The Familiar Dark(40)
Another snort from Marion. “In hiding. You always did have a way with the words, even when you was little.”
I drummed my knuckles on the countertop, something gritty sticking to my skin. “Izzy?” I prompted.
Marion took another drag from her cigarette. “Getting right down to business. I can respect that.” She paused, pointed at me with one nicotine-stained finger. “Don’t ask me how I know because I ain’t gonna tell you.” She swirled her cigarette through the air. “A magician never reveals her secrets.”
“I won’t ask,” I said, trying to hurry her along. My God, she loved an audience. My mama was right about that.
Marion leaned forward. “She was seeing that Matthew fellow. The one works for Jimmy Ray. Has that stupid-looking ponytail. Heard she was like a cat in heat around him.”
“Matt?” I said, momentarily struck dumb. The bartender from the strip club. The absolute asshole. The worst of all possible bad choices. Oh, Izzy, what were you thinking? “How did they even meet?”
“Got no idea,” Marion said. “Figured they crossed paths at some point, liked what they saw. Don’t know how far it had gone or nothing like that. But I have it on good authority that he wasn’t exactly telling her no.”
“She was twelve.”
Marion shrugged. “And he’s an asshole with a pecker. This shouldn’t be news to you. It’s the oldest story in the world.”
I wanted her to be wrong. I wanted to live in a world where grown men didn’t prey on twelve-year-old girls. But she was right, of course. It was nothing new. Nothing that wasn’t done every second of every day in every corner of the world. Little girls were never safe. I should know; I used to be one of them.
SIXTEEN
Originally Barren Springs had been a dry town in a dry county, the band of ragtag settlers still determined to put God first in thanks for his having saved them from starvation and ruin. Their resolve hadn’t lasted long; soon as folks figured out how rough life was around here—discovered that just because land is pretty doesn’t make it farmable—they realized liquor was vital to take the edge off, make the days bearable. But most of the drinking in Barren Springs was still done in private, as if God wouldn’t count it against you so long as you didn’t throw it in his face. Beer bought at the Piggly Wiggly and consumed by the case down by the creek or flasks of whiskey tucked under car seats for swigs on the way home from work. Other than Jimmy Ray’s strip joint, the only watering hole in Barren Springs was Cassidy’s, a tiny bar wedged between the laundromat and the questionable sub shop. It had a leg up on Jimmy Ray’s place because it served a couple of actual cocktails and smelled like dryer sheets instead of strippers. Of course, at least half the town would say those were knocks against it. I’d only been inside a handful of times, mainly with Louise, whose husband, Keith, worked the bar most nights. Cassidy’s only held about thirty people at capacity, the space long and narrow. Bar running the length of the right side, liquor bottles always shaking slightly when the dryers on the other side of the shared wall were in full spin, and a few two-top tables lining the left. Tonight, at half an hour before closing on a Tuesday, there was only one man bellied up to the bar and Keith cleaning up behind it.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Keith said when I came through the door, sweatshirt thrown over my pajamas and flip-flops on my feet. “Hated to bother you, but I didn’t want him driving. I tried to get his keys, but he wouldn’t hand them over.”
Keith’s call had woken me from the first deep sleep I’d had in what felt like years. Actual slumber, not simply skimming the surface of rest with thoughts of Junie floating against my closed eyelids. “It’s okay,” I said. “How long’s he been here?”
“Most of the night,” Keith said. He was wiping down the bar and paused where Cal’s head rested on the wood. “Poor fucker. I think it all caught up with him. I wasn’t gonna bother you, but the usual suspects were sniffing around. Brenda Longmont, that Candy girl you went to school with. I figured he was gonna have enough regrets in the morning, didn’t need to add waking up next to one of them to the list.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Good call.” I slid onto the stool next to Cal’s, ran my hand over his hair. “Hey, Cal. Come on, wake up.”
Cal had never been a drinker, not even when we were younger and I was a little too friendly with the bottle. He’d watched our mama and went the other way, a decision I mimicked as soon as I got pregnant. But while I’d given up drinking for good, Cal still had the occasional beer after work or while watching the game. But I’d only seen him really drunk once before, when his high school girlfriend, long since moved away and on with her life, had gotten married to some lawyer in St. Louis. I don’t think it was a broken heart over her that made Cal hit the bottle so much as it was the knowledge that the life he was living in Barren Springs—working for Land, helping me raise Junie, taking Mama groceries once in a while to keep her from starving—was the one he was most likely going to live forever. We’d never talked about it, though, because Cal would have never admitted that to anyone, probably not even to himself.
I pushed gently against his shoulder, said his name again, and he raised his head, fastened his bleary eyes to the right of me. “Eve?” he said, and I leaned backward, out of the range of his whiskey-fume breath. “What’s going on?”