scab
along its cutting edge.
Behind the shed,
the mound of white stone
holds the security light
across a thousand
broken faces.
Neal waits
inside the opened office door,
his coat zipped
to the throat.
His eyes find Della first.
“You brought him?”
“Course I did,” she says.
Neal looks at me then—
the wrapped hand,
the burned coat,
the shoulder hanging
lower than the other.
Della starts toward him.
“Show him, Cal.”
The McCready’s receipt
comes out of my wallet,
unfolds against the hood—
Neal’s plate number
turned his way.
Wind catches
one corner.
My bandaged hand
holds it down.
“Cal had your plate
from the club road
before Old Monty’s burned,”
Della says. “Watched you strip
that decal at McCready’s
and still kept the number
away from Vance.”
Neal keeps his eyes on the number.
“Why did you?” he asks.
“I wanted the man who owned it
to tell me
where it’d been,” I say.
Della stops at the office door.
“You tell us
why stone went down twice,
or we get back in that truck
and let Vance
come collect you.”
“Shut the door behind you.”
Neal turns and walks inside.
The office is narrow,
warmed by a red coil
behind a wire cage heater.
Neal sits behind a metal desk.
I stay standing.
A yellow DeWalt radio
sits on the steel shelf,
Glen Campbell’s
“Wichita Lineman”
coming through the static—
those first clean notes
strung pole to pole.
I hear you singing in the wire.
For a breath,
the office opens
into that other country
inside the county—
road crews before daylight,
coffee cooling in thermos lids,
men who know
which gate stays unlocked
and which question
never gets asked.
I’ve known that country
all my life—
never called it mine,
but still carried its air
in my lungs.
The heater coil
burns red
behind its wire cage.
A little of it
gets into Neal’s eyes.
One corner of his mouth
cinches toward his teeth.
His fingers comb
through the gray
above one ear,
then stall
at the back of his head.
I slide
the McCready’s receipt
across the metal desk.
Paper makes
a dry little sound
over the steel—
his plate number faceup
between us.
Everything with a spring,
a coil,
or a wire
keeps up its racket.
But Neal sits with his mouth shut.
“You know that plate?” I ask.
Breaking the ice.
“Reckon I ought to.
It’s bolted to my truck,” Neal answers.
“Your pickup—one of the two
that left Old Monty’s?”
Neal looks at Della.
She gives him nothing.
“Yes,” he says.
“What were you doing there?”
“Wayne called,” he says.
“Said meet him in the pines
behind the house.”
“What for?”
“Said he needed
somebody watchin’
Cane Creek Road.”
“While he did what?”
He stays quiet.
“My truck was out front,” I say.
“I saw it.”
“So you knew I was inside?”
“Knew somebody had to be.”
“Who struck it?” I ask.
“Never saw the match,” says Neal.
“Saw Wayne go around front.
Saw the downstairs
set fire.”
“Did you pour the gasoline?”
“Ain’t but one man
between those two things.”
“And then you left?” asks Della.
His chair gives a metal pop.
“I followed Wayne.”
“He drove the other truck?” I ask.
“Out ahead of me
before I cleared the pines.”
“Why tell us now?” Della asks.
“Wayne called before my tires
found pavement,” Neal says.
“Wanted to know
if I’d seen you get away.
Or burn in the fire.”
“You had,” I say.
“In the mirror,” Neal says.
“Saw your shoulder hit dirt
as my truck found the road.”
“Shame,” says Della.
“After I seen you at McCready’s,
I called Wayne. Told him
some fella caught me peeling
the club sticker. Told him
what you looked like.
He gave me your name.
Said you’d started
nosin’ around
Hawthorn Road.”
He has a coughing fit.
“Wayne knows
my truck was sittin’
in those pines.” Neal hooks
a finger under the zipper
at his throat
and gives himself an inch.
“Soon as Vance needs
somebody to own that fire,
Wayne’ll hang
the whole damn thing
off my bumper.”
Della leans
against the filing cabinet
and works one tooth
with her tongue.
“So that’s why
you called me,” she says.
“You need to put what you know
in the state’s hands
before Vance finds out
you opened your mouth?”
“I want the receipt,” Neal says.
“No,” I say. “No way.”
Della looks down at the plate number.
“It ties your plate
to the truck Cal watched you strip
that club decal off,” she says.
“You ain’t asking
for a piece of paper.
You’re asking us
to help erase you.”
“I’m asking for time,” Neal says.
“Okay,” I say. “How much?”
“Till I can put what I got
in hands Vance don’t own.”
I brace my good hand
beside the plate number.
“What are we buying time for?”
Neal taps the bottom drawer
with the toe of his boot.
“I got a road book
Vance don’t know I kept,” he says.
“You don’t get
the receipt back,” I tell him.
“If your book is good—”
“I call Jude’s lawyer,” says Della.
“He gets the state here. But I can’t promise
what happens once he comes.”
“Geeze, Della, ain’t asking you
to get me loose.”
Neal looks past us
through the dark window—
his pickup waiting
beneath
the security light.
“I’m asking you
not to let me disappear
in county,” he says.
Neal’s chair rolls backward.
He opens
the bottom desk drawer
and takes out
a black pocket book,
soft at the corners.
The elastic band
has gone gray
with road dust.
He lays the book
beside the McCready’s receipt.
“Start with
the first load,” I say.
“What’d the ticket call it?”
“Bank wash.”
“The county says
the stone was for rain?”
“Rain washed out
the roadside bank
on Hawthorn Road,” says Neal.
“Didn’t rain that week.”
“Paper don’t need rain,” he says.
He’s right.
“Where’d the stone go?” I ask.
“Across the culvert,
up into the club drive.”
“County property?”
“The drive ain’t,” he says.
Looks away.
“County stone?”
“Yep.”
“When?”
“Evening before
they found Wade.”
“Who ordered it?”
“Wayne did,” he says. “Said Vance
had cleared it.”
“You asked Vance?”
Neal gives a dry laugh.
“You go behind Vance,” he says.
“Might as well tell the sheriff
to his face he lied.
That never goes well.”
“Okay,” I say. “But what about
the second load?”
Neal hooks a thumb
beneath the gray elastic.
It snaps loose.
He turns past the first entry
and flattens the next
beneath his palm.
“Wayne called again.
Said Vance wanted me
back at the culvert.”
Neal turns the pocket book
our way. Vance is the only name
in the margin—
the ink pressed
hard enough
to bruise
the page beneath.
He fans
the remaining pages.
Every page is filled in
the same small hand—
truck numbers, fuel, mileage,
stone by the ton.
“County ever see this?” I ask.
“They see the book
I turn in. I keep this one
because county paper
changes,” Neal says. “Diesel
comes up short, they don’t blame
the commissioner. They start
at the lowest name
on the sheet.”
Della takes out her phone
and calls Jude’s lawyer.
“Road barn,” she says. “Get
the state man back here.
No county.”
She listens,
then lowers the phone.
“He’s turning around.”
Neal turns back
to the first entry—
the evening before
Wade was found.
The entry names it:
No. 57 limestone.
County truck.
Hawthorn Road—
culvert and club drive.
He brings up
a photograph on his phone.
“I take one
before every dump.”
The truck bed sits full
of sharp white stone,
the quarry ticket
laid across the tailgate.
It looks like what I saw
the morning they found Wade.
That ain’t a match.
But now the stone has
a number, a source, and a date.
Beside the first entry,
one work-order number
floats the lie
county put on paper:
Hawthorn Road—
“washout repair.”
Neal moves down
to the next day—
a little after noon,
the same county truck,
another load,
Hawthorn Road—
culvert shoulder.
Beside it,
the same work-order number
turns up again.
In the margin,
Neal wrote
what county wouldn’t:
Backdate.
Vance.
I put a finger on the number.
“Same work order?” I ask.
“Same one. Month old.”
“But you hauled these
a day apart.”
“Evening before.
Then after they found him.”
“Who told you
to backdate them?”
“Wayne. Said Vance wanted
both loads under the old washout.
Carry the tonnage back
to that date.”
“So what does the county
book show?” I ask.
“One washed bank
on Hawthorn Road. Two loads
hauled a month ago.”
“A week it didn’t rain.”
Neal drags a work-worn nail
beneath the number
made to carry both loads.
I look down at Neal’s book.
“This one tells it straight.”
“I write the day the wheels turn,” he says.
On county paper, nothing moved
after Wade came
out of the ditch.
Neal’s book shows
the county truck did.
“Body already gone?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Scene released?”
“No.”
Della straightens
away from the cabinet.
“Yellow tape still up?” she asks.
“Yes,” says Neal.
“How’d you get through?” I ask.
“Vance lifted it.”
The heater cuts out.
“What’d Vance tell you to do?”
“Crack the tailgate. Ease forward.
Feather stone into the ruts.
Drop the belly blade.
Dress the shoulder,” Neal says.
“Where he wanted it?”
Neal drags a sound
through his throat—
low, rough,
close to oh fuck.
“He walked ahead
of the grille,” Neal says.
“Ran the whole truck
with one hand—
where to spill the load,
where to spread it smooth,
where the belly blade
came down.”
Hawthorn Road comes back
with the machinery inside it now—
Neal easing the dump truck
through lifted tape,
tailgate cracked,
No. 57 stone whispering
into the tire ruts
while Vance walked ahead
of the grille,
one hand cutting left,
then right,
then down—
the belly blade following,
steel combing
the shoulder raw and level,
pushing the county’s version
flat across the ground.
But the bank fell away
beneath the blade, didn’t it.
Dead grass kept
the long drag in it.
Inside the culvert mouth,
that bleached scuff
held to the concrete.
That’s what I saw.
Vance dressed
the road for witnesses—
everything level
at windshield height.
The truth stayed low.
“You take the truck
down the bank?” I ask.
“No,” he answers.
“Blade go below the shoulder?”
“Nah.”
“Touch the culvert mouth?”
“Never got near it.”
Neal swipes away
the photograph of the first load,
opens his call history,
and lays the phone
beside the pocket book,
its cracked corner
turned toward me.
Vance’s name is written
in the book’s margin.
Wayne’s three calls remain
on the cracked phone beside it.
It places both Vance and Wayne
in the evidence.
Outside, a dump truck cools
in the dark—one hard knock
through the frame,
then another.
“One last thing,” I say.
“Della, show him
the lighter.”
Della pulls up
the picture she took
at the hospital
before the lawyer sealed it—
W.L. cut into the brass,
the bent lid hanging
half-shut—
and turns the screen
toward Neal.
“You seen that before?” I ask.
Neal gives it half a second.
“Wayne’s.”
“What makes you sure?”
“Seen that lighter
in Wayne’s hand
at the club
more nights than I can count,”
Neal says. “When the lid hung,
he’d knock the bottom
against his hand
to make it jump.”
Della locks the phone.
“You tell the state man
exactly that when he gets here.”
“I will.”
County paper puts
both loads under one washout
in a week without rain.
Neal’s book keeps
the dates county erased—
Wayne sent him out twice
on Vance’s orders.
Wade died between the loads.
