Dogwood (10 page)

My mama still sits in the living room and stares at the pictures on the mantel over the fireplace. Mornings are the worst, so she lies in bed as the sunlight streams in the window. My daddy is up before the sun, so his side of the bed is cold. He reads the paper and lets the dog out and checks the tomato plants and leaves footprints in the dew on the grass before she even knows what time it is.

Mama turns the Westclox alarm around so she doesn’t have to look at it because she remembers what time it was that she heard the sirens. She had a sick feeling as soon as the fire whistle blew, and she ran outside to see the smoke. I’ve heard her talk to her friends about it on the phone. In fact, I overheard her telling one of her friends that she prayed somebody’s house was on fire that morning.

Isn’t that awful? she said. That I would pray such a thing.

I don’t think it’s awful. People can get out of a burning house.

That first winter the sadness covered my mama like a blanket of snow, and she gazed at the closet full of coats and scarves and empty gloves. In the spring, the Goodwill truck came and took a bunch of sleds and coats and other clothes away. The
neighbors helped gather it all because she couldn’t bear to do it by herself.

She stares at those pictures on the mantel and thinks about her two little girls who will never sleep in their beds or hop out the door going to school or cry when the soap gets in their eyes or snuggle up to her late at night because some boy broke her heart. A mother’s grief is the worst because it’s always there in front of her. She carried the children, saw them come directly out of her body, nursed them from her own breasts, and then cared for them, kept them safe.

A father’s grief stays hidden. You have to look a lot harder to catch it. I’ve seen my daddy pause while looking at a school bus, and I wondered what was going on inside him. When he’s alone on the porch, his pipe lit, rocking back and forth, I think he’s thinking about Tanny and Karla and how they used to crawl up in his lap and go to sleep to the sound of the crickets and the whip-poor-wills and the soft light of the fireflies coming up from the wet ground like the prayers of parents for their kids. I don’t know if he ever prayed for them, but if he did, it didn’t do him a lot of good.

It was late one night when I saw him sitting in the corner of the living room, looking out at the darkness. Before he went to bed, he’d been drinking some of the stuff he keeps in his special cabinet over the refrigerator. When he got up, Mama didn’t stir and I stayed as quiet as I could and just watched as he poured another glass and downed it. Something was bothering him. He got into his gun cabinet and fumbled for some shells.

Then he headed for the car. I made it there before he did and hid in the backseat. It was an old Chevy Malibu that he said I could have when I got old enough, and there was a lot of stuff in the backseat, so I pulled a cover over me and stayed there. He turned left at the end of the driveway, but after that I kind of got lost as to where we were. I peeked out the window a couple of
times to see a gas station and then some streetlights in a parking lot, but it was as dark as pitch. I don’t know what pitch is, but I’ve heard him say that.

He pulled over to the side of the road, and I heard the rosebushes scrape against the car. It was then that I knew where we were, and I wondered if there was a way to stop him.

Then I wondered if I should even try
.

Eddie Buret tried hard to show everybody he was a strong-armed, no-nonsense chief, even though that seemed to come naturally. He’d nitpick, stand over my shoulder as I wrote up my traffic tickets and daily reports, and basically let me know I was on probation. So much for the peaceful little town police force he was trying to assemble.

On my first day, when they returned from the retirement party for Chief Buret, Eddie was already tipsy from a few beers and Wes could hardly stand. It was a good thing Maggie had gone with them because she was the only one who didn’t need a Breathalyzer. I mentioned that Mrs. Spurlock and her daughter had been by, asking about the missing person’s report, and Eddie lit into me. He said I shouldn’t give preferential treatment to “skanks” like that. It seemed extreme, but I learned that any mix of alcohol and police work caused Eddie to get mean.

“Don’t worry about him,” Maggie whispered when his door was closed and he and Wes were inside. “He don’t mean nothing by it. Tomorrow he won’t remember a thing he said.”

But Maggie’s prediction turned out to be wrong. The next day
he threw the missing person’s report on my desk. “Here’s your report. I told you I filed it.”

I tried to talk sense into him, but he seemed put off by the whole thing. “If you’re not going to respect my authority, we’re not going to be able to work together.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You gonna let this happen again?”

“No, sir.”

“Good.”

But it did happen again when I brought up the possibility of adding Kevlar vests to our inventory of equipment. He hit the roof, asking if I wanted to pay the cost. I’d seen them work while in Iraq and had several friends live after being shot.

Eddie wouldn’t listen. “Plus, they’re heavy and hot in the summer. You know how many shootings there have been in this town since I’ve worked here? That’s right, a big, fat goose egg. And I aim to keep it that way.”

My routine became regimented. I’d work early mornings, relieving Wes and patrolling neighborhoods and school zones. After work, I’d stop at The Home Depot, eat dinner with Lynda, then head to the old Benedict place and work on the roof or drywall. We spent a ton of money for a plumber to rework the pipes that had rusted out, but the rest of it was pretty straightforward.

One Saturday evening I told Lynda I had a surprise for her. She thought I was taking her out for dinner, but instead, we drove to the house and I put a blindfold on her, which made her laugh. She was scared that she might fall, with her belly poked out and off-balance, but I held on to her and led her up the rickety steps. At the top of the stairs we turned right, and I brought her into the little bedroom and closed the door.

I took the blindfold off and watched. Her face lit up like sparklers on the Fourth of July. Then the tears came as she surveyed
the room. Her parents had given us a crib, and I’d set it up in the corner. Beside that was a nice rocking chair. I’d painted the room the color she’d picked out at Sherwin-Williams and glued the Noah’s ark border with all the animals on it just below the ceiling.

The rest of the house was a pure mess with creaking floors and missing railings. Paint chips littered the kitchen, and the old refrigerator smelled like something had died in there. But this room, our baby’s room, felt brand-new. I’d redone the windows and the trim, added new hardwood flooring, and hung a new six-panel door. Standing there with the door closed, it felt like a kid’s room in some ritzy neighborhood in Huntington.

“Bobby Ray, it’s beautiful,” Lynda gushed. “Is this what you’ve been working on?”

“This and the roof. Just want you to see what it’s going to be like when it’s finished. Stay right here.” I hurried to the car and retrieved a basket and a blanket from the trunk.

Lynda was in the window on the second floor, still looking at everything, her hands over her mouth in a posture of awe.

I made her sit in the rocking chair and pulled the crib mattress out for me, and we ate fried chicken, biscuits, and cole slaw.

In the middle of the meal, she got down on all fours and planted a greasy kiss on my lips. “You’ve heard what happens to pregnant women, haven’t you?”

“They get strange appetites for weird foods, right?”

“Not just that. Their hormones rush around, and you never know what’s going to happen.”

“Is that so?” I wished I’d hung curtains on the window.

She kissed me again and then pulled away, sitting with her back against the wall, her knees drawn in.

“What? Did I do something wrong?”

A tear escaped. “I’m worried. What if something happens to you? What would
we
do?” She put a hand on her stomach.

I placed my hand on hers and kissed her again. “Honey, there’s
nothing that could take me away from the two of you. We’re going to watch this little guy grow up together and have a bunch of sisters and brothers. Besides, what could happen in a sleepy little town like this anyway?”

She lay back on the mattress and embraced me while the chicken got cold.

The bus that picked me up in Clarkston originated in Pittsburgh. Every time I hear the name of the city I think of October 11, 1972, and the final game of the National League play-offs. The last pitch. Bob Moose falling off the mound, letting go of the slider. Dust kicking up by Manny Sanguillen as he threw off his mask and hustled to the backstop. George Foster loping home from third base with the winning run. My father and I dancing around the Curtis Mathes TV.

Roberto Clemente, the best right fielder ever, would step on a plane to Nicaragua that winter and would never return. One decision changed the course of a life.

The bus driver that day looked like he needed convincing that the sum of our state was equal to its parts and not a hole. To most, West Virginia is a place you go through or around to get somewhere else. It is wide, hand-shaped, and filled with mythic beauty and unadorned, unending poverty. Its boundaries hold unparalleled beauty and danger. It is a redneck opera. The driver glanced in the mirror periodically, reading the past on my face and my newly purchased khakis and Carhartt T-shirt. The fact that I was heading anywhere from Clarkston betrayed me. Unlike Hester Prynne, I
didn’t need a scarlet letter to prove I had done something terrible. He no doubt thought I was some convenience store robber whose plan had gone awry. Maybe I’d wounded the clerk or stolen a few pickups. He had no idea the crime I paid for was much worse.

I stared out the window, trying to calculate the cost of the diesel against the sparse occupancy of the Greyhound. I counted maybe ten people in front of me, though I couldn’t see children with the high-backed seats.

We passed a bloated deer wrapped around a mile-marker sign, its eyes open and tongue lolling, wounds stuffed with gravel. The legs rose at a weird angle toward the sky, as if in petition to erase the grotesque pose.

In a flash I saw my father’s boots and a gun held at his side as he climbed over the barbed wire fence, then lifted the wire in the middle for me. Our first hunting trip. Squirrel season.

He sat me on a stump and put one knee to the ground, scanning the trees. He could shoot the eye of a squirrel at fifty yards with a .22. “This is a good spot—saw five or six the other day gathering for winter. They’ll be up with the first light.”

Hunting, like vacations, required an early start. Shuffling around in the dark, looking for an extra coat, calculating shells, keeping the dogs quiet. By this time, Carson could hunt on his own and had chosen the back side of the property, where not even a No Trespassing sign was needed.

An orange stripe lit the tops of trees. A red-tailed squirrel stretched his head out of a hole. The tree before us had grown sideways and up, like half of a football goal post, and the hole was right in the corner, where the tree took a turn toward the sky.

“You ready?” he whispered, not taking his eye off the twitching tail that circled the trunk and inched closer to us.

The .410 passed down to me was rusted on top and had a stock that pulled away from the barrel if you didn’t hold it right.

My father whispered the squirrel play-by-play. “Here he comes now. Get that gun ready and aim just a little to the right. That sight is off a bit.”

My thumbs were cold as I placed one on top of the other and edged the hammer back. Like a shelf too high for a child, one he has to pull a chair over to reach, the hammer was too much for me. I had it halfway back, struggling to hear the click as it lodged in place, gritting my teeth and mashing, when it slipped through both thumbs and struck the shell.

A thunderous roar. Leaves shook. A hole big enough to bury my squirrel opened in the earth by my feet. I was so shocked by the blast that I didn’t realize blood was pouring onto the white laces my mother had bought the week before when I told her I wanted new shoes.

I felt life leaking from me, but my father put a finger to his lips. “Put another shell in.”

“Daddy, I’m hurt,” I whispered.

I remember little about the downhill trip. He left our guns by the stump and wrapped my foot tightly with something, cradling me in his arms, my arms and one leg flopping. He held my injured foot in the air and gripped my ankle so tight I was sure he would pinch it off.

It was that foot that an inmate pointed to in the shower, asking me what had happened. It was not an observation from a concerned friend.

“You headed to Charleston?” an old woman in front of me said. I’d been watching her in the reflection of the window, knitting a hat. She was diminutive, with a finchlike face, a nose so pointed she looked like she had it sharpened for special occasions.

“Huntington.”

“You live in the city?”

“Actually east of there. My brother’s picking me up.”

“That’s nice of him. What’s he do?”

“He was in the military. I’m not sure what he’s into now.”

She shook her head. “So many people out of work these days. What do you do?”

“I’m actually looking for something.”

She craned her neck over the seat, and her eyes roamed over my clothes. “You just get out?”

I nodded.

“Well, bless your heart. A new start. How long were you in?”

I told her and she invited me next to her. We settled into the easy conversation of strangers, revealing enough to keep the banter going while the road beneath us changed.

The rolling hills were the same, spreading out like an ocean of green. Each spring when my father turned over the ground, my brother and I would find evidence that we stood on defiled soil. Those who had gone before us had touched the land and brought it under submission. Once, Carson found an arrowhead stuck in a tree. The arrow’s shaft had weathered away, and all that was left was the hewn rock. He left it there, saying we would bring our children back someday and show them, prove to them that we were not the first to walk those woods.

My new friend’s name was Mrs. Meyers, though she hadn’t been a Mrs. in a long time. “You have someone waiting for you? Other than your brother?”

“My mother.” I smiled. “She lives alone. Had a fall last winter and is still on the mend. You headed to Charleston?”

Her fingers worked like a spider spinning a web. “I’ll switch there. Headed to see my sister in Lexington.”

I knew the road well. Interstate 64 cut a swath through the southwestern part of the state, crossed the Big Sandy River, and flattened as it rolled into the land of Daniel Boone and the Kentucky Wildcats.

“This is for her. Cancer, you know. Too proud to buy a wig, so
I make her these. Stage IV. I scraped up enough for the bus ticket because it might not be much longer.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Mrs. Meyers dipped her head. “She’s had a full life. A lot longer than some. Did you hear about those kids playing at the reservoir the other day?”

She told me the story as a hawk flew across the road and lit on the branch of a pine. It fluttered and held on, the wind blowing it back so it had to adjust its grip, while scanning for prey.

“It’s sad when a child dies,” she said. “So much potential lost. I’ll bet those parents never get over it. First thing every morning they’ll wake up and remember what used to be. Can’t imagine that, can you?”

“No, I can’t.”

We rolled toward the capital and it grew cloudy, then began to rain, pelting the bus and sending drops of water running down the glass like tears.

Mrs. Meyers grew quiet, humming to herself, turning on the light. “There we go,” she said, fitting the gray beanie on her head. “How does it look?”

“I think your sister is going to love it. I can’t believe you finished.”

“I got a head start a few days ago.” She stuffed the knitting needles into her purse. She could have fit a person inside.

The Kanawha River lay below us as we exited the interstate, a mud-caked snake where my father had worked for more than thirty years. The city had changed—new hotels, restaurants, billboards, big box stores—but the river was just as brown, just as lazy.

“It’s none of my business,” Mrs. Meyers said. “You don’t have to tell me, but why’d they put you in Clarkston? You seem like such a nice young man.”

“I made a big mistake.”

“Sold something you shouldn’t have?”

I smiled. Seeing an old woman probe like this gave me an indication of what was ahead. “It was a costly error.”

She turned and patted my hand. “Well, you just remember it’s behind you. You’ve paid the debt, and the Lord’s given you another opportunity.”

There are losses that mark a life forever, that in simple terms define that life and everything around it. Dropped passes in the end zone. A wild pitch in the bottom of the ninth. But there are also collective losses shared. Blurred images of a grassy knoll. A child’s salute to a flag-draped coffin. A body on a balcony, men pointing. A space shuttle soaring, then exploding into smoky trails.

These losses provide borders for our collective territories and set life’s cornerstones. The locusts of time devour, and we are left with stalks. I was banished to a wasteland outside that territory, and reentering would cost. But I have to pay. For her. For me. For our future. I still had hope that our lives could be salvaged from the past.

As we neared the station, I opened a closed and locked door. I allowed myself to dream. Ruthie Bowles had given me permission. As discouraging as the visit had been, as the news Karin had shared, I took heart in Ruthie’s revelation.

Before she left, Ruthie had said something that sealed my decision to return. “Your heart is good, Will. I can see why Karin still talks about you.”

“How much has she told you?”

“Enough to know that I want to see your children before I die.”

I had felt free to open my own doors and tell her things no living soul on earth knew but me. She had taken my words, processed them to the bitter root, and turned them back to me, giving hope and a mission—to rescue the heart of the woman I loved. I knew the road would be difficult and I had no idea how long it would take—who knows the ways of the heart?—but I was prepared to stay and work to help her heal.

Ruthie had opened the door for us both. It was my job to walk through it.

I waved at Mrs. Meyers and she rose, giving me a peck on the cheek.

“My best to your sister,” I said. “I hope you have a good visit.”

“Good luck, Will.” She didn’t continue, but it felt like she wanted to say,
You’re going to need it.

Clouds hugged the landscape as the bus chugged west toward Huntington. The road had been cut through the hills, so I mostly saw rocks and trees, but what I could see from that rain-splattered window surprised me. Big box stores and restaurants dotted the landscape between exit signs. I expected things to be different, but what I saw was shocking.

Huntington was a mixture of the new and old. We passed Marshall University and the new football stadium. At the bus station I had to resist the urge to remain inside. An appointment with my parole officer helped ease that, and I walked the two miles from the station, up Fourth Avenue past the shops I recalled from childhood.

The parole officer was a middle-aged woman who didn’t fit the profile of what I expected. She commended me for my quick reporting and laid out the guidelines, most of which I’d already memorized. I had to find a job. I couldn’t possess firearms or weapons of any sort. No alcohol or drugs. No bars. Of all the conditions, the employment scared me the most.

“You’ll be staying at this address?” she said, looking over the form I’d filled out.

“With my mother. It’s the house I grew up in.”

She handed me a packet of information and said she’d see me for my next report.

I walked back to the bus station looking for my brother, checking the clock and glancing at a bank of pay phones. I had
vowed not to call him. The warden faxed the information of when to meet me along with a note asking him to come alone. Dealing with Carson was hard enough. Adding others to the mix was a relational accelerant, and I knew there were things we needed to deal with. The warden said Carson had agreed.

After years of looking at walls and staring through bars, it felt foreign to walk outside without permission. I knew that would change. I couldn’t wait to go back on the hill and explore the old haunts I had visited every night as I went to sleep.

I had a ritual in Clarkston that eased me into each long prison night. I read at least half an hour, sitting on my bed with my back against the wall. At lights-out, I would lie down and make the long trip in my memory out of the house and up the hill, past the barn and pond, the woodpile, and the abandoned station wagon. I would pass my father sitting on his tractor, a rake or baler attached, his Cincinnati Reds hat planted firmly on his balding head.

I walked the graded path, stepping from one limestone boulder to another. The path snaked up the hill and curved to the plateau of the tree line. My father had constructed the road the summer I was born. He was always a believer that animals knew much more than we did about ingress and egress, so he followed the path cattle and deer had made over the years, with a few variations, and the project was completed before the first snow.