This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel (19 page)

“Leave it unlocked,” she said. “We’re going to be heading right back out.” She disappeared down a hallway, and my eyes scanned what must have been the living room. It was tidy and clean, and looked as if nothing had changed since the house had been built. Brown shag carpet covered the floors, and a mint-green sofa sat beneath windows that looked out on the front yard behind heavy curtains. There were two cream-colored sitting chairs opposite the sofa, a coffee table in front of them. There was no television. The room, and maybe the entire house, smelled like something I couldn’t quite place, but it was something that seemed familiar, something on the front end of a memory.

I heard her open and close a closet door somewhere down the hall. When she walked back into the living room she wore a jacket and carried a small umbrella, her purse slung over her shoulder, the blacked-out sunglasses still on.

“Are you ready?” she asked. She stood there as if waiting for an answer. When none came, she leaned forward as if trying to smell me, and then she leaned away as if she’d discovered something she didn’t want to know. “Well,” she said. “You can say something.” She waited. My eyes followed her purse as it slid slowly down her right arm, stopping at the bend in her elbow. She held her umbrella in front of her with both hands. Her posture made her seem like someone who was used to waiting and was willing to wait forever.

“Where do you think we’re going?” I asked.

As soon as the words were out she dropped her purse at her feet and her right hand shot up and spread itself out across the bridge of my nose, pushing my sunglasses up against my eyes. The touch of her hand was shocking, and I pulled away from it, but her hand moved too, and her fingers kneaded my lips and cheeks, slowly working themselves up to the bill of my hat.

I realized that she couldn’t see me. The muscles in my body relaxed, and my face leaned heavily toward her.

“Who are you?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

“A friend of your son’s. Of Wade’s.”

“What’s your name?”

“Pruitt.”

“I’ve never known him to mention you,” she said.

“He wouldn’t have. He hasn’t seen me in a long time.” Her hand came to a rest on my left shoulder, and she left it there for just a second before touching my chest, right above my heart.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” she said. She took her hand from my chest and lifted up her glasses so that her eyes could be seen; they were both covered in a murky blue film. “These don’t let me see as well as my hands do.” She smiled and dropped the glasses back into place. “I thought you were someone I’d already arranged to take me to an appointment on Friday morning, but I knew today is Thursday, and I was confused because of that.” She bent down and felt along the floor until her hand closed around the strap of her pocketbook. She stood again and put the strap over her shoulder, and then she turned away and walked back toward the middle of the room before stopping. “It
is
Thursday, right?”

“Yes. It’s Thursday.”

“Humph,” she said as if she’d discovered something. “Then my doctor’s appointment is tomorrow. They will come tomorrow, and they will pick me up then.” She gestured toward the sofa. “Please sit down. Be comfortable.” She walked through the living room and into the hallway back to the room she’d been in earlier.

Dust motes floated up from the sofa cushions and drifted through a shaft of sunlight shining through a gap in the curtained windows behind me. The light disappeared as the curtains were pulled tight. My body sunk down into the old cushions, and the gun dislodged itself from my waistband. My back leaned against it so that it rested nose down behind me.

She walked out of the hallway and stood in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips. “Let me get us some tea,” she said. “And then I want to hear all about how you know my Wade.” She turned to walk into the kitchen that was off the right side of the living room, but she stopped and turned back. “Is sweet tea okay with you?” she asked.

“Yes. But this won’t take long.”

She waved her hand as if dismissing my words. “Nonsense,” she said. “You stay as long as you’d like. I have nowhere to be; we’ve already decided that.” Her shoes squeaked over the linoleum in the kitchen, followed by the sound of her opening cabinets and getting down glasses, opening and closing the refrigerator and getting ice out of the freezer. “Would you like coffee instead?” she asked, her voice curving around the half wall that separated her from me.

“No.” But her question made clear the smell in her house, and a memory forced itself into my mind. It was not the smell of freshly brewed coffee but the stale scent of coffee after it has permeated everything. And it is there in my mother’s kitchen, the smell of stale coffee in a hot room with the windows closed. My mother has dropped the glass coffeepot and the sound of its shattering has made me cry. And the smell of that memory lived here in this house now.

When she walked back into the living room she carried a small wooden tray with both hands; on it sat two tall glasses of tea and a small stack of napkins.

“I was confused when I heard you at the door because my appointment is on Friday,” she said. “And I knew today is Thursday, so I couldn’t understand why someone would be at the door.” She laughed to herself. “Even when I’m right I think I’m wrong. Old age can be a very good prankster.” She stopped walking when her knees brushed against the coffee table. “You’ll have to set this down for me,” she said. “There are some things I cannot trust myself to do.”

When the tray was out of her hands and had been set down, she moved around the coffee table and sat in one of the armchairs. She reached forward and picked up her glass from the tray and brought it toward her. Her hand shook and the ice cubes clinked together softly. She took a drink from her tea and picked up a napkin and wrapped it around the glass. She crossed her legs and smoothed out her skirt.

“So, Mr. Pruitt,” she said, “you know Wade.”

“We played baseball together.”

“If I were a betting woman, I’d bet you played first,” she said, smiling. “You’re tall. Most first basemen are tall and right-handed, and usually very strong. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you make it to the majors, Mr. Pruitt?”

My fingers had closed around one of the napkins on the tray, and now it was balled up in my hand. “No.”

“That’s too bad,” she said. “I’m sure you wanted to become a professional ballplayer. I’m sure you worked very hard.”

“Very hard.” The napkin had become rock-hard from my squeezing it, hard enough to be thrown through the glass window behind me or tucked into a fist to make the fist heavier and more solid. The memory wasn’t of me crying after all, but of my mother crying instead. Her forehead is bleeding from where the coffeepot has been shattered across her face, splattering me and the walls and the floor with cold, stale coffee. The old man has slammed the door behind him, and now the lawn mower is sputtering, finally catching and firing. My mother doesn’t look up from where she cleans the floor, but each time the lawn mower passes the windows it kicks up gravel and sticks against the glass, and my mother ducks lower as if my father has aimed those things at her.

“Well,” she said, reaching out and setting her glass on the tray. “Sometimes you need a little luck. Wade didn’t have the career he wanted to have either, certainly not the career I wanted him to have. Especially not considering his talent.”

“That’s too bad.” But those were just words, and she knew it. She leaned forward as if preparing to ask something or say something that no one else should ever hear, even though there was no one else in the house and there probably hadn’t been for a long time.

“Does he owe you money, Mr. Pruitt?”

“Money?”

“Does Wade owe you money?” she asked. “Is that why you’re here?”

“No. He doesn’t owe me money.”

“Well,” she said, smiling, “good for you, because he sure owes me money.” She leaned away and opened the palm of her left hand, showing that she’d balled up her napkin too, and she tossed it onto the table before picking up her glass from the tray. “I ask you that question because he owes a lot of people money,” she said. “They’ve come here looking for him over the years.”

“That’s not what this visit is about.”

“What’s it about?” she asked, before saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry to ask you so many questions. I don’t get very many visitors, and I forget how to act.” She smiled. “Forgive me.”

“Business. This is just about business.”

“Well, I won’t ask you what kind of business you’re in,” she said. “I’ve asked enough questions.”

The room grew quiet, and the ice cubes popped and resettled themselves in the glasses. She stared at the table before lifting her eyes toward me. “I have to tell you that I haven’t seen my son in years, Mr. Pruitt. I honestly can’t remember the last time I even spoke with him.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“Why?” she asked. “In case your business takes you there as well?”

“Perhaps it will.”

“That doesn’t sound good to me, Mr. Pruitt,” she said. “It seems that you want to find my son to do more than catch up and talk about baseball. But it doesn’t matter what it seems like to me. I’ve already told you I don’t know where he is, and I have no idea how to contact him.”

“It’s just old baseball stuff. That’s all.”

“Old baseball stuff,” she said. “Of course.” She looked down at her glass as if trying to remember what it was she was drinking. “Would you like to see something, Mr. Pruitt? I think it will bring back good memories of ‘old baseball stuff.’ ” She set her glass back on the tray and stood. “Come on,” she said, turning toward the hallway. “Follow me.”

After standing with her and stepping around the coffee table, I stopped before walking down the hallway. The Glock had been left behind, stuffed down behind the cushion. She must have heard my feet turning away from her.

“No,” she said. “Leave it. I’ll get the glasses later. Follow me.”

She shuffled past what must’ve been her bedroom with its made bed and framed photographs on the dresser, past a small, dark bathroom to the end of the hall where two closed doors faced each other. She went to the door on the left and ran her hand along it until her fingers closed around the doorknob. She looked back toward me without saying anything, and then she opened the door and stepped inside.

The room was hot and bright from the sun that poured through the windows in the far corner of the room. It was a boy’s room, clearly the room Wade Chesterfield had grown up in, and it hadn’t changed since he was a boy. Posters of baseball players from the 1970s covered the walls: Jim Kaat, Ron Guidry, Tommy John before his elbow surgery, and Steve Carlton—all of them lefties like Wade had been. Trophies sat on every flat surface, most of them crowned with tiny gold figurines either poised with bats on their shoulders or in the middle of their windups, their knees raised against their chests and the ball tucked into their mitts. The bed was made neatly and the burgundy carpet showed the tracks left by a vacuum cleaner. It smelled old and closed off like places smell when no one visits them for a long time.

She stood in the doorway with me standing behind her, and like mine, her eyes seemed to take inventory of everything in the room, even though she was only seeing it through a memory. When she stepped farther inside her right hand reached out and felt along the wall to a desk that was covered in trophies. Her fingertips flitted across the tops of each one, stopping when they found the tallest. Her hand rested there as she turned to face me.

“All of these before he graduated from high school, Mr. Pruitt,” she said. She turned back toward the trophies as if assessing them in some way. “It’s all here. Right from the very beginning: every single bit of it.” She lifted her hand from the trophy and let it drop to her side. “And now I’m the only one who ever comes in here.”

She stood there for another moment before shuffling across the room and skirting the bed under the windows. Her hand lifted to touch the bedside table as she drew closer to it. Once she touched it she stopped and reached down for something hidden between the table and the bed, and when she stood up straight she held a twenty-six-inch Louisville Slugger; it was almost black with age and use and the barrel was chipped and dented. She held it with both hands in front of her and stared down at it like an offering.

“This was his first bat,” she said. She looked toward me. “I bet you haven’t seen one this small in a very long time.” She held the bat out to me, and when my right hand took it my left hand searched my back pocket for my batting gloves, finding them and slipping them on. To swing it made the bat feel even smaller and lighter, almost like a nightstick a police officer would carry on a belt. She still faced me, and my mind wondered what she thought at that moment while standing in this dusty old bedroom that was still decorated for a boy’s life with a boy’s things, not speaking but just listening to the sound of the tiny bat cut through the air. My feet set themselves as if stepping into the batter’s box.

“Wade’s father bought that bat for him on his sixth birthday,” she said. “He was so happy to have a boy, and he was even happier when he saw that Wade was going to be a lefty.” She turned and raised her right hand and pointed toward the window that looked into the backyard. “His father would take him to the ball field behind the elementary school at—” My eyes caught sight of it a split second before it happened, a split second before the bird’s body smashed against the window. The sound startled her, and she stumbled against the table; her left hand came down and knocked a lamp onto the floor, her right hand reaching out for the bed as she tried to steady herself.

The room was quiet now. The only sound was her breath coming in short bursts. She brought her hand to her chest as if feeling for a heartbeat. The child’s bat hung down by my side.

“What was that?” she asked.

My mind replayed the memory of the bird smacking the window, my eyes watching it gather itself a half second later before flying away. But she hadn’t seen any of that, and now, in the silence afterward, her heart raced and her mind spun, struggling to imagine the unknown. She stood there, not looking at me but looking for me, waiting for me to say something. Instead, my feet stepped closer to her at the center of the room and set themselves while my hands raised the tiny bat to my shoulder. When my eyes closed, a picture of Wade Chesterfield as a boy in this same bedroom flashed before them—perhaps he’d stood in the very same place where she stood now. But when my eyes opened they saw past the boy in this room and decades into the future to the place where Wade Chesterfield the man waited to be found.