Redemption Road

by John Hart

  The old man had been fine for the first day. He’d been calm and quiet, and even respectful. At some point, though, that changed. He got moody and sullen and short with the nurses. His eyes were red all the time, and Gideon woke more than once to find him staring out from under the bill of an old cap, lips moving as he stared at his son and whispered words Gideon couldn’t hear. Once, when a nurse suggested his father go home and get some sleep, he came to his feet so fast the chair scraped. There’d been a look in his eyes, too, something that scared even Gideon.

  After that, none of the nurses lingered when the old man was in the room. They didn’t smile and tease out stories. But it worked out in a way. Gideon’s father stayed away most of the time. When he chose to appear, he curled on the chair or slept. At times he stayed under a hospital blanket, and only Gideon knew he had bottles under there, too. He could hear them clanking in the dark, the gurgle when his father lifted the blanket and tipped one back.

  It was the pattern. And if the drinking went longer and deeper than usual, Gideon didn’t blame him. They both had reason to hate, and Gideon, too, knew the ache of failure. He didn’t pull the trigger, and that made him as weak as his father. So he tolerated the drunkenness and long stares, the time his father stumbled to the bathroom and vomited until the sun rose. And when the nurses asked Gideon about the mess, he’d said it was him; that the painkillers made him sick.

  After that they gave him Tylenol and let him hurt.

  He didn’t mind.

  The room was kept dark, and in the gloom he saw his mother’s face, not as a photograph—flat and faded—but as it must have been when she was alive, the color of it, the animation of her smile. The memory couldn’t be real, but he played it like a favorite movie, over and over and bright in the dark. The confession caught him by surprise.

  “She died because of me.”

  Gideon started because he didn’t know his father was in the room. He hadn’t been for hours, but now he was by the bed, his fingers hooked on the rail, a look on his face of desperation and shame.

  “Please, don’t hate me. Please, don’t die.”

  Gideon wasn’t going to die. The doctors had said as much, but his father’s breakdown was complete: red eyes and swollen face, the smell from his mouth like something pickled. “Where have you been? When did you get here?”

  “You don’t know how it is, son. You don’t see how it piles up—the things we do, the consequence when we love and trust and let others inside. You’re just a boy. How could you know anything about betrayal or hurt or what a man can do if he’s pushed?”

  Gideon sat up straighter; felt stitches pull in his chest. “What are you talking about? No one died because of you.”

  “Your mother.”

  “What about her?”

  Robert Strange pulled once on the rail, then rocked onto his knees as a bottle clattered from a coat pocket and slid across the floor. “It was just an argument, that’s all. Okay, wait. No. That’s a lie, and I promised no more lies. I hit her, yes, three times. But just the three, three times and done. I did that, but apologized. I swore to her son. I told her she didn’t need to leave me or go to the church. She’d done a bad thing. Yes, okay. But, I’d already forgiven her, so there was no sin to pray for, no need for God or the cross or reason to pray for me, either. All she had to do was stay with us, and I would forgive every bad thing she’d ever done, the lies and distortions and the secrets of her heart. Tell me you see it, son. So many years I’ve watched it eat you alive, to be motherless and stuck with me, alone. Tell me you forgive me, and I think maybe I could sleep without dreams. Tell me I did what any husband would do.”

  “I don’t understand. You hit her?”

  “It wasn’t like I planned it or enjoyed it.” Robert pulled at his hair and left it spiked. “The bad part happened so fast, my fists … that was twenty seconds, and maybe less. I never meant it. I didn’t want her to leave, didn’t think she’d die over twenty seconds. Just like that, one, two, three…”

  He was moving his fingers—counting—and Gideon blinked as it all soaked in. “She went to the church because of you?”

  “Her killer must have found her there.”

  “She died because of you?”

  The question was hard, and the father grew still, his head tilting so light caught in his eyes. “You still think she’s some kind of saint, don’t you, some perfect thing? I understand that, I do. A boy should feel that way about his mother. But she left you in that crib, son. I was angry, yes, and maybe I broke up the kitchen and smashed some things, and maybe I lied to the cops about what really happened. But she’s the one who left.”

  “Only because you hurt her.”

  “Not just because of that.” He slumped to the floor and hugged the bottle to his chest. “Because she loved Adrian Wall more than she loved me.”

  * * *

  Gideon struggled with it all: the man on the floor, the revelation. His mother loved Adrian Wall. What did that mean? Did he kill her or not?

  Gideon looked again at his father. He sat with his arms around his knees, his face buried. There’d been no abduction. His mother met her killer at the church or some other place. Not in his kitchen. Not as he’d watched from the crib.

  Was it Adrian?

  How could Gideon know? Could she possibly love him? That question was too big. It was massive, incomprehensible.

  There’d been no abduction.…

  The boy closed his eyes because the larger questions were coming hard and fast.

  Was she leaving for good?

  Was she leaving him?

  She couldn’t be that flawed, that … wrong.

  “She was a good woman, son, warm-spirited and loving, but as conflicted as the rest of us.”

  “Reverend. Black?”

  “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, Gideon. It seemed like an important moment, and I didn’t want to interrupt, either.”

  “You startled me. I barely recognize you.”

  “It’s the beard, or the lack of it. Then there’re the clothes. I don’t always wear black, you know.” The preacher stood in the gloom at the edge of a green curtain. He smiled and stepped all the way inside. “Hello, Robert. I’m sorry to see you in such a state. Let me help you.” He extended a hand and drew Gideon’s father to his feet. “Difficult times, I’m sure. We must strive to rise above them.”

  “Reverend.”

  Robert dipped his head and tried to tuck the bottle out of sight. Reverend Black smiled. “Weakness is not a sin, Robert. God built us all with special flaws and left us the challenge of addressing them. Facing the things that hurt us most is the real test. If you came to church with your son, you might understand the difference.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Next Sunday, perhaps.”

  “Thank you, Reverend.”

  “What are you drinking?”

  “Uh…” Robert scrubbed a forearm across his face and cleared his throat. “It’s just bourbon. I’m sorry … uh. What I said about Julia. Hitting her, I mean. I guess you heard that?”

  “It’s not my place to judge you, Robert.”

  “But, do you think I got her killed, somehow? She ran from me, and then she died. Do you understand how it could be like that?” Robert was teary-eyed, still breaking. “I’ve carried that secret for so long. Please tell me she didn’t die because of me.”

  “I’ll tell you what.” The reverend put an arm around Robert’s shoulders and took the bottle, holding it up to find it almost full. “Why don’t you find someplace quiet?” The reverend walked him past the bed, toward the door. “Not home. A place close by. Take this with you, and have a nice quiet drink. Spend some time with your thoughts.”

  Robert took the bottle. “I don’t understand.”

  “The garden, perhaps, or the parking garage. I don’t really care.”

  “But…”

  “No one knows more than I about the depths of human frailty. Your own. Those of your wife. I�
��d like to help your son understand, if I can. In the meantime, enjoy the bottle. I give you permission.” Reverend Black pushed him into the hall and closed the door down to a crack. “Tomorrow is soon enough to contemplate the multitude of your sins.”

  He closed the door the rest of the way and stood for a long time in the silence. To Gideon, he looked different, and it wasn’t just the clothes or missing beard. He seemed stiffer, narrower. When he spoke, he sounded less forgiving, too. “Your father is a weak man.”

  “I know.”

  “A man with no will for necessary things.”

  The reverend turned from the door, and his face was all dark eyes and angles. They’d spoken often of necessary things. Sundays after church. Long prayers on difficult nights. And the prayers weren’t like Sunday sermons. The reverend had explained it more than once, but Gideon didn’t pretend to understand it all: the Old Testament versus the New, an eye for an eye as opposed to a turned cheek. What Gideon did understand was the concept of necessary things. Those were the things you felt in your heart that no one else would do for you. They were difficult things, things you kept to yourself until it was time to act. The acting is where he’d failed. “About Adrian Wall…”

  “Shhh.” The reverend held up a hand, then pulled a chair beside the bed. “You did nothing wrong.”

  “I didn’t pull the trigger.”

  “All I ever said was to follow your heart and be unafraid to act. Adrian Wall’s fate was always in larger hands than your own.”

  Gideon frowned because that’s not how he remembered it. The reverend’s talk of necessary things had not been so much about following as about acting. Always the acting.

  This is the time they let prisoners out.

  This is the place they go.

  The best place for you to hide.

  It seemed wrong coming from the reverend, but sometimes Gideon misunderstood the big concepts. God did drown the world. He did turn Lot’s wife to a pillar of salt. It all made sense when the reverend explained it. Cleansings. Punishment. Creative destruction. “I thought you’d be angry with me.”

  “Of course not, Gideon. You’re a child and wounded by fate. You should also understand that necessary things are rarely easy things. If they were, then there’d be no distinction between men of will and those of low character. I’ve always believed you to be the former, and no imagined failing could dissuade me of that conviction. You’ve always had an eager soul. Your mother can see that, you know.” The reverend touched Gideon’s hand. “The question now is, if you’re still willing to help me.”

  “Of course. Always.”

  “Good boy. Good. This may hurt a little.” The reverend stood and stripped the needle from Gideon’s arm.

  “Ow.”

  “I want you to get dressed and come with me.”

  “But the doctor…”

  “Who do you trust more, the doctor or me?”

  The preacher’s eyebrow went up, and the stare between them held, one of them unflinching and hard, the other unusually frightened. “My clothes are in the closet.”

  The preacher crossed the room and found the clothing. At the bed, he offered the first real smile Gideon had seen. “Come along now. Quickly.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gideon climbed shakily from the bed. He was weak. His chest hurt. He got one leg in his pants, then the other. When he straightened, he saw the preacher’s blood. “Your neck is bleeding.” He pointed at the preacher’s neck, and when the old man touched it, his fingers came back red. Gideon saw then that the collar was bloody, too, and that a purple bruise was spreading along the side of his neck. It all felt wrong: the preacher in red flannel and bleeding, the way he’d stripped out the needle and sent Gideon’s father off to get drunk.

  “How did you hurt yourself?”

  “It’s like I told you, son.” The preacher tossed a shirt at the boy. “The necessary things are rarely the easy ones.”

  * * *

  After that nothing felt exactly right. The way he looked Gideon up and down, how he checked the hall and spoke too quietly. “Balance okay? You can walk?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then walk normally. If someone speaks to you, let me respond.”

  Gideon followed him out and kept his head down. He knew it wasn’t right, what they were doing. The doctor had been clear: A week at least. Those are delicate stitches in your chest. We don’t want to knock them loose.

  “I think I’m bleeding.”

  They were alone in the elevator, Reverend Black watching floors tick down. “That’s normal,”

  “Is it a lot?”

  “It’s fine.” But, he didn’t even look. They went from the fifth floor to the second, where the elevator stopped and a nurse got on. She looked at Gideon, then at the gash on the preacher’s neck. She opened her mouth, but Reverend Black cut her off. “What are you looking at?”

  The nurse shut her mouth; faced front.

  Out of the elevator other people stared, too, but no one stopped them. They went through the ER and out the glass door. In the parking lot, Gideon struggled as they moved faster through the crowded lot. He felt weak. The sun was too bright.

  “This is not your car.”

  “It runs.”

  Gideon hesitated. He’d been in the preacher’s car before, a minivan with immaculate paint and a cross on the plates. This one was small and dirty and, in places, rusted through.

  “Let’s get you situated.” Reverend Black pushed Gideon into the car, then strapped him down and slid behind the wheel.

  Gideon wrinkled his nose. “It smells funny in here.”

  “How about some quiet while we drive?”

  The reverend turned the key and drove them through town and out to the poor side of things. Air whistled through his teeth as the car moved, and Gideon thought at first they were going to the old, white church on its skinny lot. The thought comforted him because he’d always felt safe in the church. He liked the hymns and the candles, the cushions and wood and velvet hassocks. The church was little, but Gideon felt the warmth of it, too. The preacher had a deep voice, and his wife was like the perfect grandmother. Elizabeth would often drive him to Sunday service. She wouldn’t go in, but was always waiting for him when he came out, and that, too, was special. But they passed the turn for the church. He watched it fade as the preacher drove instead to the hillside road that dropped into the dim, cool shade that seemed to lie so often on Gideon’s house. “We’re going to my house?”

  “I need a special favor. Will you do that, son? Grant me a special favor?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I never doubted you. Not once.”

  The reverend pulled to a stop near the porch and got the front door open. His movements seemed hurried and erratic. Tripping once on the stairs. Darting eyes and color in his face. Inside, the air was stuffy, all the curtains were drawn. He got Gideon onto the sofa and sat him down.

  “This favor. You need to be smart and do it right.” The reverend pushed a phone into Gideon’s hands. “Call her. Tell her you want to see her.”

  Gideon felt the wrongness piling up: the eagerness and dry lips, the sudden, fierce intensity. “I don’t understand. Call who?”

  “Elizabeth.” The preacher took the phone from Gideon’s fingers and dialed a number. “Tell her you need to see her. Tell her to come here.”

  “Why?”

  “Tell her that you miss her.”

  Gideon kept his eyes on Reverend Black and waited for Elizabeth to answer the phone. It took five rings, then Gideon said what he’d been asked to say. There was a silence after his words; in the hesitation, he said, “I just miss you is all.”

  He listened for ten more seconds, and when she hung up, it felt like part of the wrongness. Why he was home. Why he was calling her.

  “What’d she say?”

  Eager fingers took the phone, and Gideon felt a strange regret. “She said I shouldn’t be out of the hospital.”

  �
��What about the rest of it?”

  “She’s coming.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The preacher got up and paced the room twice. He took Gideon’s arm and led him to the bathroom. “The next thing is really important.”

  “What?”

  He squared up the boy and put heavy hands on his shoulders. “Don’t scream.”

  Gideon didn’t know the girl in the tub. Silver tape covered her mouth and was wrapped around her head two or three times. Her wrists were taped, too; but Gideon stared mostly at the swollen eyes. She was chained to the radiator, wrapped in a tarp. “Reverend…?”

  The preacher put him on the toilet seat and knelt as the girl struggled. “You don’t want to do that.”

  Gideon, watching, knew he’d never seen anyone so frightened in all his life. The girl was wide-eyed and grew still. He tried to understand, but it felt as if the world had changed while he slept, as if the sun had set one day and come up dark the next. “Reverend?”

  “Stay here. Stay quiet.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that.”

  “Do you trust me, son? Do you believe I know what’s right and what’s wrong?”

  “Yes, sir.” But he really didn’t. The door closed, and Gideon sat still. The girl was watching him, and that made it worse. “Does it hurt?” he whispered.

  She moved her head up and down, slowly.

  “I’m sorry for the reverend,” Gideon said. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  34

  Elizabeth drove because she had no other choice. She couldn’t stay at the house, couldn’t leave the county.

  So she drove.

  She drove so the warden wouldn’t find her, and not the cops, either. She stuck to the gravel roads and the dirt, to the narrow lanes that led to forgotten places. The movement was all she had left, just that and worry and the fear her courage would break. Elizabeth dreaded prison with the kind of fear born bloody from knowledge of what happens when helplessness becomes the final rule. Prison was powerlessness and subjugation, the antithesis of everything she’d fought to be since she’d first known the bitter taste of fallen pine. She’d denied that for a long time, but all she had to do was look at Adrian to know the truth of it. So she drove as she had as a kid, wind-struck and wild and untouched. Yet with every intersection came a choice, and every choice took her west. She didn’t even notice until she hit the county line, then she turned east because the children were east, and those were the bars of her cage—Channing and the boy, the county map with its unforgiving lines.