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  The back door to the church opened behind her and a thin band of light pierced the darkness. A man’s voice, high, wheezy and a little uncertain, edged around the door.

  “Is it time?”

  Sister Tulah took one last look up at the black, gaping vastness overhead and decided that if she was ready, God must be also. She straightened the lace collar on her long, flower print dress and smoothed back her hair, once dishwater blond, but now a sharp steel gray, making sure that it was pinned in all the right places. She rubbed her pudgy, age-spotted hands together and then licked her lips before pursing them tightly together. Without turning to look over her shoulder at the awaiting sliver of light, Sister Tulah replied.

  “It’s time.”

  JUDAH DIDN’T have more than twenty dollars to his name when he left Starke and headed to Silas. As soon as Erwin and Pellman realized who Judah was, however, they announced that they were buying. Judah set down his second shot of whiskey and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The two cousins and Judah hadn’t been good friends or anything back when Judah still lived in town, but the more he drank, the more Judah enjoyed their company.

  “Shit, man. Can’t believe you walked here from Starke. Ain’t that like twenty miles or something?”

  Judah pulled his last cigarette out of the pack and tapped it on the bar.

  “Near about. I probably only walked ten of it or so, though. I got picked up by that crazy lady in the minivan I was telling you about.”

  “Oh, yeah, the one that dropped you off at the Wal-Mart in Kentsville and then followed you in and tried to buy you some clothes?”

  Judah ran his hand through his hair and coughed. The woman in the beige Taurus, who insisted over and over that Judah call her Trish, had been nice, and Judah didn’t want to make fun of her, but her trailing of Judah through the store and then surprising him at the checkout line offering to buy his pair of Wranglers and plaid button-down had been unnerving.

  “Yeah.”

  Pellman shook his head.

  “Man, I need to go jail for a while. Maybe when I get out some broad will want to buy me some new clothes.”

  Judah lit his cigarette.

  “It’s not as glamorous at it seems.”

  It was Friday at The Ace and as the evening wore on, the bar started to fill up. Judah slowly began to recognize more and more of the patrons as they came banging through the front door. The heavy metal door slammed shut after every person who passed through it, and each bang caused Judah to look up into the bar mirror. He kept meeting the eyes of people he knew, but no one seemed to notice him. Judah turned to Pellman.

  “Do I look different to you?”

  Pellman had been rambling on about the last girl he had spent a bunch of money on, and then returned the favor by sleeping with Erwin’s daddy, and came up short when Judah interrupted him.

  “Huh?”

  “I look different to you? Than the last time you saw me?”

  The liquor was going to Judah’s head. Sober, he would never have asked a question like that. But he was starting to feel anxious and out of place. He had returned to Silas because he had no place else to go. He knew that he was lost, though he would never have admitted it, and he knew that Silas was not the swallow that was going to lead him to shore. If anything, the town would drown him, twisting its tentacles around his heart and dragging him down to the depths. Judah would have given anything for the anonymity sheltering him now to last forever. Pellman titled his head and considered Judah for a moment.

  “Hell, man. I don’t know. I ain’t known it was you when you first sat down. I guess you don’t look no different or nothing, though. You just get used to the same people round here all the time, you don’t think none bout people going away and coming back. So, I don’t know.”

  Judah looked straight ahead and stared into the cloudy bar mirror. In the warped reflection he could have been the son of anyone in Silas. But that was only wishful thinking.

  “I don’t know, either.”

  Judah stood up and wedged his way through a cloud of stale smoke and sweaty people to the bathroom at the back of the bar. It was locked and he could hear giggling behind the plywood door. He decided not to wait and stepped outside of The Ace into the warm night. A man his age leaning against the side wall of the cinderblock building gave Judah a dirty look as he came around the corner. The chunky teenage girl wearing only half a hot pink shirt and no shoes rolled her eyes and pulled the man’s face back to hers. Judah averted his eyes and walked past them to the dirt parking lot behind the bar. He kicked his way through the chunks of rock and tufts of dead grass until he got to the last truck at the end of the crooked row and unzipped his fly. He sort of hoped he was pissing on the front tire of the truck belonging to the man getting with the underage girl, but more likely the white Dodge was owned by a little league coach or an army vet. Judah was pretty sure he had that kind of luck. It didn’t stop him, though. He relieved himself in the faint blue-white glow from the bug zapper hanging from an oak tree branch and scrutinized his reflection in the driver’s side window.

  Judah hadn’t spent much time looking at himself in the mirror in prison. Or before that, either. He came from a long line of men who carried grease underneath their nails the same way that some men sported wristwatches. Men who only changed their undershirts when they were streaked with mud, blood or worse, not just because it was the next day. Men who looked in the mirror only when they shaved and who shaved only when they were trying to get some. Vanity had no part to play.

  But for a brief moment, in the watery glare of the fingerprint smeared window, Judah considered himself. He was in need of a haircut, but he still had the same dark, near-black hair that stuck out stiffly in all directions when he wasn’t able to tame it with a hat. His brother Levi, not even forty, had developed a strange gray streak through the right side of his hair, but Judah didn’t notice anything when he twisted his head. It was hard to tell in the tenebrous light, but he figured his eyes were still the same light gray, surrounded by three layers of crow’s feet from spending almost every day outdoors since he was old enough to crawl. Cassie had told him many times that he would be much handsomer with blue eyes, but that was her thing. Whenever they broke up, she always latched onto someone with blond hair, blue eyes and a gold chain. She had always been trying to buy him jewelry, and got upset when he wouldn’t wear it. He wondered what type of necklace her new Denny’s boyfriend wore.

  Judah shook and zipped himself up. As far as he could tell, he looked the same as the last time he had been in Silas, so he wasn’t sure why no one recognized him. Maybe Pellman was right; people just got used to seeing the same faces, men wearing the same work shirts, driving the same trucks, drinking the same beers, beating up or hooking up with the same women, in the same bars, where their fathers and their fathers and theirs had done the same. Judah walked back around the building and decided to enjoy the anonymity while he could. As soon as folks found out that another Cannon boy was back in town, he didn’t think it would last for long. He swung the heavy steel door open and pushed his way back through the ever-louder crowd to the bar. Pellman was nowhere to be found and his seat had been taken by the last person Judah had expected to see, and the only person in the bar who mattered.

  She turned around when she felt his hand grip the back of the barstool and her wide smile stung him in a place he thought he had forgotten about. She ran a hand through her long, tangled hair and rested her elbow on the bar as she regarded him.

  “Took you long enough to come back to town.”

  Judah took a deep breath and realized that he had no idea what to say.

  “Hi, Ramey.”

  The bartender, who in the course of the last four beers and two shots had finally introduced himself and grunted out that his name was Grady, cleared away the remnants of Pellman’s eight hour binger and wiped the square of bar in front of Judah.

  “You still drinking the same?”

  Judah nodded
and eased himself down next to Ramey. He was having trouble looking at her, so he concentrated on the bartender.

  “What happened to the guys sitting here?”

  Grady capped the plastic ashtray and then slung the ashes from the dirty one into the trash.

  “Erwin’s wife finally showed up. Good thing you wasn’t sitting here when she came in. Bout screaming bloody murder to get his ass in the car. Took Pellman, too. They both said to keep your tab open, though, and they’d pay it next time.”

  Grady set the beer down in front of Judah and crossed his thick arms over his chest.

  “Who are you, anyhow? You just get back from the service or something?”

  Beside Judah, Ramey lit a cigarette and laughed. Judah kept his eyes on his beer.

  “Now, Grady. I always pegged you as a special kinda idiot, but are you really saying you don’t know who this is?”

  Judah looked up at Grady, knowing what his expression would be. Ramey had a certain way of saying exactly what was on her mind, while still making whomever she was insulting fall in love with her. Grady grinned and shrugged his shoulders. So he could smile, after all.

  “Beats me.”

  Judah studied the bubbles rising up the side his pint glass. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Ramey’s cigarette pointed at him.

  “This here’s one of the Cannon boys. I know you ain’t been in Silas too long, but you gotta learn these things.”

  Judah tried to keep a straight face, but he was having trouble. The bartender shook his head.

  “There’s another one?”

  Ramey blew a stream of smoke out of the side of her mouth and nodded before resting her cigarette in the ashtray. Judah felt her hand on his shoulder.

  “There is. So why don’t you pour us two shots of Jack?”

  Immediately, there was a scratched shot glass filled with amber liquid in front of Judah. He had considered sobering up when he had walked outside, but apparently that’s not where this night was headed. He could feel Ramey waiting beside him.

  “Pick up your shot, Judah Cannon.”

  Judah pinched the glass between his fingers. He took a deep breath and raised his shot and his head at the same time. He finally let himself meet her eyes. They were serious. Compassionate, but fierce. How many times had he seen this look in her eyes? He held the shot glass up next to hers and Ramey nodded.

  “Now, can we be done with the bullshit?”

  “I guess so.”

  She narrowed her eyes.

  “I ain’t seen you in near on seven years. I’m gonna need a better answer than that.”

  Judah touched the edge of his glass to hers and whiskey spilled onto both of their hands. Her eyes wouldn’t leave his. Judah knew he was drunk, but he also knew that he meant what he said. And he knew that she did, too.

  “Ramey Barrow, walking through that door and seeing you sitting here at this bar is the best thing that’s happened to me in seven years. How bout that?”

  She raised the glass to her lips.

  “It’ll do.”

  They slammed the shot glasses down on the bar and Judah knew it was going to be a wild night.

  “I WROTE you a letter. When you were in jail. I wrote a few, actually.”

  Ramey slung the last of the beer out of her can and heaved it backwards over the roof of her silver Cutlass. It banged on the already dented hood and rolled down into the long, damp grass. Judah didn’t take his eyes off the brilliant stars overhead.

  “I know.”

  “You never wrote back.”

  The stars appeared to be burning in the darkness.

  “No.”

  Ramey reached into the plastic grocery bag between them to pull out another beer. She tapped the top of the can with a chipped nail, but didn’t open it. Judah’s face was still turned up toward the sky.

  “Want to tell me why?”

  Ramey watched Judah’s teeth flash in the moonlight as he bit his bottom lip. He lowered his gaze, his eyes moving from studying the stars to contemplating the scars alongside the creases in his callused palms. Judah finally turned to Ramey and exhaled.

  “Whew, Ramey. I can’t even begin to explain why. Or how. Or what. Or nothing.”

  She nodded. The headlights from her car illuminated the other side of the field from where they were sitting and in the eerie light her normally reddish brown hair appeared black.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  Judah followed the shadow of her jawline with his eyes.

  “About prison?”

  Ramey nodded again. Every movement she made was so familiar, yet so alien. So comforting, yet so unnerving. Hadn’t he sat this far away, inches only, the space of two breaths, from her before? In this same field? Only it had been colder then, a late October night. And the vehicle had been his older brother’s truck, borrowed without asking. The light had been dimmer that night, only a sliver of moon fighting its way through the clouds, and he had tried not to focus on the single tear drop that clung to the end of her freckled nose as she confessed in agony that Keith Wilder not asking her to homecoming was a sure sign that no one would ever, ever love her.

  “Yeah.”

  He could have taken off his Mighty Tigers sweatshirt that night and wrapped it around her thin, fifteen year old shoulders. He could have told her that she was beautiful, that she was something else, that she broke every guy’s heart at Bradford Central High if she so much as smiled at them and that Keith Wilder was a pussy who couldn’t get it up unless he was going after a goat. He could have put his arm around her, his best friend in the whole world, and told her all of that and maybe she would have sniffed and thrown her shoulders back and given him that crooked grin he loved so much. Instead, he had handed her the mangled joint he had been trying to roll and asked her to do it for him. She had smaller fingers and could do it faster.

  “Not really, no.”

  She had snatched the twisted paper from his hand and rolled it between her palms, throwing the remnants of dried weed in his face. She had called him an asshole; he had called her a bitch. The next day after school he had brought her a Dr. Pepper swiped from Buddy’s as a peace offering and she had punched him in the shoulder. Hard. All of their friends in the dirt lot behind the abandoned liquor store had laughed. Everyone knew that’s just how it was with those two.

  Ramey tapped the top of the beer can again. Judah looked at her mouth while her eyes searched the darkness before them. Her bottom lip was still full, almost pouting, but there was a sadness lingering at the corners of her mouth that he didn’t remember. There was so much he knew, but didn’t know, had heard about, but hadn’t been there for, had wanted to be a part of, but hadn’t dared. Ramey reached over and slid her hand underneath his.

  “Well, all right then.”

  THE SCREEN door of Ramey’s apartment rattled open and then she heard the banging. It was delivered from a fist too large and too heavy to belong to Ginny, the girl next door who had no concept that eight o’clock on a Saturday morning was too early to come by trying to borrow cash for a fix. The banging wasn’t frantic enough to be Ginny, either. Whoever was pounding away at her door was doing it slowly, deliberately, and with no intention of leaving. Ramey pushed her hair out of her eyes, rolled over and slipped out of bed in one fluid motion. She kicked through the scattered clothes strewn across the thin, brown carpet of her bedroom until she located her jeans. The banging continued. She yanked the jeans on while she walked, stumbling as she jerked her heels through each skinny ankle, and closed the bedroom door quietly behind her. She lifted a dirty T-shirt from the orange loveseat when she went through the living room and pulled it over her head. Ramey slammed her shin into the sharp corner of the coffee table as she tried to walk and dress at the same time, and she gave up trying to be quiet.

  “Damnit!”

  Judah was probably already awake anyway.

  “Just give me a minute before you break my damn door down!”

  Ramey leaned on
e hand against the wood paneled wall and made sure her shirt was pulled all the way down before opening the door. She raked her hair back into a ponytail, but realized she had nothing to tie it with, so she let it fall from her hands. When she squinted through the peephole she was not surprised to see a distorted figure somewhat resembling the man still in her bed. Ramey rolled her eyes and slid the metal chain over before turning the deadbolt and opening the door.

  Levi had drawn his fist back to hit the door once more and almost punched Ramey in the face before catching himself. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and narrowed her eyes. Levi braced himself with one arm against the doorjamb and tried to lean into the apartment. He barely gave Ramey a second glance.

  “Is he here?”

  He tried to push past her, but Ramey didn’t budge.

  “Who?”

  Levi stepped back now and regarded Ramey, as if remembering finally that it was her front door he had almost knocked a hole through.

  “You know who. Judah.”

  Ramey shrugged.

  “Haven’t seen him.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Levi tried to look over Ramey’s shoulder to see into the apartment, but Ramey shifted and blocked his view again.

  “I thought Judah was in prison.”

  Levi glared at Ramey. He was bigger than her, bigger than Judah, though they shared the same squared jaw and squinting eyes. Levi was bulky and boxy, heavy on his feet but quick with his thick, meaty hands. He was quick to anger, too, but only when someone had directly insulted him. He ignored innuendos, but had never walked away from an outright challenge in his life. Levi was a good person to have on the winning team and a dangerous person to have if the odds turned in the wrong direction. Ramey had known Levi her entire life and had long ago stopped being impressed. Levi huffed.