CHAPTER THREE.

Deacon LATE afternoon and one impertinent shaft of sunlight slipping between the drapes of the bar, drapes drawn against the summer heat and shine, respect for the aching eyes of daytime customers, and the sunlight stabbing its cruel or thoughtless way through drifting cigarette smoke and dust and the thick and sour smell of old beer. THE PLAZA, except someone hung the sign upside down so it reads, but that was a long time ago, a long story everyone's tired of repeating, or a short story simply not worth repeating again. The Plaza and Deacon sitting alone at the bar, lanky, stoop-shouldered Deacon Silvey nursing his third PBR of the day and dreading seven o'clock and the beginning of his Friday night shift at the Highland Wash-N-Fold, five immeasurable hours of rumbling dryers and washing machines like the strangling lungs of drowning men. If he didn't still have a hangover from the night before, that would be enough to give him one, just thinking about all those G.o.dd.a.m.n washers and dryers chugging half the night.

And this a.s.shole parked on the stool next to him, talking, talking like he's just invented The Mouth and it needs a test drive; Deacon turns and stares at him, stares hard at the very fat man with greasylong hair and a black T-shirt that reads KILL ALL THE MOTHERf.u.c.kERS, happy clown face and KILL ALL THE MOTHERf.u.c.kERS in drippy red letters. The fat man has a zit at the left corner of his mouth as big as a peanut and skin the cheesewhite color of something washed up on a beach. The fat man slurps at his beer and is talking again before he's even swallowed.

"Now, don't think they're gonna stop with the f.a.ggots and n.i.g.g.e.rs," the fat man says. "All this AIDS s.h.i.t, that's just a smoke screen, you know, what you might call a red herring to get us all lookin' off the other way while they get the big guns in place, while they get FEMA and the f.u.c.kin' EPA and the f.u.c.kin' FBI all workin' together. . . ."

And every single word from the man's mouth like a threepenny nail hammered between Deacon's eyeb.a.l.l.s, and he glances over to Sheryl, railthin girl mopping lazily at the bar with a gray rag, and she's not even pretending to listen to the fat man anymore, so you'd think the a.s.shole would get a clue and shut the h.e.l.l up.

"Oh man, you don't even want to get me started on AIDS," the fat man says, and the happy clown face jiggles like cottonblack Jell-O. "You get me started on AIDS and I'll be here until Gabriel blows his horn, I f.u.c.kin' swear. You wanna know how much money, how much of our tax dollars, goes into so-called AIDS research? You wanna hear how we've had the G.o.dd.a.m.n vaccine since 1975?"

Deacon lifts his mug, p.i.s.scheap beer gone lukewarm, but he has to pace himself, better to spend the whole afternoon sipping flat, lukewarm beer than run out of cash with half the day left to go. He swallows, wipes the scabbed knuckles of one hand across his chin, stubble there like sandpaper to remind him he's forgotten to shave again.

"Are you as tired of listening to this guy as I am?" he asks Sheryl. She stops mopping the bar and glances at Deacon, cautious glance that says Maybe it's better just to listen until the a.s.shole gets tired and goes away, better because she knows Deacon, and Jesus, her shift's over in another thirty minutes and she'd rather make it until three without a fight. All that in her tired green eyes like dusty emeralds, and Deacon nods, sets his mug down; Sheryl sighs, loud, resigned sigh, and goes back to her gray bar rag and the countertop like maybe nothing will happen if she isn't watching. Deacon turns to the fat man, jabs one thumb towards Sheryl.

"The lady's getting tired of listening to you, buddy," he says, and immediately, "I did not say that, Deke, you son of a b.i.t.c.h," Sheryl sounding more annoyed than worried, and Deacon Silvey's glad it's the fat man he's telling to shut up instead of the bartender.

But the fat man has stopped talking, stares wide-eyed at Deacon like he's some exotic species of fungus sprouting from the bar stool. "What d'you say to me?" he says, and his tongue flicks past chapped lips, licks nervously at the huge zit.

"Of course, she's way too polite to tell you to shut the f.u.c.k up. But that's what she's thinking. Ordinarily, I'd just sit here, drink my beer, and mind my own G.o.dd.a.m.n business. Figure, hey, you know, if the girl's gonna work in a dive like this, she has to expect to listen to creeps like you. Am I right?"

Not a peep from the fat man now, just his doughy face changing color, turning the shade of funeral-parlor carnations, and Sheryl tosses her rag somewhere beneath the edge of the bar, snakehiss between her teeth that might have been a word or only anger looking for a way out.

"I swear to G.o.d, Deke, you start a fight with this guy on my shift and I'm gonna call the cops," sounding like she means it, already reaching for the telephone beside the register, and the fat man still hasn't said anything else.

"So we're cool then?" and Deacon almost manages half a grimace, his head hurting way too much to smile, but one eyebrow c.o.c.ked like a pistol. "You're gonna save the rest of your cut-rate, anti-Semite, conspiracy-theory bulls.h.i.t for somebody that cares, okay?"

"You're some kinda f.a.ggot, ain't you," the fat man says, not asking, telling, and now his face is almost the exact color of strawberry preserves.

"Hey buddy, seriously," Deacon says, pointing a finger at the guy's forehead. "If you don't calm down I think you're gonna blow a corpuscle or something-"

"I'm picking up the phone, Deke. Do you see me picking up the motherf.u.c.king telephone?" and "Yeah," he says, "I see, and I know you mean it, Sheryl," enough calm in his voice to keep her from dialing the police for at least another fifteen or twenty seconds, so she just stands there, holding the receiver, glaring at him and chewing at the stainless steel ring in her lower lip.

"But we're not gonna need the cops, are we, buddy?" Deacon asks the fat man, and now everyone else in the bar is watching, all those booze-and-smoke bleary eyes squinting from the shadows, all those faces waiting to see how much more interesting this is going to get.

"You're gonna need a meat wagon, you say one more word to me, you crazy Jew fairy," the fat man growls. "I don't have to sit here, in a public place, and get myself verbally a.s.saulted 'cause you believe everything they want you to believe. Jesus, I oughta have my f.u.c.kin' head examined, even comin' in a place like this."

And Deacon's up and moving then, hands faster than the eye, too fast for the fat man to do anything much but make a small squeaking sound, stepped-on mouse sort of sound, and then Deacon's left fist is tangled deep in the man's long hair, right hand holding tight to the seat of his baggy jeans. Almost like the fat man's suspended on piano wires no one can see, dangling weightless, half an inch off the dirty tile as Deacon shoves him towards the door. The fat man hasn't turned loose of his beer mug, and he's trying to use it as a weapon, cut-gla.s.s cudgel flailing side to side and beer splashing the walls, splashing Deacon until the man manages to hit himself in the head with the mug and yelps.

Six, maybe seven feet left before the closed door, and there's already blood streaming down the man's face, blood in his eyes, and Deacon is beginning to wonder in a sluggish, drunken way if he's strong enough, or the man's heavy enough, if there's enough velocity, enough momentum, to break through the redpainted gla.s.s. But a skinny kid in a yellow Curious George shirt opens the door, quick sidestep as the fat man sails out of The Plaza and into the brilliant July afternoon, trips on the sidewalk and lands on his a.s.s in the middle of the street.

Deacon quickly pulls the door closed again, turns the dead bolt fast, and for a moment they can all hear the man cursing, bellowing out there in the heat about papists and h.o.m.os and f.u.c.king s.p.a.ce aliens before the screech of tires drowns him out, car-horn blat like an exclamation point; Deke thanks the skinny guy who opened the door, stares a second at his banana-colored shirt, and then heads slowly back to his stool at the bar.

"You're crazy," Sheryl grumbles, still holding the telephone receiver. "One day, you're gonna pull that s.h.i.t with the wrong guy and get your sorry punk a.s.s kicked to h.e.l.l and back. You know that, don't you?"

And yeah, he says, yeah, sure, whatever you say, boss lady, but she's setting the receiver back in its cradle, anger traded for disgust, pouring him another beer even though he hasn't asked for it and there's still at least three inches of the waterthin draft left in his mug.

"On the house, you crazy f.u.c.kin' drunk," she says, frowning, and Deacon Silvey finishes off the warm beer before he lets himself start on the cold.

Ask Deacon Silvey where and when his life first landed in the s.h.i.tter, how it got there and never really climbed out again, and every time he'll point to an October afternoon and the ratmaze-neat Atlanta suburb where he grew up, October 1970, when he was eight years old and his mother lost her car keys. Had promised to take him to the movies, and he can never remember which movie, never mind, it doesn't matter, but she'd promised, and then she couldn't find the car keys. His father out back raking leaves and his mother searching the house, annoyed, probing under sofa cushions and then down on her knees to peer beneath the recliner, beneath the china cabinet, Deacon watching the clock, and pretty soon it wouldn't matter, another ten minutes and it would be too late to make the matinee, anyway.

So Deacon going to her purse on the coffee table, then, because that's where the keys should have been, that's all, opening the metal catch and the pungent smell of new patent leather before he began to feel sick, suddensharp pain at his temples, stomach rolling, and when Deacon opened his eyes he was lying on the carpet staring up at his mother bending over him, the pinched look on her face that said she was scared to death, and "Deke, oh G.o.d, honey, are you okay? What happened?" and he told her that the car keys were in the pocket of her coat. Long and silent second as her expression changed from worry to confusion, finally helping him up off the floor, and Deacon's legs unsteady, helping him to the sofa, and, "They're in there, Momma. Really," he said. And they were, right where she'd left them the night before. "How'd you know that, Deke?" but it didn't matter because his head hurt too much to go to the movies, hurt so bad that he spent the rest of the afternoon in his bedroom with the curtains pulled closed and didn't even come out for supper.

A trip to the doctor after that, several trips, several doctors, specialists, and after the tests each of them a.s.suring his parents that their son wasn't epileptic and, no, he didn't have a brain tumor, either, and neither his mother nor father mentioning the car keys. Like that wasn't really a part of the story, just the blackout and the headache afterwards. His father complaining about the bills the doctors sent when there was nothing even wrong with the kid, but no one asking Deacon about the keys again, and a month, two months, and the whole thing forgotten by Christmas.

But that was the beginning, that's where it started, not nearly as dramatic as the story about Davey Barber's beagle puppy, nothing grisly or sad about lost car keys, and later everyone would always point back to the dead dog, never the sunny afternoon and the lost car keys.

Five minutes left until Sheryl's shift is over before anyone remembers that Deacon locked the door, convenient amnesia, and then a fist pounding hard on the gla.s.s, bang, bang, bang, and Deacon thinks maybe it's the fat guy come back with the cops and so maybe he won't have to go to work at the laundromat tonight after all. Sheryl glaring at the door and cursing Deacon, glancing up at the Budweiser clock over the bar and cursing because Bunky Tolbert is late again. She steps out from behind the counter and Deacon swivels on his stool, turns to face the door just in case it really is The Second Coming of the Fat Guy.

"You locked the f.u.c.king door, Deke," Sheryl says, then she yells at whoever it is outside to please stop banging on the gla.s.s, give her one second for Christ's sake.

"You ain't heard n.o.body complaining," Deacon says coolly.

"You're gonna get me fired, you a.s.shole," she snaps back, door open now, and it's not the fat guy after all. Just Sadie in black polyester and the eyeliner she never bothers to wash off, easier just to put more on so she always looks a little like an anemic racc.o.o.n. Sadie Jasper, with her silver purse shaped like a coffin, and Deacon smiles for her, easy drunken smile, only a little disappointed that it isn't Mr. Kill-All-The-Motherf.u.c.kers and he still has to go to work.

"Hey babe," he says, and Sadie sits down on the stool next to him, kisses Deacon on the cheek, and she smells like clove cigarettes and vanilla oil, comfortable, safe smells, and "You didn't happen to see a really fat son of a b.i.t.c.h dead in the street out there, did you?" he asks her. Sadie stares at him with those eyes that still give him the w.i.l.l.i.e.s every now and then, heavy-lidded and her pale, blue irises surrounded by all that smudged eyeliner and her coalblack hair.

"No," she replies. "But I wasn't paying all that much attention," deadpan solemn but enough of a smile that Deke can tell she knows he's joking, and "More's the pity," he says and kisses her back, tastes her waxy black lipstick, and he can think of so many things he'd rather spend the night doing than watching Highland Avenue yuppies separate their whites from their colors.

"You want anything, Sadie?" Sheryl asks, talking to Sadie but looking at the clock and she should have been out of here five minutes ago. Sadie scowls at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar, squints hard at the long row of bottles lined up back there, all concentration like she ever orders anything different, and "I think I'll have a White Russian, please," she says, finally, and Deacon would bet ten dollars she's never had anything else, that somewhere, sometime, a White Russian was Sadie's first taste of alcohol and she's never seen any point in trying anything different.

Sadie opens her shiny coffin purse and digs out a wrinkled five, lays it on the counter while Sheryl adds vodka to ice cubes and half-and-half. "And give dumb-a.s.s here another gla.s.s of that cow p.i.s.s," she says and grins at the bartender.

"Jesus, it must be my G.o.dd.a.m.n birthday," Deke says. "Two free beers in one afternoon," and he finishes his PBR, sets the mug down and slides it towards Sheryl as she puts Sadie's White Russian on a c.o.c.ktail napkin with a flaming eight ball printed on one side.

"No, just guilt money from home," Sadie says and takes a mint-green slip of paper from her purse, a check with her father's name printed neatly across the top and enough zeros that at least they won't have to worry about paying the rent for another month. "As long as my mother's new therapist keeps telling her it really is all her fault that I turned out this way, I figure we can expect a steady trickle," and Sadie takes a sip of her drink before she puts the check safely back inside her purse and snaps the little coffin shut again.

"Well, it's rea.s.suring to know that at least one of us isn't burdened with a conscience," Deacon says, and Sadie punches him in the arm, not hard but he groans like she's broken a bone, groans until she leans over and kisses his shoulder.

"Jesus, you guys are making me sick," Sheryl mutters. "You know how long it's been since I even had a date?" and Sadie sticks her tongue out at the bartender, tongue the color of milkstained bubble gum, and then turns back to Deacon.

"I saw your friend Chance at the post office today," she says, and Deacon sips at his fresh beer, and "How's she holding up?" he asks; Sadie shrugs and stirs at her drink with a red plastic swizzle stick.

"Beats me. She was buying stamps. You know she doesn't like talking to me."

"I don't think Chance much likes talking to anybody these days, baby. I wouldn't take it personally."

"No, I'm pretty sure she thinks weird rubs off," Sadie says and lays the swizzle stick on her napkin, stares at Deke with those unreal blue eyes like something in a taxidermist's shop window, eyes like gla.s.s, and "She's a very detached young lady."

"Yeah?" and Deacon watches her in the mirror, watches her between the liquor bottles. "Well, I expect you'd be pretty detached too, Little Miss Pickled Sunshine, if you'd been through all the s.h.i.t Chance has been through lately." And she doesn't say a word, no response but another shrug, Sadie's eternal answer to a whole messy world of things she'd rather not think about.

Deacon runs his fingers through his short, mousebrown hair, not quite p.i.s.sed at Sadie yet and hoping he didn't sound that way because now she's pouting, stirring aimlessly at her drink, and her lower lip looks like something a yellow jacket stung. But sometimes her callous goth-girl shtick is hard to stomach, sometimes like now, and suddenly Deacon feels very old and very tired, all the h.e.l.l he's caught, and he honestly can't imagine how Chance Matthews is alive, still walking and talking. Someone like that almost enough to make you believe in bad luck or karma, the f.u.c.king sins of the father, someone like that enough to keep things in perspective.

"You didn't have to yell at me," Sadie says, almost whispers, and "I didn't yell at you, Sadie," Deacon says, and now they're talking to each other through the mirror, too bad his parents never figured out this trick. It might have saved a lot of broken dishes.

"It's not my fault she doesn't like me," and that's enough to light the short and ragged fuse that's never far beneath Deke's skin, enough to get him up off the bar stool and moving towards the door. Forget the beer, forget Sadie, because he really doesn't want to be anywhere near her or anyone else when the bomb in his head goes off.

But she's already calling after him, still hasn't learned when to let him go, when to shut up and sit it out until the s.h.i.t blows over. "What the f.u.c.k did I say, Deacon?" she asks, raising her voice and Sheryl's watching them both now, starting to look a lot more worried than she did about the fat man. Her smokedusty eyes doing all the talking, and Just keep walking, Deke, she's trying to say without opening her mouth, Just keep on going, and she'll get over it, and you'll get over it, and n.o.body gets hurt this time. But Deke stops halfway to the red door, and "Every G.o.dd.a.m.n thing isn't about you, Sadie. This isn't about you."

"I never said it was," and G.o.d he hates the way she can flinch without moving a muscle, flinch with words like she's afraid he's going to hit her when he's never laid a hand on her. "All I was saying-"

"All you were saying, Sadie, is that you're just too G.o.dd.a.m.ned simple or shallow or selfish or whatever to figure out why someone who's lost everything, everyone she ever loved or gave two s.h.i.ts for, why someone like that can't stop being miserable for five minutes to smile and make you feel like the sparkling center of the G.o.dd.a.m.n universe."

Not even looking at Sadie in the mirror now, that much a coward, that much a jerk, but everything he needs to see right there in Sheryl's green eyes, like just exactly how unnecessary that was, like how someone who spends every day hiding in the hooch because he can't deal with his own life has a h.e.l.l of a nerve telling anyone else to get a clue.

"Whatever," Deacon Silvey says. And he turns away from Sheryl and Sadie and the cold beer he's hardly touched, stalks past the cigarette machine and out of The Plaza's crimson door, out of the mustycool shadows and into the merciless heat and sundrowned day he deserves.

Deacon had just turned nine and the beagle had been missing for three weeks, three stickyhot weeks in the middle of August, too hot to be outside, but him and Davey Barber and some other boys playing football behind Davey's house, anyway. Someone pa.s.sed Deacon the ball and he lost his balance, fell and tumbled crash into the puppy's doghouse. Boys laughing and Deacon disoriented, his right ankle hurting, but he was about to get up and run for the garden hose stretched across the gra.s.s for a goal line when he smelled oranges, something like orange peels or raw fish, and he'd never even noticed how the two smelled so much alike.

"Hey, you okay, Deke?" and more laughter, then, Greg Musgrove calling him a p.u.s.s.y, and "Yeah, sure," he said. "I'm fine. Just got my feet tangled up," but that orangeandfish smell so strong, strong enough it was making him nauseous, making him gag, and he leaned back against the abandoned doghouse, eyes watering and trying not to puke.

And "Jesus, man, what's the matter with you?" Davey asked him, but Deacon's head hurt too much to answer, too much to even think, and if he opened his mouth he knew he'd puke for sure. The football rolling from his hands, b.u.mp to the ground, bouncing away, and by then all the boys standing around him while the smell dragged Deacon Silvey down and down, falling like something in a fairy story his mother read to him once, falling and going nowhere fast, and he saw the puppy, the older kids that took it away one night when everyone in Davey's house was asleep, and "Oh," he said. "Oh s.h.i.t," seeing the rest, seeing it all, but nothing else out of his mouth before he was vomiting, his lunch sprayed all over the nearest pair of sneakers, and someone was running for Davey's mother, shouting, scared, and the world folded up like a crumpled paper cup, and Deacon tumbled into the black s.p.a.ce left behind.

Straight to the hospital in an ambulance that time, paramedics and a stretcher and everything; not that he remembered the ride, the sirens blaring, or the emergency room, nothing but black and dreamless sleep until he opened his eyes in a white room that smelled like medicine and Pine-Sol, and his mother was crying.

"They killed it," he said, words all croaky because his throat was so dry and sore, but needing to talk before he forgot, and his father turning away from the window, then, his father looking angry, inconvenienced, embarra.s.sed, something Deacon knew was inappropriate, but his father looking that way, regardless. His mother crying louder, and "Davey's dog," Deacon said. "They killed it. It's in the field."

His father took one step closer to the bed, and "Son," he said, "if you're doing this just to get attention, you better tell us right this minute. Right now. Before it gets any more out of hand than it already has," and the dazzling sun, sun setting like a fireball behind his father, too bright to look at, so he looked at his mother, instead.

"They killed it," he said again, speaking to her because she only seemed frightened, not angry, not ready to blame him for whatever was happening, and she shook her head, not understanding, either.

"Killed what, Deke? We don't know what you're talking about." And neither did he, not really, but telling her anyway while his father turned away, turned back to the window. Deacon telling her how the boys had stolen the puppy and beat it to death with a hammer, beat it until all its bones were broken, and then they'd nailed it to a tree in the field behind the high school and left it there. Telling her as fast as he could talk, before he forgot all their names, boys he didn't know, and he could see she thought he was crazy, crazy or lying or both, maybe.

"You hit your head," she said, talking to him like he was five years old or seventy-five, talking the way she talked to his grandmother at the nursing home. "You were playing football at Davey's house, and you hit your head. Don't you remember playing football, Deke?"

"I didn't hit my head, Mom. I just twisted my ankle. I didn't hit my head, I swear," and his father turning around again, angry father framed in fire, and his mother was already uncovering his bare feet, and "His ankle's swollen, Marty," she said, mothervoice like something thin and brittle, like something strained.

"That doesn't mean he isn't lying. That doesn't mean he didn't hit his head," and then his father staring at him, just staring at him, and bitter secrets behind Martin Silvey's eyes that Deke could see but wouldn't even begin to understand for years, old secrets dressed up like resentment or disappointment.

"You keep talking this way, Deacon, and they're gonna start thinking you're crazy. Do you know what that means, if they think you're crazy?"

"You're scaring him. Jesus, what's the point of scaring him when he's already lying here in a hospital bed, and we don't even know what's wrong with him."

But his father not hearing her or not listening, leaning close now, faint smell of whiskey on his breath, and whatever Deacon had seen in his eyes before was gone, nothing left but a strange and serious concern.

"I'm not trying to scare you, Deke. You don't know what these people, what these doctors, will believe, and sometimes it's better if we keep the things we think we know to ourselves. It won't fix anything, telling them about the dog. It won't change things so that those boys never killed it. They might even get the idea you had something to do with it."

His mother crying again, covering his swollen ankle, and she stepped out of the room, left him alone with his father, and Deacon knew he was going to cry, cry like his mother, cry like a girl, and he didn't want his father to see. Wanted to go back to the black place that wasn't a place, the place where nothing hurt and he didn't have to think about why anyone would beat a puppy to death with a hammer or why his father was telling him he should pretend he hit his head or the doctors would think he was crazy.

"The puppy will still be dead, Deke," his father said. "I just want you to realize you can't change that. I want you to think about that," and Deacon rolled over, pushed his face deep into his pillow to hide the tears, m.u.f.fle the sobs he couldn't swallow, and in a few more minutes his father followed his mother out into the hallway and left him alone in the white room.

Another week in the hospital, almost time for school to start again when they finally let him go home, a week of puzzled frowns from men and women in lab coats and still no explanation for his "seizure," no matter how much blood they took from his arms or how many pictures they made of the inside of his head. And Deacon never told them about Davey Barber's beagle.

But the week after he started fourth grade, he pedaled his bicycle out past the high school, past the football stadium and the older kids at band practice, all the way to the field; tall gra.s.s and pollenyellow stalks of goldenrod, Queen Anne's lace and a scatter of oaks just far enough away that he couldn't see anything from the road. Only an hour or so left until dark, but Deacon hid his bike in the gra.s.s and walked towards the trees, picked his way slow across the weedthick field, watching for copperheads and rattlesnakes. Standing finally in the long, uneasy shadows gathering below the limbs, and the puppy was right where he knew it would be, what was left of it after a month, anyway, a month of the summer sun and rain, crows and maggots working at its body. Deacon used a pair of pliers to pull the nail out of its skull, and then he buried the body in a sandy, barren place beneath the trees. No tears this time, just a sick and final feeling in his belly because he could never tell anyone, could never even tell Davey what had happened to his dog, and no way to know when it might happen all over again, no way to know what not to touch.

On the other side of the field, one hundred yards and five years away, past chain-link fence to hold in the safer world of teenagers, illusions of a safer world perched on the slippery edge of growing up, the marching band began to play "Aura Lee," trumpets and clarinets, flutes and snare-drum cadence, and Deacon Silvey followed the music back the way he'd come.

Deacon is sitting alone on a candyblue plastic milk crate outside The Plaza, drawing circles in the dirt with a stick, circles within circles, and a little while ago Sadie left the bar, the door easing itself shut behind her, and she headed off towards Five Points without even looking at him. That quick, determined way she has of walking, eyes fixed on the ground straight ahead of her, dead ahead, and he probably couldn't have gotten her attention if he wanted to; Sadie wrapped up snug and fretting in her sulky black coc.o.o.n until she's ready to come out again. Deacon draws another circle, seventh from the outer rim, and this exercise he taught himself a long time ago, trapping the fury in smaller and smaller circles, concentric restraint, putting it all away where it can't hurt anyone but him, and he usually has it coming.

He tilts the crate back, all his weight resting against the wall of The Plaza, semicircle of glazed bricks the soft color of b.u.t.ter, odd semicircle of a building jutting out from under an old shopping center: a florist and an Indian restaurant up there, Western Supermarket and a video rental place, and The Plaza tucked neatly beneath. Not as hot now as when he first left the bar, a few clouds and maybe a thunderstorm on the way, car exhaust, hot asphalt and a spicy hint of curry in the air.

The Plaza door opens again and this time it's Sheryl, still wearing her beer-stained bar ap.r.o.n, lighting a cigarette as she walks towards him. She squats down in the gravel and dirt next to his crate and exhales a cloud of smoke, takes another drag off her Marlboro before she says anything. Bunky Tolbert hasn't shown up, and Deacon wonders who's watching the bar.

"I asked Jess to watch after things for me while I took a break," she says, reply to his unspoken question like a sideshow mind reader's trick, and then Sheryl offers him a cigarette and Deacon says no, but thanks, and she shrugs, have-it-your-way shrug and slips the pack back into her ap.r.o.n pocket. "What's that supposed to be?" she asks, pointing at Deacon's circles with the smoldering tip of her cigarette.

A quick, embarra.s.sed swipe from one of his boots, and Deacon erases them all, nothing there now but bits of limestone and sand again, and "Just doodling," he replies. "It wasn't anything." Sheryl nods and puffs her cigarette.

"Look, I know you're a smart guy, Deke," she says, taps gray ash to the ground and looks up at him, squints at him through her own smoke. "So I'm not going to bother telling you what an a.s.shole you can be. I figure you already know that part." And Deacon nods once, tosses away his stick and leans forward on the blue milk crate, all four corners back down to earth again.

"Then what are you gonna say, Sheryl?" he asks, not in the mood for guessing games, not really in the mood to listen to her or anyone else, for that matter.

"That she's just a kid, that's all, Deke. And I know she can be a freaky little pain in the a.s.s sometimes, but if I were you and wanted her to hang around, well . . . I'd take it just a little easier on her, cowboy."

Deacon kicks at the dirt, kicks away the smooth place his boot made of the circles, and "It'll work itself out, Sheryl. It always does." And Sheryl nods, thoughtful, sure, whatever-you-say sort of nod, one more drag off her cigarette and she crushes the b.u.t.t out beneath the toe of a sneaker.

"I just keep wondering if you're p.i.s.sed off at Sadie, or if you're p.i.s.sed off at Elise and it's just a lot easier to hurt someone who isn't dead."

Deacon swallows, wishing he had another beer or a bottle of gin, bottle of vodka, almost anything to wash away the dry. "That's a h.e.l.l of a s.h.i.tty thing to say," he mumbles, and Sheryl nods her head.

"All I'm sayin' is be careful, man," and she gets up, glances at the darkening sky, the powdergray undersides of the thunderheads beginning to stack up above the city. "I gotta get back inside before Jessie decides to start handing out free martinis. If you see Bunky, kick his lazy a.s.s for me," and then she's gone, and Deacon Silvey is alone, and there's a sound like thunder off towards Red Mountain.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Sadie SADIE Jasper stalks down the steep hill leading away from The Plaza, away from Deacon, her pointy black boots clock-clock-clocking loud on the asphalt, and never mind the sidewalk, half-overgrown with kudzu, anyway, so she's walking down the middle of the road; if anyone runs her down that's their problem, a dent in their fender, their cracked windshield, an explanation they'll have to come up with for the police. She imagines her body lying limp and broken beside the road, b.l.o.o.d.y rag doll held inside chalk-white lines, imagines little hairy bits of her scalp caught beneath the wiper blades of some a.s.shole's Saab or BMW, and that almost makes her smile. She kicks at an empty plastic bottle that once held brake fluid, and it bounces on ahead of her, finally comes to rest against the curb.

No good pretending that Deacon would really give a s.h.i.t. Hey, buddy, someone just ran over your girlfriend and now she's dead. Man, now she's f.u.c.king road pizza, and Sadie knows precisely the way he'd rub at his eyes for a moment or two, the dull and calculated squint towards the ceiling of that s.h.i.tty little bar, before he'd shake his head and order a shot of whiskey. Something almost expensive, in her memory. One alcoholic tear for poor crumpled Sadie, if she was lucky, and so she glances around for something else to kick, something else that can't kick back.

The steep road intersecting with Twenty-first Street, and she turns right, turns north towards home, the tiny apartment she shares with Deacon, and Sadie spots an old Diet c.o.ke can in the gutter. She starts to kick it, then pictures Chance Matthews' face printed across the red-and-white aluminum and stomps it hard, instead. Much more satisfying to feel the soft metal fold and flatten out beneath the heel of her boot, delicious, ruined, scrunchy sound as she grinds it back and forth against the blacktop. And then a car rushes past, shinyblack blur and tires squealing, horn like a f.u.c.king banshee on crack, and some guy yelling at her to get out of the middle of the G.o.dd.a.m.n road, Get out of the middle of the road you f.u.c.king freak; sudden swoosh of air and exhaust fumes, and Sadie watches the car speed away, then stares down at the squashed Diet c.o.ke can, and it doesn't really look anything like Chance Matthews anymore.

"f.u.c.ker," she whispers and kicks it, sends it skittering and skipping away after the car that almost ran her down, and Sadie Jasper decides that maybe the sidewalk isn't such a bad idea after all.

Another block to the bank where she usually manages to keep just enough in checking that they don't cancel her account or charge her fees for letting it sit empty. The teller smiles politely, requisite, insincere smile, and takes away the candygreen slip of paper with her mother's signature, the deposit slip scarred by her own sprawling, unsteady handwriting, and gives her back a hundred and fifty in cash; the rest tucked away safe for now, and Sadie counts the money twice before stuffing it into her Bad Badtz-Maru billfold. "Thank you, Miss Jasper. You have a nice day now," the teller says, but Sadie knows she doesn't mean it any more than she means the plastic smile, that she's probably only thinking about all the customers standing impatiently behind Sadie, or wondering how anyone could walk around in public dressed like a refugee from The Adams Family ; Sadie takes an extra few seconds to return her billfold to her purse, another second to snap the purse shut again, and then she glares at the woman behind the counter, not a smile but the distressed sort of face she might make if someone told her that she'd stepped in dog s.h.i.t, maybe, and "You're welcome," she says.

She leaves the bank, leaves the air-conditioning and carpetsmelling air, crosses Twentieth Street to the dusty, secondhand bookshop squeezed between a hardware store and a place that repairs bicycles. Cowbell jingle when she opens the door and no air conditioner here, just a couple of huge ceiling fans that must have been around at least since Eisenhower was president, rusty steel blades to move the stale, bookscented heat around and around, and the old man behind the counter smiles at her. But this is a genuine smile, his white beard that always makes Sadie think of the grandfathers she never knew, white eyebrows, and, "Good afternoon, Sadie," the old man says.

"Good afternoon, Jerome," she says, returning the smile in her hard, uneasy way, and "I think I might have something for you today," he says, reaches beneath the counter, and his hand comes back with a book, clothbound cover the color of antique ivory, t.i.tle and author stamped in faded gold and art deco letters. Best Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood, and she lifts it carefully off the countertop, picks it up the way someone else might lift a diamond necklace or a sick kitten, and opens the book to the frontispiece and t.i.tle page, black-and-white photo of the author in a dapper suit, sadkind eyes and his bow tie just a little crooked.

"It's an ex-library copy, I'm afraid," Jerome says, and Sadie's eyes drift from the author's portrait to the word DISCARD stamped crimson and blockylarge just below the t.i.tle, and PROPERTY OF NEWBURGH PUBLIC LIBRARY, NEWBURGH, NEW YORK, stamped underneath that in ink the color of blackberry juice. She sighs loud, frowns, something almost violent about marking a book that way, disrespectful and indelible inkbruises on paper gone yellowbrown around the edges.