Текст книги "A Land More Kind Than Home"

Автор книги: Wiley Cash

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Jess Hall

S

EVEN

MISS LYLE HAD MET ME AND MR. STUCKEY AT HER DOOR, and then she took my hand and led me through the living room, where Mama was lying on the sofa with her eyes closed. Miss Lyle told me to sit as quiet as I could right there at the dining room table and wait for my daddy. It felt like an oven inside her house with no breeze coming in, even though she went around opening all the windows after I’d gotten in there and sat down. After she’d done that she went back into the living room and sat down in a chair beside the sofa. It was dark in her house, and there wasn’t hardly any lights on except for a lamp in the front room and the bulb hanging over the table where I was sitting and waiting. Mr. Stuckey stayed out on the porch after I came inside, and a few minutes later I heard a car come driving down the road and stop, and then I heard a door open and shut and the car drove off. I knew that whoever was driving that car had come by to pick him up.

I leaned back in my seat and looked into the living room, where I saw a little bit of light coming from under the door to the kitchen. There were people in there, but I hadn’t seen them yet. I could hear the voices of a couple of old women whispering. I could smell the coffee they’d started brewing in there too, and I figured they didn’t even know I was here, and even if they did they had probably forgotten all about me with Mama lying on the sofa over there in the front room crying like she was and Miss Lyle sitting next to her in that chair whispering, “Now, now,” and rubbing Mama’s back.

Outside, another car was coming slow down the road in front of the house, and I heard the tires crunch on the gravel when it pulled into Miss Lyle’s driveway. I heard the car doors open and slam, and then I heard footsteps in the gravel. I prayed it was Daddy coming to get me, and I sat there and listened hard. Whoever was out there shuffled their feet slowly through the gravel like they’d never make it inside. I couldn’t hear them in the driveway anymore, and I knew they must’ve been coming up the porch steps one step at a time.

The door creaked open in the front room and a man’s voice said, “Addie.” It was quiet for just a second after that, and then Mama started crying again even louder than she was before. I knew that whatever made her cry had just been brought into the house because I heard somebody walking across the wood floor in the front room like they were struggling to do it, and I turned around in my chair and looked toward the front room and waited to see what it was. Two old men from the church shuffled into the dining room, and they stopped walking and looked at me where I sat at the table. They were carrying Stump. He had his head leaned forward and his eyes closed like he was asleep, but I knew he wasn’t sleeping, and I knew without knowing for sure that I’d seen these same two men carrying him out of the church as me and Mr. Stuckey drove off in Daddy’s truck. I wanted to say something to them, but my jaws were shaking and I couldn’t get my mouth to open. I could feel tears running down my cheeks.

“Alton,” one of the old men said. He held Stump under his arms and looked at the other man.

“What happened?” I finally asked, but I was crying so hard they probably didn’t even understand what I’d said. I couldn’t hardly see them with all the tears in my eyes. “What happened to him?” I asked, but it came out worse than it had before.

“Alton,” the man said again. The one named Alton held Stump’s legs and just stared at me. When he heard his name, he looked at the man calling him. They shuffled across the floor to the bedroom on the other side of the table. It was so quiet that I could barely hear Mama crying in the next room, and I knew she had her face buried in one of the sofa cushions. I knew those old men had laid Stump down on the bed because I heard the springs creak. I could hear them in there whispering too, and then I heard the door shut. A second later I felt somebody’s hand on my shoulder.

“Son,” a voice said. I looked up and saw the old man named Alton standing over me. His eyes were bright blue and sad-looking, and his face was tan and wrinkled. “I’m sorry, son,” he said. He squeezed my shoulder just hard enough for me to barely feel it.

“Alton,” the other man said. Alton gave my shoulder another squeeze.

The two old men walked through the front room and opened and closed the kitchen door without making a sound. After a minute I could hear them whispering to the old women who were already in there. I heard the pot tap against their cups when they poured the coffee, and then I heard somebody put the pot back on the stove. I leaned back in my chair as far as I could, and I looked around the corner into the front room. All I could see was Mama’s feet, but I could tell that she’d turned over on her side with her back to Miss Lyle. Miss Lyle still sat in that chair by Mama.

I crossed my arms and put them on the table and laid my head down on them. I breathed hard and tried to stop myself from crying, and I knew my breath was probably fogging up the wooden tabletop and I knew it was making my face get wet and hot, but after a bit I knew it was wet from my own tears.

WHEN I LOOKED UP, MISS LYLE STOOD RIGHT BY THE TABLE AND I wondered how long she’d been there.

“Jess,” she said, “can I get you something to drink, maybe some milk or a little something to eat?”

My mouth was dry as a cotton ball and I was thirsty, but I shook my head no anyway because I just wanted to sit there and wait for Daddy without having to talk to nobody. Miss Lyle stood there looking at me like she was waiting for me to say something else.

“I don’t want anything,” I said, and then I put my head back down on the table. I knew she was still standing there looking at me.

“You let me know if you need something,” she said. I looked up, and she was still there. She put her hand on my head and then used her fingers to brush my hair. “Your daddy’s going to be here real soon, but don’t be afraid to tell me if you need anything.”

She turned and walked through the front room, and I watched her open the door to the kitchen. She held the door open for a second, and I could see a little table in there and some of them old people sitting down with their coffee cups. Alton and the other old man who’d carried Stump into the house leaned against the counter with their arms crossed. They all looked at Miss Lyle when she came in. She let the door close behind her and I couldn’t see nothing after that.

I pushed my chair away from the table as quiet as I could, and then I got down real slow and walked over to the doorway and took a look into the front room. Mama still laid on the sofa with her back to me and I could hear her breathing, but I could tell she wasn’t asleep. A voice came from inside the kitchen that was louder than all the others, and I could tell it was Miss Lyle. She sounded like she was angry.

“I don’t care why he was in there,” she said. “He shouldn’t have been. Not tonight and not this morning either. No way.”

“But, Adelaide,” one of those old women said, “I know what I saw this morning, and I know what I heard. It was a miracle.”

“We all heard that boy speak,” the man named Alton said. “Every one of us heard it.”

“Well, that don’t matter now, does it?” Miss Lyle said. “It don’t matter one bit what y’all heard in there this morning. All that matters is what happened tonight, and I can tell you that you’d better be ready to talk about it once the sheriff gets here.” It got quiet after that, and I pictured Miss Lyle with her hands on her hips staring at those old women and those two old men until they looked away from her. I could hear somebody running the water in the kitchen sink, and then it sounded like somebody’s footsteps were coming across the floor toward the living room.

I turned and crept back into the dining room and walked to the other side of the table and stopped at the bedroom door where those men had laid Stump on the bed. Nobody had opened the kitchen door yet, and from that far away I could just barely hear them talking in there, and I could hear the curtains stirring in the dining room from the little bit of breeze that came in the open windows now. I put my hand on the knob, and I turned it real slow and hoped the door wouldn’t make any noise, and then I walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind me just as quiet as I’d opened it.

It was dark and hot in there with the windows closed and the curtains pulled shut. When my eyes adjusted to all that dark, I found where just a little bit of moonlight was trying to get through the windows over the bed, and in that light I could make out where Stump laid in the middle of the bed with his arms by his sides. His face was turned away from me like he was asleep or just lying there and staring at the wall. I couldn’t see him as good as I wanted to, so I walked closer to the bed until I stood right beside him. The bedspread was a white quilt, and with him laying on it his face looked pale blue in the light coming through the curtains. Some buttons were tore off his shirt and it was pulled open and I could see his chest. I just stood there and stared at him, and then I crawled up onto the bed so I could look at his face. There was a speck of dried blood on his lip like he might’ve bit it by accident, and his eyes were closed like he hadn’t woke up yet, and I thought about waking up in the night and looking over at him and watching his mouth puff out air while he slept. At night the house used to be so quiet that I could hear him breathing soft beside me. Sometimes I’d lay there and listen to him for what seemed like forever, and before I knew it I’d be asleep again. But I didn’t want him to be asleep like this on Miss Lyle’s bed with the moonlight outside shining on the curtains of this hot room and Mama crying on the sofa with Daddy on his way. I wanted to tell him, “Wake up, Stump,” but I didn’t say nothing because I was afraid to see that he wouldn’t hear me.

I got up on my knees on the bed beside him, and I pulled back the curtains behind the bed and pushed the window open to let some air in. I looked outside. The moon shone bright, and I saw our truck and the other cars parked in the driveway in front of the house. I left the curtains pulled open, and then I looked down at Stump where the moonlight spread across his face. I lay down beside him and stared up at the ceiling while the breeze moved through the curtains over the bed. I thought about how it felt just like sleeping in our bed at home, and for a minute I imagined that Mama hadn’t come into our bedroom to wake us up yet.

I closed my eyes and thought about me and Stump lying out in the ferns down by the creek where the sun that came through the trees was still bright on his face. There was an old green frog croaking somewhere along the creek, and his voice sounded like a loose banjo string, and I knew if I didn’t keep an eye on Stump he’d take to looking around for that frog until I’d have to get up and go hunting after him. I tried my best to keep my eyes open, but sometimes the water gurgling in the creek can sound like people talking, and I listened to them talk until I drifted off to sleep in all that warm sun, and when I woke up I saw that Stump had fallen asleep too, and it could be late now with the light out of the trees and the air turned nice and cool. I looked at his face until he blinked his eyes and looked up to where the sunlight faded in the treetops and smiled.

“We better get on home,” I whispered.

There was a noise like an old car driving fast down the road, and I laid there with my eyes closed and listened. I heard footsteps running through loose gravel and a screen door slamming shut and the sound of my daddy’s voice come through the walls in a room far away from us. The knob turned on the bedroom door, and I wished it was Mama coming to wake us up even though neither one of us was asleep, and I opened my eyes into that soft moonlight with Stump still laying right there beside me.

“Jess,” somebody said. I looked up and saw Daddy standing in the doorway holding out his hand to me. I couldn’t see his face because he was looking away into the other room where the lights were on. I wanted to tell him about what I’d seen, about how they’d carried him out of the church, that he was in here on the bed with me, but the way Daddy stood there made it seem like it was too dark and quiet for me to say anything at all.

I climbed down from the bed and walked over to Daddy where he stood in the doorway still looking into the other room, and he took my hand in his and it was rough and dry and he led me into the dining room, and then he was in there with the door closed and I heard him dragging a chair across the floor toward the bed.

I walked over to the window in the dining room and pulled the curtains back a little and looked outside. It was completely dark out there, but I could make out the shapes of the cars in the driveway and the little trees and the bushes around in the yard. Something caught my eye out by the road, and I looked and saw somebody standing there smoking a cigarette. I watched that glowing orange tip move from their mouth down to their side, and then back up to their mouth again. I couldn’t tell who it was out there, so I walked over to the switch and turned the lights out on the chandelier over the table and the dining room went dark. I walked back to the window and pulled the curtains back again and saw an old, beat-up truck parked out by the road in front of the house where a man stood smoking a cigarette and leaning up against the hood. I knew he must be the man Mama wanted me to call Grandpa. He had his cap pulled low and he looked at the ground, and even though I couldn’t see his face good he still didn’t look one bit like I thought he would. He tossed his cigarette into the gravel and rubbed it out with his boot. Then he folded his arms across his chest like he was waiting for something to happen, and he turned his head and looked in the direction of the ridge on the other side of the road.

The house had just about gone quiet now, and I could barely hear Daddy through the bedroom door where he was sitting in that chair by the bed and whispering something to Stump. I stared out the window and tried hard to hear what Daddy said, but he was whispering too quiet. But then I heard Mama stirring on the sofa like she was turning over, and I heard Miss Lyle scoot her chair a little closer. I imagined Mama’s face as she opened her eyes and blinked at Miss Lyle like she’d been sleeping and she’d just woke up from a dream. Outside the man Mama said to call Grandpa turned his face away from the ridge and looked down the road and coughed and spit something into the gravel.

I let the curtain close, and I sat down on the floor and put my back against the wall. I folded my arms over my knees and I rested my head to hide my face, and then I sat there and thought about what Daddy might be whispering to Stump in the next room, and I cried and cried and I just couldn’t get myself to stop.

THE BEDROOM DOOR OPENED, AND FROM WHERE I SAT ON THE FLOOR I could look under the table and see my daddy’s boots walk across the floor. He walked around the room past the chairs until he stood right in front of where I was sitting. I didn’t look up at him, so Daddy squatted down and put his hand on my head.

“Hey, buddy,” he said. “Hey, Jess.”

I finally looked up at him, and I figured my eyes looked good and swollen with all the crying I’d done that day. Daddy looked at me, and then he pulled me to him and I put my face in his shirt. I could smell him now, and he smelled like he always does, like the barn and his own sweat from the collar of the shirt he’s worn while he worked in the field, and for just a minute I felt better because he smelled like him and that meant he was finally there with me. He put his arms around me and hugged me tight. He stood up straight and picked me up and kept on hugging me, and I figured if somebody was watching us it would look funny with my legs hanging so close to the ground, but I didn’t say nothing because right then I liked the way it felt for him to hold me. I kept my face pressed up against his shirt collar, and he carried me through the dining room past the table and into the front room.

Mama was sitting up on the sofa now with both her feet on the floor. Miss Lyle had gotten up out of her chair, and she sat on the sofa right beside Mama. When Daddy carried me in, they were both already looking up at us like they’d been expecting us to walk in and it had taken us too long to do it. Mama and Daddy just looked at each other.

“I called the sheriff, Julie,” Daddy finally said to her. “Why hadn’t nobody called him yet?”

Mama and Miss Lyle just sat there and looked up at him, but they didn’t say nothing. Daddy waited for Mama to answer him.

“Chambliss tell you not to call?” Daddy asked her.

“Ben,” Miss Lyle said, “why don’t we just wait until—”

“Chambliss tell you not to call him?” Daddy asked Mama again.

“Yes,” Mama whispered.

There was the sound of another car coming down the road, and Daddy carried me over to the screen door and we both looked out. The moon wasn’t giving off enough light, and Daddy felt around on the wall right inside the door until he found a light switch, and when he flipped it the floodlights came on in the front yard. An old red truck pulled into the driveway behind ours; I could see three men sitting in it. When I looked close, I saw that one of them was Mr. Gene Thompson, and the other two were the men I’d seen smoking out by the road that morning who’d had all that Brylcreem in their hair. The man Mama had told me to call Grandpa had already lit up another cigarette, and he was leaning up against the front of his truck. He didn’t even turn around to see who’d pulled up in the driveway. Mr. Thompson and those men sat in the truck for a minute like they were trying to decide if they should get out or not, but Mr. Thompson finally opened the door and then the driver opened his and they all got out and started walking up the gravel driveway toward the house. The two men I didn’t know were about as old as Daddy, and they still had on their church clothes. Mr. Thompson was walking behind them. His lip had a little bloody scab on it from where Mama had busted it that morning when she was fighting with him and trying to get him to turn her loose.

Daddy put me down and pushed me toward the sofa where Mama sat. He looked at Mama and Miss Lyle.

“Y’all lock this door behind me,” he said. “They ain’t coming in here.” He went to step outside, and Miss Lyle stood up and walked toward the door.

“Ben,” she said.

Daddy turned around and looked at her, and through the screen I could see Mr. Thompson and those men coming up the driveway.

“You lock this door,” he said.

Daddy turned and pushed the screen door open and walked down the porch steps into the yard. The door slammed behind him. Mama hollered out his name and stood up from the sofa and reached for me, but I was too far away for her to catch me and she didn’t even hardly try. Miss Lyle watched, and then she closed the front door and turned the lock. I couldn’t see nothing then, so I went over to the open window on the right-hand side of the door and pulled back the curtains.

“Jess,” Mama said, “come here and sit down.” I acted like I didn’t hear her. “Jess,” she said again. Miss Lyle stood behind me, and we watched Daddy walk up to Mr. Thompson and those two men. Mama sat back down on the sofa behind us, and I heard her whisper something under her breath, and I knew she was talking to herself and maybe she was even praying.

Those two men I didn’t know stood in between Daddy and Mr. Thompson, and I could tell they wanted to get by Daddy and go up the porch steps and into the house, but Daddy wouldn’t let them.

“Y’all ain’t going in there,” I heard him say. “Ain’t no reason to be out here in the first place. I’ve already called the sheriff, and he should be here any minute.”

One of the men tried to go right around Daddy anyway, and Daddy put his hand on the man’s chest and stopped him. The man looked down at where Daddy had put his hand on him, and he slapped it away and kept on walking toward the house. When he did that, Daddy hauled back and punched him right smack in the face and the man’s hands went up to his nose and he stumbled backward into the gravel and fell down right in front of our truck. Before he even hit the ground that other man had ahold of Daddy and they were down on the ground in the yard and wrestling and kicking up grass. Daddy finally got on top of the man, and when he did he started punching him in the face. Mr. Thompson stood behind Daddy and yanked on Daddy’s shirt and tried to pull him off. I could hear him hollering for Daddy to stop, but Daddy just kept on punching that man like he couldn’t even hear Mr. Thompson.

The man Daddy punched first was on his knees in the gravel, and his nose was busted and bleeding and the blood ran down his face and neck and onto his button-down shirt. He tried to wipe the blood off his face with the back of his hands, but it just kept on pouring out of his nose. He looked over to the yard where Mr. Thompson was trying to pull Daddy off the other man, and he put his hand down on the ground like he was about to stand up. I heard somebody hollering my daddy’s name, and I looked up at the road and saw my grandpa running down through the grass toward the house. The man on his knees looked up too, and when he did my grandpa swung his leg and kicked the man right in the face just like he was kicking a ball. The man’s nose made a sound like a tree limb snapping in two, and his head whipped around like it had come loose from his neck. He fell onto his back in the gravel, and he just laid there and I could see his chest puffing air like he’d just finished running as fast as he could and he couldn’t catch his breath. His arms and legs moved around through the gravel like he was trying to make a snow angel right there in the driveway, but he didn’t try to get up again.

My grandpa pushed Mr. Thompson up against the side of our truck, and Mr. Thompson stayed there and watched my grandpa try to get Daddy up off the man he was hitting.

“Ben,” I heard my grandpa say. “That’s enough.” My daddy’s fist was covered in blood, and his shirt was turned red from the man’s bloody face. “Stop it, Ben,” my grandpa said. He got Daddy up on his feet, and my daddy shook loose like he was going after Mr. Thompson now. “Goddamn it, that’s enough,” my grandpa said. He wrapped his arms around Daddy and tried to keep him from getting away. Daddy got free and turned around and pushed my grandpa in the chest.

“Get off me!” he screamed. “Don’t you ever touch me! Ever!” Daddy pushed my grandpa again, and then he turned around and faced the house and when he did I could see that he was crying. He put his hands over his eyes, and I saw they had blood all over them. He walked out toward the road where my grandpa’s truck was parked. My grandpa just stood there and watched him, and then he turned and looked at Mr. Thompson.

“Y’all need to go,” he said. “There wasn’t no reason for you to have come out here to start with.”

Miss Lyle stepped away from the window and unlocked the door and opened it and looked outside.

“Wait, Gene,” she told Mr. Thompson. “Let me get something to clean them boys up. After that y’all need to leave. Ben called the sheriff, and he’ll be here real soon. He don’t need to see any of this. It’s just going to make it worse than it already is.”

Miss Lyle closed the door and turned around and walked across the front room toward the kitchen. I could hear her in there opening and closing drawers and running water in the sink. She must’ve told them old people what had happened outside because I could hear them fussing and I could hear the sound of their chairs being pushed back from the table. Mama still sat on the sofa. When I looked at her, she stood up and walked over to me at the window. She pulled me to her, and I hugged her around the waist. We stood there and looked out at the yard where Mr. Thompson helped those men stand up and checked to see how bad they’d been hurt. Daddy was almost out of the reach of the floodlights at the top of the road, but I could see him leaning his head down on the hood of my grandpa’s truck, and his shoulders were shaking like he was crying. My grandpa stood in the center of the yard. His back was to us, but I saw him reach into his shirt pocket and pull out a pack of cigarettes. He shook one out and lit it and looked out at the road like he was watching Daddy too.

DADDY WAS STILL OUT THERE WHEN THE SHERIFF PULLED UP WITH the red and blue police lights spinning on top of his car. He parked behind my grandpa’s truck and turned off the lights and got out and left his door open, and then he leaned in and picked up a cowboy hat where it had been sitting on the seat beside him. He put it on. I could see him good with the light coming from inside his car. He was about as old as my grandpa; his cowboy hat was white, and his brown button-down shirt was wet where his armpits were sweating. The little silver star on his chest shone when the light caught it. He left his arm propped up on the car door, and he just stood there and looked out at the yard.

Miss Lyle and two of those old women were out there with wet washcloths wiping the blood off those men’s faces. Somebody had given one of those men a sandwich bag full of ice, and he was holding it up to his nose.

“I think it’s broke,” I heard one of those old women tell him.

My grandpa sat on the porch steps smoking and watching Daddy out at the road. When Mama saw the sheriff, she walked through the dining room to the bedroom where Stump was still laying on the bed and she closed the door behind her. Before she left she told me to stay inside. I asked her if Daddy was crying, but she just told me to leave him alone and not bother him. I figured she’d never seen him cry either and it had probably scared her too.

I heard the sheriff walking through the gravel, and then I could just barely see him moving like a shadow until he stepped into the grass and the floodlights hit him and made that little star on his chest shine. While he walked he looked over his left shoulder out at the road, where I knew my daddy was standing.

“What in the hell happened here?” the sheriff asked. He said it like anybody who wanted to could try and give him an answer. Mr. Thompson looked up at him and pointed out to the road where Daddy stood by my grandpa’s truck.

“We just came out to extend the sympathy of the church,” Mr. Thompson said. “We came out in the spirit of faith and fellowship, Sheriff, and that man attacked us.”

The sheriff looked at Mr. Thompson, but he didn’t say anything to him, and then he walked over to the man who held that bag of ice on his nose. The sheriff reached out and picked up the hand that held the bag and he looked close at that man’s face where it was busted. He squinted his eyes like he was concentrating on what he was looking at, and then he looked over at Miss Lyle where she was trying to get the other man’s face to stop bleeding. The man Miss Lyle was working on had his eyes almost swollen shut, and there was a big, bloody cut under one of them. The sheriff let go of the man’s hand and the bag of ice dropped back on his nose. He let out a groan like he’d just been punched again.

“Well, I’m sorry if y’all came all the way out here and got your feelings hurt,” the sheriff said. “But that man’s just found out that he’s lost his son, so I ain’t planning on doing nothing about this little disagreement tonight.” He looked at Mr. Thompson. “But if you three want to give me a statement about what happened up at y’all’s church tonight then I’ll be glad to take it.” Mr. Thompson looked over at those two men he’d brought with him, and then he looked back at the sheriff.

“We don’t know nothing about it,” Mr. Thompson said.

“You knew enough to come out here and bring these two boys with you,” the sheriff said. “And I find it funny that you don’t know nothing now. Maybe after you saw the law you forgot what drove you to come out here, and that’s fine. There’s nothing I can do about that tonight. But I’d suggest you head back to Marshall and tell Chambliss and anybody who’ll listen that I expect them to be ready to talk as soon as I get things settled tonight.” He stood there like he was waiting for Mr. Thompson to say something, and then he turned away and started walking toward the house.

“I suppose Pastor will talk if the Lord leads him,” Mr. Thompson said. The sheriff stopped and turned around in the yard and looked at him.

“Then you’d better pray to God he’s led,” the sheriff said.

“I can’t rightly say what Pastor will do, Sheriff. I’m sure you’ve heard the good Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“So does the law,” the sheriff said. “You tell Chambliss and the rest of your people that I’ll be around to see them.”

The sheriff turned to walk up the porch steps, and when he did my grandpa looked up at him. The sheriff stopped and held up his hand to block out the glare from the floodlights, and then he stared hard at my grandpa. My grandpa stared right back at him. It was quiet except for the sound of the slow footsteps crunching in the gravel where Mr. Thompson and those two men were walking out to their truck.

“So you’re back in town,” the sheriff said to my grandpa. He lowered his hand, and the light hit him in the eyes again. He looked from my grandpa up to me where I stood behind the screen door.

“You figuring to stick around this time?” the sheriff said.

“We’ll see,” my grandpa said.

“I guess we will,” the sheriff said. My grandpa stood up from the steps real slow to let the sheriff pass. Then the sheriff opened the screen door and I moved out of his way too. He took off his cowboy hat and held it down by his side.