Treeborne Page 2

  He pulled up near the water tower and drank six more cold beers while watching the other vehicles strategically parked in moon-cut shadow. He got hisself riled up thinking Tammy might be in the backseat of one with an even younger man than he—maybe a member of the Conquistadors varsity squad. He got out and listened at a high school couple rut and moan. Nearly yanked them through the cracked window, then he caught hisself. Young love. The dial tuned to The Peach. It was late enough that Pedro Hannah could get away with playing rock-and-roll music. Nobody awake to hear but kids like these and the men who worked owl-shift at the coal mines down in Bankhead and, tonight anyway, Wooten Ragsdale. Between songs Pedro said there was nothing new to report about last week’s Peach Days incident. Wooten was so drunk he did not register what incident the boy meant nor his wife’s involvement in it.

  The sun was up, slowly turning the valley blue as if it’d sunk underwater, time Wooten arrived at the Hernando de Soto Dam. He knocked on a metal door. When it opened there stood his brother-in-law, Ren Treeborne, wearing nothing but a pair of red-and-white-checkered drawers and a gold chain around his hairy neck.

  “Hell is it Woot?”

  “She’s gone.”

  “Who?”

  “Tammy,” he said. “She ain’t been home the last three nights.”

  They took Ren’s pickup, the floorboards littered with lakeshore sand and pinched cigarettes. Empty coke-cola bottles rolled out from underneath the seat then back again. Ren cranked down the driver’s-side window with a pair of pliers then handed them to Wooten. Hot air stirred up the sparkling floorboard grit as Ren turned right onto 31. From there it wasn’t far to Wooten and Tammy’s trailer.

  They walked around inside then throughout the yard, hunting for signs among the weeds and the construction materials and the above-ground swimming pool. Found nothing that could be interpreted as such. Near the edge of the woods Ren believed he caught a whiff of rot, though he couldn’t be sure. Wooten said the dog was missing too. Ren knew Tammy wouldn’t of taken that damn mutt if she’d run off.

  “We ought to call Aaron,” he said.

  “Let’s wait just a day or two.”

  “Woot.”

  “I can’t stand admitting she’s left me Ren.”

  “She’s my sister Woot.”

  “I know it.”

  “What if she’s somewhere hurt and needing help?”

  “I know it,” Wooten said. “Don’t you reckon I know?”

  Ren hated seeing a grown man so ashamed. He knew his baby sister could be flighty. They’d all worried about her marrying Wooten. Tammy had sworn she’d found pure-dee love this time. Who was Ren to doubt? Wooten had invited Ren, Luther, Hugh and Maybelle to witness the proposal outside the Ragsdale chickenhouses and slaughtering facility. One of Elberta’s biggest employers since Prince’s Peach Cannery shut down in the twenties. Tammy had just got on at the water department. Wooten owned some land on which he’d parked a trailer. This trailer. Tammy was, she told her family, a year older and much wiser than she was after high school when she left for the Gulf Coast.

  “Alright,” Ren said. “Let’s see if she don’t turn up tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” Wooten said. “Thank you Ren.”

  Folks remembered seeing Wooten Ragsdale down at The Fencepost Cafe at lunch that day. Said he ordered a bloody steak and a baked potato big as a newborn baby. He ate alone, Ren gone back to the De Soto Dam. Wooten’s check, the money him and Tammy were making logging the land she’d inherited after her momma died earlier that summer, the house they were building there, these were the subject of hours of big talk and bullshitting at the little restaurant. Folks paid special attention whenever the couple came in to eat. Strange, they thought that day, Tammy not meeting Wooten for lunch. The county water department office was, after all, just down Madrid and other side of the square.

  After lunch Wooten took a peek at the blind tiger in back of the restaurant. No longer a need for pretending there was an exotic animal on view, but the speakeasy’s name had stuck. He took another peek and then another one till he was so drunk he had to cover one eye to see the road straight. He managed to arrive at The Seven unharmed, though he wasn’t able to do much work. The chain saw missed each time he tried to lay into a tree. He took a nap in the cab of his pickup truck then drove over at Livingstown to see about that Crews boy.

  Wooten found the boy’s daddy Van in the shop building where he kept three llamas he’d bought off a traveling sideshow run by a spectacular midget. Van Crews swung a pistol onto Wooten when he barged in demanding to see Lyle.

  “I don’t keep up with him.”

  “Lie!”

  “I ain’t arguing with you about it,” Van said, jostling the pistol. He lowered it when he realized how drunk Wooten was then turned his attention back to the llama’s milk soap he had on to boil. Forever chasing fortune, Van Crews had noticed Elberta women becoming more concerned about their upkeep. He was working on a llama’s milk shampoo too—made with real llama butter for extra shine.

  “You ain’t got any of that dope do you?”

  “Not for you I ain’t,” Van said, pointing the snubbish pistol again. “I’ll tell Lyle you was hunting him. Now go on home Woot. You look like twice run-over shit.”

  Wooten could piece together nothing between leaving Livingstown and showing up at football practice later that afternoon, though, when asked, he’d tell Sheriff Aaron Guthrie that he’d gone swimming. It was blamed hot enough for this to make sense—problem was, grown men in Elberta didn’t just go swimming by themselves.

  Wooten started out on the concrete bleachers with all the other used-to-bes who had nothing better to do than watch a bunch of high school boys running into each other time and again. The Elberta County High School Conquistadors jamboree game was a few weeks off and practice tempo had adjusted accordingly. Wooten gradually drifted down onto the sideline for a better look. He’d been a fair ball player on a couple good teams in the forties. He followed Coach Williams up and down the field. Coach carried hisself like a war hero, wore short gray cotton shorts and looked like a turtle from the neck up. Every Conquistador who’d ever played for him adored him to death. He gave these boys and the men they became scant approval in return, which only made them adore him more.

  During one play a Conquistador—folks later told it was the Snell kid—came running toward the sideline on a passing route too fast to pull up. Coach Williams dodged, but Wooten Ragsdale held his ground. The Conquistador fell flat on his back. All the used-to-bes laughed and spat and clapped. Coach Williams even smiled around his polished silver whistle. Wooten helped up the Conquistador and slapped him on the rear end. When the Conquistador jogged back onto the field for the next play, Wooten followed. The Conquistadors didn’t know what to do when he leaned into the huddle. The grown man smelled like booze and treebark. Realizing Coach Williams meant to let it ride, the quarterback lined everybody up and snapped the ball on two. He shoved it into the Snell kid’s gut going up the middle on a dive. Wooten had plowed a path so clear the kid ran half the field before getting tackled from behind. Coach Williams blew his whistle and hollered for him to come on off the field.

  But Wooten would not.

  He called another play, another and another, leading the offense to the goal line in the same sweat-soaked clothes he’d worn the last four days his wife was missing. All the used-to-bes stopped laughing and clapping. During the touchdown play Wooten drove a boy named Winchell hard into the ground. The boy’s cleat caught in the grass and his leg bent backward at an unnatural angle. The break, the used-to-bes later claimed, could be heard from the bleachers. Boys who saw the injury up close puked on themselves.

  Coach Williams sprinted up to Wooten. “Get your sorry goddamn ass off my field right this second before I kick it all the way to goddamn fucking Bankhead and back.”

  But still Wooten would not.

  The fight was over time Ren got there. The used-to-bes had gathered around their vehi
cles to rehash what’d occurred. Sometimes old Conquistadors got in on practice, but it was usually ones no more than a year or two removed from school. Wooten had been out coming up on a decade. He sat alone on the bleachers, the boys he’d whipped pacing the trampled sidelines with tiny paper cups of water. Ren waved to his brother-in-law then went to apologize to Coach Williams, who had a good-size welt on his right cheek. Bertrand English, an assistant, boasted a missing tooth and busted lower lip. Ren apologized to him too and asked about the Winchell boy. He’d been carried to Doc Barfield’s. Ren promised to stop by and look in on him. He knew this story would hit The Fencepost before the dinner rush. Liable to make the next day’s Elberta Times-Journal too. Coach Williams said not to worry about it, and he was sorry for bothering Ren at work.

  “I tried over at the water department, but Tam wasn’t in. Everything alright?”

  “She ain’t been feeling too good lately,” Ren said.

  “Well, it ain’t easy what y’all been through this summer.”

  Ren grimaced as he shook his coach’s hand.

  He kept Wooten at the dam that night. Only had the one cot in his office, which he helped his brother-in-law onto after feeding him dry toast and as much water as he could stomach. Ren ate the last of some okra and butter beans then made hisself a pallet on the cold concrete floor. If he turned on his side he could hear the turbines working in the gallery fifty feet down below. He slept little that night, wondering if Tammy really had fled Elberta. If she had at least she’d waited till their momma wasn’t around anymore.

  Next morning Ren felt like he was the one who’d taken on the Conquistadors varsity squad, the coaches and the used-to-bes. Wooten was smiling and drinking black coffee in the break room with Willy Ramsey, one of two engineers at the De Soto Dam. Ren grabbed the Times-Journal off the table and carried it to the bathroom. His stomach complained to be emptied as he unzipped his blue jeans. His morning ritual was reading the Times-Journal all the way through while squatted on the toilet. Later in the afternoon he’d go back and hunt for any unread morsels. He read the paper to be up on things. There always seemed plenty in Elberta to be up on too. Other day one of the Farleys had a heart attack on his tractor. Unguided, the machine crashed into a haybarn and spun its tires so long that before anybody realized Junior Farley was missing all the gas ran out and the engine died same as the man. There was nothing about Wooten’s fight in the paper. Thank God. Ren flushed then washed his hands.

  Willy Ramsey was eating a baloney sandwich. Through a mouthful he said, “Woot here tells that Tammy’s run off to be some kind of movie star.”

  “Ah,” Ren said, setting the newspaper back down.

  “Well I hope it ain’t got nothing to do with that Peach Days mess,” Willy said. “Not that I’m blaming her. This used to be a nice little town. Now I just don’t know.”

  Ren called Sheriff Aaron Guthrie and asked to meet at the trailer. Then he called the library to let Nita know what was going on. She boo-hooed into the phone. Ren didn’t know how to comfort her. In this respect he was not the best husband.

  When they got to the trailer, biscuit crumbs yet clung to the sheriff’s navy-blue shirt. He was built like many Elberta men: a gut, twig-legs and thinning hair. He and Wooten searched inside the trailer. Meanwhile, Ren walked down at the mailbox.

  Among the usual grocery store flyers set a peach pit. Couldn’t of been but a handful of days removed from a fruit’s flesh. Ren carried the pit inside. The sheriff held it up to his face like a jeweler would a diamond. “How long you say she’s missing for?”

  “Five days,” Ren said.

  The sheriff grunted. He had plenty of questions, namely how come they’d waited so long before telling him. Aaron Guthrie was good at his job without going so overboard he didn’t have time to fish De Soto Lake, or sit around The Fencepost and bullshit two meals a day.

  “I was ashamed for anybody to know.”

  “But you told your brother here?”

  “Brother-in-law,” Ren said, wishing he’d just bit his tongue.

  The sheriff held up the peach pit again. “And this was in the mailbox?”

  “She’s gone off to Hollywood,” Wooten said. He sat down in the recliner chair and the frame groaned. “That’s what she’s done to me.”

  “You ought to of said something right off the bat,” the sheriff said. “Now what else ain’t you told?”

  Wooten began crying, his good hand cupping his forehead and the bad one pressed against his bearded jaw.

  “The dog,” Ren said.

  “I don’t know where Martin is neither!”

  “I’ll call Connie,” the sheriff said. “Get his hound over here.”

  The three men smoked cigarettes while waiting for Big Connie Ward and his black-and-tan Troop to arrive. A crayon-green lizard crawled across the porch then up the heat-cracked banister. The lizard gazed at the men in unrepentant fashion before disappearing behind the trailer’s aluminum siding as if it was no more real than magic.

  “I’ll have to carry you in and get this all on the record,” the sheriff said.

  “Fuck you Aaron.”

  “This right here ain’t good enough?” Ren asked.

  “There’s appearances I got to keep.”

  “Fuck you straight to hell,” Wooten said.

  “Heard you was down at ball practice yesterday.”

  Wooten sniffled and blew smoke.

  “Broke that Winchell boy’s leg clean in two.”

  Wooten sat on the porch steps. “I just want my wife back home with me.”

  “Then you best start helping me goddamn it.”

  Wooten tried to recall the last time he’d seen Tammy. His memory skirted away though, not wanting to be caught and dissected. He realized how little he marked what seemed like, in the present, ordinary days. They hadn’t fought more than usual, he said. Sure, they fought, who didn’t, but he never laid a hand on her. Not once. He thought he remembered her tanning her legs by the pool. That white swimsuit. She wasn’t acting particularly odd, not that he could tell. Didn’t Treebornes always act somewhat odd? Sorry. He looked at Ren. None intended. The keys to her pickup truck right yonder on the counter. That’s right, smooched her cheek then left to fill up the gas cans so I wouldn’t have to do it come morning. Call and ask Dennis down at the Pump-N-Save! Dennis would remember. Would of filled up the cans earlier but I had to drop off the Crews boy down at Livingstown on the way home then—

  “What about him?” Ren said. “Talk to Lyle and see what he remembers.”

  The sheriff ignored this suggestion. “Reckon it could be to do with her momma?” he asked. “You know how women get whenever somebody passes.”

  The heat was rolling waves off the gravel and dirt driveway time Big Connie Ward pulled up in a red pickup truck. When Troop stepped down from the cab Wooten held out one of Tammy’s silk nightgowns for him to sniff. The hound found no signs of her but soon discovered Martin’s remains in the woods just beyond the yard. Troop grabbed the poor dog’s body and shook. Plump maggots and shiny black beetles tumbled out of Martin’s innards like candy from a piñata till Big Connie wopped Troop upside the skull and said quit it. The hound tucked tail then and sat, holding high his flat head and panting.

  “Just sick,” Big Connie said, leaning over to inspect Martin’s decapitated body.

  “You don’t reckon a cult did this do you?” Ren asked.

  “Not no cult,” Big Connie said. “Just pure-dee sickness is all it is.”

  “But what about that clay man Woot?” Ren said.

  “What clay man?” the sheriff asked.

  “It ain’t anything Aaron,” Wooten said. “Found him strung up on the porch other week ago. I don’t know, big dummy-looking thing made of dirt and leaves and shit-what-all else. Probably just some kids messing around.”

  “And you ain’t even going to talk to Lyle Crews?” Ren said.

  Big Connie cut a look that made the sheriff frown.

 
“I’ll talk to Van,” the sheriff said. “See what we can’t find out.”

  They got together a search party at Woodrow’s Pit Cook Bar-B-Q. Men who’d soon die as look a black person in the face would yet go over at The Hills for Woodrow’s pulled pork and ribs. Never ate inside the low block building though—their usual compromise was to carry out. Come lunch you’d see pickups parked all along Jaybird Ridge, which divided Elberta from Freedom Hills, and men eating from foam containers balanced on the hoods. This day they made an exception and did not carry out. Woodrow’s ribs were ringed with a beautiful pink halo just inside the hard black bark, and required a gentle tug of the teeth for the meat to come loose from the bone. Perfect. The pulled pork came by the pound and dressed with a vinegary tomato-based sauce that had peaches in it for sweetness. Woodrow’d learned to smoke hogs from his great-granddaddy, who was a Louisiana slave, and he kept what he claimed were a real set of iron shackles in a glass case built into the counter.

  Aaron Guthrie went over the search plan while the men sopped puddles of dark-red sauce with pieces of white loafbread. They’d start out down below Wooten and Tammy’s trailer along the Elberta River, he said. The bank was karsty, all run-through with sinkholes and caves where Tammy might of, the sheriff gently put it, got lost. Others would search The Seven and its dense woods. A crew was on its way from Poarch County to drag De Soto Lake. After the sheriff finished talking he asked Wooten if there was anything he wanted to add.

  Wooten stood up, ducking a ceiling fan coated in one hundred years of dust and grease, and thanked everybody. But, he said, it didn’t matter one lick where in the valley they looked for Tammy. “She’s five hundred miles away by now,” he said. “And if there’s one thing I know it’s she ain’t ever coming back to Elberta, Alabama, so long as she lives.”