Chapter 6: Road Work
Fresh stone covers old ground.
The Hawthorn County
Road Department
is my last stop.
Fresh stone showed up
on Hawthorn Road
before Wade did.
I want to know
who put it there.
Crows have gathered
at the county road barn
when I round the bend.
Five sit along
the chain-link fence,
feathers puffed
against the cold.
A sixth pecks
at something in the gravel.
Stops when my truck
comes into view.
Turns its head.
Watches.
My eyes drop to my lap.
I have the plate number
written on the back
of a McCready’s receipt—
said it twice
on the club road,
then wrote it down
at the first stop sign.
Since breakfast,
I’ve checked the pickups
everywhere I stop.
Courthouse lot.
Outside the bank.
The row
at the tire shop.
Now the county yard.
A clean patch catches my eyes
low in the windshield—
the same place
I watched him peel off
the club decal.
I pull onto the shoulder
across from the yard
and kill the engine.
The pickup sits nose-in
between a road grader
and a mound
of fresh stone.
Its rear plate
faces the road.
I take the receipt
from my pocket
and compare the number
written on the back.
Same truck.
A squawk
cuts across the yard.
Crow hits gravel hard,
like it wronged him,
throwing stones around his feet
till he stops cold.
Black eye cuts my way.
Holds.
Then he’s over the fence
like he’s seen
all he needs to see.
Flies off.
And my eyes—they follow.
Beyond the fence,
county trucks stand in a row,
mud dried high
along the doors.
The man from McCready’s
steps out slow
from the equipment shed,
county orange pulled over his coat
like a warning.
He sees me.
I get out
and cross the road.
Cold gets down my collar.
“You lose something?”
he calls.
“No.
Actually, I found it.”
He looks at the receipt
in my hand.
Then at me.
Up close,
he’s got more years on him
than the windshield let on—
gray in his beard,
road dust packed deep
into the seams
of his boots.
I nod toward his pickup.
“Hard to get the sticker off?”
He glances
at the windshield.
“Nah. Old sticker.”
“Didn’t look old
when you peeled it off.”
Both hands go
into his vest pockets.
Something silver worked
low across the windshield.
A razor scraper I saw him use.
The guy had slipped it beneath one wing
and pullec the hawk back slow.
The decal stretches
before it lets go.
Wind gets under
a loose sheet of tin
on the equipment shed.
Bangs it once.
Then quits.
“You follow me out here
to ask about a sticker?”
“Didn’t follow you.”
“No?”
“Recognized the vehicle.”
I look past him
toward the county trucks.
“That your crew
that laid the stone
out at Hawthorn ?”
His face doesn’t change.
“County’s gotta lot of roads.”
“Hawthorn had fresh stone
when Wade turned up dead.”
“Bank washed.”
“Ain’t rained all week.”
He works his jaw once.
“Go ask the commissioner.”
“He tell y’all to put it down?”
“We ain’t covered nothing.”
I look at the wet clay packed
around the rear tires
of the county truck.
He follows my eyes.
“You best not come around
calling folks liars,” he says.
“Never called you one.”
“Ain’t got to.
I can tell by lookin’ at you.”
The office door opens.
A woman hangs near the door,
a stack of work orders
hugged to her coat.
She looks at him.
Then to me.
“Everything all right, Neal?”
Neal keeps his eyes on me.
“Cal here was just leaving.”
I never gave him
my name.
I don’t know him.
I fold the receipt
and put it in my pocket.
“That county truck—
the one with clay
around the tires—
was it working Hawthorn?”
The woman looks
toward the truck.
Neal steps between us.
“You heard me,” he says.
Hard to argue with all that muscle.
Back across the road I go.
In the mirror,
Neal says something to her.
She listens.
Cuts her eyes my way.
Then heads inside.
A moment later,
she appears behind the blinds
with a phone
to her ear.
I leave the shoulder.
At the stop sign,
the road barn hangs
in my mirror.
Neal’s pickup sits there—
same one from the club road,
county orange close by.
So Neal works both sides
of Hawthorn.
All I did was ask
who sent the stone.
Man near told me a name.
But his nerves—
they told me where
the dirt was still thin.
A county dump truck
rolls out of the yard
and settles behind me,
its bed heaped
with stone.
I make the turn.
My phone buzzes
with a text message.
Unknown number.
You ever tell Jude
what Wade done
at the old Monty’s place?
My right tires
drop off the pavement.
I brake hard
where the shoulder
gives out.
For a second,
I’m eighteen again—
my face turned toward the wall,
damp plaster against my palm,
Wade’s weight
behind me.
I tell him wait.
He says my name
like that makes it gentle.
Like wanting him
means I want
whatever comes next.
An awful pain.
I say stop.
He doesn’t.
Wade’s breathing
grows louder
behind me.
Lower.
Mechanical.
Until it isn’t Wade
behind me,
but the county dump truck—
white cab, high grille,
stone rattling in the bed.
Kind of like that memory.
I sit with both hands
locked around the wheel.
Thinking,
sure, I wanted Wade.
That’s always the part
I use against myself.
Both hands locked on that wheel,
and I’m thinking,
yeah, I wanted Wade.
That’s my weapon against myself.
Sure, I went there.
Drank what he gave me.
Wanted his hands on me.
Then I told him to stop.
Everything after that
was Wade taking
what I’d quit giving.
For years,
I told myself
those things made it harder
to call what happened
by its goddamn name.
But they don’t.
I read the message again.
What Wade done.
Not what happened.
Whoever sent it
knows enough
to choose those words.
Only Wade and me
were inside that house.
Unless somebody saw us
going in.
Or, unless Wade told?
Or…unless he went back
with somebody else?
Did he go back with Jude?
Jude knew Wade hated me.
And Jude knew
there was something
I wouldn’t tell him.
But he never knew
I had wanted Wade first.
What Wade told himself
my wanting gave him,
I never knew.
Back on the road,
truck pushing forward.
That message on the seat—
still glowing,
still riding shotgun.
It ain’t digging up the past.
It’s showing me
somebody knows
where to cut.
Highway calls.
Wheel turns to town.
Wade is dead, alright.
But the secret lives.
