“Lawanda here got you in it,” Howard pointed out.
“True enough, but I don’t regret that.” Was I lying? “I needed to come back,” I said, “and I would have never done it on my own.”
June nodded. Lawanda pushed her potatoes an inch farther from her untouched meat loaf. Maybe this was getting to her after all.
“We should get Garland out,” Lawanda said, “and then you can go home.”
“Hush!” Howard ordered.
This startled Jeff and he turned over his milk. Lawanda jumped up.
“Wait till the children are done, Howard,” June advised. “I’ll send them on the porch with their cake.”
Ray inhaled his food, Dessie sulked, and Jeff dawdled, but finally they were gone.
“Lord have mercy,” June said.
“What’s that for?” Howard wanted to know.
“You blessed the food,” June said. “I reckon I can bless the talk.”
They looked at each other.
“Fair enough,” he agreed.
“What I understand from talking with Mr. Galt,” I began, “is that my father is officially being held for public intoxication and resisting arrest and that bond will be set when the court meets Monday. What they’re really keeping him for, though, is to give you time to work up a case against him regarding Lawanda.”
“What?” Lawanda’s body rose with her voice, both lifted in astonishment.
“That’s true and you knew it,” her daddy said. “I told you myself. Now sit down.”
“Do you have a lawyer working on it?” I asked.
They all stared at me. Finally, Howard spoke.
“That’d be the sheriff’s business, wouldn’t it?”
“Not until you bring charges. And to do that, you have to have testimony—”
“We got that notebook!” Howard pounded the table.
“I’m not sure,” I told him, “but I don’t think that’s admissible evidence.”
“Your lawyer tell you that?”
“I didn’t call one.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s not sure she wants Garland out,” Lawanda broke in.
“Partly,” I admitted. “But also I’d have to find a lawyer.”
“I thought every soul in Louisville had a lawyer,” June said.
“Well, they don’t.”
“Wait a minute!” Howard said, turning to me. “Why don’t you want him out? He’s your own daddy.”
“That’s why,” I said. “I’m scared of him.”
“See!” His arm shot out, finger pointed, as if to poke into the eye of what I’d said. “A grown woman, his own flesh, who don’t even live here, is scared of him. That’s why we got to keep him locked up.”
“She’s scared of the past,” Lawanda spat out. “Something that already happened! And I don’t know what you’re scared of. Me, I’m scared Garland’s going to die locked up where you wouldn’t keep a dog!” And she got up and walked out the back door.
I started to follow.
“Leave her be,” June said. “She needs to cool off.”
I turned around. Even as I did it, pivoting on the scrubbed linoleum, I could feel a larger turning.
“She’s right,” I told them. “I am scared of the past, what’s over. That man I saw last night wasn’t my daddy that hurt me—”
“He’s your daddy that hurt Lawanda!” Howard grabbed my arm.
“He’s what became of my daddy,” I finished, turning my wrist till he let go.
“Lawanda doesn’t act hurt,” June put in. “There’s no sign of anything bad, except all this upset.” She turned to Howard. “I don’t see why you can’t just let it go. Mommy said you wouldn’t even talk to her today.” Howard raised his palm to stop her, but she ignored him. “And you know what she did then? Went to see Garland. Said he looked bad.”
“Your mommy has no more sense than Lawanda!” Howard snapped at her. “Do you think I care how the old man looks?”
“Well, I do.” What? What was I saying?
“Me, too,” Lawanda said. None of us had heard her come in. “And if the bond is set Monday, I’ll bet Mr. Ballard will pay it and get him out. Unless you talk him out of it.” She glared at her father.
“Don’t know as I can,” Howard said. “He’s blind as you.”
“Or can see as deep,” I told him.
“Does that mean you won’t help me?” he asked.
“Help you what?”
“Keep your daddy where he belongs.”
I took a deep breath, looked from Howard to Lawanda, thought of the distance between Amos and me. You’re not my daddy!—the first thing I ever said to him. But he was. Now and ever shall be.
“If you mean in jail,” I said, “no, I guess not.”
He got up from the table and walked away.
LAWANDA: I stormed out the back door and stared at our steep patch of yard. That’s my life, I thought. Open a door and walk into a mountain.
It was cold and I didn’t have a coat and I was glad. I wanted to get numb. I wanted to freeze all the questions: Nancy Catherine’s, Dad’s, mine. Was I in love with Garland? Stupid idea. But how would I know? It’s not like I’d been in love with anybody else. Didn’t my heart beat faster on the way to see him? Yes, but it was a hard climb up the ridge. Didn’t I want him to hold me? Not that I knew of. I mean really, I had never thought about it. Yeah, but now that I had … Maybe. I guess. I don’t know.
But he didn’t. That’s the point. So what if he felt that way about me? You can feel anything. Is that bad?
They’re talking about action, I told myself, circling the coal shed, picking up a good-sized chunk. Innocent in action, that’s what I’ll say. This piece of coal could have been a diamond, given enough pressure, enough time. Or it could have been burned to cinders in the grate. But none of that happened. They were reading action where Garland wrote feeling. But there wasn’t any action! For that matter, they didn’t even know what he wrote.
What did happen between Garland and me? I went over it. We were friends. I needed someone to talk to and I could talk to him. What’s wrong with that? Nothing. Okay, why was I scared, then? His drinking. That’s it? No, there was something there when he was drinking, something threatening to get out—
But it didn’t. I would say that if I had to.
I went back into the overheated house—still mad, but clearer. They could accuse all they wanted, but I knew what I knew.
HOWARD: They’re going to let that man out, by God. Lawanda won’t say what he done, and what he wrote won’t hold him. I’ve tried to talk to Curtis Ballard, get him to promise not to go bond, but it’s like his eyes are sealed, his ear flaps sewed over. “Good at heart,” Mr. Ballard says. “Whatever Garland may have written, I know he’s good at heart.” I thought a man showed himself by his work. “By their fruits ye shall know them. ” A good heart ain’t enough! Even if he has one, which I doubt.
You know something else? I don’t think Mr. Ballard wants to be wrong. Garland’s like some strip-mine bench he thinks he’s reclaimed. See? It’ll grow kudzu, poison ivy, stinkweed, bindweed, beggar-lice. He can’t admit that a garden plant won’t last in it till the fruit sets. Sour ground, I’m telling you. Sowed with salt.
Lawanda’s a wild plant anyway. Too much like her mamaw. Thinks she can do anything, go anywhere she pleases. If she was a boy, now … What I don’t get is how Mamaw raised Junie, a regular woman, a person with sense. Whatever Mamaw’s got loose in her skipped straight to Lawanda. I should have seen it coming. I remember the time Lawanda climbed up on top of the shed. I’d come out to the coal pile and saw her tottering up there, not about to admit she was scared. Before I could say a word she hollered, “You let Noonie play up here!”
“He’s older. Now come on down.”
“He’s a boy, you mean.”
“Now, Lawanda—”
“ ‘Boys will be boys,’ Mom’s always saying. What about girls?”
“Girls will be switched if they don’t mind their daddies,” I said.
She climbed down.
“I told you never to set foot on that ladder.”
“God said I could,” she taunted.
“You leave God out of this!” I took a forsythia sprout then and there and welted her legs.
Fat lot of good that did. She didn’t need God’s go-ahead to climb that hill. All she needed was the notion. All the seed needs is a little wind to ride out on and it can land in a garden or a tar pit. Well, I’ve dug up the plant. It’s wilted but surviving. Now I got to take care of that tar.
NANCY CATHERINE: When I left the Ingles’, I went back to the motel, thinking to settle in for the night. I couldn’t do it. I’d seen too much: the buses, Howard’s blindness, that I was on Lawanda’s side. I couldn’t lie down with a shrieking orange carpet and that.
So it occurred to me to take another hike up Cade’s Hill. I thought if I could fix First Bus in my mind—its order, the care Amos gave it—I’d have something else to hold against all I knew of him, something to add to Lawanda’s account. She found him in his garden, not his wilderness; they met in his library.
So, getting my jacket and making sure the car flashlight worked, I drove off. It seemed much farther to Hallspoint Road in the dark, without Lawanda. I was tempted to turn around at each traffic light. What I was doing made no sense. Where I was made no sense. How could somebody I’d never met suck me back into my father’s life? Back where I swore I’d never be?
Even with the bypass opening up one side of the town, Cardin is a jail in itself, walled in by mountains, choked by the river, barbed wired by the railroad. I looked at the rim of ridges, a green-black worse than dark. I looked at the sky above, constellations punched through like the design in God’s pie safe.
Mamaw, I thought. That’s the Mamaw channel coming through. Lawanda’s got me wired up to all these people. She’s a connector. And it hit me: she could be my daughter. I’m old enough. She could be Daddy’s granddaughter. But he doesn’t have any. Four kids and not a single grandchild.
Lost them in the war.
It was more like a sign I passed than a thought. What channel was that?
The school-bus shelter was hard to see in the dark, so I almost passed it and was going too fast as I got off the road. I skidded in the gravel and came close to losing control of the car. My heart was hammering when I started across the road.
Funny, in Louisville I wouldn’t think of walking through an empty lot at night, wouldn’t jog in Cherokee Park or even walk back to my car after a movie by myself. But here I didn’t hesitate. Maybe my obsession made me feel safe. I headed up through the weeds, the flashlight beam zigzagging ahead of me. I was relieved to be doing something.
But when I reached the top of the ridge where the buses sat, I shivered. There was a charge in the air, like an odor, except I felt instead of smelled it.
My first thought was that the burglars had come back, and I ran to First Bus, meaning to scare them off. I climbed the steps and peered in, but I could see neither light nor movement.
I walked to the door of Second Bus. Nothing going on in there, either. Still the feeling persisted. Bad vibrations. I sat on the steps to think. Was it just memory warning me away? Or maybe it was little Nancy Catherine looking at me from her trapped space, saying, You can escape! Forget about me! Go!
I was listening for her, but what I heard were footsteps. Without thinking, I turned off the light. Then I saw him, enlarged by his coat and the darkness, like a shadow thrown against a wall. He was carrying a gas can. His face wasn’t even covered. He came closer, set the can down, and began working off the lid. He didn’t see me or seem to sense anyone close by.
I couldn’t let him go any further. I flashed the light in his face.
“Howard Ingle,” I said, “you don’t want to do that.”
He jumped, then froze, the smell of gas sloshing out of the can. I couldn’t see his face, so I went on. “You have no right to damage my father’s property, and you’ll wind up further back in jail than he is if you do.”
“What about the damage he’s done to my property?” Howard asked.
“Your daughter’s not property,” I told him. “And you have no proof of damage.”
“I got a gas can,” he said. “Sometimes you got to burn the field clean.”
Fear pricked my spine. I was going to have to stop him.
“This is a person’s house,” I told him. “Not a field.”
“Some house!” he said, disgusted. “Some person.” And he started around the bus, tilting the can. “Go home, Nancy Catherine,” he called, “and you won’t have to see this. Not a soul will know who did it. ”
When he heard me get up, he began running, splashing the gas against the bus. But I heard something else. I swung the light behind me. It was Lawanda! Oh my God! She ran past me, yelling, “Daddy! Stop it! Stop!”
Before she could reach him, something sparked in his hand. She jumped on his back and they both fell as a fuse of fire ran around the bus.
“Goddamn you, Howard!” I screamed, pulling Lawanda from his back. Then I tore my jacket off and began beating at the flames. Howard just stood there. I was working my way around the bus, knowing it was useless, when I saw Lawanda go for the gas can. I hollered, “No! No!” but she raised her foot to kick it into the garden. Fire got there first and there was this boom, and it looked like a starburst. For a minute, I couldn’t see Lawanda, then she appeared, robed in flame, the corn patch behind her.
“Howard!” My voice spiraled. I ran toward Lawanda and he was there.
HOWARD: I could see the maps on the ceiling start to curl. But then something blew up like God Almighty and I was running and it was Lawanda, Lawanda burning, which couldn’t be, and I jerked off my coat and she was already on the ground, rolling. I threw it over her, her hair. I beat on her, lay on her, smothered the fire out. Then I had to drag her away from the flame that was coming. Her face was black, her eyes still as the moon. I carried her down the hill, Nancy Catherine screaming all the way.
She took us to the hospital. Lawanda’s so big, it was hard to put her in the car. I couldn’t get in the backseat with her. Nancy Catherine said she was breathing okay, to stop moaning, and I said would she take me to jail after the hospital. She said I was burned, too, we all were, and I started this crazy crying. “Listen for your daughter!” she said. “Shut up and listen!”
FOUR
MAMAW: Mother Jesus, let Your eyes be the headlights pulling me across this mountain. I’ve driven many a night but it’s never been this black. “Not Lawanda,” is the only prayer I got in me, and that’s no good. It is Lawanda. Already is. I’m the one says you don’t want sacrifice, and here’s my own grandbaby … She’s got to live, You hear me? We ain’t got room in our pain to lose Lawanda.
What did she do, anyway? The least of anybody. Amos, Howard, me, even Nancy Catherine, but Lawanda? Ain’t You paying attention? This is wrong, the wrong way around—
Lordy mercy, I’ve got to slow down some. I just about missed that curve. The crack in the windshield don’t help, either. Coal truck kicked up a rock last week. Window down and I could have been blind, dead over Pine Mountain.
Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and billows
have gone over me.
Waves and billows of fire.
Just passed the turn to Stony Fork. We’ve had many a picnic there. Frying apples over a woodfire, bees buzzing. And Lawanda running with a gang of ragtag kids. Dessie getting stung. Where can we go, Mother Jesus, if we lose Lawanda? Will You come wake her up like Lazarus? Give her a new skin?
June on the phone was pure heartbroke. On top of everything, Ray’s saying he won’t see his daddy again. Between her man, the other younguns, and Lawanda, where’s she supposed to go? It’s like the old hymn says:
Where could I go,
Where could I go
Seeking a refuge for my soul?
Needing a friend
To help me in the end,
Where could I go but to the Lord?
Your love is the one road we got, Mother Jesus. Without You, it’s the rock wall or the cliff. Sometimes the fog’s so thick you can’t see no edges. Like now. So reel us in. Reel us close and heal Lawanda. Give us forgiveness, Howard most of all. Give us healing. You, who stood the fire of all our hate. Amen.
NANCY CATHERINE: I got Lawanda and Howard to the hospital, called June and went to pick her up, then drove to the jail. I had a few singed places, but nothing that wouldn’t keep, and anyway, it was my heart that hurt. I wanted that notebook so I could read and judge for myself, and then I wanted my daddy out of that jail. I wanted everybody at the hospital, where we could keep watch for Lawanda and see we all cared about the same thing.
I’d already been considering how to get the notebook; this holocaust just gave me a trump card to play. It was about one in the morning when I got to the jail, so I had to buzz Galt on the intercom. He has an apartment on the premises.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” he said, sounding none too happy about it.
I didn’t care. “Mr. Galt,” I began, before he even sat down in his office, “do you know what happened tonight?”
He looked blank.
“About the fire?”
He shook his head. So I told him, bluntly and bitterly. “Good God!” was all he said.
I set in. “Because you’ve been holding my father here in hopes of more serious charges—”
He spluttered in protest, but I plunged on. “I know about the notebook and how you slandered my father based on evidence illegally seized.”
He raised his hands. I pressed hard: “And since, if you had not been holding him here, Howard Ingle would not have burned the buses, nor Lawanda been a victim of the blaze, I propose that you give me my father’s notebook with the understanding that this will be the last we hear of either matter—my father’s writing or your manipulations—and that, as soon as I find a place for him, you’ll release him upon payment of the bond.”
With a Hammer for My Heart Page 13
