We
were relaxed, at one with the world it seemed, and when I fell asleep across
the chair with the radio playing Tony Bennett out of someplace in Virginia,
Nathan left me there. He knew I would have wanted to be left.
The
day after Christmas I visited my mother's grave. I knelt there for some time,
in my hand some flowers, and though I tried with everything I could to feel
some deep sense of loss, I didn't. The guilt I had experienced when I'd heard
of her death had gone. I had faced the fact that I had not been there, and wish
though I might, I couldn't turn time backwards. She was gone, much the same as
my father, as Linny - if not in person then surely in spirit - and then there
was Caroline. For some reason my attention turned increasingly to her, and the
more I remembered what we had shared the more important it became.
I had
never discovered why Caroline Lanafeuille had left Greenleaf, what her father
had done that had precipitated such a reaction. The truth was, she was the
first. And despite the girls in Florida, the beach-dwellers, despite the
Devereau sisters and all they brought with them, there really was only one girl
who had ever touched me with something more than the physical. If I would cry
for losing anyone, it would be for Caroline.
I did
not stay long at the grave, I did not see the purpose. I visited, I paid my
respects, I did not say a prayer for I didn't believe anyone was listening. I
said a few words
to
my mother: how grateful I was that she had cared for
me, that I hoped she'd found peace, hoped she'd found my father. Then I walked
from the cemetery at the end of Nine Mile Road and went home.
The
remainder of the day passed uneventfully. Every once in a while Nathan would
walk to the front window and look out towards the road. I knew he was looking
for Linny. Again, just as before, she had engineered that sense of uncertainty:
was she with you, was she not? How she did that… well, I don't believe even she
knew how. She was beside you, possessed you, swallowed you up completely, and
then she was a million miles away and growing more distant with each heartbeat.
She could make you feel as if you were the center of the universe, and then as
nothing. I thought she was perhaps a little crazy.
But
Nathan was a man, his own life was right there in front of him, and he would
learn too.
Learn
the hard way perhaps, but hell, was there any other way?
Later,
evening closing up around the house, I lay in a chair in the front room and
listened to the radio without really hearing much of anything at all. I was
tired, as if the past eighteen months of running had finally caught up with me.
Nathan was somewhere - the kitchen, upstairs, back in the kitchen again - and I
sensed his restlessness. He wanted something to happen, and I reckoned the best
thing for everyone concerned would have been for him to leave then, to go see
his folks, to get things straightened out.
But
he stayed. Stayed with no intention of seeing anyone but Linny Goldbourne, for
she, in her own inimitable style, had captured him and wouldn't let go until
she decided she wished for something else.
'You think
she did such things on purpose?' Father John asked.
I
shook my head. 'I don't think so. I think she came from the kind of background
where she could have pretty much anything she wanted without a great deal of
effort. Live like that for a while and I think things begin to lose their
value. Relationships too. Figure if you've got money there's always a line of
people waiting in the background to be your best friend.'
Father
John smiled. 'To have and have not.'
I
shook my head.
'It's
the name of a book,' he said. 'Deals with similar sorts of things.'
'Right,
okay.'
'So
you don't think there was any malice intent on her part?'
'Malice
intent, no. I don't think she was even aware of what she was doing. If I hadn't
seen Nathan pacing about like a caged animal that day I might have thought it
was just me, but I could see he was feeling the same things as I once had. It
was the
not knowing
that did it. Was she with you? Was she not? Was she
off with someone else? Was she using you for some brief amusement, and then you
were forgotten? It was the way she looked at you sometimes, like she was
looking right through you… it was odd.' 'Did you know much about her father?'
'No,'
I said. 'I didn't really know anything about him at all. Some rumors perhaps.'
'Rumors?'
'The
stuff I told you, that he was something significant in the Klan, that he
controlled a great deal of land, possessed endless millions of dollars, could
buy anything he wanted including people, votes… that kind of stuff.'
'You
know he's dead.'
'You
told me that already.'
'Right,'
Father John said, and for a moment he looked distracted.
'His
position was what got her where she ended up, you know?' I said.
Father
John nodded. 'I'd thought of that as well.'
'If
he hadn't been who he was I don't think that would have happened to her… she
wasn't that bad.'
There
was quiet for a moment, Father John looking down at his hands, his expression
distant.
Then
he looked up and smiled. 'So, the next day, the day she came back?'
'Right,'
I said. 'The next day -'
I
felt good when I woke. I had stayed off the weed and the wine the day before
and felt better for it.
Nathan
slept through until close to lunchtime and I appreciated the couple of hours
alone. I walked through the house, spent a little time in each room, moved some
things around, found some photos I hadn't seen for years, photos of myself as a
child, my parents in their twenties and thirties. I recognized how much I looked
like my father, and somehow that pleased me.
I
walked out into the back. The yard was overgrown. Under an eave that projected
from the rear of the building, a small shelter where my mother had stored wood
and tools, I took an axe and split some logs. The axe was heavy, rusted around
the join between the blade and the haft, but it did the job. It felt good to be
doing something physical, felt good to get some clean North Carolina air in my
lungs. It felt good to be alive without the fear of someone finding me.
I
made breakfast, waffles and bacon, and I sat alone in the kitchen and ate. It
felt right to be back there. That house had always been an anchor, a safe
harbor, and though I was no longer running from anything, it still gave me a
feeling of security. Here I could stay, regardless of what the world might
think, and I felt lucky to have it.
When
Nathan came down he had a headache. He didn't want to eat, but he drank two or
three cups of coffee.
'Figure
we should clean the place up,' I said. 'Thought I might stay here for a while.'
Nathan
nodded. 'Sure thing,' he said.
'You
can stay here as long as you want, but I reckon you should give some thought to
what you're gonna do 'bout your folks.'
'My
folks?'
I sat
down facing him. 'Sure, your folks. You can't leave them trying to convince
everybody that you're dead, Nathan.'
'Why
not?'
I
gave a forced, unnatural laugh. This was a response I had not expected, it
ain't right. They're your parents for God's sake. You want them to keep
pretending you're dead for the rest of their lives?'
Nathan
shrugged. 'Figure they'll get over it,' he said. 'Hell, perhaps they already
have.'
'You
don't think they'd be happy to see you?'
'Shock
would more 'n likely kill my pa,' Nathan said, and there was something in his
tone that made me suspect he could actually believe such a thing.
I
shook my head in disagreement. 'You are their son. Whatever the hell has
happened, you are still their son.' 'The prodigal returns,' he said.
'Jesus,
Nathan, sometimes I just don't get your viewpoint.'
Nathan
stopped with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. 'I don't know that you need
to get my viewpoint, Danny. I am who I am. I think what I want to think. I say
what I want to say. It's as simple as that.'
'Shit,
you've changed, man -'
'Changed?'
he said, his tone one of surprise. 'We've
all
changed. The world has
changed. The world has become some crazy fucked-up place with people killin'
each other like there's no tomorrow. What the hell d'you think this has all
been about, Danny? Do you ever wonder about why we're here? D'you ever stop to
think about what's going on around you? Hell, sometimes you are so blind.'
'Meaning?'
I asked defensively.
'Meaning
nothing.'
'If
you meant nothing you wouldn't have said it,' I snapped.
'Oh
shit,' he replied. 'What is this now? Kids in the sandbox? I won't come if I
can't win bullshit?'
And
then I thought of them. Thought of the men at Eve Chantry's house.
I was
on the edge of saying something. But I didn't. Didn't say a thing. I didn't ask
myself why I said nothing. I didn't even question my motives, or lack of them.
I just decided then and there to say nothing. It seemed ridiculous that anyone
would really do anything just because their daughter was seeing some black guy.
Maybe I believed that. Maybe I deluded myself. Whatever. But I didn't mention
it.
And
then the moment was gone.
'Forget
it,' I said.
'Already
have,' Nathan replied.
I
walked over to the sink. I started to wash some plates. I wanted to turn and
hurl one right at Nathan Verney and crack his head in half.
But I
didn't do a thing. Like so many times before.
There
was silence between us, and I let that silence grow and fill my house as if it
could suffocate Nathan, could suffocate how I felt, could bury us both in
emptiness and dissolve everything.
And
perhaps that atmosphere would have stayed, stayed and mushroomed like some dark
fungus, but Linny arrived within the hour, and with her arrival everything
shifted to a different level altogether.
'A
different level, how d'you mean?' Father John asked.
I
smiled. 'She was so enthusiastic about everything. She would always bring something
- something great, something stupid - it didn't matter. That day she brought
Christmas party hats and balloons, all kinds of things from her own house. She
brought bottles of champagne and some cigars she'd stolen from her father,
these foot-long Havanas. That was what she did, she assumed control, she made
everything revolve around herself.'
'And
she stayed the rest of the day?'
I
nodded. 'Yes, the whole day.'
'And
when did these men come back?'
'The
exact time I could never be sure of, midnight, sometime after midnight I think.
I'd drunk a lot of champagne, smoked some weed too, and I slept heavily… and if
it hadn't been for the sheer volume and intensity of screaming I don't think I
would have woken at all.'
'But
you did wake up?'
I
nodded, lit another cigarette.
'And
what happened when you woke up?'
'First
of all I was conscious of something in the house that didn't belong there… you
know… when you just
know
that something isn't right?'
'Yes,'
Father John replied.
'That
feeling, that awareness, whatever you wanna call it… I just knew there was
something in the house that shouldn't have been.' 'And what else?'
The
darkness.
The
darkness was intense.
I
didn't know how to describe it. Darkness is darkness, right?