to sound ungrateful, but if you don’t know where Roy Dean is, there’s other holes I could be digging in. Why exactly did you want to go for this here drive?”
“Because I believe I know where Roy Dean has been spendinghis time lately, and it ain’t no kindygarden, see what I’m sayin’? It’s bad news, serious bad news—no place to be haulin’ kids into. If Chrissy’s kid
is
with Roy Dean, then somebody needs to do something.”
“Jeez, just what is this place anyway? Some kind of strip joint?”
“I believe I’ll just show you. Turn off on Methaney there.”
Stella glanced at Arthur Junior; his arms were folded across his chest and he had an angry set to his jaw. She did as she was told.
She hadn’t driven Methaney in years. A couple of decades ago, someone still farmed soybeans out here, but the soil didn’t give up much, and the fields lay mostly unworked and fallow, sowthistle and carpetweed taking over.
“Drive slow,” Arthur Junior said, his voice a near whisper, “and don’t stop.”
After a half mile or so, they drove by a hand-painted wood sign that hung by chains from a couple of posts driven into the ground next to a gravel turnoff. In big block letters, it read BENNING SALVAGE . Five yards into the turnoff, a tall set of steel gates was locked tight with a heavy padlock.
“Oh,” Stella said. “The junkyard. That’s what you wanted to show me?”
“Ain’t just a junkyard,” Arthur Junior said, his voice low. “Drive on by, and when you get down to the T down there, turn around and come back. But don’t stop, hear? Don’t be lingerin’.”
The boy was spooked, that was for sure. Wasn’t any way anyone could hear them out here, but Stella didn’t bother to point that out. Driving past the property, she spotted lights onin a little prefab house up on a berm shaded by a couple of twisty scrub oaks. A few pickups and sedans were parked out front. Further back on the property, sodium vapor lights on blocky steel poles illuminated other buildings and sheds. And beyond that, cars—acres of cars in various states of body condition and decomposition, skeletons of wrecks and rusting carcasses whose innards were being stripped a little at a time to patch up other cars. All along the edges of the property ran a chain-link fence topped by razor wire. Nasty to look at, especially since some of the barbs caught the moonlight just right and glinted shiny and menacing.
She figured there was a mean dog or two not far off. It wasn’t just junkyards that had them—in Stella’s experience every family compound out in the sticks had a few flea-bitten curs, bred to meanness with stick beatings and fights over scraps of garbage. When one got hit by a car or lost a fight or mangled a leg on a trap or fence and had to be put down, there was always some scrawny mutt bitch around ready to deliver a new generation of hardscrabble pups.
She turned back to Arthur Junior. “I knew a Benning or two. One of ’em was just a few years behind me in school.”
“That woulda been Earl. He’s probably about forty-five—he’s owned the place since his dad passed. But he has a partner. You know—an associate. Don’t know his full name but he goes by Funzi. Comes down from Kansas City with some of his guys and stays for a few days now and then; I think he has a place down on the lake.”
“
Funzi
? What is that, Italian or some such?”
Arthur drilled her with that gaze again, and this time Stelladid turn and look at him. In the moonlight his face looked pale as milk, his eyes deep sockets. And the boy looked scared shitless. “Uh-huh. Italian, like Alphonse. Mrs. Hardesty, you know what Italian means up in Kansas City, don’t you?”
Stella made the turn, a gentle curve on the scruffy remains of a farm road, and started back. The junkyard was on the driver’s side of the Jeep now, and she watched carefully as it rolled by. No signs of life anywhere, but the light in the windows of Benning’s
“Because I believe I know where Roy Dean has been spendinghis time lately, and it ain’t no kindygarden, see what I’m sayin’? It’s bad news, serious bad news—no place to be haulin’ kids into. If Chrissy’s kid
is
with Roy Dean, then somebody needs to do something.”
“Jeez, just what is this place anyway? Some kind of strip joint?”
“I believe I’ll just show you. Turn off on Methaney there.”
Stella glanced at Arthur Junior; his arms were folded across his chest and he had an angry set to his jaw. She did as she was told.
She hadn’t driven Methaney in years. A couple of decades ago, someone still farmed soybeans out here, but the soil didn’t give up much, and the fields lay mostly unworked and fallow, sowthistle and carpetweed taking over.
“Drive slow,” Arthur Junior said, his voice a near whisper, “and don’t stop.”
After a half mile or so, they drove by a hand-painted wood sign that hung by chains from a couple of posts driven into the ground next to a gravel turnoff. In big block letters, it read BENNING SALVAGE . Five yards into the turnoff, a tall set of steel gates was locked tight with a heavy padlock.
“Oh,” Stella said. “The junkyard. That’s what you wanted to show me?”
“Ain’t just a junkyard,” Arthur Junior said, his voice low. “Drive on by, and when you get down to the T down there, turn around and come back. But don’t stop, hear? Don’t be lingerin’.”
The boy was spooked, that was for sure. Wasn’t any way anyone could hear them out here, but Stella didn’t bother to point that out. Driving past the property, she spotted lights onin a little prefab house up on a berm shaded by a couple of twisty scrub oaks. A few pickups and sedans were parked out front. Further back on the property, sodium vapor lights on blocky steel poles illuminated other buildings and sheds. And beyond that, cars—acres of cars in various states of body condition and decomposition, skeletons of wrecks and rusting carcasses whose innards were being stripped a little at a time to patch up other cars. All along the edges of the property ran a chain-link fence topped by razor wire. Nasty to look at, especially since some of the barbs caught the moonlight just right and glinted shiny and menacing.
She figured there was a mean dog or two not far off. It wasn’t just junkyards that had them—in Stella’s experience every family compound out in the sticks had a few flea-bitten curs, bred to meanness with stick beatings and fights over scraps of garbage. When one got hit by a car or lost a fight or mangled a leg on a trap or fence and had to be put down, there was always some scrawny mutt bitch around ready to deliver a new generation of hardscrabble pups.
She turned back to Arthur Junior. “I knew a Benning or two. One of ’em was just a few years behind me in school.”
“That woulda been Earl. He’s probably about forty-five—he’s owned the place since his dad passed. But he has a partner. You know—an associate. Don’t know his full name but he goes by Funzi. Comes down from Kansas City with some of his guys and stays for a few days now and then; I think he has a place down on the lake.”
“
Funzi
? What is that, Italian or some such?”
Arthur drilled her with that gaze again, and this time Stelladid turn and look at him. In the moonlight his face looked pale as milk, his eyes deep sockets. And the boy looked scared shitless. “Uh-huh. Italian, like Alphonse. Mrs. Hardesty, you know what Italian means up in Kansas City, don’t you?”
Stella made the turn, a gentle curve on the scruffy remains of a farm road, and started back. The junkyard was on the driver’s side of the Jeep now, and she watched carefully as it rolled by. No signs of life anywhere, but the light in the windows of Benning’s
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