We all stood there paralyzed. I was half in shock. I knew Uncle Clarence hadn’t wanted Joe to get Dog, but I couldn’t believe he’d shoot the little guy. I looked over at Joe.
He said nothing, but his face was ash-colored.
We heard an incredibly loud shot that echoed up in the hills behind the house.
And then Dog started barking. We ran to the back door. The sun had set, but in the fading light, we could see Uncle Clarence standing there with the rifle in his hands. Maddox was lying faceup
in Uncle Clarence’s freshly planted vegetable garden. His leg was twisted awkwardly to the side, and I could tell he was dead.
“Good Lord, Clarence,” Aunt Al said.
“Thought he was a bear,” Uncle Clarence said. “Heard a noise out back and went to investigate. You all were inside. You didn’t see nothing.”
He looked down at his rifle. “Thought he was a bear,” he said again.
And that was
what Uncle Clarence told the policemen who came to the house. Thought he was a bear. It was dark. Maddox was big as a
bear and was wearing that black sweatshirt. When the police asked Uncle Clarence what Maddox had been doing in the backyard, Uncle Clarence said he didn’t know because he hadn’t asked
him because he thought he was a bear.
Aunt Al, who had Earl in her lap, said we’d all been inside and hadn’t seen anything. Joe and I nodded in agreement. No one mentioned the business about Dog. The police roped off the
backyard, sent for an ambulance to pick up the body, and brought Uncle Clarence down to the station for questioning. Aunt Al called Uncle Tinsley to come and get me. When he arrived, she briefly
told him the same story we told the police. Uncle Tinsley listened quietly. “I see,” he said.
We were both silent most of the way home, then Uncle Tinsley finally said, “Thought he was a bear, did he?”
“Yep,” I said.
Uncle Tinsley had his eyes on the road. “Well, that’s an explanation people around here can live with,” he said. “I know I can.”
We drove a little farther in silence, and then he looked over at me. “You seem to be holding up pretty well,” he said. “You feeling okay?”
“Yep,” I said.
I’d never seen a dead person before. I thought it might be upsetting, but it just wasn’t. Maddox getting killed didn’t make me what I would call happy, even though I’d
wanted to kill him myself. Maybe I was numb. What I did feel was extremely focused, like I was going through a tunnel and couldn’t afford to look to either side, but instead had to pay
complete attention to what was in front of me and keep moving forward.
Uncle Tinsley rolled down his window and took a deep breath. “Smell that honeysuckle,” he said.
By the time we got home, the moon was out, skinny and silver. The porch lights were on, and Liz was standing at the top of the steps waiting for us.
“What happened?” she called out.
“Maddox is dead!” I shouted.
Uncle Tinsley and I climbed the front steps. “It was getting dark, and Clarence Wyatt heard a noise behind the house,” Uncle Tinsley said. “He says he thought it was a bear and
shot it. Turned out to be Maddox.”
Liz stared at us a moment. “I feel dizzy,” she said. “I feel sick. I need to lie down.”
She ran into the house. I followed her up to the second floor and down the hall to the bird wing. She threw herself on the bed, but after a moment, she sat up and started rocking back and
forth.
“Uncle Clarence didn’t think Maddox was a bear,” Liz said. “What really happened?”
I sat down next to her and started explaining, and Liz burst into tears. “It’s okay,” I said.
“No, it’s not,” Liz sobbed. “What about Doris and the kids? What about that new baby?”
“He had money and all those houses he rented out,” I said. “She’s better off without him.”
“But those kids don’t have a dad anymore.”
“We don’t have a dad,” I said. “We got by.”
“No, we didn’t. Look at what’s happened. And it’s all my fault.”
Liz’s sobs got even louder. She was working herself into a state, heaving and gasping for air, and I worried that she might have a complete breakdown and maybe take sleeping pills again or
do something just as bad. Then she started shaking her head and going on about how she’d killed Maddox, killed Maddox, killed the mad ox, willed it, killed it, she made the mad ox die, she
made the bad bear lie, trapped in a dark box, the mad ox, the bad bear, the bad ox, the mad bear, the dark box, the big trap, the backseat, the black car—she made it halt, and it was all her
fault, all her fault, all her fault.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “He started it all. But now it’s over.” I began stroking her hair and repeating, “It’s not your fault. It’s
over, it’s all over,” and after a while she stopped crying and nodded off.
I sat with her, listening to her even breathing, then got up to turn off the light and leave when Liz suddenly said, “Beware the bear.”
I looked back down at her. Liz was talking in her sleep.
Truth be told,
I worried that it might not be over. What if someone had seen us getting into Maddox’s car in the alley? What
if a neighbor on the hill had seen the three of us drive up? At the very least, the police must wonder what the heck Maddox was doing in the Wyatts’ backyard.
The next day was Sunday. When I woke up, morning light filled the bedroom, and the birds outside our window were making their usual racket. Next to me, Liz was sleeping right through it, and I
took that as a good sign. Downstairs, Uncle Tinsley was dressed in a seersucker suit and a striped tie. He said he’d decided to go into town and, as he put it, show his face and take the
pulse of the people. And the places to do that were the Baptist church and the Bulldog Diner.
Liz woke up a little while later and she seemed better, but she still looked pale and fragile. She spent the morning playing the guitar while I worked in the garden, weeding around the irises
and thinking about my sister. Liz deserved a medal for what she’d gone through, I told myself.
I put down the trowel and went up to the bird wing, where I took my dad’s Silver Star out of the cigar box in the cradle. I had never actually put it on. I felt you had to earn the right
to do that. Liz certainly had, not just for everything she’d gone through but for protecting her kid sister from their mother’s wackiness until I was old enough to handle it. So had
Uncle Clarence, not just for shooting Maddox but for taking on the work of a man when he was only a boy so that my dad would have a home. So had Aunt Al, for breathing in lint every night at the
mill and then going home to care for her sick husband and her special little Earl. So had Uncle Tinsley, for taking in his two wayward nieces, and Mom, for coming back to a place she hated, to be
there for Liz. All I’d done was get into a fight with Lisa Saunders and backtalk Miss Clay.
I took the Silver Star downstairs. Liz was sitting on the piano bench with her guitar.
“This is for you,” I said, and held out the medal. “You deserve it.”
Liz put down the guitar and took the medal. She looked at it for a minute. “I can’t take this,” she said. “It was your dad’s.” She handed it back. “But
I’ll never forget that you wanted to give it to me.”
Uncle Tinsley returned after lunch. We followed him into the living room, where he sat down in the brocade wing chair and loosened his tie.
Everyone in Byler knew about the shooting, of course, he told us. That was all anyone was talking about. What no one could figure out was what Maddox had been doing behind the Wyatt house. The
police had asked Doris. She didn’t know, but she was demanding an investigation. They’d also talked to the Wyatts’ neighbors, but people on the mill hill hated Maddox and
didn’t much like the cops, either. So no one saw anything and no one heard anything—except the gunshot. Everyone heard that.
The town was full of speculation. Maddox couldn’t have been up to any good. People suspected it had something to do with the feud. Was he just lurking? Spying on the family? Maybe he was
planning an ambush. But if that was what he was up to, why was his car parked out front? Still, he had that revolver on him. At the very least, he was trespassing, and a man had the right to
protect his family and his property. That was why, after questioning Uncle Clarence, the police hadn’t arrested him. His story was simple and made sense. People in these parts were always
getting into hunting accidents. Over in the next county, some bird-watcher from up north who was wearing a white shirt was killed on opening day of deer season.
And Maddox was a troublemaker even for the police, filing lawsuits and complaints, evicting tenants, riding the men at the mill, and putting moves on women all over town. The cops knew that just
about everyone in Byler except Doris was glad Maddox was gone, and so, despite a few unanswered questions, they were more than willing to shrug the whole thing off.
“Accidents happen.” Uncle Tinsley held up his hands. “ ‘Thought he was a bear.’ ”
He sat in the wing chair for a minute, then he said, “I believe I’ll play the piano.”
He opened the French doors in the ballroom and took the green velvet cover off the grand piano. He propped up the lid, sat down on the bench, ran his hands over the keys, hit a few chords, and
then started playing some classical stuff. It sounded pretty good for classical stuff, even to someone tone-deaf like me, and Liz and I listened for a little while. Then she said, “We need to
go get the emus.”
Uncle Tinsley was still playing when we left the house. We got ropes from the barn and walked along the road to the hay field. It was near feeding time, and the emus were standing at the gate
waiting for us, like they usually did.
After three weeks of trying, Liz had finally gotten Eunice to eat out of the bowl while she held it. It had taken another week for Eunice to let Liz stroke her back while she was eating. That
afternoon, as Eunice pecked away, Liz stroked her with the rope, getting her used to it, then slipped it around her neck. Eunice paused, gave Liz a puzzled look, then went back to eating. I quickly
put my rope over Eugene.
Liz and I both knew this whole emu-rescue business could turn out to be a big waste of time. Or worse. Now that we’d caught them, the emus might kick us with their talons or peck out our
eyes or run into the road and cause a traffic accident. And once we got them back to Mayfield, those darned emus might just escape again. Even so, they were in our care now and we were doing what
we had to do.
We led the emus out onto the road. They were a little frantic at first, but then they seemed to find something almost calming about the rope, like it was a relief to give up the fight. Eugene
and I were in the lead. He was actually ahead of me, pulling on the rope as if he knew where we were going and wanted to get there. Every now and then a car passed and the driver slowed and the
kids inside rolled down the windows and waved wildly at the sight of Liz and me bringing those big crazy birds back home.
A number of
books provided useful background information, including
Hard Times Cotton Mill Girls
by Victoria Byerly,
Mighty Giants: An American Chestnut Anthology
, and
Remarkable Trees of Virginia
by Nancy Ross Hugo and Jeff Kirwan.
I’d like to thank Laurie Taylor Rice, an extraordinary woman who happens to be my sister-in-law, friend, and trusted first reader. My gratitude also goes to her husband, Joel Rice, a great
guy whose family owned a mill and who generously shared his mill-town memories with me.
My deep thanks and admiration to V. R. “Shack” Shackelford, the quintessential country lawyer, for confirming points of legal procedure, and Thomas C. “Bucky” Waddy, who
shared his law enforcement expertise. Cheryl Jarvis brought music and so much more into my life. Adrianna Cowan-Waddy, Cathy Inskeep Marco, and Mike and Betty Long have all made this displaced West
Virginian feel truly at home.
My magnificent editor, Nan Graham, lavished all her passion and intelligence on these pages. Brian Belfiglio gave wise counsel. Jennifer Rudolph Walsh is a dear friend, an amazing advocate, and
a superb agent.
Thanks to my brother, Brian, who is my North Star.
And of course, John, who helps me shine light on dark places.
Jeannette Walls was
born in Phoenix, Arizona, and grew up in the Southwest and Welch, West Virginia. She graduated from Barnard
College and was a journalist in New York City. Her memoir,
The Glass Castle,
is one of the bestselling memoirs of all time and has been translated into thirty languages. She is the author
of a novel,
Half Broke Horses,
named one of the ten best books of 2009 by the editors of
The New York Times Book Review.
Walls lives in rural Virginia with her husband, the writer
John Taylor.