Authors: Bret Lott
“Last warning,” Thigpen said.
And now I closed my eyes.
I could see things: this hole, four feet deep. Thigpen above and behind Tabitha, Mom and Miss Dinah, and Unc. I could see it all.
I heard the cable saw stop, heard Simons call out, “You find it?” and then I saw him, too, saw the distance from the statue to here, the narrow path he’d have to walk to get here, the time it would take, and I saw the gun tucked into Thigpen’s waist, saw one arm useless at his side, in the other the flashlight, pointed at Unc.
And still with my eyes closed I saw two shovels, one in Tabitha’s hands, the other in mine, and I saw behind her Thigpen turned a
moment from us, saw he was close enough, close enough, and saw Simons start from the statue, and toward us, here, now.
Now.
I opened my eyes. There was light, more than I could need, more than the world of this night could ever need, all of it from a flashlight held on a man who could not see it.
I’d seen all of this, all of it, in an instant.
Son
, he’d said.
I put my hand out in front of me, held it out to Tabitha, my index and middle fingers together, held them out for her to see, then brought them to my chest.
Trust me
.
“Don’t blink, son,” Unc said.
She looked at my hand, looked at me. She nodded.
“That’s it, you fuck,” Thigpen said, and turned from behind Tabitha, took a step toward Unc.
I held my shovel handle with both hands like a baseball bat, nodded hard at her, with my eyes looked up at Thigpen.
She knew.
I saw Simons, still on the trail, still moving.
Tabitha turned, swung the shovel at Thigpen, caught him hard behind the knees, and he fell back, slammed full on the ground, and with it let out a jagged and deep cry, the air out of him in a moment, the flashlight flying like it’d done when I’d fallen, sending shadows and light everywhere, confused and torn light that made no sense.
But I didn’t need it. I’d seen what I had to do, seen how we might live.
I was out of the hole in the same moment Unc rolled to his side, tried hard to kick at Thigpen, though his hands were tied to his ankles, and in the same moment Mom and Miss Dinah cried out, the light finally settling, pointing away, and then I was on Thigpen, and pulled from his waist the gun, and turned, backed away from him and away from the hole, looking toward where in a moment I knew Simons would emerge.
Tabitha was up from the hole now, too, held the shovel above Thigpen’s head, ready to hit him.
I cocked the hammer and saw in the new angle of light Charles Middleton Simons, his own pistol drawn, step through the green and into the circle.
“Clever,” he said, and stopped.
He had the gun up, his arm straight and stiff, pointing at me, and slowly started toward us. Between him and me lay them all, watching him: Mom, Miss Dinah, Unc. Tabitha with the shovel.
Thigpen groaned, rolled his head back and forth, and Tabitha lifted the shovel, ready.
Simons pointed the gun at her, arm still out stiff, and Mom and Miss Dinah gave out quick yelps. “Her first?” he said, and stepped over a string.
Tabitha stood frozen.
“Or Mother?” Simons said, and quick moved the gun toward Mom.
She winced, her eyes on me, leaned hard away, and Simons took another step.
I’d seen what I would do. I’d seen it. But I hadn’t seen him with the gun at her. Only on me. That’s what I’d seen with my eyes closed, with that gift of sight I’d been given by my uncle.
My father.
Yet I’d seen the gun on
me
, the one to shoot or be shot.
“But of course,” Simons said, and now swung the gun to Unc, there in front of him, twenty feet away. “It will have to be Leland. Unc.” He paused, took another step. “Daddy. Of course it will have to be him, because he’s the only one I fear.” He took another step, another. “A wild card. He’s willing to die, willing to kill or be killed. All because of this land, this place.” He took another step, now stood only a few feet from Mom and Miss Dinah, huddled into each other. “And because he carries with him some guilt over the life he’s led, from squiring you to the suicide of his wife to the bum deal lost eyesight can be.” He took another step, leveled the gun at Unc sitting
there on the ground. “And logic would dictate I would kill him first for Constance, for the fact that she loved him more than me.”
Still he looked at me. “As I said, Leland, all of this is horribly predictable. For money, yes. And unrequited love. Predictable.” He paused. “And so you ought to die first, for predictability’s sake, for the symmetry of it.”
He held his arm even straighter, angled it level with Unc’s head.
Then he swung it to me.
I fired, and felt fire inside me, saw the flash and smoke from off his gun.
It was the deer that came to me in this instant, their settling into woods for the night, one of them gone—me—and none of them knowing the difference, my absence among them no absence at all, me nothing, and in this instant I felt the rush of night sky through me, felt all the ghosts of all the dead on Hungry Neck there’d ever been, and I knew them each, knew them black and white, old and newborn, these people what made the land this land, made a nameless island where I would die more than nameless, made it something to keep, to
cherish
, I knew, and I knew only then the difference between sin and love, knew only then both could be one and the same at any given moment, as life and death become the same in the moment between high tide and its beginning to wane, that moment when all the world holds its breath for the next thing to come, and then it comes, the tide letting out, the sea edging away to leave its debris behind. Sin and love could be the same, I knew, a fact maybe only knowable in the moment you stepped off the edge of a tub, a cord around your neck for the way your life had unwound before you, or maybe only knowable in the moment of the middle of your first night in a new town, the smell of death and decay summoning you from sleep, only to find here it is outside your back door, that smell of decay swallowing you whole, while here at your leg stands your only child, the hem of your nightgown bunched in his fist, him comforting you, telling you not to cry. Sin and love could be the same, a fact maybe only knowable in seeing your burning wife in her bed just before the explosion of hot glass, searing into your eyes the
image for the rest of your life. Burned there, like the burning in me the instant he fired on me, the moment between sin and love as distant and close as a mother and father hidden from you your whole life, and yet present beside you every moment you breathed.
It was the deer that came to me, and these ghosts, and this land, all of it swept into me and around me and through me, the way my blood swept through me with each heartbeat, blood mine and in the same moment my mother’s and father’s both, me a part of them but only and always me, and then slowly, slowly, I fell away, and I disappeared into the black night above me, and into the ground beneath me, my blood carried out to sea, I knew, on this tide, beneath this moon, me the debris of this day, dead.
I saw things.
I saw a buzzard above a dawn sky, a jay’s nest, a hickory stick. I saw deer tracks, saw raccoon prints at a river’s edge, saw spartina green in a breeze. I saw these things.
And then I was cold, and I saw nothing, only black, and I heard the wash of water beneath me, felt fingers of wind pick at me, cold.
“Huger, we got you,” I heard Mom say. “We got you, baby,” and I opened my eyes.
We were moving, above me Mom, past her a dawn sky still too close to night.
But there was color to it. Violet to one side of Mom, pale gray to the other.
I felt nothing, only cold.
“Huger,” she said, and now she cried above me, her mouth crumpled to nothing, eyebrows knotted, and she said, “Huger, you okay?” The wind pulled at her hair, moved it and moved it. “Oh, Huger,” she said, then glanced up and away. “He’s awake,” she cried, and there was movement, rocking with that movement.
I whispered, “Mom,” and she looked back down at me, smiled, cried, and leaned in close, kissed me.
I was on my back, and we were in a boat, and I was cold, and now Tabitha was beside Mom, and touched my face with her hand. She
smiled, and I could see her face with this daylight coming on. She smiled, put her hand up close to my face, her first two fingers together, and brought them to her lips.
“Now,” Miss Dinah said from above and behind me. “Stop that.”
Then here was Unc, Tabitha moving away for him, Mom still here.
His nose was swollen up, his thin hair whipped by the wind. His marble eyes, the gnarled flesh above them.
Then he cried, his mouth going wide and crumbling, his eyes creasing closed, tears going.
“Huger,” he gave out. “Son.”
And I whispered, “Daddy,” though I was not certain he might hear it on the wind here on the marsh, and on the light coming up around us.
He leaned down, kissed me as Mom had, and as he pulled away I saw above us now the creeping edge of live-oak branches out over water, the green of them in a sky starting yellow.
We were home.
We left the trailer when it was still dark, got here before light. Three miles, about, the two of us walking. He wouldn’t tell me where we were going, and I didn’t ask.
There was no moon out, only stars.
New Year’s Day, closing day of deer season, a day bigger than the Saturdays after Thanksgiving. But this year it was only Unc and me, and we walked our dirt roads, Unc’s arm looped in my right arm, me with my left still in a sling.
But in my hand I carried the hickory stick.
He’d made coffee before I was even up, and bacon, eggs. We’d sat at the counter in the kitchen, the only light that from the stove hood, and said nothing, only ate.
Mom was still asleep, back in her old room. She had to work later today, and’d stayed up long past midnight. Tabitha had been here, and Miss Dinah too. But now it was only Unc and me.
And just before he’d closed my door last night—he was sleeping on the couch in the front room, me in his room—he’d told me he’d wake me early, that he had somewhere he wanted to show me.
——
Things have happened.
Thigpen hasn’t said anything, is only in the county facility while the sorting of charges continues. He’s got a pile of money somewhere, we’re sure. But we’ve told our side, all five of us.
And there’s the island, already cordoned off.
Like Simons said would happen, there’s plans already for a museum of what’s left, and there’s been proclamations made, state archaeologists out for measurements and photographs, probes into smuggled goods and their recipients. There is debate, too, on whether or not to dig up the Father of Fathers, put on display the treasures inside, or to leave him alone, there in the ground.
Someday something will happen here, and Hungry Neck will no longer be as empty as I or Unc needs it. But Unc has told me already he’ll donate the island, whenever they get to setting something up.
The senate-committee hearings haven’t started, but Delbert Yandle still calls every other day, representing the board without hiding the fact anymore. He asks how I’m doing, wants to make sure I’m feeling fine, and that Unc is feeling fine, and that this next bid might be enough to make us feel fine for the rest of our lives.
Mom has been here more nights than not. And one night a week or so ago, when they thought I was asleep in Unc’s room, I heard them talking out in the kitchen, and heard Mom’s laughter, heard it from Unc, too. The two of them, and laughter.
I haven’t been back to school yet, and Tabitha brings books over, or I go over there, and we read, and we talk.
Dr. Joe Cray’s MRI shop is empty, a
FOR LEASE
sign set up out front, and Mrs. Dupree has somewhere in her house two paperweights.
And I killed a man.
But what’s strange is that killing Simons isn’t what comes to me nights, when I am alone and trying to sleep. Nor is it a body with hardly any head, or the killings of Yandle and Ravenel and Patrick and Reynold, though there are moments when those things sneak up on me, make my pulse pick up, my hands go hot.
What comes to me is the statue. The Son, and his eyes, green glass, the years those eyes have seen come and go, every one of them spent here at Hungry Neck, seasons in and out and in again.
And the Father of Fathers, that sound when my shovel hit the coffin. Just that sound, the thick scratch of the tip into pitch-painted oak, the jolt through my arm.
They’re the only ones left out there. The father and the son. That’s what comes to me when I am alone, and in the dark.
I had a Thermos of coffee in the daypack I wore, and on our way here Unc told me which roads to follow, which way to turn. And when we came to the sweet gum he’d told me to watch for, the one with a perfect elbow parallel to the road, he let go my arm, hooked his hand on my belt, and pushed me off the road and into the woods.
The sky had gone violet by this time, still too dark to see the hands on a watch. But Unc led me, as best he could, by pushing, and subtle pulls, a kind of blind tack through a woods he seemed to know better even than the roads we’d walked on our way here.
And as we steered through the woods, I came to know what I’d begun to feel that night on the island: there is another kind of seeing, a way of looking in front of you and seeing maybe what you can’t really see, a way of knowing something without knowing it. There is a kind of darkness that allows you to see itself, and the trees are suddenly there before you, and the leaves, the fallen branches and low places where water fills in, all of it there before you and shrouded in a kind of knowledge you can only get with being inside the dark of it.
There’s no way to tell you about it. Only that it’s a kind of seeing when there is light and no light, and that I came to it, finally, through no one but Unc.
And then here we were, Unc and me, at an old tree stand deep inside Hungry Neck, two-by-four steps up the trunk of a live oak, a platform fifteen feet up, the wood weathered the same gray as the trunk itself, gray melted into gray in the light before dawn.