Faithful Unto Death (13 page)

He snapped the phone shut, contemplated the toes of his shoes for a second or two, and then said, “Could we walk instead of sitting in the weeds out here?”

I said sure and Baby Bear was more than agreeable to the idea. We continued the way I had started out, away from my house and toward Elkins Road. I was thinking about how he had called Jo, not forgetting his promise, and I liked him for that but I was also thinking about his saying, “I love you,” which sounded way too intimate and possessive for my tastes. I wondered if Jo was saying it back.

By night, the backyards we were passing were as different as they were by day. We passed a yard where the homeowners had lined their flower beds in dimly glowing solar lamps. I’ve been tempted to try those. They don’t give off much light, but they’re easy to install and not too expensive. Solar lamps are nowhere near as effective as the kind electricians put up. You can get a lighting specialist to come out to your home and get lights put up in the branches of your trees, highlighting the pool and I don’t know what all. The Garcias’ yard is lit like that, front and back, and it’s real pretty when they give a party at night.

I was maundering on about these things as Alex and I walked, giving him time to get his thoughts together, and that’s what I was talking about when we got to the gate that keeps unauthorized vehicles off the levee. I say a gate—there are two posts with a chain between them. You find a gate everywhere a road cuts through the levee—to keep teenagers from driving out onto the unpaved levee surface.

We had come out of the trees to Elkins Road. To the right was the Avalon Community Center parking lot, where Alex’s truck had been parked the night his father died. Where it was parked now. Ahead and to the left was the corner of the golf course where Graham Garcia’s body had been found.

I stopped talking. I had exhausted the topic of outdoor lighting, which neither of us had any real interest in. I’d been filling up the silence before I found out something I might not want to know. We crossed to the other side of Elkins and stood on the sidewalk under the streetlight. To maintain the levee system, the road is raised here, so we walked up through the thick, overgrown grass until we were sheltered in the belt of trees rimming the seventh hole. We looked down through the trees into the golf course. It was quiet, and in an unimaginative but well-groomed, lush, green way, it was pretty. There were lights on in the custom houses backing up to the golf course. Cars went by every now and then. From where we were standing, up close to the trunk of a fallen log, we were shielded by the trees, and you couldn’t have seen us from the golf course unless you’d really been looking.

“You swear on your honor?”

I said I did.

Alex said, “I was sitting on the log.”

“What time was this?”

“It was late.” He cut his eyes at me. “It was seriously late.”

He sat down on the log.

“I wanted Jo to meet me that night but she said she couldn’t. I came over anyway. To be closer to her. Maybe she would change her mind if I was already here. And she did. She said she could give me half an hour. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. We sat in the truck and talked. Then she said she had to go. She had a test next morning. So I walked her home”—he cut his eyes at me—“the back way.”

Meaning the levee to the back gate to the garage roof, to her bedroom window . . .

“And then I came back. I wasn’t ready to go home. So I sat here, just quiet, you know?”

“Alex, I don’t much want you calling Jo after—”

“So I sat here, thinking about Jo, and I see this guy come walking out on the golf course, and you know, it’s late and dark, so already he has my attention, and when he gets closer, I can see it’s Dad. Which was totally random—it’s o-dark-thirty on the golf course, and he comes walking out like it’s Saturday afternoon and it’s his turn at the tee.”

“Where had he come from?” I asked. “Where was he parked?”

Alex didn’t answer directly. He stretched his arm out to point where the golf course cart path veered down to tunnel under Alcorn Oaks and continue on to the other side of the golf course. He pointed.

“That’s where I saw them.”

“Them?”

“Dad and Jo.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t actually Jo.”

“You just this second said—”

“It couldn’t have been Jo. She went back home to study. And anyway, I picked her up from school on Monday. She said it wasn’t her.” Alex’s mouth twisted.

“You actually asked Jo if she had—”

“It made her mad.”

“You
think
?”

“Listen! It looked like Jo, okay? I’m telling you, it freaking looked like her!” Alex’s voice was shaky.

“You’re saying your dad was with a girl? Not a woman, but a
girl
?”

He plowed on, not acknowledging my questions. “He was standing there under the trees, acting like he was practicing his putting, which he wasn’t.” He gave a snort of derision. “You don’t practice putting in the rough. And you don’t practice swings that late at night on an unlit course. And you don’t putt with a Big Bertha.” He glanced at me. “A Big Bertha is a driver.”

I didn’t give a hoot about practice swings.

“So that was different. I mean, he was out there in the middle of the night, on the golf course, in the rough. Then the whole putting charade. And then she came out of the tunnel, her long hair all down her back, and Dad ran up to her and he put his arms around her and they kissed.”

He turned his burning eyes on me.

“No,” I said.

His eyes didn’t waver. “He bent her over backward. If I’d had a gun, I would have shot him.” He leaned over and spit on the ground, then turned his back on the golf course and started walking to his truck, Baby Bear ambling at his side. “Then I left. I didn’t need to see any more. I didn’t want to see any more.”

When he got to the Ford, he beeped the locks and climbed inside. It’s a big truck for a kid that age. He unrolled the window and I put my hands on it, trying to keep him in place so I could tell him it wasn’t Jo, it couldn’t have been Jo. Because, you know, two hundred plus pounds can keep an F-150 in place.

“Could she have been older, Alex? Like, thirty?” Thirty would be better. Thirty would be much better.

“I told you. I thought it was Jo. She was Jo’s age.”

“Alex, Jo is fourteen.”

He looked at me.

I had to step back quick to keep my arms from getting torn off when he reversed and peeled out of the parking lot. When he topped Elkins, I could see the cell phone at his ear. I knew he was calling Jo. The way he’d promised to.

Baby Bear must have thought he was jogging back to the house with an old man. That’s how I felt. Old and shocked and sick at heart. Not believing what I’d heard. Graham Garcia with a child. Because a fourteen-year-old is a child.

Alex was mistaken. His father couldn’t have been with someone that young. Alex had said it was late, it was dark; the kid would have been tired, and he’d had Jo on his mind. The mind can play tricks on you.

It couldn’t have been a girl that young.

The idea of a man Graham Garcia’s age touching one of my daughters . . . If Graham Garcia had touched my child, if he had so much as laid his little finger on her, I would have killed him myself. I would have killed that man. I would—someone else had killed Graham Garcia.

I wasn’t the only man who loved his daughters. I wouldn’t be the only man who would feel murderous at the violation of his child.

Baby Bear gave a yelp and I stopped, my body soaked and my knees trembling. Somewhere along the way, I’d started running and I’d outrun Baby Bear. I didn’t think I could do that. Baby Bear didn’t, either. He caught up, reproach in his eyes. I dropped to the grass and lay on my back, my blood pounding in my ears.

The black sky was sprinkled with stars—there’s too much light in Sugar Land to see the whole panoply.

My God made that sky. My God was holding this world in His hands. He held me and He held Jo and He held the someone else. The fourteen-year-old someone who had met Graham Garcia on the golf course the night he died.

My heart slowed. I got to my feet and stumbled home, Baby Bear staying close and muttering in concern. The weight of my promise bowed my shoulders.

Seventeen

A
nnie had been waiting for me when I got back from walking Baby Bear. She knew something had happened with Alex; Annie had overheard Jo’s side of those phone conversations. Not unreasonably, she wanted to know what Alex and I had talked about.

I told her about the promise. She said I never should have made the promise, which was true enough, but the advice was too late to do me any good. She wanted to know what I was going to do with whatever information I now had, and I couldn’t give her a satisfactory answer to that question, either, because I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do. Annie pushed harder and I bit her head off.

I hadn’t slept. I’d stood under the shower until the hot water ran out, stood there until it turned tepid, stood there till it turned cold.

I had lain down next to my Annie Laurie, who wasn’t speaking to me and was tossing and turning herself. When she finally fell into fitful sleep, I got up and prowled the house.

I climbed the stairs and rested my cheek against Jo’s door. My child, my baby, my little girl. God protect her. Oh, if someone, some man had wheedled his way into my Jo’s life, I would want that man dead. I would. I could understand that kind of murder. That’s not saying it’s right.

That’s not saying it’s wrong.

I don’t know. I don’t know. But I could understand. That’s all I’m saying. I could understand.

Baby Bear heard me and snuffled at the door, asking me to open it. I opened the door as quietly as I could and Baby Bear pushed against my legs, his tail beating the air. I crossed to Jo’s bed and looked down at my sleeping daughter.

Light spilled in through the window. The life-sized plastic goose with a five-watt bulb in its belly glowed from a corner. That goose had been in Jo’s nursery and she’s never turned loose of it.

Jo lay on her back, her dark hair in a braid lying across her pillowcase. Her lashes were so long they brushed her cheeks. She breathed with her mouth open like a child. She looked about ten.

Thank God it wasn’t Jo.

Baby Bear and I padded out of Jo’s room and down to the kitchen, where I studied Annie’s collection of wine bottles for a long time before I pulled a box of Alpha-Bits out of the pantry and poured myself and Baby Bear each a bowl. I had mine with milk.

After a while, Annie Laurie appeared in her nightshirt, her hair tousled, and watched us from the door. She got herself a coffee cup and poured out some cereal into it, added a splash of milk, and joined us. When Annie was done eating, she put her cup on the floor and Baby Bear danced it over to the cabinets trying to get the last bit of sugary milk onto his tongue. She got out of her chair and put her hands on my shoulders. I covered one of her hands with my own. She kissed the back of my bowed head and went back to our bedroom.

It was a long night.

I woke up in an easy chair. Jo had left for school and Annie Laurie was off, too. She’d left me a note to remind me of the building committee meeting.

So I had to meet with the church building committee at ten o’clock and be at Honey Garcia’s side at eleven thirty while she made the final decisions concerning Graham’s funeral. I wasn’t sure which I dreaded most.

Eighteen

From:
Walker Wells

To:
Merrie Wells

Subject:
Jo

Hey, Sweetheart—Do me a favor. Call your sister.

From:
Merrie Wells

To:
Walker Wells

Subject:
Re:
Jo

What’s up?

From:
Walker Wells

To:
Merrie Wells

Subject:
Re:
Jo

Could you just call her? I’m asking.

From:
Merrie Wells

To:
Walker Wells

Subject:
Re:
Jo

A little information would be good. But okay. I’ll call.

Nineteen

B
y ten fifteen, there was no question. The building committee meeting was going to be the worst ordeal of the day.

Our church family is about three-quarters through a six-part building plan. The way we do it is we don’t start building on the next phase until the phase we started before is completely finished and we have the money in hand for the next. Not pledged, mind you, but cash in the bank.

There’s good sense in that policy. It means we don’t get tangled in interest rates, and it doesn’t send us into a tailspin if some member has a sudden reversal of fortune (or of conscience) and can no longer fulfill their pledge. We know what we have to work with before we get started.

On the downside (of course, there is always a downside, and sometimes it feels like there are always three or four downsides, no matter which side I choose)—on the downside, building the way we do, piecemeal, ends up costing significantly more than if we just committed to the whole project at once.

I mean, the contractor has to shut down operations until we get all the money together. Then he has to gather his crew again, restart his supply lines, deal with the headache of finding brick and tile and what all to exactly match what we’ve already installed, because we wouldn’t give him enough funds to have it reserved in the first place, and oh, I don’t know.

Michael Edwin serves as our general contractor. He’s a member and he gives us his time for free, which is a big deal—he normally oversees projects like sports stadiums and high-rise condos in far-off places. And he gets understandably chapped about what seems to him to be an amateurish and wasteful way of doing business. Michael is regularly on the line for millions; it’s part of doing business as far as he’s concerned. And when I talk to him, and he explains it all, I’m utterly convinced that we should go ahead and make the leap of faith and just build the dang thing.

Then Carl Shelby, who handles the accounting business for the church, also at no cost, gets hold of me and sits me down and scares me half to death with stories of churches who have bitten off more than they could gulp down and consequently lost hundreds of members who got tired of the constant pleas for money, so that even more funds dried up until finally the church was foreclosed on and sold to be a bar or a brothel or something else I don’t want to contemplate, though the only Church of Christ I ever knew to be foreclosed on is now a public library and a very decent little pub.

They were both wasting their time telling
me
these things, though, and they should know that, because I’m not a voting member of the building committee. And thank you, God, for that.

But I still have to be at the meetings.

Today Bob Carmichael suggested a big cross on the steeple. Jim Brightwell thought that’s too Baptist for words. Carmichael said, apropos of the Baptist comment, that what he really wanted was a cross that would rise higher than the Baptist cross that stands on the other side of Highway 59 from us.

Dr. Fallon, who usually has plenty to say at the building committee, was silent and ill looking—he seemed preoccupied. How he made it on this committee, I don’t know, because usually it’s members who (1) have some special expertise, like Edwin, or (2) have been with us for years, or (3) have a ton of expendable money and they’re willing to spend it on the church. I know, I know. I’m not saying that’s the way it should be. I’m just telling you how it is.

Brightwell said why don’t we install stained glass windows and go all Catholic and have done with it. Sam Pearce said there’s nothing in the Bible against stained glass, and for his part, he has never understood why all the Churches of Christ look like a cross between a basketball stadium and an upside-down swimming pool, and is there some reason we don’t want our churches to look like churches?

Fallon roused himself, glowered a few inches over my head, and said why wasn’t there more preaching on the Ten Commandments?

I sat up straighter and stopped playing Words with Friends on my cell phone.

Brightwell ignored Fallon and said, fine, let’s put up some big, garish, neon, blinking-light cross; let’s put up thirty, and plaster our windows with pictures of writhing bloody saints, and let’s have a little incense while we’re at it, only first, first let’s take the name “Church of Christ” off the front of the building, because . . .

At that point I excused myself to meet with Honey Garcia. I was just about looking forward to funeral planning at this point.

Settegast-Koph Funeral Home was handling the funeral. They have a location less than ten minutes from the church, so I didn’t really need the half hour I’d allowed for drive time, but I needed to get out of that meeting. Usually I use extra minutes to return phone calls, and that’s what I should have done; my cell was showing two voice mails and three text messages. But I had hamster wheels spinning in my head and I couldn’t settle to it.

I sat in the funeral home parking lot running the air conditioner like I had access to HD’s bottomless gas card and tried to think about what I should do about what Alex had told me. The hamster wheels spun on without producing one single idea. I’d gotten out of the car and headed for the door when I saw Honey’s Escalade pull in.

Cruz got out of the driver’s seat. I’d never seen her drive Honey’s car, and it was a little bit funny watching her clamber out of the high-set SUV. Short women should not drive SUVs.

Honey slipped out of the passenger side and leaned her head against the edge of the opened door for a minute before she took a step away from the Escalade and slammed the door. Honey was wearing a crumpled black linen suit that bleached her of color, and one wing of her auburn hair stood up wonky-like. An unsteady step confirmed my suspicions about why Cruz was driving.

Jenasy Garcia got out of the backseat and slammed the door so hard it made my teeth hurt.

She looked like a taller, slimmer, and angrier version of Honey. Oh, and Jenasy was sober, so that was different, too. Her auburn hair was pulled into a loop and her face was somber and swollen from crying. In contrast to her mother’s tailored suit, Jenasy was wearing jeans, flat sandals, and a Southwestern University tee. She had her arms crossed tightly below her breasts. She didn’t look at me or her mother, and when Cruz said something to her in Spanish, Jenasy shot back in staccato Spanish that didn’t sound particularly reconciliatory. My Spanish CDs evidently had limits, because I couldn’t follow any of it except that I’m pretty sure Jenasy called her mother a cow’s head. Or the mother of a cow’s head, which sounds less likely, because that would make Jenasy the cow’s head . . .

I got out to meet them.

Honey said, “Thanks for being here, Bear. Jenasy, you remember Mr. Wells, don’t you?”

Jenasy looked up at me and nodded and offered me a cool, slim hand.

She said, “You’re Merrie’s dad.”

I said I was and I offered my condolences.

Jenasy gave me another nod and a twist of her mouth.

She asked, “Is Father Nat already here?”

Her voice was rough and thick with the tears she was holding back.

I didn’t know. We walked in together with Cruz leading the way and waited in the dim foyer for someone to come out and give us some direction. Honey sat on the edge of the sofa and hugged her purse.

“Where’s Alex?” I said.

Jenasy was bent over a glossy casket catalog laid out on a side table, flipping through the pages without any real show of interest.

“The little shit didn’t want to come.” She said it without looking up.

Honey flapped her hands ineffectually. “Oh, now, Jen, it’s not that he didn’t want to come—”

“Glad you aren’t contesting that the spoiled brat is a little shit.”

Honey leaned over and slapped her hand down on the table next to the catalog Jenasy was looking through. Jenasy jumped. Honey looked at Jenasy hard until the girl dropped her eyes. I think it’s interesting what can come through the alcohol haze when there’s a real need.

Jenasy pressed her lips together and rolled her eyes without looking up. “Let me be more accurate. We told him last night about this appointment. We woke him up this morning in plenty of time to get ready and go. He didn’t get up and he didn’t come. I think it’s safe to assume that means he didn’t want to come, but if Mother—”

Before Jenasy could continue, as she seemed prepared to, Cruz interrupted.

“Jenasy,” Cruz said, “you will speak to your mama, and of your mama, with respect. Don’t be shaming the family. Time like this.”

Jenasy flushed. We were all relieved when a young woman opened a staff door and walked in. Everything about her, from the center part in her dark hair down to her sensible black pumps, was understated. She closed the door behind her so softly I barely heard the click, and then she walked over to Honey and held out her hand. She had the low, even voice I’ve noticed funeral directors cultivate.

“Mrs. Garcia? My name is Margaret Butler. On behalf of all of us at Settegast-Koph, I’d like to express our sympathy for your terrible loss.”

After Honey had given the offered hand a squeeze, the woman sat down across from her, her knees angled toward Honey and her hands folded quietly on her lap. The move was so practiced it looked natural. I’d seen it done often, and I knew it was, in fact, practiced and deliberate. Not that I had a problem with that. These people know their business, and in spite of what you see on television and the movies, I’ve never seen it done with anything but compassion and dignity.

Margaret Butler said, “It’s our job to make this part of the process just as easy and painless as we possibly can. Please feel free to ask any questions, and to make these decisions without feeling pressured. Is this your priest?” She looked up at me.

That’s when Nat Fontana came through the door, and his clerical collar alerted Margaret that she had the wrong guy.

It’s a testament to Graham’s involvement with his church that Nat was here instead of a lay volunteer from the St. Laurence Funeral Ministry. With over five thousand registered families in his parish, Nat can’t be everywhere for everybody, and with masses of volunteers mustered for every call from Friday fish fries to visitation of the sick, he doesn’t have to be. That he was, was an indication that Nat had a personal relationship with Graham or, possibly, with Dr. Garcia.

Nat is almost as big as I am—and big coincidence, he played ball for Notre Dame. The little local weekly, the
Fort Bend Sun
, once did a story on us, “Defending the Line—From the Stadium to the Sanctuary.” The photographer wanted us to pose in a three-point stand, but we politely declined.

Nat is at least ten years older than me, but he once offered to arm wrestle. I told him “no.” Mainly because it sounded like something out of a John Huston film, a Catholic priest arm wrestling a Protestant minister, but also because I thought he might beat me—Nat is one tough booger. I know for a fact he’s still lifting.

Nat saw me first and gave me a head nod. “Bear.” He bent down to give Cruz a hug and kissed both her cheeks.

“Thanks again for those tamales, Cruz. Those fresh corn tamales? Be still, my heart. I think I ate six at one sitting and I didn’t even add salt. You cannot improve perfection.”

Cruz gave Nat a smile she has never given me. I’ve never gotten those fresh corn tamales, either.

Then Nat crossed straight over to Jenasy, who had abandoned the selection of custom coffins. Nat took her in his arms and gave her a hug that lifted her to the tips of her sandaled toes. It surprised me for a second that he hadn’t greeted Honey first, but then, Jenasy was a member of his parish; I don’t know how well he even knew Honey.

Nat put Jenasy back down on her feet and, with his arm around her shoulders, guided her to the sofa where her mother sat. Jenasy sat down, but she left two feet or so between herself and Honey. Nat took Honey’s hand in both of his, murmured something consoling, and then covered up whatever message Jenasy was trying to send her mother by squeezing himself in that two-foot space. After introducing himself to Margaret, Nat took his phone out, checked the time, and reholstered it.

“Honey, I can only be with you for a few minutes; I’ve got another commitment.”

I admired the way Nat left it at that—he didn’t feel any need to explain what the commitment was, why he couldn’t get out of it—I am forever getting trapped into endless explanations.

Nat went on, “I’ve spoken to Detective Wanderley and my understanding is that there won’t be any problem with holding the funeral on Friday afternoon, so with your permission, we’ll schedule it for one o’clock at the church. Then there’s the hour drive to Mount Olivet, the interment, an hour back . . . the parish ladies will have a dinner set up for the family at, say, six, six thirty, and that can be done at the church or at your home, whichever works best for you, Honey.”

Cruz answered for Honey, “We’ll be having the dinner at the house; we got plenty room.” Then, as an afterthought, “That’s right, Honey?”

Honey didn’t look like she was taking all this in but she nodded and said, “About the service, I’ve written out a list of who all should speak and the songs and Graham always liked the poem, that Rudyard Kipling one, you know which one I mean? That . . . ‘You’ll be a man, my son . . .’”