Where the Broken Lie (21 page)

The next day, Tammy and Tory go to Glidden to visit Grandma and after that to lunch and a matinee.

With Grandpa in the garage working on his broken down Wheel Horse, I pack a paper sack with potato chips, two bologna sandwiches, two bottles of water, and a book. I head out for the cemetery, prepared to stay until sundown if necessary. Determined to catch Mr. Innocent retrieving my letter. If, that is, my letter is even still there.

It is.

By 10 a.m., I have set up camp again in the bushes. I pull a bottle of water and a sandwich out of my lunch sack. I am two bites in when my first visitor arrives.

Edie Dales.

“Son of a bitch,” I whisper through a mouthful of bologna.

He passes right in front of me, arms at his side, hands clenched into fists, which is how Edie has always faced the world.

He walks slowly, heels hitting ground first, toes last like he’s wearing cowboy boots, but he is not. His arms don’t sway at all when he walks. It’s as if the fingers on both hands are wrapped around something heavy, something he has to carry everywhere he goes. Maybe lugging all that invisible weight around makes Edie Dales so angry all the time.

Edie carries his heavy weights around the corner of the utility shed and out of my line of sight. I wait a few seconds then quietly scoot over and peek around the corner. He walks to a headstone in the far corner of the cemetery, stops, and puts his hands in his pockets. Something in the way he stands there with his eyes looking down and all humble-looking tells me that this must be his father’s grave. He is saying something, but I can’t hear what it is. Whatever the message, he delivers it with a lot of shoulder shrugs and head tilts, like he is apologizing or perhaps confessing.

After a few minutes, Edie pulls his hands out of his pockets, picks up his invisible weights and walks back toward me. He turns the corner into my line of sight again and after a couple of steps, he stops in his tracks and puts his hands in his pockets again.

Edie scans the horizon, takes in a deep breath—almost sniffing, like some animal in the wild picking up the scent of prey. That’s when he spots the Grave Letter at the foot of the headstone in front of him.

He glances around the bone yard at the other letters, his eyes snapping sharply from one to the next. Then he locks on the yellow envelope by James Johnson. After a peek over each shoulder, he makes a move toward the letter.

My heart jumps like I’d just felt a tug on my fishing line and watched my bobber go under. I push the bushes away from my face to get a clearer view. As I do, though, Edie stops in his tracks.

I had been too loud.

I freeze, suddenly mindful of my Adam’s apple and how loudly I swallow. Intensely aware of the itchy, drippy, sweat that covered my face.

Air makes a wheezy sound as it passes through my nostrils so I open my mouth, but I am no quieter.

But then something else, a different noise. It is the rumble of a lawn mower in the distance.

My eyes go to the long grass in the cemetery lawn. Old Man Keller is on his way, which is good and bad news. On the one hand, Edie hasn’t caught me. On the other, I haven’t caught him either.

Edie looks down at the envelope, pulls his hands out of his pocket and makes his way out of the cemetery. He and Keller nod at each other as they pass.

I’m not sure what to do. Do I wait to see if Edie came back for the letter? That could be hours. I look down at my lunch sack, see my book, and decide to stay for a little while anyway.

Questions race around my mind, bouncing into and off of one another.

Why was Edie writing these letters?

Had he killed Katie himself or did he know who had?

The Old Man and his mower had been noise-polluting the cemetery for about twenty-five minutes when he gets to the area in front of the bushes that are camouflaging me. I look down at my clothes and thank God for thinking to put a green shirt on me today when I hadn’t thought to do so myself. I scrunch up small as small as I can get, knees pulled up to chest, arms wrapped around knees.

The Old Man went in and out of view, left to right, right to left, blade on blade.

And then another surprise. This day was full of them.

The Old Man puts the mower in park and swings himself off of it. I lower my head for a better view between the branches, but can’t see what he is doing from my seated position. I stand up so I can see better, thankful for the noise of the still-running Cub Cadet.

He walks around to the other side of the mower and bends down out of view. When he is upright again, the Old Man looks directly at the bushes I am hiding behind. He shoots furtive glances to the left and the right, then walks back around and takes his rightful place atop his grass-chopper.

As he sits down something catches my eye. A tiny little corner of something sticking out of the back pocket of the Old Man’s denim overalls.

Something yellow.

He pulls away and my eyes lock on the rock in front of James Johnson’s headstone. The letter is gone. The Old Man has taken the letter I had written to Mr. Innocent.

Why? He is going to mess this up for me, but I don’t know what to do about it. Looking around at the places he has already mowed, I see that all of the other Grave Letters seem to still be in place.

The realization hit me like a Son Settles sucker punch. It’s not Edie Dales. It’s the Old Man.

Old Man Keller is Mr. Innocent.

I spring out from behind the bushes and run to the grave of James Johnson where Keller is quite startled to see me.

“Jesus Christ, Tucker, you scared the ever-living shit out of me,” he yells over the top of the mower.

I walk closer to him, holding his gaze. I reach down and turn the key of the Cub Cadet, killing the engine. Its rumble echoes through the cemetery for a moment and then all is quiet. The world is still. Not a bird, not a car, not another human being. Just me and the Old Man.

His voice quivers. “Again, Tuck? What do you want with me this time?”

“Answers,” I say. “I want answers. And you’re the guy who has them, aren’t you, Alvin?”

The Old Man chuckles.

“Answers, huh? I hope the questions are easy,” he says, pointing at his head apologetically.

I say nothing, just watch the Old Man squirm in the silence. It isn’t an interrogation technique, exactly. I really don’t know what to say next.

The quiet gets the best of him.

“Good for holding hats, not much else,” he laughs, again pointing at his head. “Ma, she’d always say, she’d say ‘Alvin, the day the good Lord was handing out brains, you musta—”

“This isn’t about brains, Alvin,” I interject. “It’s about honesty. You just be honest with me, okay?”

“Sure, Tuck, yeah, of course … of course, I’ll be honest with you.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“What’s eatin’ at ya, Tuck?”

The world smells like freshly cut grass and I breathe in as much as my lungs can hold. One of the fringe benefits to the Old Man’s job, that smell. A green smell that rises in rings and swirls from the decapitated blades of grass.

“What’s in your back pocket, Alvin?”

“Oh, is that what this is about?” He reaches back and pulls out the envelope. “This letter?”

“Yes, Alvin, that’s exactly what this is about.”

“Well, sure, I know it’s one of them, what are they calling them—Grave Letters? Yeah, they’re all over the place out here” he says, lifting his arm and turning in his seat to reveal them to me. “Get in my way when I mow—some of ‘em, anyway.”

“I’ve been watching you the whole time, Alvin. You only picked up one letter. And you didn’t move it out of the way. You put it in your pocket. Why did you do that, Alvin? Why only the one letter?”

His eyes dart left and right. “Hell, I don’t know, I guess –“

I raise a warning finger.

“Don’t! Goddammit, don’t lie to me, Alvin!” Then, in a quiet voice, I add, “Just don’t, all right? You know exactly what that letter is. Now tell me what else you know.”

Lips parted slightly, eyes narrow, the Old Man is churning something over in his mind.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, I know what the letter is.”

“And?”

“And,” he hedges, “I suppose I’ve written a couple-few myself.”

“Why, Alvin? Why did you write them?”

He pulls the cap off his head and runs his fingers through silvery-white bristles.

“I don’t know. I guess, well, to be honest”—he looks up at me—“you’re kinda the cause behind it?”

“Me? How the hell am I the cause?”

“It was that night up at Mustang’s. You and that Skinner kid was talking and I overheard you.”

The stop-and-go of the Old Man’s confession was getting to me.

“Enough with the twenty questions routine, Alvin. Just spit it out. All of it.”

“Fine, fine,” he says, the words dipped in disdain. Then his head lowers and his eyes drop down and to the right where he finds the memory of that night at Mustang’s.

“Like I say, you and that Skinner kid were at Mustang’s and you got to talking about that Cooper girl who got killed back when, what twenty years ago or so? Well, he says something to you about how he seen ol’ Slim Jim break into Ben Halpern’s house that same night and come out with a gallon of milk or somethin’. Well, that was the first time I’d heard that Halpern story and I get to thinkin’ about it myself and I figure that Skinner kid is probably right. That sure don’t sound like a man who just killed a little girl. I mean, ol’ Slim Jim, he wasn’t all there—touched in the head—but he sure as hell had enough sense to know to not stick around if he’d killed a girl. Hell, just look at his past and you can see that. Lots of petty theft and even then he’d leave town and move onto someplace new. That’s exactly what he did. You gonna tell me that he knew enough to leave St. Charles Mizzou after stealing a bag of chips but he’s gonna hang around Willow Grove after killing a little girl?”

“Okay, so what’s all of this got to do with you? I still don’t understand why you wrote that letter.”

“My conscience, I guess. I started to feeling guilty and my conscience got the best of me. You see, I had a part in getting’ Slim Jim put away.”

A million little memory dots swirled through my mind and two of them connected.

“Wait … were you the anonymous tipster?”

The Old Man nods.

“I don’t get it. The story was that the anonymous tipster saw Slim Jim taking Katie down the tracks. You’re telling me now that you never saw that?”

He shakes his head slowly side to side and with eyes closed says, “I didn’t. I didn’t see nothin’.”

“So you just call up and say that you saw something that you didn’t see. Why? And why anonymously? Why not step out and tell Sheriff Buck, nobody would have doubted you.”

“That’s not exactly how it happened. You see, someone else did see Slim Jim taking that Cooper girl down the tracks.” Then crinkling his eyebrows together he adds, “At least, that’s what they told me. But I don’t know any more.”

“Who was it? Who told you they saw them and why didn’t they come forth on their own?”

He wrestles hard with something inside himself, grimaces, and shakes his head. He looks at me and I can see that in that moment the Old Man hates everything inside and outside of himself. Hates it all.

“It’s complicated, Tucker.”

“Alvin.”

Unspoken words inflate his cheeks. Then he blurts them out.

“It was that Andrew Dales. He’s the one who seen Slim Jim and Katie going down the tracks. Wasn’t going to come forward and tell anybody, the little bastard, so I done it.”

“Edie? That doesn’t make sense, Alvin. Why wouldn’t he come forward on his own?”

“Hell, I don’t know. He said that Slim Jim used to get him beer and pot sometimes and he knew Slim Jim would tell his folks if he found out it was Andrew who had ratted him out. Protecting himself, I suppose. Said that telling people what he saw would mean getting in trouble himself, so he asks me to do it for him. Says he can’t do it because it needs to come from an adult voice to be taken seriously. Anyway, I tell him I’ll do it—that’s all. Never regretted it either, not really. Not until going to Mustang’s the other night and hearing the two of you yapping about it. Should have just minded my own damn business, I guess.”

So yet again things are pointing to Edie Dales. But something about the Old Man’s story isn’t sitting quite right with me. I’m not as willing to believe Edie’s story, as Keller seemed to be.

Or maybe it’s Keller’s story I don’t fully believe.

In the Gaines family, Sunday has always been a day reserved for Grandparents, the gridiron, and God (and in that order if I’m being honest.) And in that regard, this Sunday is the same as every other. The whole family has gathered. Dad and Aunt Paula. Gavin and his wife, Donna. Heather and her husband, Steve, and their twin boys.

Only this Sunday Grandma isn’t in the kitchen cooking. Rather she is confined to a bed that faces the window to the front yard so she can watch her great-grandchildren laugh and tumble under a shimmering, but sinking sun. There is nothing more they can do for Grandma at the rehab center, so we have brought her home. This will be the last of a thousand Sundays with Grandma.

Evening pushes in and still Tory and her cousins play outside that window, ignoring both darkness and death. I went outside to check on the kids and to see if Gavin needs a break from babysitting, but he’s still going strong, finding it easier to deal with what is happening in the yard than what is happening inside the house.

I look inside through the same window that Grandma is gazing out of, but the view from this side is grim. White blankets over white sheets. Pink gown over gray skin. A nicely framed picture of death.

Aunt Paula closes the drapes, but the light in the window frames Grandma’s silhouette. I stay there for a few minutes, staring at the still shadow of my father’s mother.

One by one, we each say our goodbyes to Grandma that evening. First her great grandchildren, then her grandchildren. Grandma is too tired to smile, but you can see it in her eyes. Grandpa sits quiet and still in a stuffed chair in the corner of the room—not watching, not listening, not talking.