All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 125

125

People came and went. Hitchhikers bummed a ride from a driver too kind for the route. An old couple bitched quietly, seething at the interloper. Patch closed his eye to Hamilton County, opened it to the midnight lights of a Tennessee paddle wheeler. At the break of a new day he watched a woman on horseback, the sun behind her.

Another bus and he made it to Stillwater, and from there the bus filled with so many Patch gave his seat to a girl not old enough to carry the life that grew inside her.

He traveled five days across three states and more than a dozen counties. In Oklahoma City he sat the whole night at a bus station, found a pay phone and dialed.

“I was thinking about Callie Montrose,” he said.

“Yeah,” Saint said.

He leaned back against the glass, cool through his shirt. “She was like us, right. Same age. Could be that she had a friend like me. And they hung out and hunted and fired cap guns in white woods.”

“I’m begging you to stop now. You’re getting reckless, kid.”

“And Marty Tooms just killed her. For what?”

“I don’t know.”

“And Eli Aaron. All those girls just like you, just like Grace.”

“I need to see you. I need to see your face and talk to you and tell you

something.”

“Is it good?” he said.

“It’s…”

“Are you pregnant? You’d make the best mother, Saint. Better than mine, you know. You’d raise a good kid.”

“You’re a good kid.”

“I’m not, Saint. No matter how you look back, before and after, I was always on the edge of something, always close to falling in. You held on to me, right. You and Misty. But I was always going to fall.”

“You’re my friend, Patch.”

“Sammy says I’m a hustler. But, like, it’s not a bad thing. It just makes it harder for people around you to know if they’re being hustled.”

“Are you hustling me, kid?”

“I think maybe I did with Misty. I let it happen because it was nice. It was a nice thing to see what she saw. For a while at least. You find anything on the rosary beads?”

“Not yet. I’m still looking. I still look.”

“Thank you, Saint.”

“You don’t ever have to say that to me.”

He closed his eye, and though he heard something else in her voice, a longing maybe, or a warning, he listened to her talk awhile. And she told him of Monta Clare and Norma and Chief Nix. And then he told her good night. And she could not find the words to say it back.

He did not know that at the other end, Saint had traced his call.

—

He crossed the town limit on foot.

He carried a map covered thick with his scrawl as he sat on a bench

before St. Joseph’s Cathedral.

“Are you a pirate?”

He looked to his left and saw a woman pushing ninety, her sunhat low.

“I used to be. Now I’ve got a wife. Grace.”

Another smile.

“We live out west, small house but a lot of land.”

“I’m glad you have someone.”

“She’s all I need. I knew it right from the start.”

“When you know, you know.”

“I also know pirates wore eye patches to adjust to the light and dark above and below deck during raids.”

She rested her hand on his and gave it a gentle squeeze. “So you’re in the light now, but you’ve come from the dark.”

That afternoon he robbed the MidFirst Bank.

Saint arrived only fifteen minutes after.

The net was closing.

OceanofPDF.com