Dogwood (21 page)

August came—the dog days when the heat and humidity make you long for a swimming pool. I slept until afternoon underneath the hum of the window air conditioner I’d bought at Sam’s Club. After I ate, I worked on the hill, digging the foundation and laying the pipe. Hooking up water and electricity back there was going to be a stretch. I’d talked with a contractor who told me it could be done, but it was going to take some cash I didn’t have.

Pouring the concrete was another problem. I’d done some flat work with a man who owned a mixing truck over in Wayne County. He finally came by and looked at what I’d done. “Driveway won’t support my truck, and it’d cost a fortune to snake a line back there. The pump I have wouldn’t be strong enough for what you need. Probably best to get a portable mixer and do it by hand. Just frame up the sides like normal and pour it yourself. It’s going to take a while, but that’s the only way I can see it working.”

“I’ve got the time,” I said.

I rented his portable mixer and pulled it back on the hill. Seeb let me have two days off, and I hauled the concrete by wheelbarrow. It was backbreaking, sweaty work, and I labored until after midnight, when I collapsed. At the end of the second day I had the whole thing poured, but I looked as white as a concrete ghost.

After that, every day brought progress as the house took shape. When darkness came, I would sit on the porch slab and study the
valley and wonder what it would look like finished. Sipping a cool drink from my deck. Visualizing the whole area covered with a blanket of new snow, the only tracks made by a passing deer or a fox. Or what it would look like in a few months when the trees blazed with color only God himself could paint.

I was excited at the end of August to put in a large order at 84 Lumber for most of the flooring and joists. The money I didn’t spend on food, gas, and a used 4x4 pickup went to materials. Every week I would lose a few hours repairing the truck or running Mama to the doctor or to see her two siblings who were still living, a brother and a sister.

“We should have some sort of get-together,” Carson said one Sunday afternoon when he and Jenna came for supper. “These relatives of ours are dropping like flies trapped in an old refrigerator.”

There were a few of my father’s relatives in the area, but most had moved to other states, too old to travel or too ill. Mama quickly put the idea to rest by saying she wasn’t holding any reunion at our place.

Jenna put a hand on my leg under the table, and I glanced at her. She smiled, eating her potato salad, and I asked her to pass a dinner roll. While her hands were occupied, I grabbed the greasiest chicken breast I could find and slid it under the table, holding it just above my leg. I thanked her for the roll and she smiled sweetly, then returned her right hand to the chicken breast and jumped a little in her chair.

“What’s wrong, darlin’?” Carson said.

She wiped her hands on a napkin and excused herself.

Carson rolled his eyes and looked at me.

I just shrugged.

“Mama tells me you’re spending more time on that project on the hill. You really building a shack up there?”

“Come see it after dinner. We’ll hop in the truck and I’ll take you back.”

He looked at his watch. “No, Jenna has a couple of shows she likes to watch. Some other time.”

“I don’t know what he would want with a big old house on top of that hill when we have this one right here,” Mama said. “I probably won’t be around much longer, and you could have the whole place to yourself.”

“You’re gonna outlive us all,” Carson said.

“Plus, Will’s gonna start a family back there, aren’t you?” Jenna said as she walked into the room. “You’ve been here long enough to check out the merchandise. Anyone strike your fancy at church?”

“I can’t get him to go with me,” Mama said. “But there are several women who I’m sure would be interested—don’t you think?”

“I could think of several at the shop who would jump at the chance to go out with an ex-convict. Just to add some spice to their lives.”

I put my fork down and walked away from the table.

“Aw, now, Will, she didn’t mean anything by it,” Carson said. “You come back here and tell us who’s gonna move in with you in that hillbilly palace.”

But I wasn’t listening. I’d been gone since the two arrived. Sunday was my night off, and I grabbed a sleeping bag and a toss-up tent, the kind you throw on the ground, anchor, and crawl inside. I slept by my house that night with a small fire and thought about all the things Carson and I had done as kids and things we wished we hadn’t done.

I still had woodsmoke in my clothes the next night when I went to work, and Shirley noticed. I told her I’d been camping and she smiled.

As I walked her to her car, she said, “Oh, I almost forgot.
There was somebody who called on the request line for you.” She dug in the pocket of her denim shirt and handed me a pink slip.

I figured it was my secret admirer, the Heather Locklear look-alike. But the message said,
Karen said to tell you she’d be listening tonight.

“When did you get this?” I said.

“A little after ten, I think,” she said.

“How did she sound?”

Shirley raised her eyebrows. “Like any normal love-starved country music fan, I suppose. Is there something special about this one?”

“Maybe.” I thanked Shirley for the message and watched her drive away. The leaves were turning up in the wind like a storm was brewing. The tree branches waved a warning.

I took the steps two at a time and hurried inside, the light above the door blinking, letting me know the request line was ringing. “WDGW,” I said, out of breath.

Click.

It had to be her. She’d let it ring as many times as she dared. I glanced at the list of upcoming songs. The music director had programmed the station so we wouldn’t replay a tune in any twenty-four-hour period except for current hits. Since I knew Karin would be listening, I wanted to pick something she’d remember, something we had shared.

That’s when it came to me, and I ran into the production room to a stack of albums I had gone through during a long stretch in the summer. I found what I was looking for, stuck it on the turntable, and cued it up. It was all coming back to me. That night. The music. The wind. The smell of the wine on her breath. The taste of her lips.

“Welcome to another set of solid Classic Country. I’m Mark Joseph with you again and happy to be back, ready to take you through the early-morning hours and hopefully see you through
to the other side. If you have a request, a memory this next song brings, or you just want to suggest something, call the request line and I’d be glad to hear what you have in mind. This is Jackson Browne from a long time ago—not necessarily classic country, but it’s close enough.”

I flipped the remote switch to the production console, and “These Days,” a simple ballad that spoke of things forgotten and the chances missed by lovers, began. The needle was ancient, and Jackson’s voice muffled but no less powerful. It had been so many years since I had heard this song, and I couldn’t help but think Karin and I were hearing it together. If the program director was listening, I’d be in trouble, but compared with everything else, it was the least of my worries.

I watched the request line, the phone mounted near the desk, praying for Line 1 to flash. There were four lines, and the station used them for contests in the morning and afternoon drive. Caller number five. Caller number ten. We usually just picked up the first line and said they had won.

About a minute into the song, Line 1 rang. I let it blink three times and picked it up. “Classic Country 16.”

Nothing on the other end. Just someone breathing heavily.

Line 2 rang. I put the first on hold. “Hello? Can I help you?”

Nothing.

“Okay, hang on. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait,” a raspy voice said. “Don’t hang up.”

“Do you have a request?” I said. “Because I have someone holding on the other line.”

“Whoever it is can’t be as important as what I’m about to say.”

The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Something about the way the guy talked rang a bell.

“All right, go,” I said.

“Turn around.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, not because there was a draft behind me or I could sense someone else in the building, and not because I was hearing the voice on the phone and in the room, or because I noticed Virginia’s line was lit up on the phone tree, but because in my haste to get back inside the building, I had forgotten to lock the front door.

Instead of turning, I punched down Line 3 and dialed 9 and 1. That’s as far as I got before something hit me in the back of the head and I slumped to the spider-infested floor.

“How many were there?” Eddie Buret said.

My head was on fire and my jaw felt loose. I had cuts on my face and a knot the size of a mouse on the back of my head. “I only know about the one who cracked me in the head. Guess there could have been more.”

“Could you identify them?”

“After I hit the floor, I remember seeing cowboy boots. And the guy wore a mask. That’s about it.”

“You’re lucky somebody noticed the station was off the air,” he said. “You could’ve been out the whole night.”

“We have loyal listeners,” I said, glancing at the phone. “Who called?”

“Female, I think. Didn’t give her name. Said something was wrong over here and for us to look into it.”

I wanted it to be Karin.

Tom, our morning guy, entered groggily as Eddie finished taking my statement. “They roughed you up pretty good,” Tom said. “You should get that looked at.”

I waved him off. “Just let me finish my shift.”

“No,” Tom said. He didn’t sound mad—actually it sounded a lot like compassion. “You were attacked and I’m here. I just talked with Seeb. He said he wants you to go to the hospital.”

I turned to Eddie. “There’s no way to trace the number of the person who called, is there? I want to thank her.”

He shook his head. “Came up unavailable.”

I shook off the rain and climbed into my truck. Eddie followed, leaning down and pecking on my window until I rolled it down. I could hear the rain-swollen river and the rising tide that seemed to envelop me.

“You know this is not going to stop, Will. This is not going to be the last time somebody tries to hurt you. Or worse.”

“I’m surprised it took them so long.”

“You should have been prepared.”

“You know I can’t carry a gun. You suggesting I should?”

“Wouldn’t want you to break your parole. Just be more careful. And you might think about relocating. No secret where you live. Your mother too.”

I nodded and rolled up the window as he walked to his cruiser. The whole thing felt like a setup. If it was someone looking for justice, they could have just killed me. And Eddie’s warning seemed almost as ominous as the attack at the station.

I started my truck and raced home.

I told my counselor everything I’d found out about Will Hatfield, his mother, his friend who was missing, the house on the hill, and the woman Karin. Everything except my dad and what he’d done.

There were conversations with my mother I wasn’t supposed to hear. Conversations with people who came by the house. Talk in secret in quiet voices.

I don’t know what they expect a man to do whose children have been wiped from the face of the earth like june bugs on a windshield, my dad had said to a neighbor. The law says the boy’s paid his debt to society and that we’ve taken enough from him. Locked him away for a few years to teach him a lesson. But every day he wakes up and takes a breath of air is another day my kids are never coming back.

I hear you, the neighbor said, spitting a line of tobacco juice on the ground.

He’s out, free as a bird. If you ask me, he didn’t get anything compared to what he did to us.

My father’s calendar at work had red Xs on it, all the way up to the day Will Hatfield was released. There was a string of letters and numbers written on the calendar, and after checking, I discovered it was for a Greyhound bus that came to Huntington. My dad loaded his shotgun that night and sat in the dark after Mama went to bed. Just sat there almost all night in the living room, staring out the window.

We’re a Christian family, good Christian people who believe in the power of God to forgive and to change people, Daddy said when the preacher came over the next day. The preacher said he was there to talk, but I think Mama called him. I don’t have no reservation in believing that God can forgive somebody. That’s his business. But I figure if God can forgive a man for what Will Hatfield did, then God can forgive me too.

The preacher read some verses, something about vengeance being mine and all that.

Daddy said he would think on it, wait for the right time, but that in his heart he knew what was right. I can’t stand the thought of that man sleeping soft and warm in his bed while my babies are cold in the ground. I’m never gonna walk in their room and watch the sun warm their faces. I’ve lived all these years hearing their voices echo through this house. Do you know what that’s like?

You know that the Lord has them safe in his hands. You know that you will see them again.

Now that is a comfort; I’ll admit. I want to see my babies again. But the Lord has told me he’s going to use me to get justice—mete it out.

I guess that’s what my daddy was aimin’ to do the night he took his gun to his car. He had kissed my mama good night and sat there in the dark again, something welling up inside him. He kept mumbling something as he drank the stuff he’d poured for himself. I couldn’t understand, and when he went to the gun cabinet, I snuck out and got in the back of the car. It was as dark as pitch and I hunkered down. I should have known he wouldn’t see me because his mind was someplace else. Maybe he was thinking about the funeral and the little caskets. Or listening to the pitiful way the women were bawlin’ and you couldn’t stop ’em. Little kids with their bunches of flowers getting ready for the cemetery.

My daddy always said he used to be fast when he was a kid. That he could run like the wind. Well, as old as he was, he sure ran
up that driveway that night, hightailin’ it away from his car parked by the road. He was kind of snorting as he ran and frothing at the mouth like some rabid dog, panting and wheezing like it was the last race of his life. He didn’t slow up till he got near their yard. He stood by a persimmon tree and listened.

He had his hands on his knees, doubled over, the crickets and frogs trying to see who could make more noise. He saw something in the moonlight—a stepladder by the garage—and he put his gun down and went to it.

I wanted to pick up the gun and run back to the car or throw it in the creek that ran past their property. I wanted to ask my dad if he would like to give Mrs. Hatfield the same heartache he had known.

He’d seen her at the Kroger in Barboursville, and he told Mama that it liked to kill the woman just to look at him. I tried to pretend I hadn’t seen her, but she knowed. She could see the hurt in my eyes all the way from the bakery.

My dad moved the stepladder to a window that was lit. The ground was soft over there, and the stepladder sunk a few inches. They had planted bushes under the window that didn’t do very well, and I figured there was just too much water in the soil for the roots to get a good hold. He climbed up a step at a time till he reached the windowsill, then put the gun in his left hand and steadied himself with his right.

He looked inside, the light shining on his face, and he had to lean closer to see what it was he was looking for. His mouth dropped open, and he studied it for a few seconds. He put his lips together in kind of a defiant look—or maybe he was resigned to do what he’d come to do. I was about to reach out and grab him
when he started back down the ladder. He didn’t put it back or anything. He just took off down the driveway toward the car.

I knew I was dead because there was no way I could catch him, so I watched him drive off. I got up on the ladder myself and took a few steps. I had to get to the third one from the top before I could see inside. Will Hatfield was on the bed, a hand behind his head, every stitch of clothes on, even his shoes, staring at something. It took me a moment to see it was a newspaper clipping. I could tell by the picture it was the one that talked about my sisters. I wondered what had happened to make my daddy not want to go through with his plan. Surely Will looking over the newspaper clipping would have set him off.

Then I noticed Will’s stomach. It was moving up and down and his chest was heaving and his shoulders shaking like people at the funeral. Will was crying. He dropped the article and reached up and put his arm over his eyes, and I could tell by the spittle in his mouth that he’d been at it for a while. Just bawlin’ his eyes out like some grieving mother.

I wondered what Daddy had thought, if maybe letting him suffer for what he did would be better than killing him. At least right then.

I walked down to the road and headed back for the house in the dark
.