Down River Read Free

and it never will be. If you have something to say, I suggest that you say it to him.”
    He backed away, and I followed him out into the molten air. He kept his hands up, eyes on me, and his voice was sharp and harsh. “Things change, boy. They grow small and they die. Even in Rowan County. Even for the goddamn Chases!”
    And then he was gone, walking fast past the flaking doors of his roadside empire. He looked back twice, and in his hatchet face I saw the cunning and the fear. He gave me the finger, and I asked myself, not for the first time, if coming home had been a mistake.
    I watched him disappear into his office, then went inside to wash off the stink.
     
     
       It took ten minutes to shower, shave, and put on clean clothes. Hot air molded itself around me as I stepped outside. The sun pressed down on the trees across the road, soft and low as it flattened itself against the world. A mist of pollen hung in the yellow light and cicadas called from the roadside. I pulled the door shut behind me, and when I turned I noticed two things almost at once. Zebulon Faith leaned, cross-armed, against the office wall. He had two guys with him, big old boys with heavy shoulders and thick smiles. That was the first thing I saw. The second was my car. Big letters, gouged into the dusty hood.
    Killer.
    Two feet long if it was an inch.
    So much for hope.
    The old man’s face split and he pushed words through the smile. “Couple of punk kids,” he said. “They took off that way.” He pointed across the empty street, to the old drive-in parking lot that was now a sea of weed-choked Tarmac. “Damned unfortunate,” he finished.
    One of the guys elbowed the other. I knew what they saw: a rich man’s car with New York plates, a city boy in shined shoes.
    They had no idea.
    I moved to the trunk, put my bag inside, pulled out the tire iron. It was two feet of solid metal with a lug wrench on one end. I started across the parking lot, the heavy rod low against my leg.
    “You shouldn’t have done it,” I said.
    “Fuck yourself, Chase.”
    They came off the porch, moving heavily, Zeb Faith in the middle. They fanned out, and their feet rasped on hard-baked earth. The man on Faith’s right was the taller of the two, and looked scared, so I focused on the man to the left, a mistake. The blow came from the right, and the guy was fast. It was like getting hit with a bat. The other followed almost as quickly. He saw me droop and stepped in with an uppercut that would have broken my jaw. But I swung the iron. It came up fast and hard, caught the man’s arm in midswing and broke it as cleanly as anything I’d ever seen. I heard bones go. He went down, screaming.
    The other man hit me again, caught me on the side of the head, and I swung at him, too. Metal connected on the meaty part of his shoulder. Zebulon Faith stepped in for a shot, but I beat him to it, delivered a short punch to the point of his chin and he dropped. Then the lights went out. I found myself on my knees, vision clouded, getting the shit kicked out of me.
    Faith was down. So was the man with the broken arm. But the other guy was having a time. I saw the boot arcing in again and I swung with all I had. The tire iron connected with his shin and he flopped onto the dirt. I didn’t know if it was broken, didn’t really care. He was out of it.
    I tried to stand up, but my legs were loose and weak. I put my hands on the ground, and felt Zebulon Faith standing over me. Breath sawed in his throat, but his voice was strong enough. “Fucking Chases,” he said, and went to work with his feet. They swung in, swung out. Swung in again, and came back bloody. I was down for real, couldn’t find the tire iron, and the old man was grunting like he was at the end of an all-night screw. I curled up, tucked my face down, and sucked in a lungful of road grit.
    That’s when I heard the sirens.
     
     
     

CHAPTER 2
     
     
       The ambulance ride was a blur, twenty minutes of