Dark River Road Read online

  New Cane Creek Baptist Church sat on the corner of Main and Forrest Streets. It’d been built after the first church burned down twenty years before. Now it had white aluminum siding, a tall steeple with a bell, stained glass windows with white doves and blue flowers and red drops of blood, and had cost the congregation more money than the school cost the county. It wasn’t the only church in town, but the only one the white folks who worked for Quinton attended. There was a Methodist church and a Presbyterian church, and over near Tunica County there was a Catholic church for the papists. There was a black church, too, and sometimes Chantry heard glad shouting and singing that sounded a lot better than the solemn hymns sung at New Cane Creek. But any white man who worked for old man Quinton went to the Baptist church he’d founded. It wasn’t overt segregation, but a definite divide. A few years before, Reverend Hale had come to replace the retiring pastor, and he was the kind of shouting preacher that always made Chantry feel jumpy and anxious for the sermon to be over.

  Strains of the organ playing Old Rugged Cross seeped from the double doors just as he reached the sidewalk in front of the church. He made it up the shallow stone steps right before one of the deacons shut the doors.

  “Sorry,” he muttered when the man frowned, and pushed past him into the chapel. It was crowded as always. Wooden pews sprouted old ladies in hats, young girls whispering, and men looking bored and pious. Ceiling fans slowly stirred the air conditioning under a vaulted ceiling. Mama sat near the front, her back straight, staring straight ahead at the choir arranged behind the padded pastor’s chair. Mikey sat beside her, a Bible story coloring book and crayons in his lap.

  He slid in beside them and got an appraising look from Mama that made him wish he’d taken time to put on a clean white shirt with his Levi’s. She wanted him to wear a suit, but didn’t complain as long as he was clean and his hair combed out of his eyes.

  After the singing, Reverend Hale got warmed up by reading passages of doom and death from Revelation, then he launched into an hour long rant about the wickedness of sinners and the eternal punishment that awaited them. Sins of the heart, the flesh, even thoughts, bought a ticket to Hell. According to the good reverend, everyone in church that day stood in imminent danger of feeling the hot breath of sulphur and brimstone after death.

  Chantry thought about the Catahoula Cur and her pups, wondered what he could do to get enough milk into the runt. Maybe he could buy some milk and feed it. Or say another prayer.

  It occurred to him that maybe he’d been in the wrong place to pray. Maybe prayer would work better if he tried it here in church where God was supposed to be sitting every Sunday. It’d always seemed unlikely that God could be in every church in the world at the same time, but the reverend said God worked in mysterious ways so maybe it was possible. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and prayed that God would keep the pup from dying. Then he prayed that God would let him keep it. Last, he started to pray that God would do something about Rainey, then decided that was too much to ask. All at once, anyway. He’d better just stick to praying for the pup.

  He opened his eyes, and first thing he saw was Cinda Sheridan sitting across the aisle to his left. Light gleamed on her pale blonde hair, loose strands stirring a little as she slowly fanned her face with a folded church bulletin. Fascinated, he watched her lips move in silent words as she read from a book in her lap. Maybe it was the Bible. Maybe it was a book about Hobbits. Cinda never seemed to care much about what people thought. Probably because her grandfather was Bert Quinton. Looking at Cinda made Chantry feel things he didn’t know how to explain. All hot and churning inside sometimes, cold as ice at others. Confused. Tight.

  He’d dreamed about her before, crazy dreams that had to do with soft pink skin and green eyes, images of her in tight white shorts and a halter top, playing volleyball on her front lawn when he went with Dempsey to deliver mulch for their flower beds. She had small, high breasts that nearly fell out of her top when she leaped up to hit the volleyball, laughing with her head all thrown back and lips parted. He’d just stood and stared, both in the dream and reality. But after the dream, he’d woke up to a heavy ache and messed up sheets. And he was sure he was going to Hell for even remembering that dream in church.

  Mama nudged him, and he looked down as Mikey sagged against his side, falling asleep as easily as if at home. He did that a lot lately. Mama worried he had something the matter with his heart. He’d heard her say that to Rainey, but he’d not even acted like he’d cared.

  Reverend Hale shouted about salvation and lost souls, pounded his fist on the pulpit and turned red in the face. “The wages of sin is death. Woe be unto those who heed not the call of the Lord to redemption, brothers and sisters. They will surely face the lake of eternal fire, cursed to unspeakable torments for days without end. Who among you will answer the call of the Lord to commit your life to Him? Is it you?” He stabbed a finger toward the congregation and Chantry heard someone gasp. “You, brother? You, sister? Or do you want to feel the flames of Hell sear your entire body . . .”

  Sweat beaded on the reverend’s face, made it glisten. He wiped his fleshy jowls with a snow white handkerchief, stepped from behind the pulpit as if about to leap down among the sinners. Chantry stared in fascination. Hale had the kind of eyebrows that went all the way across his brow, bushy like caterpillars, and his eyes were so dark a brown they were almost black. His nose was thin, jutting from between the brows like an axe blade. He wasn’t particularly tall but gave an impression of height when he was up on that dais, looking like one of God’s avenging angels out to wrest sinners from the very hands of the devil.

  Now he seemed to look straight at Chantry when he boomed, “Beware the pitfalls of envy, lust, and avarice, for those are Satan’s tools. Seek humility and peace, not pride and strife.”

  Chantry squirmed, pulled Mikey closer to him and looked away from the reverend. His head pounded, throbbed with the verbal assault and uneasy feelings of guilt. He knew about lust. He knew about envy. Peace was unfamiliar but it sounded like something he’d want. Maybe he’d have to get humility first to qualify for peace.

  Finally church was over and the ending hymn sung, and Chantry got up and carried Mikey so he wouldn’t have to try to walk down the crowded aisle of people busting to get out the doors first. Mostly grownups stood and talked in little groups, but kids cooped up for an hour only wanted to get outside.

  Cinda and her best friend Mariah nearly bumped into him in the aisle. Mariah giggled, and Cinda gave him a look from the side of her eyes like she wanted to say something. His stomach got tight. He nodded at her.

  “Hey Cinda.”

  “Hey Chantry.” She looked at Mikey in his arms. “Your little brother looks heavy.”

  “He’s not. He’s—still little.” God, it felt so awkward, walking beside her like this and talking about anything but what he really wanted to talk about. He wanted to ask her to go to the Dairy Queen with him. He wanted to ask her just to talk to him for a while, stand where he could just look at her and think how pretty she was with her hair all loose around her face and her lips pink and shiny with some kind of slick stuff girls used.

  “See you later,” Cinda said then, and she and Mariah kept going down the aisle. She left a lingering scent of something sweet and flowery in her wake that made him feel all weird.

  He must have squeezed Mikey too tight because he made a little squeaky sound and patted his arm. “Put me down. I can walk, Chantry.”

  “No. I’ll carry you outside and then you can walk.”

  Chantry stopped on the outside steps and set Mikey down, a hand on his shoulder to keep him balanced while they waited on Mama. She’d stopped to talk to Donny Ray Caldwell’s mother about the next start of school. Mama taught sixth through ninth grades, but not all at the same time. The school was pretty big for a country school, with nearly four hundred pupils registered. Donny had been in Mama’s class last year and would be again this year when he repeated eighth grade.
His birthday fell too late for him to be in Chantry’s class, but he was only a few months from fifteen and big for his age. Donny Ray and Chantry hung out sometimes, but not often. It wasn’t that they didn’t like each other, just that they didn’t really have a lot to talk about. Chantry had no Atari games, didn’t listen to music that often, and spent a lot of his free time earning extra money by helping Dempsey Rivers keep the town park mowed, mulched, and landscaped.

  “Hey, fag.”

  Chantry looked up. His eyes narrowed when he saw Chris Quinton and two of his buddies grinning at him. He didn’t answer, just stared at them. There was no point in getting into any kind of insult trade with Chris. It wouldn’t matter what he said, and he didn’t want to get into a fight with him here on the church steps.

  Chris took a step closer. He wore a white shirt, blue sports coat, sharp creases pressed into his khaki Dockers, and smelled of some kind of aftershave. His blond hair was neat and feathered over his ears, not ragged like Chantry’s. Mama cut Chantry’s hair, but Chris Quinton got his styled. He’d heard him say that once and thought it was funny that a guy talked about getting his hair styled instead of cut. Maybe Chris always wore new clothes and whatever haircut was in style, but his two friends wore cheap imitations and their mullets were shaggy instead of well-cut.

  “Ain’t you got anything to say, Callahan? Looka here, dudes, he’s so gay he can’t even talk to us.”

  Mikey looked up, frowning a little, and Chantry kept a hand on his shoulder and his eyes on Chris. It was hard not saying anything back, hard not to pop Chris in the mouth and have the pleasure of seeing his lip split, but he kept still. His chest felt tight and his hand had curled into a knot despite knowing he couldn’t do anything. Not here.

  Chris was right up on him now, so close Chantry could see his own reflection in the light gray eyes looking at him with something like scorn.

  “I saw you talking to Cinda. Don’t be talking to my cousin, Callahan. You’re just Sugarditch trash. Hear me? Stay away from her, or—”

  “Or what?” Chantry couldn’t keep from asking, feeling the anger build up inside until it made his words come out all thick and raspy.

  Something flickered in Chris’s eyes. Satisfaction that he’d finally goaded him into talking, maybe. “Or maybe you won’t like what happens if you don’t,” he said.

  “Is there some kind of problem, gentlemen?” Chantry heard his mama ask, and Chris took a step back.

  “No, ma’am. Me and Chantry was just discussing some . . . after school activities, Mrs. Lassiter.”

  “Really. I hope those activities include grammar lessons. School begins in six weeks, so I trust you’re enjoying your vacation, Chris.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We went to California to visit my mama’s family and I learned to surf.”

  Chris was always polite to adults, acting the part of the perfect student and teenager until they got out of earshot. Then he reverted to the kid Chantry was most familiar with encountering.

  Mama smiled at him, but there was something cool in her eyes and tone that let both Chris and Chantry know she wasn’t fooled. It always gave him fierce pleasure when she did that. Mama wasn’t stupid.

  “It’s always nice to be able to travel, and I’m certain your class would love to hear about your vacation,” Mama said. Chris didn’t attend public school in Cane Creek. He went to a private school that his grandfather had founded. An all-white school. That didn’t stop him from attending any school activities at Cane Creek he chose to, though, and no one ever said anything when he showed up for the school dances or festivals. Maybe because Cinda went to the public school. And his granddad basically owned it.

  Chris was being really polite. “Yes, ma’am. My teachers at the academy usually give us an assignment about our vacations the first week back at school.”

  “Do they? I’m very pleased to hear it, Chris.”

  “It’d be nice if you taught at the academy, Mrs. Lassiter. My father says you’re the best teacher in Cane Creek.”

  There was an old black and white TV show that Chantry had seen a few times that had a kid like Chris on it. Every time he saw Eddie Haskell talking to Beaver’s mom he thought of Chris Quinton. They even looked a lot alike, as far as he could tell in black and white. And both of them were suck-ups.

  Mama answered Chris politely, and then gave Chantry a little nudge with her hand. When they walked away from the church, Chantry helping Mikey down the steps when he insisted on doing it himself, he felt Chris staring at them. Cinda may be only thirteen and his first cousin, but Chris acted more like she was his girlfriend. Maybe Quintons married their own cousins. That’d sure explain a lot.

  CHAPTER 3

  Dempsey was home when Chantry walked over to his house that afternoon, sitting out on his sagging front porch repairing a fishing net. Gnarled hands worked efficiently despite being bony and distorted from years of hard work, thick fingers weaving together small lines of hemp to close up a hole.

  “Got it caught on a sunken log,” Dempsey said when Chantry sat down on the top step to watch. “Lost a big ole cat that woulda tasted mighty good in my fryin’ pan.”

  Dempsey’s favorite meal was fried catfish and hushpuppies, and he knew just how to fry it up so it was flaky and tender without being tough no matter the size or age of the fish. He liked river catfish, not farm grown ones that had all the taste bred out of them, he said. Dempsey spent any free time on his john boat out in the river shoals where the strong current wouldn’t carry him off downstream. He knew a lot about the river and a lot about planting stuff, too. Dempsey was probably the smartest man Chantry knew, but not book smart. He’d only gone to sixth grade.

  He wasn’t real tall but he’d always seemed big to Chantry, with wise eyes that seemed to see everything. His hair was short, wiry, and had streaks of gray, but his face was curiously unlined. Only around the eyes did he show his age.

  “What’cha got on your mind, Chantry?” he asked when he set aside the net and got them both a Mason jar of iced tea from the house. “Come to see me, or Tansy?”

  “You.” Chantry waited until Dempsey sat down again in the wooden rocker. It creaked on the cypress planks of the porch. He rubbed the slick side of the tea jar with his thumb and looked up at the old man. “Rainey got a dog.”

  “Yeah, so I heard.”

  That didn’t surprise Chantry. Dempsey heard everything. He said it was because he kept his mouth shut and his ears open, but Chantry thought part of the reason was some white people in Cane Creek said whatever they wanted in front of him, figuring he didn’t much count since he was only an old black man.

  “She had nine pups last night. The last one, it’s so little. A male. The others keep pushing it out of the way.” Chantry paused, not sure how to continue.

  “And you want to save it.”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Can’t save everything, boy.”

  “I know. But I can save this one. Tell me how.”

  Dempsey pursed his lips, rocked back and forth a few times. “What’s ole Rainey say?”

  “The pups are worth three hundred each. He won’t want to lose one.”

  “Hm.” Dempsey’s skepticism was obvious. Not that Chantry blamed him. Rainey often did inexplicable things. After rocking a few more times, Dempsey said, “Need bitches milk for it to get enough. Feed it six, seven times a day yourself until it gets strong enough to make it on his own. Might make it, might not.”

  “Where do I get the milk?” Chantry had a sudden vision of trying to milk Belle like a cow or goat. That’d be weird.

  “Buy it. Vets have it. It’s cheapest in powder, but comes in cans too.”

  “Oh. So, Doc Malone would have it?”

  “Yeah, most likely. I might have an old can of it here somewhere from when I raised beagle pups. I’ll look for it. Won’t last long, but should get you through until Malone opens his doors tomorrow.” He set his iced tea on his knee, fingers balancing it lightly. “It’s
not easy to take on feedin’ a pup, Chantry. And Rainey most likely won’t thank you.”

  “I’m not doing it for Rainey.”

  Dempsey nodded. “All right. Think Rainey’ll pay for the milk?”

  Probably not. Chantry chewed his bottom lip a minute, then looked up. “Got any extra work I can do?”

  “Sure. Be at the end of the street by six in the mornin’. Bring heavy gloves. We got a lot of diggin’ to do.”

  Chantry was right about Rainey not wanting to pay for milk. When he took Belle out some of the cheap food Rainey’d brought home for her that afternoon, Beau and Rafe were out there too, looking at the pups.

  “Might just as well drown that li’l un,” Beau said. “It ain’t gonna live anyway.”

  Chantry set the pan of food down carefully and looked up at Rainey. He was nodding his head like he agreed.

  “And lose three hundred dollars?” Chantry said as if surprised, but he felt all tight inside.

  “Huh,” Rafe said, “lose that much just tryin’ to keep it alive. Cut losses, I say.”

  Rainey nudged the tiny pup with his boot toe. It made a weak sound and barely moved. “Yeah. It ain’t gonna make it.”

  “Yes, it will.” Chantry stepped forward to put himself between Rainey and the pup. “I’ll help.”

  Beau gave him a funny look, kinda surprised and suspicious all at once. He was near as big as Rainey but more solid, thick through the shoulders and just as freckled, big splotches across his square-jawed face. Rafe was taller, not as brawny, with close-set eyes in a thin face. Both of them looked at him like he’d just said something really stupid.

  “What you wanna go and do that for?” Beau asked. “You think you’re gonna get the money for it?”

  “No. Nothin’ like that. I . . .it just seems like a waste to not try to save it. Won’t cost much to feed it a little extra. I’ll make sure it gets it. Hate to lose that three hundred dollars.”