Nickelback was how empty they were. Other than a half dozen cars in the grocery store parking lot, there didn’t seem to be any people around. Each business had someone in it, but who they were waiting for Hank couldn’t guess. Maybe the heat kept everyone inside. Hank knew that’s where he belonged.
As Hank lingered in front of the real estate office, he saw the police Suburban pull around the corner and stop beside him. The sheriff leaned out the window and some guy in the other seat, who wasn’t wearing a uniform and who looked a little green in the face, leaned forward and looked over at him. Goddamn, what a small town.
“You already looking at buying a place?” Mickey grinned at him. “If you’re thinking of having Cookie and Leo fix that car, then you might as well start shopping for a house. It’ll be awhile.”
“I gathered that.” Hank watched the lines in Mickey’s face, the way the creases ran through his cheeks when he smiled, the way his nose wrinkled a little and one of his eyebrows kinked slightly in the middle. It was the first look he’d had at the sheriff in the daylight. In the brief silence between them, Hank felt an inexplicable sadness come over him, as though something was tugging at him from within, causing his heart to sink a little. It was sudden and strange. Had to be the heat.
Mickey motioned toward the back of the Suburban and said, “We found the rest of your buddy out there.”
“Is he happy to have his leg back?”
Mickey smiled and said, “I don’t think he misses it much. There’s nowhere to run in this town anyway.”
Hank smiled as the Suburban pulled away. No shit.
XII
Eli drove fast and worked himself up about what he would say to Ron. But he didn’t speak. Neither he nor Eddie said anything as they drove past the Super 8 and out of town to the west, toward the refinery. Ron told them they should never be seen together around town. That made things difficult, of course, because there weren’t too many places they could meet where they wouldn’t be seen. Usually that meant meeting at one or the other’s house very late at night, but Eli had decided that in this case they just couldn’t wait. They’d have to be up very early in the morning to get started, so they couldn’t waste the night waiting up to talk to Ron.
As he drove, Eli thought it all through, going over the recent past and marveling at the natural progression of events. Six months earlier, Eli and Eddie were still working out at Monarch and everything was fine. Then they got hit in the layoffs and everything went to hell. At first, they lived off the money Eli’s aunt had left him in a trust. Fifteen grand. It felt like a fortune. For the first couple months they sat in the trailer, drank beer and smoked weed all day and tried to get a band going. They’d always intended to start one and they talked a lot about this maybe being the break they needed. Practice up, get a drummer and a bass player, head to LA and start playing some shows. Nothing big, just covers. They figured it was best to know the classics—easy crowd pleasers—so they spent their time learning as many AC/DC tunes as they could. They figured they could play a few nights a week in bars and make enough to get by. Maybe they’d get a little apartment down in Venice, hang out on the beach and live the good life.
But by the fourth month, they’d settled deep into a routine full of nothing and the money started getting low. They were collecting unemployment, but it wasn’t much and it would be hard to live on when that was all they had—and even that wouldn’t last forever. They started talking less and less about finding a good drummer and more and more about where their next meal was coming from. There wasn’t any work to be had anywhere and neither of them had anything worth selling. And even if they did, there weren’t too many people in town with any money to buy anything.
Finally, they started hanging out at Eddie’s sister’s place trying to get meals out of her. It was a small house she’d bought in town after she managed to sell their parents’ old place to a guy who’d moved to Nickelback to work