Where All Light Tends to Go (21 page)

The bulls dropped and scurried behind the cars. Their rifles rested on hoods and roofs and anything they could use to steady themselves. They hollered to one another with words I couldn’t understand through all of the ringing. One of them rushed out to get his arms under Rogers and drag him behind the cars. He must’ve asked for cover because right about then a round came from their side and blew away shards of glass that hung just over my head. Even through the ringing I heard the bullet whiz past like a pissed-off hornet, and I dropped down behind the cabinets and knelt there for a long time listening to them yell, listening to the Walkers bay.

A few more rounds came through the open window and hammered holes into the wall across from me. I could see Josephine’s body in the hall from my position, and the way that she slept looked so peaceful that I thought for a second or two of joining her there. That type of peacefulness and stillness was all that mattered anymore.

I crawled over by the refrigerator and opened the cabinet where Daddy kept his liquor. There was a half-filled bottle of Evan Williams that seemed to suit me right then, so I popped the cork and put the bottle to my lips. My mouth was dry and that woody-tasting bourbon hit it just right, so I took another long slug until my thirst was gone and a woozy clarity flushed over me. I crept across the room, sliding my knees and hands and that rifle along the hardwood until I was in the living room and right beside the coffee table. That opened pack of Winstons looked good, so I shook one from the pack and lit it. I hadn’t noticed my hands shaking until I held the cigarette between my fingers, but I was trembling. I set the pack of smokes back where Daddy had left them, squared it off between the record album and television remote just so.

The front door was still cracked open and outside the bulls were waiting. I stood from the floor with Daddy’s rifle in my hands and opened the door a bit further till it was only the screen and the porch and the stairs and the yard and those dogs that separated us from one another. I was on the edge of that ravine now and peered around the corner to where the sun shined brightly onto cars, a fierce white light blinding all of the bulls who stood out there in wait. It was a light that no matter how hard they tried, they would never understand, and I felt sorry for them. There was such a sad, sad truth in how clueless they were to what shined down all around them. The gap between here and there didn’t seem so barren any longer, didn’t seem so far and out of reach. The space between here and there was no distance at all, and I readied myself to go where that Indian had never had the courage to go, the place Mama had peered off onto with a beckoning kind of sadness in her eyes. There was no fear or sorrow or repentance any longer, and I ventured out into that middle ground with a fearless pride that held my back arched and chest out. That restful time was near now, and I finally understood that there’d never been any difference between here or there. Only the middle ground of this wicked world mattered, the vast gap that stretched between, and those who were born with enough grit to brave it.

I would like to thank my agent, Julia Kenny, and editor, Sara Minnich, for their unwavering encouragement and editorial vision, as well as the entire team at G. P. Putnam’s Sons. I would also like to thank two wonderful friends, Greg Hlavaty and Bessie Dietrich Goggins, for their support from the book’s infancy.

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