The Truth That Lies Between Read online

He was only five-foot-nine but thick in the chest and thighs, like an athlete, although he clearly carried some extra weight in the midsection. Stone wore scuffed leather boots, faded blue jeans, and a short-sleeved, navy, button-up shirt that matched the dark circles around his eyes. A white patch on the left chest read S & S Heating/Cooling. I froze in my chair while he focused on Jack, ambling toward him a few steps before stopping right beside me.

  “I asked you a question, boy.” Stone pointed at Jack, who had stopped pacing and stood on the other side of the room.

  “Why aren’t you at work?” Jack was afraid of Stone, but lately he had begun to stand up to him more and more. I wasn’t sure if it was because he had hit a growth spurt to five-foot-eight himself, had testosterone beginning to surge through his veins, or if he was just sick of it.

  “Can’t you see I’ve been at work? I don’t just wear this shirt because I like the style.”

  From a foot away, it was easy to smell the alcohol. Was he drunk because he got sent home, or sent home because he was drunk? It didn’t matter, the result for us was the same.

  “I came home early today,” he spat, “to spend quality time with you. Now tell me about your precious little secret before I squeeze it out of you.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Jack’s tone was defiant, aimed to deflect the question about the secret. “Just get out of here and leave us alone. I don’t have to tell you nothin’.”

  The secret wasn’t much of a secret at this point, and it sure wasn’t worth getting hit over. I knew that, and I knew Jack knew that. But I also knew Jack would never tell him at any cost. It was the principle of it. However minute, inconsequential, and undeveloped it was, it was our secret. Jack had some faults just like everyone else, but being disloyal was never one of them. There was very little I had not shared with him over the years, from girl problems to test answers, and never once had he divulged anything told in confidence.

  Stone’s forearm muscles tensed as he clenched his fists and teeth simultaneously. “You’re gonna be sorry when I’m gone one day, but right now I’ve had it with your smart mouth.” He started toward Jack.

  I gulped. “Mr. Perkins, we, uh, weren’t talking about nothin’ important. I was gonna prank call a girl I been messin’ with. Jack was just promising he would keep it a secret. You, uh, you chased the girls in your day, huh?”

  Stone stopped and glared at me briefly before his face twisted into a roguish grin. “Yeah, you could say that.” He glowered at Jack before meeting my gaze again. “Just don’t be calling long distance, and don’t say nothing stupid that gets somebody’s daddy over here. I’d hate to have to rough somebody up.”

  Stone turned and walked toward his stepson. He appeared to look past Jack, like he wasn’t even there, but my friend’s eyes never wavered, staring him down. I thought their shoulders would bump as Stone walked by, but at the last second Jack flinched and stepped aside slightly. Stone stopped and faced Jack eye to eye, unblinking. Jack could not hold it. His eyes deflected toward the floor after a few seconds, and his shoulders slumped slightly. Stone turned and walked down the hall into the back of the house.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jack said, and Jet and I followed him outside. Michelle’s car was gone.

  We settled under a gigantic white oak tree in the vacant lot next to Jack’s house, picking up the huge acorns that were beginning to fall and skipping them off the asphalt on the road. Jet bent and grabbed a particularly large one, displaying it like a piece of found treasure briefly before chunking it as far as he could. “Why does your mom put up with him?”

  “Her excuse is always about Stone helping out after Dad got killed in Vietnam. Kept her from losing the house, blah, blah, blah. Now all I see is Stone telling her what to do and shutting her up if she questions him. Maybe he was decent at first, when I was little. Now he’s just drunk half the time, mad all the time. Always coming and going, crazy hours, whispering in the phone, his panties all in a wad. I heard them yelling the other day about where his paycheck was.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” I said. “If he quits bringing home a check, your mom might kick him out.”

  “What was that he said about missing him when he’s gone one day?” Jet asked. “What’s he implying?”

  Jack snorted. “If you’re asking what he meant, I dunno. He don’t have any family anywhere. Parents died up in Pennsylvania. No brothers or sisters. I wish he would go.”

  As if on cue, Stone stomped out of the house, got in his truck, and drove away.

  Jack spat in that direction. “Don’t come back.”

  “Where’d he get his name anyway?” I asked. “Did he stay stoned in high school or something?”

  Jack wasn’t in a joking mood. “I don’t know. He says he got it because he has fists of stone. My mother says it’s from the Bible. Something about his real name, Peter.”

  “Ahh, the apostle Peter,” Jet said. “You know, Saint Peter? His real name was Simon, but Jesus changed his name to Cephas, which means rock or stone in Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Greek, and the Greek form of Cephas is Petra, or Peter.”

  Jack grimaced. “If you say so. But I can tell you he ain’t no saint.” He nodded toward the road, where Stone’s truck had reappeared and was pulling to the shoulder. “Why can’t he leave us alone?”

  Stone approached us with shoulders sagging slightly and four fingers buried in each front pocket of his jeans. He studied the ground and kicked at the leaves, his demeanor entirely different than before. He spoke slowly, slurring his words at times. “I been thinking. I just want you boys to know I meant no harm earlier. I can’t tell you what all I’m having to deal with, but I’m under a lot of stress. It ain’t no excuse, I know. I don’t want you boys going home and telling your folks I’m some monster.” He paused and looked at Jack. “I just want my family to be respectful. Sometimes they don’t appreciate what all I do for ’em. I work hard and come home tired sometimes. That’s all. Let me work out some things, and maybe we can all go fishing soon.”

  “Sir.” Jet’s voice was sincere as he gave a toothy grin. “You don’t have to apologize to us. Sometimes life just makes you irascible and prone to imbibing. As for the local ichthyofauna, you know this convivial group would love to extricate some if there is more of a proclivity toward magnanimity.”

  I held my breath. I wasn’t sure what Jet had said, but I had a pretty good idea as to the gist of it and wondered if he’d get slugged.

  Jack’s mouth dropped open, his eyes widened, and he coughed back a laugh.

  Stone blinked vacantly then nodded. “Yeah, I agree … okay.” He reached out and tousled Jet’s sandy brown hair. “You are a strange one, Townsend.” He turned and walked back to his truck, got in, and drove off again.

  “What the heck did you say to him?” Jack asked.

  Jet smiled mischievously. “I told him he was a grouchy drunk, but we’re fun-loving guys who’d love to go fishing if he’ll be nice.”

  * * *

  Jet, Jack, and I bounced around atop an upturned five-gallon bucket, an old tire, and a broken sheet of plywood propped on empty paint cans in the back of Jet’s father’s Chevy Silverado as we headed to Papa Mac’s across town, just barely outside the city limits. Mr. Townsend had agreed to help us at the Hideaway — as Jack insisted we call it — but only on the condition that he spoke with Papa Mac first, and in person.

  Jet’s dog, Mutt, had insisted on coming too, and we laughed and dodged his slobber as he continuously ran back and forth, side to side, wagging his tongue in the wind. Mutt was what my grandfather called a “Heinz 57,” mostly brown with no distinctive features of any particular breed, though Jet liked to say he had some shepherd in him, whatever that meant.

  Papa Mac’s farmhouse sat at the end of a short gravel driveway and desperately needed a coat or two of white paint. Otherwise it looked to be in decent condition. An aged barn, weathered and gray like the farmer who had built it two generations before
, stood at an odd angle facing the back corner of the house, violated by a looming oak that had stabbed a limb through its metal roof. Various farming implements were scattered around the yard, and an ancient, battered, Ford truck, probably some shade of blue long ago, sat on blocks under a huge pecan tree to the side of house.

  I had been there with my dad a few times over the years, and not much had changed; I didn’t think the Ford was getting fixed any time soon. Papa Mac’s two-tone truck was parked in front of the house, but I could see a black car I didn’t recognize around back, opposite the barn. Only the back half was visible, but I knew my cars well enough to recognize a newer model Camaro. Its bright chrome wheels glimmered in the sun and were even more out of place than the car itself.

  “Y’all stay in the truck and watch the dog.” Mr. Townsend slid out and walked toward the house. He glanced back over his shoulder. “I’ll call you over if I need you.”

  A group of birds darted and dove violently, their movements haphazard and random, dancing in continually mutating circles over the house.

  Jet followed my gaze. “You know, everyone calls those chimney sweeps, but they’re actually chimney swifts. They can’t perch on a limb like other birds. Hang on to the inside of the chimney and fly, that’s it. Even drink and bathe while they’re flying.”

  I was about to ask for an explanation as to how something could bathe while flying through the air, but then Papa Mac emerged from the barn. He wiped his hands on a blue towel hanging from the front pocket of his overalls, shook Mr. Townsend’s hand, and then lifted his cap to shield his eyes from the sun as he peered in our direction. He nodded, the equivalent of a smile for him.

  Papa Mac seemed oddly out of place to me, here at his house instead of on his farm where we usually encountered him, cruising the fields in his 1969 two-tone green, long-wheel base, Ford F100 truck, with windows down, elbow on the windowsill, hand gripping the top of the door. Dust billows roiling behind him as he sees us and stops, opens the door with the outside handle, slides out, and shuffles over to where we stand in the shade. Inevitably wearing the same overalls, a tattered shirt with the sleeves rolled up, work boots, and a soiled cap with the logo obscured by layers of a working man’s grime. Spitting tobacco juice in the dirt as he asks in a deep, unhurried drawl what us boys are up to on this fine day.

  Jet scratched behind Mutt’s ear, getting poked with a paw each time he stopped. “What you think he’ll say?”

  I shrugged and shook my head, feeling like our odds would have been better if I was let in on the discussion. It was my father, after all, who had been assigned responsibility to look after the place. And I knew Papa Mac better than Mr. Townsend did.

  “Well it ain’t like we’re asking to build a high rise condo,” Jack said.

  “And, it looks like we have our answer,” Jet said as his father shook hands again. Mr. Thompson headed toward us, smiling and giving a thumbs-up.

  “You boys have fun and stay out of trouble,” Papa Mac bellowed with a gesture that was half wave and half point of his index finger. Then he turned and walked back toward the barn.

  Jet’s father was about halfway back to the truck when I saw it. A flash of sunlight reflecting off of glass, then a glimpse of someone, face and torso obscured by the corner of the house, opening the back door to the Camaro. A blur of darkness poured from the car, and my heart skipped a beat when I realized what it was. An enormous black dog I immediately recognized as a Rottweiler barreled straight toward us, eyes fixed on Mr. Townsend, silent as an assassin.

  FOUR

  “RUN, Mr. Townsend!” I shouted. He smiled and shook his head. I frantically shouted again, pointing at the beast bearing down him. “No, I’m serious. Run!”

  Jet’s father was a tough, blue collar guy from the country, with thick forearms and callused hands the size of oven mitts, and I doubted he had run from many fights in his life. But on that particular day, at the moment he saw what was coming, I don’t think he considered doing anything else.

  Jet held Mutt by the collar as he thrashed about in the back of the truck, growling and barking and lunging. We all screamed at the top of our lungs, urging Mr. Townsend to run faster, but the massive Rottweiler was closing the gap far too quickly. With only fifteen feet to go but the dog right on his heels, the man’s look of terror abruptly turned to one of resolution. He pulled up and stopped to face the beast.

  Just as the Rottweiler leapt, a streak of brown intercepted it in midair, and two canine bodies crashed to the ground in a whirling tangle of fur and teeth and snarls. Mutt valiantly tried to slash while eluding the jaws of the larger brute, but the gravity of his peril was obvious. The Rottweiler outweighed him by at least 100 pounds, and Mutt was a family pet with some shepherd blood, not a guard dog.

  Mr. Townsend yelled and tried to kick the black monster to no avail, as Mutt battled for his life. I grabbed a half-filled paint can and jumped out of the truck just as the Rottweiler crunched down on Mutt’s front leg, lowered his shoulder, and forced the smaller dog to the ground. A sickening shriek pierced the air.

  In one motion, I swung the paint can over my head and crashed it down on the black dog while also attempting to kick it. The effect of both efforts together was that neither was forceful, and I slipped and fell over the top of the dogs onto the dusty ground beyond them. It was enough to distract the Rottweiler from Mutt beneath him, but he turned his attention to me. I braced myself for his attack.

  A loud explosion erupted to my left, and the Rottweiler wailed in pain, biting at his own hindquarters as he ran off toward the house.

  Papa Mac stood ten feet away, shouldering a double-barreled shotgun. “Rock salt,” he drawled matter-of-factly. “Kills a rat at five yards but won’t hurt nothin’ else. Not permanent, anyway.”

  “You shoulda used buckshot.” Jet kneeled to gather a whimpering Mutt into his arms.

  Papa Mac walked over, patted Jet on the head, bent down, and examined Mutt closely. “Got a broke leg, but he’ll live.” He looked at Mr. Townsend as he stood up. “Y’all shouldna brung your dog. Good way to stir up trouble at a strange house.”

  I was still sitting on my butt in the dirt, too stunned to move. Mr. Townsend reached down and grabbed my hand, pulling me up. His eyes scanned me quickly from head to toe, satisfying himself that I wasn’t hurt. “I’m sorry we let him come, Mr. MacIntosh, and I do apologize. Didn’t recall you had a dog like that or I wouldn’t have.”

  “He ain’t my dog. Belongs to my son, Vance. He’s down from Memphis for a while visiting. Thought he had him put up.”

  “C’mon boys, let’s get Mutt to the vet.” Mr. Townsend helped situate Mutt on Jet’s lap in the front seat of the truck, motioning for Jack and me to get in the back again.

  Jack and I both started to speak, but Mr. Townsend shut us up with a hard glare. I could hardly contain myself, knowing what I’d seen at the back of the house, but I could tell he meant business. So I said nothing.

  As the truck started slowly rolling to drive away, Mr. Townsend rolled down his window. “That dog was attacking me, not my dog.”

  Papa Mac nodded his head solemnly, but didn’t say a word at first. As we pulled away, he called out, “Case, you and your friends go on ahead with your plan and build that hut or whatever it was you were talking about. Just be careful.”

  My mind raced as we drove away. Had anyone else seen what I had? Who let the dog out of the car? I assumed it was his son Vance. But why?

  * * *

  Two weeks later, the Hideaway was complete: an elevated ten-by-ten floor, three walls with double swinging doors spanning the front, and a metal roof stippled with dents and various shades of rust. The broad doors would be perfect when closed for fending off bitter winter winds or unbearable southern summer sun, ideal when open to let in the warmth of a campfire or a cool fall breeze. The Hideaway was primitive at best — it wasn’t even critter-proof — but it would keep the rain and wind off us. And most importantly, it was all ours.

>   We told no one of what we were doing other than Mr. Townsend. Allowing even him to enter our sacred circle was an impropriety necessitated only by our self-imposed time constraints. Fall was prime time for camping and hunting, and we didn’t want it to pass by without completing our plan.

  Jack even insisted that Mr. Townsend take an oath of secrecy and goaded Jet into drafting a document for him to sign. Jet used his mother’s typewriter and created two copies on her best stationary, and we presented it to Mr. Townsend one day as we worked.

  I, John Adams Townsend, before my family, friends, and Maker, do hereby solemnly swear and promise, under penalty of perpetual distrust, reproach, and opprobrium from said witnesses upon breech of this agreement, to keep confidential any and all facts and other information pertaining to the location, nature, and utilization of the area known as the Hideaway on the property of Paul MacIntosh, in Amberton, Mississippi, except as required by law or threat of bodily harm.

  Jack read over it before passing it to Mr. Townsend. “Why didn’t you just do it in Swahili?”

  Jet’s father studied it a moment. “Impressive, Jet. Sounds mighty lawyerly — you thinking about that instead of medicine?”

  “No, it’s still cardiovascular surgery for me,” Jet responded. “I do like the way attorneys entangle you with the English language, but what they do is borrring. Are you gonna sign it?”

  “C’mon, Mr. Townsend,” Jack chimed in. “This is very important.”

  “Well, first I have a question. Why is it so important that I keep this a secret? It’s not like someone can’t just walk up in here.”

  “Because it’s our spot. Case is the one who really has permission to be here, and if folks start busting up in here all the time, they’ll ruin it for everyone. Plus, we have it hidden pretty good. Kinda gotta know it’s here to find it.”

  “True…” He pursed his lips and tapped them with two fingers, indecisive. “I’m sorry, but I can’t sign this.”