Dark River Road Read online

  “Like I had a choice.”

  “Whatever, dude. At least now the girls think you’re hot. For whatever that’s worth.”

  Yeah. For whatever that was worth. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be Cinda’s date just to make her cousin mad. It didn’t sound like a very good idea. It sounded more like trouble.

  Mama had bought him new Levi’s and some long-sleeved tee shirts with pretty cool screen prints of dragons on the front. Since he’d been giving her half his paycheck every week, she had more to spend on his clothes, though she still watched every penny. They’d gone to the Kmart over in Clarksdale to buy clothes, taking Rainey’s truck that he’d got for trading Belle.

  He wore the black tee shirt with a red dragon breathing fire on the front, his new Levi’s, and the brown leather jacket they’d found this summer in a used clothing store. It still smelled like new leather, and looked like it’d hardly been worn.

  At ten minutes to seven, he showed back up at the school, taking Mikey back to Mama so she could watch him. She’d said it worked out just fine because Mikey would get to help her pour punch into cups and he liked doing that, so Chantry didn’t feel too bad about not watching him.

  It was straight up seven when he went outside the front of the school to see if Cinda really would show up. He wasn’t at all sure she would. Maybe she’d just asked him on a dare. Donny Ray didn’t seem to think so, but he wouldn’t really know. He leaned up against the brick wall by the front door, trying to look like he wasn’t waiting for anyone special. He shoved his hands in his pockets and watched the cars coming into the school parking lot.

  Since Donny had told him what people were saying, he noticed now when they looked at him, quick glances as if trying to decide whether Chantry was good enough to beat up three guys. It might have been funny if it wasn’t dangerous. Once Chris heard the rumors, he’d be bound and determined to prove them wrong. It wouldn’t matter that Chantry hadn’t done it. All that would matter is that people thought he had. Chris wouldn’t be able to stand anyone thinking Chantry had gotten the better of him at anything.

  At a quarter after seven, Cinda got out of a long black car and came up the steps to the front of the school. She wore a short black and white striped skirt and a pink sweater that hugged her breasts and left part of her stomach bare. Her blonde hair was all loose around her face and her mouth looked shiny and pink. She smiled at him.

  “Sorry I’m late. My daddy got home from work a little late and then we had to stop a few places before we got here.”

  He stood up straight. “That’s okay. You ready to go in?”

  To his surprise, she reached for his arm and tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, fingers holding tight to his jacket. “Now I am.”

  When they walked in to the gym together he saw heads turn, saw kids whisper, and some of the boys look hard at him. Several girls ran toward them, greeting Cinda like they hadn’t seen her in a hundred years while they kept looking over at Chantry. He wasn’t sure he liked this. He did like being with Cinda, though, having her hang onto his arm and laugh up at him through her lashes like girls always did when they liked a boy. That part was cool. It was the other part he wasn’t so sure about.

  The gym looked a lot different at night, even more different than it had when he’d helped put up the bunting and strings of lights. Flashing colors washed across the walls and wood floors, red and green and blue flickers turning the basketball court into an illusion. He saw Mama across the gym at the refreshment table, Mikey sitting behind her in a folding chair and grinning with joy at being a part of it all.

  “Uh, want some punch?” he asked Cinda when she finished talking to her friends, and she looked up at him with that smile that made his heart contract and his head get light.

  “Sure.”

  He left her talking to Cathy Chandler and Maryann Snowden, and went across the floor to the table that held bowls of fruit punch and plates of cookies, cupcakes, and some small little square cakes that Mama had said were called petty something.

  “I see you’re with Cinda Sheridan,” Mama said when she ladled him up some punch, and handed him the paper cups with napkins wrapped around them. “You didn’t tell me that she’s your date.”

  “No, ma’am. I guess I didn’t.” He knew he hadn’t. It hadn’t seemed real even when he was getting dressed; hoping his face didn’t break out like it did sometimes these days, hoping his cold wouldn’t come back and he didn’t say anything too stupid. Hoping Cinda showed up.

  “Well, I hope you two are enjoying yourselves,” Mama said then, but she didn’t sound too sure about it and he didn’t know why.

  “Hey Chantry,” Mikey piped up behind Mama, and grinned so big it was easy to see the gap where he’d lost a front tooth.

  “Hey sport,” he said back, and turned around to go back to Cinda.

  She was where he’d left her, standing near the door with two of her friends. There wasn’t any sign of Mariah, her best friend, but that was just as well since Tansy had said Chris was taking her to the festival anyway. He knew they’d end up running into each other before the night was over. It was inevitable.

  When he was halfway across the floor, he saw Tansy come in with Leon Smith. He stared hard at her. She paused in the doorway like she knew people would turn to look at her and they did. They wouldn’t be able to help it. She looked eighteen instead of fourteen, wearing a tight short dress that hugged curves most girls only dreamed about. Her hair was up on top of her head and she had some kind of dangly earrings that caught the light every time she moved. She wasn’t that tall, but tonight she looked it, wearing open shoes with stacked heels and straps that tied up around her ankles and calves. It only made her legs look longer and more sleek. Like a cat, somehow. All elegant and sexy. She even moved kinda like a cat, walking beside Leon with the same kind of stride a cat had when it crossed a room.

  Leon was on the basketball team. He was tall, dark-skinned, and smart, an Honors student in every class. He had a hand in the middle of Tansy’s back like he owned her or wanted to, like he’d just made the All Star Team and knew it. Chantry didn’t blame him. Tansy looked—fine.

  “Hey Chantry,” she said when they passed each other, and he said hey back, noticing that Leon didn’t look at him especially friendly. They went to stand with the other black kids on the far side of the gym, separated from the white kids by lots more than just a few yards of wood floor.

  Cinda and her friends were whispering about Tansy when he reached them with the punch, and he frowned when he heard Maryann say Tansy looked like a slut.

  “She looks good,” he said, and handed Cinda the cup of punch.

  “Well,” Maryann said after blinking at him in surprise, “you would say that since you’re a boy. Boys like girls who look like sluts.”

  “Not all boys.”

  “That’s right, you’re friends with her, aren’t you,” Cathy said, and he saw her give Cinda a dig in the ribs with her elbow.

  “That’s right.” He gave her a look meant to shut her up. Her eyes got a little wide, but Cathy didn’t say anything else about Tansy.

  “That was rude,” Cinda said when Cathy and Maryann walked away, and he looked down at her and tried to decide if she meant him or Cathy. “I didn’t know you were such good friends with Tansy Rivers. I mean, I saw you that day rolling on the ground with her, but I thought you were just playing around.”

  “We were.” If Cinda expected him to be mean about Tansy, he didn’t know what he’d do. He did know he wouldn’t say anything bad about Tansy or listen to anything bad about her.

  “Oh. Then Chris was wrong. He said you and her were . . . you know. I told him he was wrong.”

  “The list of things he’s wrong about has to be a mile long,” Chantry said, and Cinda laughed. He wondered if she knew about the cross burning, but it didn’t seem the time to ask.

  Music started playing on the sound system, and the glitter ball dangling from the center of the gym ceiling
started turning, reflecting lights in little diamond shapes all over the floor. The female pop star sang a song about almost having it all, and the music got tangled up in his head with everything he was feeling inside.

  He’d never danced before, and when Cinda tried to get him to he shook his head at first. It wasn’t something he wanted to try, especially here in front of everyone for the first time.

  “Come on,” she teased, poking her lower lip out in a pout that grabbed his attention, “I’ll show you what to do.”

  He let her talk him into it, but felt awkward and clumsy when she put her hands up on his shoulders to hold on to him and told him to put one hand on her back.

  “No, a little lower,” she said when he put his hand between her shoulder blades. “And not like you’re afraid I’ll break. It’s okay.”

  His hand slid lower, fingers brushing over the soft nap of her pink sweater until he reached bare skin above the waist of her skirt. He held his breath. She was softer than the sweater, silky-soft beneath his palm. She moved closer against him so that her breasts grazed his chest, just light enough he could feel them. He got that hot churning feeling inside again and hoped it didn’t show. He didn’t want her to know that she made him feel that way.

  After a few minutes, he got used to moving with her, putting his feet where she said and not having to look down to keep from stomping on her toes. She laughed at him, but not mean, and he grinned.

  “Well, you can smile,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile before.”

  “Have to have something to smile about.”

  “And talk about?” She moved a little closer. Her hair brushed his jaw, but her head only came up to just above his shoulder. She pressed her face against him, and he took a deep breath that smelled sweet and exotic. “That’s okay,” she said, “I like guys who don’t say too much.”

  It was a good thing, ‘cause he couldn’t think of much to say that she’d want to hear. It wasn’t like being with Tansy, when he could say what he wanted and know she wouldn’t think he was crazy. Tansy understood. If he tried to tell Cinda about Rainey, or the dog, or how much he missed a father he’d never known and how worried he was about Mama, she’d run away. Some people just wouldn’t ever understand because they hadn’t been there. Maybe they’d even want to understand, or try, but it’d be difficult to know how it made him feel and impossible to explain.

  Every time a slow dance came on, Cinda got him to dance with her, but he wouldn’t even try to fast dance. That’d take some practice. Maybe he’d give it a try out in the garage sometime, when no one would see. If Tansy started talking to him again, maybe they could practice together. He’d seen her dance and she moved like she’d been doing it all her life.

  Then the deejay announced another Whitney Houston song; she started singing that she wanted to dance with somebody, somebody who loved her, and he looked over just in time to see Tansy step out onto the dance floor with Leon. The sweater dress she wore showed off her long legs and she acted like she knew it. After a minute it seemed like everyone in the gym was watching Tansy and Leon dance. She didn’t look around but kept dancing to the lively beat, and she sang right along with the lyrics. There was a time or two when her voice sounded louder and better than the girl singing it on the tape. She was really, really good.

  Right about then he happened to see Chris Quinton standing just inside the gym door, his face all worked up into a tight expression as he stared at Tansy dancing with Leon. Chantry watched him closely, but when the song ended and Tansy and Leon went to the refreshment table, Chris walked in the other direction. The rest of the night went pretty fast, and only once more did he see Chris Quinton. He stood across the gym talking to his friends, with Mariah occasionally looking over at Cinda and Chantry like she wanted to say something but didn’t dare. It was just as well.

  When the Fall Festival ended he walked Cinda out front to wait for her daddy to come pick her up. It’d gotten cold, with the wind damp and coming from the northwest across the river. Cinda shivered, and he took off his leather jacket and put it around her shoulders to keep her warm.

  She turned, looked up at him, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to bend down and kiss her. She tasted like cherries. Sweet. Delicious. Ripe.

  She made a soft little sound like “um” and kissed him back, curling her fingers into his shirt to hold him close. Then she stepped back, smiling up at him.

  Someone shouted something at them, and he looked up. Donny Ray whistled, and several other boys made hooting sounds.

  “Sorry,” he said to Cinda, and she shook her head.

  “Lousy timing, Chantry Callahan. Don’t ever say you’re sorry when you kiss a girl. She’ll think you really are.”

  He grabbed her hand before she turned away. “I’m not sorry for kissing you. Next time it won’t be in front of the whole school.”

  “Oh, and you think there’ll be a next time?” She was still smiling, and shrugged free of his hand and his coat in almost the same motion, handing him the jacket. “There’s my dad. Call me. I think I’d like to see what next time will be like.”

  So would he. That night he dreamed about Cinda and not Tansy, and when he woke up to go to work at the vet’s clinic, he wished he had a few more hours just to dream.

  “You’re pretty good at this,” Doc Malone told Chantry once he’d finished sewing an ear back on a coon hound that’d got it caught in a barbed wire fence. “Good instincts.”

  Chantry didn’t do much but sop up blood and hand him sterilized instruments when he needed them, but the praise made him feel good. He nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Ever think about being a vet?”

  He had. But that was one of those dreams that would stay a dream. He had no illusions about what it’d take to go to vet school.

  “Not much,” he said, and shifted the unconscious dog to lift it from the surgery table to a cage for recovery.

  “You should. I’ll retire one day and Cane Creek will need another vet.”

  “I’ll be long gone from here by then.”

  Silence greeted that remark, and Chantry put the coon hound into the clean cage and made sure it was doing okay before he shut the door and latched it.

  “Cane Creek isn’t so bad,” Malone said when Chantry had cleaned up the surgery area. “Lot of folks here with money.”

  “Maybe that’s part of the problem.” He focused on pushing the broom across the floor. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate what Malone was trying to say. He did. He just didn’t want to say how he really felt.

  “Yeah,” Malone said like he understood, and Chantry looked up. “Some folks act like they think they’re better because they have a little money. But real folks don’t think that way.”

  “It’s not the real folks that bother me.”

  Malone grinned. “Being an asshole isn’t restricted to just people with money, Chantry. It knows no class boundaries.”

  “No, just makes it easier to get away with it.”

  “So young to be so cynical. How’s Shadow?”

  “Great. Took him out to a friend of Dempsey’s that has some goats. He did pretty good.” This was safe conversational territory. Doc Malone gave him old magazines about Catahoulas and stock dogs to read, and most of the time, just gave him sacks of premium dog food he said had been broken open and couldn’t be sold. Chantry knew he could use them in the clinic, but Mama had always said it was bad manners to refuse a gift when given for the right reason and so he took the food when Malone offered it. It wasn’t just for him, he reasoned, but for Shadow. And he’d do extra work to make it up.

  “Still plan to enter him in the GCSA?” Malone asked.

  “In January. I’ll pay the dues for the year so he’ll qualify. I don’t know if he’ll be ready to compete and win, but just trying might do him some good.”

  “It’ll get him noticed, anyway. He’ll bring a good price if he gets enough points.”

  Chantry didn’t
reply to that. It was his own secret that he intended to have enough to buy Shadow himself. He had plans for the dog. Long-term plans. Rainey had been right when he said folks paid top dollar for a good stock dog. They’d pay more for a winner. Shadow had excellent bloodlines and could put some good pups down when the time came. Breeding fees went pretty high. And if he got the pick of the litter a few times, he could end up doing pretty well one day.

  Malone gave him a ride to the end of the road, and Chantry was glad of it. It’d turned into a wet, cold day, with the wind hard enough to go bone-deep. He went out back as soon as he got home, to check on Shadow and the new house he’d finally been able to put together. It wasn’t the best, but he’d put pine straw in it for warmth and it was pretty tight. He hated that Shadow had to stay penned up so much of the time, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He took him out for runs as often as he could. The dog went wild sometimes, with so much pent-up energy he just ran in circles and made Chantry laugh.

  When he went in the house, Mama was waiting on him. She looked tense, fine lines going from her eyes and on each side of her mouth. He glanced around the kitchen for Rainey but didn’t see him. Only Mikey sat there in his good clothes, looking expectant and a little confused.

  “We’re going up to Memphis, Chantry,” Mama said. “Clean up and put on something nice and I’ll tell you about it on the way.”

  Memphis was sixty-eight miles from Cane Creek but it might as well have been five hundred. He vaguely remembered going there with Mama and Rainey one time when he was real little, but it’d been so long ago he didn’t remember anything but that there had been lots of people and cars.

  Mama didn’t drive much, but she started Rainey’s truck like she’d been doing it every day of her life and backed out of the driveway. Mikey sat between them, strapped into a seat so that he could almost see over the high dashboard.

  “Rainey know we’re taking his truck?” Chantry asked when they got out on the highway, and Mama said he would when he got home and read her note. Great. He laid his head against the window and watched the blacktop unfurl in a dark ribbon ahead of them. It was a gray day, the sky dripping rain and dead leaves. He wondered what mission Mama was on that she’d invite the hell that would await them when they got back with Rainey’s truck.