Dogwood by Chris Fabry

Author:Chris Fabry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Christian / General, FICTION / General
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2013-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Will

I awoke, cold as a stone, something sizzling in the fire behind me. My back stiff, I turned and saw ashes smoking as a man poured a yellow stream. It didn’t take me long to figure out what the liquid was or that the person zipping up his brown pants was Eddie Buret.

He spat a stream of brown tobacco juice at the ground by my head. I could tell he had deadly accuracy, and I wondered if he was as good with his gun.

“Checked in with your parole officer yet?” Eddie said. He spoke around the chaw.

“Yesterday,” I said.

“Good for you, Hatfield. Nice and prompt. Keep that up. Hate to see you get thrown back in over a technicality.” He scanned the view and took a deep breath. “Real nice up here. Imagine you never thought you’d get back.”

I let the statement hang in the reddening sky, remembering the old proverb my father used to quote: Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

“It’s a pretty piece of ground. Too bad your dad didn’t have the gumption to sell it when he could.”

“What do you mean?”

Eddie waved a hand. “What’s done is done. Can’t go back to the past, right?” He crouched like a catcher, his knees cracking, looking into my face to read something that wasn’t there. “How’d those old boys treat you up in Clarkston? Probably a lot better than Moundsville, huh? I’ve heard stories of that place. But you don’t look too much worse for the wear. Must’ve found somebody to protect you.” He smiled and I saw bits of tobacco on his yellowing teeth. His star had the word Chief on it.

“Didn’t know you decided to go into law enforcement,” I said. “Last I heard, you were trying to break into NASCAR.”

“When your father has lots of influence, you take what you’re offered. He convinced me it might be a good career move, and I guess he was right.”

Eddie didn’t wear a wedding band, and I imagined a string of lonely apartments he had moved out of that would never look the same.

“Thanks for your concern,” I said.

“You don’t have to get smart about it.” He stood, kicking a rock into the fire and sending a fresh wave of ashes over me. He surveyed the scene like a conqueror of a new world. “Everybody’s asking about you. If you’d actually have the cojones to come back. I think they wanted to know if you were really that stupid, to tell you the truth.”

I kept quiet, letting him grandstand. My father always said to let people talk who seemed to have the inclination. You could learn a lot more that way. He also said when a man talks to an empty theater, he’s doing it for himself.

“That friend of yours Arron—you always called him Elvis. You hear from him?”

“I heard he was missing.”

“Well, that’s what his mother says. And his sister. Now there’s a choice piece.” Eddie shook his head. “I figured you and him being best friends and all, he might have said something to you.

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