Where the Broken Lie (7 page)

I go to the cemetery every day that week. Talk to Ethan and Katie, and keep watch on the letter I have left for Phyllis. By Saturday afternoon, it is gone, and so Sunday morning, I go to church just to see if Phyllis Ross looks different somehow.

The last time I had been inside the Willow Grove United Methodist Church was for my son’s funeral. My breath quickens at the sight of the emptiness that fills the space where Ethan had lay in his coffin. The same kind of emptiness I saw occupying the hole in that barn.

Mom and Larry aren’t here this Sunday, so I sit by myself in the spot that Grandma Mueller used to sit in every Sunday. She is to be credited for this flat and faded cushion, having worn it down one Sunday at a time.

The congregation is smaller as membership growth has been outpaced by attrition. Attrition by life that carried youngsters away from home. Attrition by death that carried the elderly farther than that.

When Pastor Judy asks the congregation to share their joys and concerns, several hands shoot up. Alice Todd asks for prayers for our military overseas. Elmer and Millie Sands announce the birth of their nineteenth grandchild. Florence Howell gives thanks for the sun. A part of me was hoping that Phyllis would raise her hand and tell the congregation about her grave letter. She does not, however, and it saddens me because my joy is all wrapped up in hers.

Pastor Judy leads us in a long passionate prayer, full of high praises, sincere gratitude, and humble requests. I close my eyes to add power to the prayer, but my mind drifts back to those Sundays when I would sit here next to Grandma Mueller and she would scratch secret messages on my back with loving fingers.
Hi, T. Love you, T. My boy.

When Pastor Judy has finished, she encourages everyone to take a few seconds for silent personal prayer, so I thank God for my wife and daughter and ask for more feathers.

I don’t know that I get much from being here. I listen for messages but don’t find any in sermon or song. Still, just being seems to calm my soul a little.

In the fellowship hall after the service, I’m listening to Albert Todd talk about how the Church Trustees Committee is in search of a back-up generator 
so if you know anybody who has one or wants to donate one or … 
when, from behind me, a dramatic Phyllis Ross tells her friends Sally Coleman and Carol Carney about the “wonderful letter” someone had left by PJ’s grave. I swallow my donut hole and choke down the rest of the last bit of the ridiculously strong decaffeinated coffee in my Styrofoam cup. I feign an increasing interest in Albert’s generator talk, but back myself into a position where I can better eavesdrop on Phyllis and friends.

“Goodness, how lovely. Who was it from?” asked Carol.

“Well that’s the thing,” Phyllis answered. “It wasn’t signed.”

Sally gasps.

“It wasn’t signed?” Carol whispers. “Oh my, an anonymous letter.”

“At the bottom of the letter it said, 
He won’t be forgotten
.”

I shift a half-turn on my feet and can see them out of the corner of my eye. I nod toward Albert, but fine-tune my ears into the ladies’ conversation. Carol and Sally pepper Phyllis with questions from the left and the right. Breathy and desperate, they gasp out their speculations. All at once it seems important. I feel like part of something bigger than my curiosity and lighter than my grief. I know something they don’t. There’s an odd power to it. They continue guessing, shooting out names like firecrackers on the fourth of July until they begin to run out of steam.

“What do you think, Phyllis?” Sally asks.

Phyllis sounds dubious. “I don’t know. This doesn’t seem like anything these folks would do.”

“Well, who then?”

After church and still feeling spiritual, I walk up the playground. But I’m almost relieved to find that Swinging Girl is not there. I was starting to feel weird about our relationship and she wasn’t, which concerned me.

So I leave the playground and head out to the cemetery to visit Ethan. Tammy had not wanted our son buried here, nearly an hour from our home in Westfield. But the Gaines family plot is here and this brings me some measure of comfort. I should not have insisted, I suppose. I should have let her keep him as close to her as possible, but I did not.

It is so much warmer today than it had been on the day of his funeral. And so quiet. I lie down flat on my stomach and my heart beats against the earth and back again against my chest. As if it is Ethan’s beating back at me, or just the one heart we are sharing for a moment. Somebody once said having children is like letting your heart live outside your body. Yeah, it’s exactly like that.

To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die

That is the quote we put on the back of Ethan’s headstone. I close my eyes and try to feel him living there inside me, but the truth is that it feels almost like the opposite. Like something that had once been there is now missing.

I wipe away tears and pull a blade of grass from above his resting place and tuck it inside my sock against the angel tattooed there. “I love you, Ethan. Daddy loves you forever.”

I see and recognize Charlie Skinner the instant I step into Mustang’s Bar and Grill. I’m not sure how I am able to so quickly recognize someone I haven’t seen in well over ten years, but I do. Maybe it’s his slouch—even more pronounced than my own. Like some street urchin, hunched over and enclosed within himself to protect his last warm thing—the beating heart inside his chest. He’s propped up on a barstool, elbows on the bar and an empty glass in front of him.

For a long time Charlie Skinner was my best friend. He might even still count as the best friend I’ve ever had if such rankings are based on Wiffle ball games played, imaginary bad guys killed, and giggles. Man, could we make each other laugh.

But there was a marker that had ended my friendship with Charlie the same way that the carbon engine had ended the horse and buggy. It was the arrival of Katie Cooper.

“Yep.”

“Well, filler up for me would ya, Stan?” he says to the bartender I am not familiar with. Son Settles must have the night off.

Stan the bartender returns moments later with a full glass. There are only four other patrons in the tavern. The only one I know is Old Man Keller who is sitting at the table behind Charlie and hovering over a glass of something dark and icy. Strange to see the Old Man sitting atop anything other than that mower. Like seeing a cop out of uniform.

I remain standing just inside the door trying to decide whether I want to turn back around and go home or sit on the stool next to Charlie. There are no other options.

“Is this seat taken?” I ask.

Without turning his head, Charlie says, “Depends.” And then he sips the foam off the top of his draught and sighs. “You aren’t going to make me eat grass, are you?”

Charlie and I used to wrestle around a lot when we were kids. There were a few times that things got heated and I would pin him down, rip grass from the ground and shove it between his lips with prying fingers until he surrendered and opened wide. It was such a ridiculous form of torment that invariably we both laughed ourselves out of our rage. At least that’s how I remember it.

“You were always stronger than me. Why did you let me do that?” I ask.

“Because you were always angrier.” He motions down to the bartender that I need a drink. “Put it on my tab, Stan.”

“That’s okay, I’ll get it,” I protest.

“Stan, put it on my tab,” he repeats in such a way that Stan will not question further. In such a way that told me that Charlie had heard about Ethan, which was as close as we’d come to actually talking about him.

Charlie and I have the “how ya doin’
” 
and “whatcha been up to
” 
conversations. We have the “remember that time
” 
laughs. We talk about our families without digging below the surface of name, rank, and serial number. And we dance around how we had drifted apart and how different we really were back then, or explore how different we are now. Sitting on the bar in front of him is a panama hat. I was going to ask him about it, but thought better of it. Wearing a weird hat is the kind of thing you do when you want the world to think of you in a way they hadn’t before. That’s all I really need to know.

“You see much of Moose anymore? Whatever came of him?”

“I don’t see any more of Moose Thornton than you see of Katie Cooper,” he replies.

I let the beer swish around in my mouth as the words swish around in my head. I slowly swallow everything.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that Moose has been dead for about seven or eight years now. Was hot-rodding in town on his Harley when some old blue-hair ran a Yield sign and pulled out in front of him on south 3rd.”

“Jesus. Were you there when it happened?”

“I was. Moose flew over the top of that friggin’ Buick and skidded about 200 feet. Blood and brains halfway down 3rd Street. Dead. Just like that.”

He says this last part with an emphatic snap of his fingers. He drains the rest of his beer and motions to Stan for two more.

“The old lady stopped in shock, looked over at Moose lying there, looked at us and raced off at about twenty miles per hour. Not a whole lot of ‘run’ in her ‘hit-and-run’.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. Some out-of-towner on a visit. She could have took off at a hundred-and-twenty and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Nothing happens in Willow Grove that somebody doesn’t see or know about.”

“Again, like Katie.”

He sits silent for a moment and then cocks his head as if to consider something. Then gazing straight ahead, he says, “No, not like Katie Cooper.”

“What do you mean?”

“You talkin’ about the guy who supposedly saw Katie with ol’ Slim Jim by the railroad tracks?”

“Yeah.”

“Never happened.” He shakes his head and gives a dismissive wave of the hand.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about that night she was found. I’m not even sure there ever was an 
anonymous tip
. And even if there was, I don’t believe any-
body
 saw any-
thing
.”

The day that Katie went missing, the entire town had searched for her. Then, early the next morning, an anonymous tipster had called the Sheriff’s Office to say that they had seen a transient who had come to town a few weeks earlier walking down the railroad tracks with Katie. It was that tip that led the Sheriff to Katie’s body.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because while the whole town was out looking for Katie that night, Moose and I was drinking a six-pack behind the lumberyard and saw that hobo Slim Jim come loafing by ‘bout eleven o’clock. We sat and watched that goofy SOB walk through the Halpern’s backdoor and come right back out about five minutes later with a jar of peanut butter, a spoon, and a gallon of milk.”

Sticking my fingers in my ears to clear out the wax would be cliché, but that’s what I feel like doing.

“Are you telling me that Slim Jim was innocent of murder because he was guilty of stealing?”

“Kind of funny when you say it like that—ironic like.”

He laughs and takes a swig of beer before continuing.

“Gaines, you gotta ask yourself … does that sound like the behavior of a man who had killed a little girl? Even Slim Jim—dumbass that he was—would have known enough to get the hell out of Dodge. Instead he goes for a midnight snack?”

Behind Charlie, Old Man Keller orders another Jack Daniels and Coke then pays us a greeting.

“Hey boys, how ya doin’ this evening?”

“Fine, thanks. Yourself?” I ask.

“Can’t complain. Another day above ground.”

Stan places the Jack and Coke in front of him and Keller snatches it up in greedy little grass-stained hands. He turns back toward his table and lifts his glass in a toast.

“You boys be good now.”

With the Old Man back at his table, I shift my attention back to Charlie

“Why didn’t the Halperns ever report anything?”

“Report what? A missing gallon of milk? They probably never even noticed. Slim Jim walked into a dark house and walked out of a dark house.”

The door front slams shut behind me as unknown patron number one leaves the bar. I peek over at Keller who is coddling his drink and chomping on ice. The Old Man smiles and nods.

“Why didn’t you and Moose tell Sheriff Buck?”

“Now, that’s a fair question. I actually thought about it. I did,” he says with a rehearsed nod. “But Moose talked me out of it. We would have caught ourselves some serious licks for sneaking out and drinking like that. Hell, we were only, what, thirteen? Plus Moose said that Slim Jim still could have done it and we’d be risking our necks for some psychopath who we already knew for sure was at least one kind of criminal.”