“Where’s this going, Wade?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Why are you still smoking?”
“It keeps my mind off chemo.”
His package of Lucky Strikes was on the dashboard. I picked it up and got out of the car and flung it into the rain ditch. It sank among the cattails.
“You need to butt out of my life, Aaron.”
“Is there any brown tar around here?” I said.
“Mexican skag?”
“That’s what some call it.”
“A musician here or there. Why?”
“No reason. How about angel dust?”
“Yeah, some,” he said. “Let’s go back to your question about heroin. You know something I don’t?”
“I’m in a bad place,” I said.
He gazed at the steely blueness of the mountains, the bales of hay lying in the fields, the Holsteins and red Angus and the white fences and the coffee-brown richness of the land that had been harrowed and the barns that were bigger than most houses and the pebbled, tree-lined stream that could break your heart. “Yeah, being young with your whole life ahead of you is a real torment, isn’t it?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I TOLD MR. LOWRY I had an emergency and needed to leave work early. “Anything I can help with?” he said in the kind way I always associated with him.
For a moment I wondered if he was unaware of Mrs. Lowry’s pernicious activities on the border. Even so, I knew I would never be able to forget his request that I not tell others of her promiscuity. My relationship with him and my faith in people would never be the same. I thanked him for his offer of help, but I couldn’t look at his eyes. I’d had the same level of respect for Mr. Lowry that I’d held for my father, and his inability to understand that increased the embarrassment and shame I felt for him.
I drove to Jo Anne’s house. All the windows and the front and back doors were open. She was scrubbing the kitchen floor on her hands and knees, her hair tied up with a bandana. There were trash bags, bottles of Clorox, buckets of soapy water, mops, and brooms all over the house, and in the trash bags fecal-streaked clothes and broken plates and shattered glass.
She did not see or hear me walk in. I squatted down and placed my hands on her shoulders, then took the scrub brush from her and lifted her to her feet and put my arms around her. I could feel her blood humming. “Wade Benbow told me what happened,” I said. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“You left last night without even saying goodbye. All you seemed to care about was acting crazy.”
“I felt hurt, Jo. I asked you to marry me, and you let a fraud and a cretin like Devos on your property.”
“I guess I’m just not good at throwing people out of my house.”
I pressed my cheek against the top of her head. “That’s why I love you.”
She didn’t answer. I heard her sniff, then felt the wetness from her eyes through my shirt. “All my paintings are gone,” she said.
“Benbow told me. We’ll get them back.”
“How?”
“The guy who did this plans to sell them. Otherwise, he would have
destroyed them like he did everything else.”
She rubbed the skin under her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Where would he sell them?”
“I don’t know. But we’ll find out. I promise.”