Roselita still looked bored and antsy. “So, I’m guessing something terrible happened and all that changed?”
“Yeah. Something did,” Keith said. “A few things did. The first one happened during our last year of high school. Dane and me were seniors. Ned was a year younger. There was a car wreck out by the Slater Street Bridge.” Keith told the rest of the story while staring into his coffee cup. Roselita noticed Dane doing the same thing. “Some dumb kids were acting the fool, dropping cinder blocks off the bridge in front of cars. A woman died.”
“Some dumbass kids, huh?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the point. Ned was there, too. He didn’t do anything, but he was there. He was trying to help. The deputies who arrived on the scene saw a longhaired kid trying to yank open a car door, and instead of trying to help him, they tossed him on the ground. When they searched him, he had an ounce of weed in his pocket. A woman died that night, but instead of trying to find out who did it, they focused on Ned—who got arrested. He ended up being charged as an adult for possession with intent to distribute and was sent to Tobacco Road Prison in Augusta. He did four years of a ten-year sentence. No one ever found out who really caused the accident or why, and since the case went cold, it seemed like the whole town turned on Ned just for being there. In a small town like this one, when no one is to blame, folks tend to start pointing fingers at whoever they want. In this case, Ned was painted as a drug dealer who was most likely responsible for the accident in some way when all he was trying to do that night was help. He got four years’ hard time and a scarlet letter for his trouble.”
“So Ned’s fast track out of McFalls came to a screeching halt.”
“Yeah, it did. He went to prison. He was seventeen, man. It’s fair to say he has a right to be bitter.”
“Tough break.”
Keith was getting edgy, but Roselita didn’t care. She’d heard these sad-sack stories her whole life. Most of the time the sucker in those stories was their own worst enemy. No one ever took accountability for their actions. He was holding. He got caught. The rest is superficial. She sipped her coffee. It still tasted like shit.
“Everything about that night—what happened, what happened to Ned—was fucked. He had nothing to do with it, but he took the wrath of the county—all of it—all the same.” Keith kept staring into his coffee cup. He rubbed at the circular tattoos on his arms.
Dane put a hand on Keith’s shoulder and took over. “Anyway, after that, nothing was the same anymore. Ned eventually got out and started working in the quarries. Not quite the life he had imagined for himself.” Dane sipped his coffee. “Anyway, fast-forward a few years. I had become a fireman and eventually the fire chief here. One of the first things I did after I got the job was call Ned. I told him to go down to Forsyth, Georgia, and get all the training he could so I could get him a job working for me—to help get his life back. I owed him that much.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you owe him?” Dane stared at Roselita until she put it together on her own. “Because it was your weed he was holding, wasn’t it?”
Dane just stared back into his coffee mug.
“His and mine,” Keith said, not wanting Dane to carry the weight of his omission by himself.
Roselita shook her head dismissively. She didn’t care but understood the guilt. “Okay. I’m tracking. So then what?”
“He did it,” Dane said without looking up. “He went and got certified in Forsyth and came to work for me running the county fire department. We worked together every day and he did the job better than anyone I knew. He found a place not far from where we’re sitting right now, and I think it’s fair to say that he was pretty happy. It was a good time overall.”
“And so then what happened? He started eating dickhead pills?”
“No,” Dane said. “That’s when the other shoe dropped.”
Keith excused himself and stepped outside on the landing for some air. It was obvious that he’d heard this story enough not to want to hear it again.
Dane waited until Keith closed the door to start talking again. “Every year the county used to throw a big shindig on the Fourth of July. Keith’s parents funded the fireworks show. They’d get this huge outfit over from South Carolina to come in and light the place up. Everyone alive and breathing from here to Fannin all the way to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, would come to downtown Waymore. It was a big deal. The Fourth around here was bigger than Christmas—no joke. It was something to see.”
“You said was. What happened?”
Dane stared at his reflection in the coffee cup. Suddenly he didn’t feel like talking.
“The last Fourth of July celebration in McFalls County was in 2010. We stopped doing it because of what happened. Too many people around here were opposed to it after that.”
“Well, what happened?”
“Something went wrong—right from the start. Something in the mechanics of the machine that handled the fireworks malfunctioned. Two of our guys from the FD—two volunteers—and one of the guys from the Carolina outfit who owned the fireworks rig were burned really badly. All three of them died a few weeks later at the Burn Center in Augusta.” Dane drank some coffee and Roselita could see the memory age Dane’s face like a time lapse.
“That’s terrible, Dane, really, but what’s it got to do with Lemon?”
Dane slid his coffee cup away from him. “They were Ned’s guys. He hired them. He trained them. He was supposed to be in charge of the whole operation. The kid who died was nineteen. When the whole thing happened, Ned took it pretty hard. He blamed himself.”
“Accidents happen, Dane. That’s life. People get hurt in that line of work. I can understand the concept of losing people under your command, but if I’m not mistaken, weren’t you the head honcho around here? I mean, you were the Fire Chief, right?”
Dane’s stare got a little more distant. “I was.”
“Then don’t take this the wrong way, but wouldn’t that make all of that something that happened under your watch? No disrespect, but where were you?”
“I wasn’t there.”
Dane’s phone buzzed in his pocket, but he just glared into his cup at nothing. It rang again. He still didn’t move.
“Dane?” Roselita said. “Your phone? Could be August.”
Dane stayed distant.
“Dane,” Roselita said again. “Are you okay?”
Dane snapped back to the moment, reached into his pocket, and took out his phone. He tapped it to read the number on the display. “It’s my girlfriend. I’ve got to take this.” He actually didn’t need to nor did he want to. But he didn’t want to talk about the Fourth of July anymore, either. He stood and answered the phone. He walked out onto the landing and passed Keith on the way in.
“Hello?” Dane closed the door behind him. Keith poured himself another cup of coffee and sat back down at the table. Roselita wasn’t positive, but she was pretty sure she’d just gotten blown off. “Keith, right? Listen. When we were back at Sheriff Ellis’s office, Dane mentioned having to go see a fella named Eddie—”