We ended up having to abandon Hammer’s truck. He could come back later with fresh nuts and a clear head. At the last second, he remembered to go back and get his rifle off the rack in his truck. Probably the firearm had more value than the vehicle. I told Rose we were taking Hammer home, but she said we were only a couple of miles from Fast Forward’s so we could stop there on our way and dry out, smoke a joint to calm our nerves, etc. Then she took off, throwing a wake like a speedboat. Hammer lived in Duffield. I wasn’t entirely sure where we were, only that I should get the hell out of that roaring creek, so I followed Rose. Hammer was in the back seat, in no way clued in to our plan. He and Fast Forward had only ever met one time, as far as I knew, at June’s party. That brief shiny moment of Emmy belonging to Hammer, before she was stolen away. I remembered Fast Forward afterward laughing with Mouse, calling Hammer a chucklehead knuckle dragger. Nothing good could come from a reintroduction. The last sober shreds of my brain were saying this: Go home.
And for the thousandth time in a month I answered back: Go home where, to what person? Useless fuck that I am, who cares. The night I’d found Dori, I hate to say, some part of me was relieved, thinking now I wouldn’t have to worry every minute about her dying. I thought I’d be better off without the fear. I was so wrong. Even with nothing else good left between us, that dread made me a person still attached to another person. Nobody needed me anywhere now.
The rain got worse. I’d never seen the like. We turned onto a side road that was not a running river, but the windshield was blinded out. I saw the faint red glow of Rose’s lights pulling over and I did the same, thinking she meant to wait out the blitz. Then her lights went out and I saw the outline of Rose running from her truck towards the outline of a house, and next thing I knew, Maggot was out and running for it too. We all went. The car felt like a fishbowl we could drown in. We got to the porch and somebody let us in.
Rose had said the house of “some lady,” and I’d thought, housedress, rent check. Nope. Her name was Temple, total and complete hotcake. Short shorts, long blond hair. No love lost between her and Rose, that was plain to see. But she made over us guys like rescue pups, went and got towels, made hot coffee, set us up in the living room with her bong that was a hippie pottery type of thing. It turned out she made these herself. Interesting lady, interesting house. Big old place, not a whole lot of furniture. Maybe they’d just moved in together. I thought of the Emmy wreckage, and wondered how long he’d take to chew this pretty girl up and spit her out. She and Rose discussed something in code which obviously was drug business, and Temple said he wasn’t there, he’d gone out driving with Big Bear Howe and some other guys. She hadn’t gone with them because it was boring as hell, those boys never talked about a thing other than football. And I thought, Huh, maybe there’s hope for this one. She said Fast Forward was still catching up with his homeboys since moving back to Generals territory. They’d gone over to this place on the river they always liked to go, Devil’s Bathtub.
My stomach did a somersault over those words. Over behind the bong, Hammer’s eyebrows went high, late to the party but finally catching on to who we were discussing. Rose said it was a hell of a day to go swimming. Temple said for sure, but it had been pretty as a picture that morning, these summer storms could just blow up out of nowhere. True, all that.
Hammer stood up, knocking over an empty coffee cup, and said we needed to go. Temple was a little shocked, reaching for the cup. She said we were welcome to wait out the storm. And he said, “We’re going now.” Just like that, the whole lifetime of Hammer, polite, bashful boy loved by all, for always doing just what they asked, was over.
58
It seemed like the storm might let up. But whatever of it was left, we were driving straight into, headed east into Scott County on a no-name gravel road. Hammer didn’t believe this was my first time at Devil’s Bathtub, and got in his head I was lying about it. He’d been here time and again with this or that batch of Peggots and was sure I was too. Maggot knew better and kept quiet. They both kept saying this is the road, keep going. Hammer meant to hunt down Fast Forward and have it out. Hammer on meth was a whole new man, cradling his rifle in the back seat with the air of a person in charge, and there’s no way I was taking that man home right now. He lived with his stepmom Ruby and her daughter Jay Ann that had her new baby. The Peggots had a deep bench. They would blame me for this and skin me alive.