P.D. Killough
In another season this drive would have
been scenic. Gone west out of Littleton Lola and her Subaru Forester
handled the winding sylvan mountains and the snow-slicked roads and did
not bow underneath the fog and the mist. But if she started to think she
had made a mistake after the first fifty miles she also made the
decision to keep on going. Hours of daylight still left and she had made
a promise to Caroline.
Besides. She had already made the longest
drive of her life a couple months back. Even if she has to stop to pee
and can feel her feet swelling it isn't that bad. At least she isn't
driving across the country to be the sole source of emotional stability
in her mate's quest to reclaim his blood relatives.
As of 2010, 72
people lived in this place. It is designated as an unincorporated
community by the U.S. Census Bureau. Nothing can grow here. Its climate
is highly variable and the winters are extreme here.
It is 37
degrees outside when Lola finally reaches the town limits. It will be
ten degrees colder and snowing in Littleton by the time she starts to
head towards home but along the Yampa River the sky is choked with thick
gray clouds and threatening drops instead of flakes. The temperature
will hold. One of the only things she can consider herself grateful for.
Here
is the unfortunate part of her day: it isn't until she gets to town
that Lola realizes the return address belongs to the Maybell Post
Office. Which she will have trouble finding since all of the buildings
along Collom Street look like they could be anything else.
There
is a General Store. And a bar. And a Game Processing Station. And a gas
station. And an elementary school. And a couple of double-wide trailers.
A
green library sign and a smaller white POST OFFICE sign point her off
of Route 40. The bar has no fewer than five vehicles in its prideful
parking lot and the lights are on.
Welcome to Maybell, Lola.
Lola Hawkes
The
drive really wasn't all that bad, in comparison. Lola had gotten used
to driving a big ancient truck everywhere she went, so the smoother
handling and lower center of gravity that the Subaru had to offer made
the wet and foggy roads nothing for her to be concerned with. She'd had
to stop once to pee, finding a gas station off the highway to do so.
Once
in Maybell, which really was just some homes surrounding one
functioning street-- probably some city that sprang up around a mine or
large ranch or something. Nothing could grow out here, though. It was
difficult to understand precisely why people lived out here except
simply to be away from everyone and everything (which was something Lola
could honestly understand).
When she found herself parked up in
front of the post office she cursed and idled for a moment, glancing
here and there. The bar, eventually, was where she wound up. It was
the only place with vehicles, and perhaps she could ask around to see if
anyone knew who this Killough person was.
Lola wore a pair of
jeans and brown work boots, with a red-and-other-colors flannel shirt
and a navy blue down vest, both of which had to be unbuttoned to
accommodate her stomach, which stretched out against the gray tee she
wore beneath it all. There was a red knit scarf about her neck and her
hair was back in a ponytail, and the persistent gray glare of the sun
against the blanket of gray clouds above was cut away by a pair of
sunglasses as well. She walked into the building with her chin high and
her shoulders square, as she ever would and probably ever will enter
new territory. Posturing and challenging and daring anyone to try and
push for dominance of the room right out the gate. All in body language
and nothing more.
The sunglasses were pushed back up into her
hair and she approached the bar, envelope folded up and in the inside
chest pocket within her vest. There she would lean and wait, elbow on
the bar and other hand in an exterior vest pocket.
P.D. Killough
This
isn't the sort of place where everyone in the joint stops what they're
doing to turn and glower at the door when it opens but it sure feels
that way. The floorboards groan underfoot and the whole place looks and
smells like it's been here since the land still lived within Mexican
territory.
On the inside the bar has the appearance of a
restaurant with booths and tables. One cowboy-looking young mestizo sits
at a booth by himself with a newspaper and a plate of food and a bottle
of beer. Everybody else is hunched onto a stool at the bar.
Hank Williams is playing over the stereo. That kind of place.
The
bartender looks over at her and he doesn't step up to meet her clear
challenge. Everybody else glances over and she can see interest and
confusion mingling in the men's eyes as they read her obvious pregnancy
with her unfamiliar face. It ends quickly though. The men turn back to
their drinks and the bartender finishes washing his glass before he
addresses her.
"You lost, ma'am?" he asks in a rural drawl.
Lola Hawkes
Her
entrance earns her a moment of notice, but then dismissal and
acceptance and little else. Honestly, Lola preferred it that way. She
didn't walk into places actively wanting fights-- not always, at least.
Today she was simply seeking information.
When the bartender came
and asked if he was lost, Lola answered back in the very competent
English that she possessed, tinged ever so slightly with Mexican Spanish
accents or rhythms here and there.
"Just a little," was her
confession. She didn't look distressed for the fact, though. Lola was
always sure to give the demeanor of somebody who was in control. She
could not be intimidated, oh no. That only worked the other way around.
"I'm looking for a man named Killough. I think he's an older man. You know where I could find him?"
P.D. Killough
"Aw, shit, Paddy, what'd you go and do now?"
This
come from one of the older ranch hands sitting nearest the door. He
like many of the rest of them are weather-beaten and leather-skinned
with laugh lines in more plentiful number than teeth. He has to turn his
head and raise his voice to catch the attention of a similarly
well-worn fellow who has taken up a place at the stool closest to the
wall. Keg taps or other men's shoulders and heads partly obscure his
face from Lola's vantage point but when he leans to see better Lola gets
her first glimpse at P.D. Killough.
If the folks she is looking
for are in their 70s he looks to be about the same age. He wears a
flannel shirt and jeans same as she does. A trucker cap on his head and a
can of chewing tobacco in the breast pocket. Blue eyes bright even in
the dim light.
All of the other men seated at the bar laugh at the
question and the older fellow who posed the question grins and cackles
at his own wit. The bartender just rolls his eyes at them and jerks his
chin towards the one fellow in the place who isn't laughing.
"That'd be him, right there," says the bartender.
"Well god damn, Loujunior," says the buddy of the guy who'd make the first wise remark. Says it like it's one word even: Loujunior. "Ain't no secrets around here, is there?"
Loujunior
just shrugs an open-armed lack-of-fucks shrug and by the time the
exchange has run its course P.D. Killough has taken his tall boy can of
Pabst Blue Ribbon and carried it over to meet Lola. The ribbing carries
on without them. He stands 5'9" in his cowboy boots and is slightly
stooped. Hair gone the colour of silver underneath his hat. Little more
than skin and sinew overtop his bones.
"Ma'am," Killough says. "What seems to be the trouble?"
Lola Hawkes
The
bar lit up with laughter-- as luck so had it, P.D. Killough was there
in that very bar, so she needn't go far to find him and continue her
errand. When the man in his seventies at the other end of the bar
straightened and peered over at her, Lola did precisely the same. Her
elbow left the bar, she distractedly nodded her thanks at the bartender,
and after that she was simply watching the old man-- she assumed an old
Kinfolk, but couldn't know for certain.
When the older man came
nearer, Lola stuck out her right hand and turned to face him straight
on. If there was one thing that her father and mother both managed to
beat into her brain, it was that good first impressions were important.
Of course she interpreted that as a strong impression, and whether it
was good or not was debatable on the other side.
Either way,
regardless of whether the man shook her hand (and he seemed like he
would), Lola would hitch her thumb toward the door. "I'm here huntin'
after some friends, and I think you might have seen them recently." The
way she spoke, you'd think she was a fucking police officer or
something. That might be what some of the locals start to think,
especially since next she asked:
"Do you mind if we step outside for a minute?"
P.D. Killough
"Not at all."
Yep.
Pretty much everyone in the place is watching to see what happens. Only
person who doesn't give two shits about the proceedings is the young
man sat in his booth. It isn't that he doesn't speak English or that he
can't hear. It's just that he's been coming to this goddamned bar every
night after work since he landed this job at the coop farm outside Craig
and he's had it with listening to the old coots tell the same fucking
stories over and over.
Killough is the only one who hardly ever
talks. When he does talk it's some dry one-liner come out of nowhere.
Lola has no way of knowing that. He holds the door open for her as they
step back out into the gravel parking lot and coughs a rattling
death's-door cough that ends in his spitting something big and thick
into the shrubbery as the door closes behind them.
"Which friends're we talkin', here?" he asks once the din of the inside has died.
Lola Hawkes
Whatever
it was that the old men in the bar would say after she left couldn't
matter less to Lola. As far as she was concerned, she would probably
never interract with any of them again. That said, she didn't burn the
bar as she walked from it or break anything on her way out the door.
She simply left, nodded politely to the old man who held the door for
her, and stood outside near the headlights of her parked Forester and
waited for the man to join her.
When he did she stood with her arms crossed between her chest and her stomach, work boots set firm in the gravel.
"Seamus
and Agnes Lane. They're grandparents of a friend of mine. She hadn't
heard from them in a while and had a friend swing by their house since
he was in the area. He found this."
It's here that she unfolds
her arms just long enough to fish the envelope from her pocket and hand
it over to the man. She'd wait patiently for him to recognize it before
continuing:
"Given your name's there on the return address, I figured you'd be a good place to start and see where they're at."
P.D. Killough
And
he does take the envelope. His answer isn't instantaneous because he
has to check and confirm that that is his return address and that is his
handwriting but the answer comes as a gritty affirmative noise in his
throat and the envelope coming back to her.
"I sure do wish I
could tell you where they're at, ma'am. You're talkin' 'bout Caroline,
ain't ya? Nora's girl, lives out near the Caern?"
He pauses in his
answer to take his tobacco can out of his pocket and prep a plug to
push between his lower lip and gums. The older man coughs another of
those sickly coughs but does not spit again. Old timer like him will
spend the rest of the conversation gutting the tobacco juice. He's
dying. What the fuck does he care what it's going to do to his stomach.
Doesn't give a fuck if she isn't actually Kinfolk but dropping the C word is a good way to gauge if she is or not.
"Listen,
I'm real sorry you had to drive all the way out here just fer me to
tell you this, but Jim and Nancy came on out here 'bout a week or so ago
to root around and I got no clue where they gone off to. Started out a
month'r so back, folks was sayin' their dogs were running off and comin'
back changed. Sick in a way their people would rather put em down than
let 'em keep on sufferin'. Then last month it got worse." He doesn't
elaborate on how it got worse. "That's about the time I wrote to Jim and
Nancy."
Another cough. This one he buries in the side of his fist.
"I'm sure they're fine."
Lola Hawkes
The
old man dropped the 'C' word-- not the vulgar one, the one that flagged
him as In The Know, and Lola barely batted an eyelash. If anything she
simply let her chin sink a little lower and sharpened her eyes to give a
significant look of recognition to him (Kinfolk, she now knew. If he
was a Garou she would have recognized that, plus he would probably be
dead by now). Beyond that, she was simply quiet and listening.
Up
until he coughed and said he was sure they were just fine she was
still. Her arms had returned to folded after she'd tucked the envelope
away again. When she spoke again she didn't sound aggravated or
impatient, but simply matter of fact. This was a woman out here for
business. She didn't have desire to waste time and wasn't the sort to
beat around the bush. So she cut to the quick, just the same out here
on the gravel as she had done in the bar.
"I'm not so sure
myself," she stated flatly. Someone with more social grace would flinch
and give a no offense here, but Lola did not. She simply continued.
"Who
was Honora and what were the circumstances of her death? The letter
asks for them specifically to come help figure out someone's passing."
P.D. Killough
"Christ, I'm gettin' my girls mixed up."
Blame
it on the wet cold or the hardship of standing when he's clearly got
one foot in the grave. Killough is mixing up names. It happens even to
people who are in the prime of their lives.
"Nora was Jim and
Nancy's older daughter. Caroline's aunt. She had some trouble when she
was 'round your age, her folks sent her out here to stay with me hopin'
it would straighten her out. Reckon it worked. She was doin' alright for
herself up until the end. Way I heard it she was huntin' elk with her
husband Bob last year. He shot her in the head. Done himself later on. I
got the coroners' reports back at the house. Jim and me were up talkin'
it over a few nights past. Might not have nothin' to do with what's
goin' on now but we got reason to suspect Nora weren't herself the night
Bob shot 'er. Or Bob weren't himself."
Another more wracking cough than any he's loosed so far.
Lola Hawkes
Lola's
face had otherwise been fairly blank throughout the encounter. She
didn't smile much, it didn't seem her style. She would be described as
gruff, though some argued she was simply too young for that to apply to
her just yet, and 'surly' better matched the description. Up until that
point she hadn't seemed in a particularly bad mood either, though. It
wasn't until this point, when she listened to the story of Nora and
Bob's demises, that the Kinswoman's face pressed into a scowl.
Her arms snugged a little more over her ribs, and she raised her dark eyebrows and asked next:
"You know where they were when this happened, by chance? And when was it that they died, respectively? Like, how long ago?"
If there was anything left in the area that might be worth looking into, Lola could go for a walkabout and see what she found.
P.D. Killough
"Ma'am."
Like
he's trying to stop her from asking any more questions. Has to be he
recognizes where this stranger is going with the ones she's dropped so
far. He holds up a palm to slow her down or to barter for more time. He
readjusts his stance and turns his head to spit out whatever comes up
when he clears his throat.
"If you come out here just to ask
questions, you're askin' too many. If you come out here to find Jim and
Nancy, you ain't gonna do it tonight. Now, you can come on back to the
house and I'll answer anything you wanna ask me and I'll put you up for
the night, or you can come on back later. This ain't nothin' you're
gonna do nothin' about tonight."
Lola Hawkes
The
way the old man put his hand out to slow her was met with a furrowing of
eyebrows for a moment and not much more. She did quiet herself,
though, and begrudgingly with a scowl on her face accept his terms. She
had wanted to make this a whirlwind one-day adventure, but that
wouldn't be the case it seemed. He was unwilling to answer her
questions just yet-- not here out in front of the bar, anyways.
He
said she could come back later, or he would put her up for the evening
and they could have this conversation in the morning. Lola shifted
uncomfortably. He could imagine that she wouldn't want to sleep outside
of her own bedroom, but this drive was a very long one and she didn't
like to burn that much gas money going home empty-handed just to come
back later.
Besides, what was the worst that an old Kinfolk would do to her?
So, with a nod, she relented.
"I
appreciate the offer, Killough. Provided we can talk about this more
effectively in the morning. Or tonight, whenever you're ready to leave
here and we can get some privacy." Her eyes flitted to the bar, then
back to the somewhat hunched coughing old man. "I'd prefer tonight,
frankly. Got a home to get back to. I'm sure you can understand."
Which
translated into: Lola would wait up on the man to let him spend what
time he needed to finish wrapping things up socially at the bar. She
would hover outside if it was less than fifteen minutes, go inside and
drink some water if it was more. She would then follow the man back to
his home in her Forester, and when they were done having whatever it was
they would speak about (The Lanes, the sick dogs, the death of Nora and
Bill's later following demise and what evidence there was surrounding
that itself) Paddy Killough would offer to put Lola up for the night but
despite the time on the clock Lola would shake her head and decline the
offer.
She would sooner just drive back home, despite the hour and the cold and the promised snow.
No comments:
Post a Comment