When I finally do make up my mind, I don’t call ahead. Just get into my all-fixed-up truck and drive over to the Hills, to the amazing house sitting on all that amazing land, one I’ve only ever seen from the road, and even then just out of curiosity to see what everybody else was always talking about.
Or maybe it’s not all that amazing, in the grand scheme of things, when I really think about it.
Maybe it should just be depressing the hell out of me because I know how it’s paid for, not from Briar Crockett’s lumber business, as thriving as it is just because everybody in town is afraidnotto send their business his way, or the cattle farm on another huge piece of property belonging to Briar next door.
No.
The Crocketts are rich. They’re also peddlers of fear, and terror, and death—death for which they’re responsible.
Of course, I’m the genius who just kicked the snot out of Briar’s sons, which is why I feel a little bit like I’ve traveled behind enemy lines when I ring his doorbell, not sure if Roof or Lynyrd are on the premises, or Briar’s new wife, or his two young daughters by her.
It’s Briar himself who answers the door. Maybe there’re security cameras lining his driveway and he already knows it’s me standing here. But it’s the big man himself, every bit as big as I am. Head full of white hair. Eyes that my father once described as being paler than spit.
He smiles at me with teeth as white as his hair.
“Now, to what could I possibly owe the honor?” he says in that low, mellow voice of his, one that’s always seemed to me, given how little time I’ve spent with the man, as if it should belong to somebody else. Somebody about half his size.
“I hope it’s not rude of me to show up unannounced,” I say, doing my very best to fake sincerity, something I could always do when it was required of me, sometimes with the media.
“On the contrary,” he says. “As I just said, I truly am honored to get a visit from a local hero.” He shrugs, almost as if he’s embarrassed. “Even if you did haul my boys out to the proverbial woodshed the other night.”
“Things got out of hand. I guess that’s the best way to describe it,” I say. “From my end, I’m not particularly proud of that.”
Like hell I’m not.
He hasn’t moved from where he opened the door. I’m still right there in front of him on the porch. If there’s people watching us, I’m not sure where they might be. Maybe there are more cameras out here. Or eyes on me from an upstairs window.
Finally, though, Briar Crockett makes a motion that waves meinto the house, saying, “Wherearemy manners? Please come in, Silas.”
Inside, the immense place is quiet as an empty church. Briar Crockett first leads me through a foyer that looks to be about the same general size as the ground floor of EmmaJean Tucker’s house. There is a ridiculously high ceiling, art on the walls, a marble floor. I remember a joke I’d heard once, somebody walking through a residence as ornate and impressive as this one and finally asking the host, “Where’s the gift shop?”
Then Briar is walking me up a spiral staircase to what he says is a combination of office and man cave. As he shows me in there, he casually points to the floor and says, “Just had to have a new rug put down, albeit reluctantly.”
Then he adds, “No matter how much you love the old one, and I surely did, sometimes there’s a stain that seeps in and you just can’t get it out no matter how hard you try.”
He sits down on one side of his desk. I take one of the seats on the other side and wonder, if only briefly, what kind of business has been done with people who have sat where I’m sitting, and how much of it was legal. If any of it was.
“How’s Mrs. Crockett?” I ask.
“I assume you mean the current missus?” he says, smiling.
“Yes, sir.”
“Gets back from her parents one day, then is right off again, on her way to take the girls to sleepaway camp,” he says. He shrugs. “‘Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing.’”
He offers another quick shrug of his shoulders as he says, “That’s from Mr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. ‘The Theologian’s Tale.’ People use that line about ships passing in the night all the time, but hardly anybody knows where it comes from.”
I do. But let it go, so he can have his moment to sound smarter than me because it seems to be important.
“But the way I look at things,” he continues, “maybe less time spent with that girl, even though I love her to death, will mean a longer marriage.”
He asks if I want something to drink.
I tell him I’m fine.
“By the way? Let me apologize for my boys’ aggressive behavior the other night,” he says. “Especially with you out on a date and all.”
“Wasn’t a date with Abby,” I say. “Just happened to run into an old friend.”
