Читать книгу Above the Waterfall - Ron Rash - Страница 9

Three

C.J. Gant’s daddy had been a decent farmer but bad to drink. He’d show up in town with fifty dollars in his pocket and wake the next day without a nickel. During elementary school, C.J. and his sister wore clothes that would shame a hobo, then had to hand the cashier a ticket to get the welfare lunch. In fourth grade, though, C.J. quit eating the cafeteria’s meal, instead bringing lunches that were nothing more than a slab of fatback in a biscuit. He’d set the brown paper sack in front of him, trying to hide what he ate. Taunts about his father, shoves and trips, books knocked out of his hands, he’d had a full portion of misery. I’d never joined in the bullying, but I’d never done much to stop it either. C.J. never swung a fist or said a word back. Things got better in his teen years. He and I both made extra money helping on his great-uncle’s farm. The day C.J. turned sixteen, he began working afternoons and weekends at Harold Tucker’s resort. He could buy himself clothes that didn’t need patches, school lunches he didn’t need a ticket for. He made good grades and received some scholarship money for college. He took out student loans, then worked two, sometimes three, part-time jobs to cover the rest.

You needed to remember all that when you dealt with C.J., because he rubbed a lot of people wrong, even those who knew his story. He took no small satisfaction in having a nice house in town and driving a pricey SUV. At public meetings he could come off as pompous, especially since he’d shed his mountain accent, but C.J. had done a lot of good since coming back five years ago—key fund-raiser for the downtown park and new high school, cosponsor of the county Meals on Wheels program. People could forget those things though.

C.J. had on his working duds, dark blue suit and white dress shirt with a silk tie. A golden name tag with TUCKER RESORTS PUBLIC RELATIONS was pinned on his coat pocket. When he sat down, C.J. laid his right hand on his knee, the way he always did, the East Carolina University class ring where you couldn’t help noticing it.

“Come to bring me a retirement present?” I asked.

C.J. didn’t smile.

“Gerald Blackwelder’s poaching fish on resort property. You need to go see him, right now.”

“Well, there’s no need to get on your high horse about it, C.J. I’ll warn him there’s been a formal complaint.”

“Warn him?” C.J. barked. “You by God drive out there and charge him. Our signs say we prosecute and they’ve been up six months. And if Gerald claims he wasn’t up there, we’ve got the proof on camera.”

“I think you know this county’s got more serious problems than an old man poaching a few trout.”

“He scared a guest enough that she left two days early. You think we can afford to lose customers, in this economy?”

“What’d he do?”

“He didn’t have to do anything. Damn it, Les, he looks like he just walked off the set of Deliverance. Besides that, he’s up there catching trout, and keeping them. How do you think our guests like that? They pay to fish and have to release their catch.”

“I’m sure he just gets a few speckleds, not your pet rainbows and browns downstream.”

“We’ve got guests who fish above the waterfall,” C.J. said. “They appreciate how rare native brook trout are, and rarer still every time Gerald makes some his dinner.”

“Brook” trout instead of “speckled,” which was what C.J. had called them growing up. Something shed, same as his accent. I leaned back in my chair. C.J. and I had gotten crosswise before when he or Harold Tucker tried to tell me how to do my job.

“Why don’t you just put it in your fancy brochures that Gerald’s there to add to the rustic experience, an authentic mountain man fishing the old-timey way.”

C.J. had always been good at keeping his feelings to himself, but now I could almost hear his molars grinding. But it wasn’t just anger. He looked desperate.

“This isn’t a joke, Les. I told Gerald in June not to go near that waterfall again. I put my ass on the line, instead of doing what Mr. Tucker wanted, which was to come to you. Gerald swore to my face he wouldn’t go fishing up there anymore.” C.J. grimaced and tapped the chair’s arm with a closed hand. “If I’d thought it out, I’d have turned right to come see you instead of left to Gerald’s house,” he said, as much to himself as to me. Then C.J. leaned forward, his voice soft, “Les, if this isn’t done right, I could lose my job.”

He glanced down at his tie, then smoothed it with his hand, like the tie needed calming, not him.

“Come on, C.J.,” I said, seriously, not joshing. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit?”

“Have you seen our parking lot? If things don’t pick up soon, Tucker will have to lay some people off.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll go this afternoon but I’m not charging Gerald without a warning.”

“Damn it, aren’t you listening?” C.J. said, raising his voice again. “He’s been warned. By the signs, by me.”

“But not by me,” I said. “You can wait until after the end of the month and have Jarvis Crowe deal with this, but for now I’m still sheriff.”

C.J.’s cell phone buzzed. As he took it from his pocket, I saw the puckered scar on the back of his hand, the result of a hay baler’s metal tines on a long-ago Saturday morning. C.J.’s great-uncle had made a tourniquet from a handkerchief and we’d rushed C.J. to the hospital. If your arm had gone in there it would have been ripped off and you’d have bled to death, son, the doctor had told C.J., scolding him for his carelessness. But it hadn’t been C.J. who’d been careless.

“You don’t have to tell him anything,” C.J. said to the caller. “I’m taking care of it right now. Just let me deal with it. I’ll let Mr. Tucker know what’s going on.”

He pocketed the phone.

“I can’t lose my job over this, Les,” C.J. said. “My boys aren’t going to grow up like me.”

I’d thought to go to Jink Hampton’s place first, but I raised my hands in surrender.

“Okay. I’ll go on out there now and make it damn clear to Gerald that he will be arrested next time.”

C.J. stood, but he didn’t leave.

“You know this wouldn’t have happened if Gerald had sold that place two years ago. Even his nephew had the sense to know there’d never be a better offer. And now, with this recession, he’ll be lucky to get half that.”

“I’m sure you and Tucker had only Gerald’s interests in mind.”

“Think what you want,” C.J. said, “but I knew that a man Gerald’s age, especially one with a bad heart, would be better off with a hospital near.”

“As far as I’m concerned, Darby inheriting less is all to the good. The only smart thing Gerald did was not to give that little prick of a nephew power of attorney. As for Gerald living longer, look what selling his farm did to your great-uncle. How long did he last in town, a month? You know what leaving a home place does to men like them. No hospital can cure that.”

C.J. didn’t have a response, because he knew it was true.

“Get over there, Les,” he said, and left.

You’re smart, though you try to hide it. You can get away from this place too, be an art teacher in Charlotte or anywhere clear to Alaska.

That’s what C.J. had told me at the start of our senior year. Since he’d come back to live here, he’d never directly said anything about me staying put, though the first time he’d been in my office he’d nodded at the Hopper painting. “With the rusty wheels and those weeds, someone might see that painting as rather symbolic, Les. Is that why you bought it?” “I didn’t buy it,” I’d answered. “Mr. Neil gave it to me when he retired, frame and all. He just remembered that in class I’d liked Hopper’s paintings.”

I’d settled for too little in my life, C.J. believed. And maybe I had.