“It’s neither right or wrong, Jonesy. It’s politics. How long do you think I would have lasted in my next campaign against Sermon Sam once he started digging up old news stories about me punching out of my plane and taking out that hotel? Or better yet, how long would I have lasted once everyone found out that the woman I was sleeping with, the woman who just happened to be married to that idiot Wells was at work and in the hotel that morning? Not very long, I can tell you that,” the Governor said.
“And what about the shootings?”
The Governor took another drink of his scotch. “What about them? Sidney Wells was a psychopath. He was trying to destroy me by murdering family members of anyone and everyone he thought was even remotely responsible for the crash that day. He knew all along I was Sidney, Junior’s father. If Pate’s wife and my daughter were having some sort of illicit affair, as you allege, then the plan must have been put together by them. Who knows?”
I tried to hide the contempt in my voice, but I don’t think I succeeded. “And who cares, right?”
I picked up a few more of the pictures and looked through them. I thought the Governor’s priorities were about as far out of line as they could be, but in truth, who was I to judge? After a few minutes I did what I thought was the right thing-which may eventually be my downfall-and reached into my pocket and gave him the document. When he used my formal title I immediately knew I’d made the wrong choice.
“Thank you, Detective Jones. That will be all.”
I gave him a chance to correct himself, but he didn’t take it. “Are you sure about that, Sir?”
When he looked away and didn’t answer me, I pulled myself out of the chair and walked out of his office.
Sandy touched my arm and pulled me out of my thoughts. “Hey, you with me, big guy?” she said. We stood next to the edge of the pond behind my house and when I looked out across the water I saw it wrinkle in spots, the blue gill hungry, nicking at the surface.
“Why did you want to come out here?” I said.
Just then, a landscape truck pulling a back-hoe on a lowboy trailer turned off the road and came up the drive. I lost sight of it for a moment, then it came around the side of the house and stopped next to the out building I use as a storage space for my lawn equipment.
“You’re about to find out,” Sandy said. “We wanted to do something. For you. Me, Murton, and Delroy. ”
I watched as Murton backed the tractor from the trailer and drove over to where we stood, about ten yards from the edge of the pond. He lowered the bucket on the backhoe and scooped out a pile of soil then placed it carefully in a mound a few feet away from the hole. He repeated the process two more times, then turned the tractor around, winked at me like he may have just noticed my presence and drove back to the truck. When he returned the next time Delroy rode along with him. There was a Weeping Willow tree in the bucket of the tractor, its root ball enclosed with burlap and twine. Murton lowered the bucket next to the hole opposite the pile of dirt, shut down the engine and climbed from the operator’s seat, a small package in his hands.
“Hey Jonesy. Sandy,” he said, as he handed me the package. It was wrapped in plain white paper, the kind a butcher would use at a meat market, and tied across both ends with brown string that knotted in the middle. The paper wrapping was stiff, but the contents of the package soft and pliable. I let a question form on my face and I saw Sandy nod at Murton. “It’s the shirt your father was wearing at the bar when he was shot,” Murton said. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Virg. I spent a year undercover with the Pate’s and never once looked at Amanda. I could have prevented the whole god damned thing.”
Sandy walked over and wrapped her arms around Murton and when she did, his eyes locked on mine. “It’s alright,” I said. “It’s time to let go of the past, Murt.”
I held the package against my chest, my father’s blood wasted and dry under a wrap of string and paper. I looked at Sandy. “He was telling me he loved me,” I said. “In the bar, when you came out of the bathroom. He didn’t say the words, but that’s what he was telling me.”
Murton walked over to the tractor and pulled a shovel from the side rack and stood next to the hole. Sandy and I walked over and I got down on my knees and placed my father’s bloodied shirt at the bottom of the hole. Then I stood back and watched as Sandy and Murton and Delroy wrestled the willow tree into the hole and filled the remaining space from the pile of dirt.
“Willow trees use more water than just about any other tree,” Murton said to no one. “I don’t know how I know that.” Then he looked away. I thought there was more he wanted to say, and I think Delroy thought the same thing.
“The ground water will soak tru the paper and into dat shirt, mon. Your father’s blood, it will flow tru dat tree just like it do your own heart, Virgil Jones.” I think it was the first time I had ever heard Delroy say my full name.
“It might not be much, but we had to do something,” Murton said.
Sandy sat down in the grass next to the tree, and after a few minutes, Murton and Delroy and I did too. Sandy took my hand and looked at me. “I’m sorry, baby,” she said. If I had been just a little quicker…”
I cut her off. “We agreed we weren’t going to have this discussion anymore.”
The shine in her eyes sparkled a turquoise blue, the un-felled tears caught in her lashes. “I can’t help it, Virgil. I can’t get these thoughts out of my head. My father died saving your life, and I keep thinking that surely there must be some reason things turned out this way. I was supposed to save your dad, Virgil. But I didn’t. Don’t you see that?”
“No, I don’t. Amanda was after me. When Dad yelled out, he took a bullet that was meant for me, and one that probably would have hit you. He not only saved my life, but he saved yours as well.”
“And how am I supposed to live with that, Virgil?”
“The same way I have all these years. The same way I’m still learning how to.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“I’ll show you,” I said. “I’ll teach you. We’ll do it together.”
Sometimes though, at night, as we lay together under the sheets, I wonder if maybe our roles aren’t reversed, if maybe it isn’t me who is being led and taught, not just by Sandy, but by those people who have held a place in my life and still rent pieces of my heart as tenants in perpetuity. And when sleep does not come as it sometimes does not, I’ll get up and walk out onto my deck and watch the moon journey across the sky, its reflection set deep in the sheen of the black-watered pond at the back of my house. I’ll stand quietly and listen to the wind hiss through the leaves on my father’s Willow tree or the dull echo of semi tires as they snap over the expansion joints out on the four-lane. The sounds surround and comfort me, ground me in some way.
And after a while I’ll go back to bed and wrap my arms around the woman I love and remind myself it probably does not matter who is the teacher and who is the student, only that we learn how to live and love along the way. God has put us here, and when our time is over God will take us away on a calendar not of our own making, but one that benefits the continued growth of our souls. Everything in between is part of a timeline we think we control, though I doubt we do. In the end I think we simply ride the rails, safe in the belief of a master plan we only witness after the fact, if ever at all.
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-bff2bb-d183-814f-19a3-e41c-053d-ed737c
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 02.08.2012
Created using: Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0
написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/
Voodoo Daddy vj-1 Page 24
