Chapter 4
Gwendolyn Madsen Every time that Gwen tried to climb into Lenny's Ford F-150, she felt like she had to ascend a small mountain. "You know," she said as she finally worked her way off the second step and onto the immaculate leather passenger seat, "you might want to consider deploying a carabiner and harness so that if I slip you could belay me." She looked up at Lenny's face. He had sounded upset on the phone; now he looked…unhappy. Conflicted? She wasn't sure, but his expression didn't crack at her joke. Frowning while she buckled in, she asked, "What's the matter?" Without signaling--or, from what Gwen could tell, even glancing over his shoulder--Lenny pulled out into traffic, foot firmly on the gas. The pickup truck belched angrily and leaped forward, a shiny black streak in the November afternoon. He quickly hit the speed limit, then soared past it. Noah was equipped with a single traffic light at the intersection of State Road 85 and Center Street. They were still half a block away when the light clicked yellow. Lenny gunned the engine, cruising through at over sixty miles per hour and after the light had turned red. Gwen swallowed, glancing about her brother's truck for something to distract her. She didn't dare touch anything--Lenny wouldn't like that--but she did know for a fact that he kept a handgun in the glove compartment. He detailed the truck every month, washed it twice a week, and personally lubed the engine. The fact that he was picking her up in his "baby" was almost a shock all on its own. Dad must have insisted, otherwise he would've brought the "slut car", which was what he called the old Ford Focus that Dad had bought over a decade ago when Lenny had turned sixteen. Technically it was the family car, for when they didn't need a pickup or the sheriff SUV, but in practical terms, it meant that Gwen got to drive it pretty much whenever she needed the wheels. "What was that all about?" asked Lenny, breaking through their silence as he turned right and headed toward home. "What was what all about?" "Don't get cute with me." She snorted. "Lenny, I don't know what you're talking about. You know, you do this all of the time. Thinking I can read your thoughts." "Damn good thing you can't." "Tell me about it," muttered Gwen. "What was that?" "Nothing." She shifted on the seat, the leather creaking. "What were you asking about?" "I wanted to know why you weren't ready to leave." "I was talking to Dane." "Dane?" "Yeah. You know. The grieving son of the man we just buried?" "Don't get smart with me." It came out as a growl, one Gwen knew it well--her dad did the same thing. She also knew better than to push it. She had, maybe, one more quip she could deploy. If she did it right, it might defuse his incipient anger. A glance at his face and a quick read of his tightened lips told her that it wasn't likely she could do it right. Not right now. "Sorry. I just meant that, you know, Dane needed some comfort." He snorted. "Who cares? He didn't even live here anymore." "It was still his dad who died, you know." "Yeah, but did Dane even care? The kid was off at college, jacking off to whatever liberal-ass nonsense they teach out there." "Lenny!" "What? Am I wrong? Tell me I'm wrong!" She knew better than to take Lenny up on that offer. "Yeah, that's what I thought." Lenny blew through a stop sign--one of only five or six in the whole city--and whipped the truck onto their house's street. They rolled past large-acre, small-building homes without sidewalks, the lawns petering out into gravel which then ossified into the asphalt. Dead grass stabbed its yellow fingers through the rocks and out of cracks in the driveways, making the whole neighborhood look derelict. Gwen didn't really know anything else--she'd lived in Noah her whole life--and though she'd visited "far distant" places like Spanish Fork, Noah just seemed normal. But on a bright-though-cold funeral day, it was easy to notice the breath of death that autumn brought with it. "So. You seeing him?" "Excuse me?" Lenny wiped his mustached lip, his hairy forearms taut as he gripped the wheel. He wore a red-and-black flannel jacket--a regular Brawny man--and his jeans were faded save the ghost-white outline on his pockets where he kept his phone, wallet, and--in his currently-unseen back pocket--hair comb. He was always slicking his jet hair with the thing, as if confident that his military-length cut needed that much grooming. Sometimes, when he was in an actual good mood for once, she would tease him about it. He would throw her that easy smile that she knew so well from childhood Christmases or surprise pick-ups from school, the kind of endearing smirk that let her know that he was around and he'd make sure she was safe. Six years her senior, Lenny Madsen was a cowboy through and through--except for the hats, which he disliked because they messed with his hair--complete with the perpetual tan, the smell of dust, and the confidence of being secure in his own skin. Sometimes that rubbed off on her; sometimes he let himself be more than just a cowboy but an actual boy, a man in her life who cared about her. But other times, he played the "overprotective big brother" note as if it were the only one on the instrument. Like now. "You still seeing him?" "Dane?" "Who else?" "I mean, he just got here…" "Don't be stupid with me, girl. I mean are you seeing him?" She hesitated. She and Dane had spent quite a bit of time together the past two summers when he'd been home from college and after she'd graduated from high school. She'd seen him as a senior when she was only a freshman, hanging out with Harmony Roman--whom, she had learned as the school year had gone on, was not dating him; they were "just good friends"--and pretty much being the contradiction she'd come to learn he was. When he'd come back the previous summer from college, Dad had been visiting with Dane Sr. about some rumors of malcontents and ne'er-do-wells coming in from Delldale. Gwen had seen Dane, reading a book, and--on a whim that she never really understood, even know--decided to strike up a conversation. A relationship grew. Love, too. "Not seeing him, seeing him," she said at last, knowing that if she remained quiet much longer, Lenny might get suspicious. "Explain that to me," he said as he lurched the truck onto the sloped driveway of the Madsen Abode. He cranked the car into park and killed the engine. "Well, I mean…yeah, we've seen each other. Like when he was here at the end of August, or…" She trailed off in part because of embarrassment, in part because she didn't really want to think too hard about how long it'd been since he was last home. "During Fall Break?" "Yeah, I think so." "You think so?" Gwen threw him an irritated sigh. "I'm not thirteen anymore, Lenny. I don't sit on my bed and write in my journal about every interaction with every cute boy that I see." With a smooth movement, she unlatched her seatbelt before she jammed open the door, letting herself down only by keeping a firm grip on the handles. Lenny dropped to the ground, then slammed shut the door. He stomped around the other side of the car, his brow a thunderhead. "What's that supposed to mean?" Gwen recoiled a bit, almost afraid. "Leave me alone, Lenny." "I want to know what's going on with my sister and that punk over at the Ranch. I have a right to know." A flame of frustration burst in her chest. She could feel it fingering up her cheeks, pushing tears toward the brims of her eyes as it went. Swallowing hard against the reaction, she swore to herself that she would not cry; she would not let him get her so upset. "You don't have a 'right to know' anything about my life that I don't want to tell you!" "Stop being a feminazi and tell me what you're doing with him!" "I'm not doing anything with him right now." "You sure you haven't been giving him a little extra attention lately? Spreading your legs for him--" "Lenny!" The shock at his brazen description was more humiliating, almost, than what he was after. "What is wrong with you?" "I'm just looking after my little sister. It's what big brothers do. Now, are you banging Dane?" "What about you?" she asked, feeling the heat rise over her face and pitch her voice higher. "What about you and that Neller girl over on the west side? You think I haven't heard anything about her?" His face, already dark with anger, deepened its crimson shade. She'd touched a nerve--she knew she had, and for once, she didn't regret it--and the explosion building inside of him was going to be almost nuclear. Part of her cringed--this might be the time she'd gone too far, when he might finally lose his control and, instead of punching a whole in the wall, go for her face--but another part of her thrilled. What was he to her, that she should cower? She was her own person. It wasn't just because she'd graduated or that she had her own job now. Lenny hardly came home any more frequently than Dane did; it wasn't as if he were some permanent piece of her life. She opened her mouth to say those very things when a flash of blue and red light and a loud whup startled them both out of their rage-fueled standoff. The police had arrived. Or, more accurately, Dad had arrived. He sat in his SUV, staring at them with an inscrutable expression, much of his face covered by his wire-framed sunglasses. He turned off the flashers and climbed out, hitching his gunbelt up a bit to rest more comfortably on his hips. It was clear where Lenny got his body-shape from, though Dad's borders had expanded. His hair, a kind of silvered sable, had the same cut as Lenny's. His face, of course, more lined. The mustache was the same (though Dad's was bigger), too. What Dad had and Lenny didn't was an effortless air of authority. People could be charmed by him--he had a winning smile, straight toothed and quick--or intimidated by him. Whatever they needed, he could be. That was why he was sheriff, after all, and had been Gwen's entire life. Lenny always felt like a jack-in-the-box, capable of being wound up forever and never triggering, or so eager to blow up that he could scarcely be put inside. Dad was steady, for the most part, and was always keen to let people make enough rope to hang themselves with. Of course, one of his friends had just been buried. Cop or not, no one could see a friend put into a pine box and not have it affect him. How badly the funeral rankled Dad, Gwen couldn't know. She looked away from Dad as he walked forward. "Y'all brawling?" "No, sir," said Lenny. Gwen shook her head. "Looked like you were brawling." "No, sir." "You get yourself up inside, Lenny. You've got to pack." "Yes, sir." "And don't forget what I told you at the luncheon, neither." Lenny hesitated, then bobbed his head. "Yeah. I won't." "Good. Now get." Lenny took the dismissal with a final pause to look at Gwen. He whispered, "Don't do nothing stupid, you hear?" After Lenny had walked up the rest of the driveway, thumped in the garage door's passcode, and disappeared inside the modest house, Dad turned to Gwen and said, "Mind telling me what that was all about?" "Just…brotherly stuff." "You looked like you were going to punch him." "No, sir," said Gwen, avoiding her father's eyes. He chuckled, but she couldn't hear any humor in it. "Girl, I've been settling domestic disputes since before your mother died. I know when two people are about to throw down. Now, tell me what's going on." Gwen swallowed. Her embarrassment increased enough to almost render her mute, but she knew better than to delay answering her father. While a well-timed joke might do something for Lenny when he was in a bit of a mood, nothing but pure obedience worked for Daddy. "We were arguing about Dane." "Junior?" "Yeah." "You…you said you weren't seeing him anymore." There was a twinge of dismay and pain in his voice. "No, I said that I didn't know what was going on with him anymore, Daddy. I swear, I'm not lying to you." He folded his arms across his chest, his tightly-ironed shirt almost creaking. "'Zat a fact?" "Yes, sir." "Are you going to keep seeing him, then? Do you know yet?" "I…" "Because I'll tell you this much right here, right now: He's bad news." She shook her head at that, as if the declaration had smacked her. "What do you mean?" "I mean he's bad news, girl. That's what I mean." "Why?" He sighed and pulled off his sunglasses. Now he was less Papa Sheriff and more Papa Madsen--one was the authoritarian, the other the father. She saw real worry and concern written into the creases around his sky-chip eyes. "Because what's happened to his family is…it's a tragedy, Gwendolyn Rose. It's the sort of thing that people like that…people like Dane, I should say…it's something they don't get over. Trust me. I've seen it a million times. He's got an obsessive aura about him; he's trouble. And if he isn't now, he will be soon." "Dad, I…" "Hey, Baby Girl. You listen to your papa, okay?" He lifted her head up by the chin and looked into her eyes. "Don't fool around on this, okay? Keep your distance. Don't answer his texts. Ignore his phone calls. Get me? Let him be. You hear?" Gwen swallowed, then nodded slightly. "I hear you," she said as tears--unexpected, unwelcomed, unwanted--slid down her face. "There, there," said Dad, pulling her into a tight hug. The pen in his pocket dug into her cheek and the faint whiff of body odor crackled in her nose. "Don't worry about him. There are others." "Yeah, Dad. I know." "Okay." "Okay." He squeezed her tightly, then released her. "Now. Let's get Lenny ready to go. He gave up a lot to stick around. The least we can do is repay that somehow." She nodded and, reluctantly, turned her feet toward the front door, following in her father's large stride. The wind whispered down, stirring the leaves on the lawn. Far away, she heard a crow caw. |