When Mockingbirds Sing (9781401688233)

by Coffey, Billy

  Reggie’s thoughts were still on the Norcross family, and that bothered him. He had already prayed for them, had given Tom and Ellen and sweet Miss Leah to the Lord, which was all he could do. Yet the family from Away lingered still, and Reggie could not understand why. Those thoughts finally began to shift as he turned at Second Street and walked down the small alleyway to the Treasure Chest. Unfortunately, his heart now pondered Barney and Mabel Moore.

  A life devoted to supplication and Scripture could provide the answer to most any question (Reggie shook his head at the whole “spiritual but not religious” nonsense), and the answer to the suffering lives of Barney and Mabel should be no different. All Reggie had to consider was Job, that good man ruined by the devil for the glory of God. Or Joseph, who was bound by chains only to rise up and rule all of Egypt. The problem was the Moores had yet to rise up. They were still being sacked and shackled.

  Why? That was the question that had preyed on Reggie’s mind for years, and one that remained unanswered. The Moores had been faithful to both their church and their God, but that had not prevented Barney’s financial troubles or Mabel’s worsening condition. As a result, their social status had been reduced from pillars of the community to pitiable laughingstocks. Aside from himself, the Grandersons, and the Barnetts, the town all but shunned Barney and Mabel. Even at church, that place where Christian love should be most evident, they were relegated to the purgatory of the back pew and given only the slightest passing greeting. It was as though the town likened them to a debilitating virus spread by mere acknowledgment. Deep down (and despite his best efforts to prove to the town otherwise), Reggie simply believed folks were afraid Barney’s failure would rub off on them.

  It was all part of the Mystery, the unseen hand of God. Only He knew why some were blessed and others cursed. All Reggie was privy to was the knowledge that while he could not change the world, he could change tiny pieces of it. Which is why he kept watch over Mabel every Saturday and Wednesday evening so Barney could run errands. It was a small act, but an appreciated one. A necessary one.

  Reggie walked into the Treasure Chest and heard voices from the shop. He pushed through the swinging doors. Barney stood near his desk looking at a large sheet of paper. Allie Granderson and Leah were with him.

  “Hey, Barney,” Reggie said.

  Barney and the girls looked up. Allie waved. And was that a smile on Leah’s face?

  “Reggie,” Barney said, “come on over here and take a look at this.”

  He weaved among the worktables and discarded tools to where they waited. Barney’s eyes were red and his cheeks puffed.

  “Hey there, Preacher Goggins,” Allie said. She gave him a sideways hug that Reggie returned.

  “Hello there, Miss Leah,” Reggie said.

  “H-hello.”

  The girl’s smile was still there. Reggie noticed it wasn’t a joyful smile but a shy one, a grin of secrets.

  “Look at this, Reggie,” Barney said. “Leah painted me a picture on the easel I made her. You just look at this.”

  He handed the painting over. Reggie’s eyes bulged at the landscape—the beauty of it, the exactness, the sheer perfection. It was as if he held not a likeness of the world, but a world itself. His hands began to shake.

  “Ain’t that somethin’?” Barney asked. “You ever seen its like, Reggie? ’Cause I sure ain’t, not in all my seventy-three years.”

  Reggie looked down at Leah and asked, “You painted this, child?”

  “Nuh-not exactly,” she said. “The R-rainbow M-man helped a luh-lot.”

  “The who?”

  “Leah’s spirit,” Allie said. “You know, the guy we were lookin’ for at the party?”

  Reggie tried to smile, but his mind was split between the numbness in his lips, the picture in his hands, and the fact that he was actually asking, “You say a spirit helped you paint this picture?”

  “He s-showed me how to m-mix the wuh . . . w-watercolors,” Leah said. “He’s m-magic. Do you buh-lieve in m-magic, Ruh-Reverend?”

  “I believe in the Lord, Miss Leah.”

  “I think it’s just wonderful,” Barney said.

  Reggie brought Leah’s painting so close it felt as if he would tumble into it. He offered the picture back to Barney.

  “Wuh-we’ll be going n-now,” Leah said. “I know you have stuh-stuff to do, Mr. Buh-Barney.”

  Barney shook his head at the painting and placed it on his desk. He wrapped the two girls in his arms. Leah hugged Barney back. Her left hand patted his head as if comforting him.

  “Good-bye, girls,” he said. “And thank you so much. Y’all have no idea.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Barney,” Allie said. “And don’t worry, we won’t tell nobody about your bawlin’. Bye, Preacher Goggins.”

  “Good-bye, Allie,” Reggie said.

  The girls headed for the swinging doors hand in hand. Leah paused just before leaving and cocked her head to the side, as if listening. She turned back to Reggie and said, “Chuh-cheery-bye, Ruh-Reverend. Please be cuh-careful of the n-newspaper b-b-box.”

  She left then, taking her mysteries with her.

  9

  Barney climbed into his truck with the Dodge’s keys in one hand and Leah’s rolled-up watercolor in the other. He’d meant to mount the painting in a place of honor above the shop desk but couldn’t. It didn’t seem right, leaving such a beautiful thing to gather dust. The engine gasped to life (There’s one miracle, he thought), but the truck didn’t move. He had to take one last look before leaving.

  He unrolled the paper and let out a low whistle. “Tarnation, child. How’d you do somethin’ like that?”

  The setting sun behind him cast its warm glow over the page, giving the illusion that the images were swirling. Something was different. The colors were brighter (Of course they are, dummy, he thought, the sun’s a-shinin’ on it) and the image clearer, yes. But also something else. Something like—

  The page inched closer until it almost touched his nose.

  “Now, what’s this about, little Leah? What you got goin’ on here with ol’ Barney?”

  He lowered the paper and scratched his head, wondering if what he saw had been Leah’s intent or the light playing tricks. Barney would have to decide later. He had to go so he could get back before Reggie started suspecting.

  His first stop on those Wednesdays and Saturdays was always the pharmacy—Barney’s way of both reminding himself what was most important and alleviating whatever nagging jabs his conscience offered. On this night he picked up Mabel’s blood pressure pills and something for her cough. According to the story he told Reggie, afterward entailed a quick trip down to the Dairy Queen for a sundae and then a leisurely loop around Route 620 back home. That was a lie—Barney considered it unlike the lie Miss Ellen Norcross told him; this one possibly could send a person to hell—but a necessary one. Instead of turning left out of the parking lot of Spencer’s Pharmacy to the Dairy Queen, he turned right toward the town of Camden.

  Perhaps this was the gutter of last resort. Barney had considered that possibility often over the past months. That he, once an Important Man, had been so trampled by life that the hole in which fate had placed him could only be escaped by the granting of some twisted miracle. As the dim lights and dirty streets of Mattingly’s wayward sister town loomed, a thought nudged its way forward in his mind that the only thing worse than being spiritual but not religious was being religious but not hopeful.

  He pulled into the lot of the 7-11 and made sure he knew no one inside. Unlikely, but not outside the realm of possibility. Leah’s rolled-up painting went into his back pocket.

  Barney said hello to the cashier and walked to the left front corner of the store. The display offered everything a fraught soul would need in order to turn desperation into further failure. Tickets were stacked in two separate bins beside a collection of tiny green pencils with VA LOTTERY stamped in gold on the sides. A large electronic sign flashed above him on t
he wall announcing the current jackpot. That night it was 250 million. Barney pulled a ticket from the bin and reached for one of the pencils.

  In the months since he’d first offered his soul to the Gods of Good Fortune, Barney had played every combination of numbers he could summon—his birthday and Mabel’s, their anniversary, the date the Treasure Chest opened. Anything that could bend luck his way. Aside from that one glorious night when he managed to pick a single correct number out of six, all Barney had gotten out of the deal were a few hundred more miles on the Dodge and what very well could have been a small ulcer. Now, as he stared at the box on the ticket—there were actually five boxes, making five chances to win, but Barney only played one and thanked God at least for that—he pulled Leah’s painting from his pocket and unrolled it across the plastic surface of the booth.

  The numbers were still there.

  In the clouds above the field was the number 23. Barely visible, but there just the same. A 42 sat in the blades of grass along the left edge of the paper. A 5 was molded into the side of the clay pot in the middle of the field, along with a 4 in the rainbow. The grass along the bottom of the page hid the number 2. And written into one of the coins that spilled from the pot was a final digit—7.

  Can’t be, he told himself. You’re losin’ it, Barney. You’re brain’s just as broken as Mabel’s.

  Maybe. But when you are crawling through the sewage in the gutter of last resort, you will take whatever glimmer of hope is offered, because even poison tastes good.

  Barney filled out his ticket and took his place in line. What came next was the sort of inner conversation between the fairer side of the human soul and its uglier counterpart that often sprang up in places where beer, condoms, and lottery tickets were offered with no questions up front and have-a-great-day on the end.

  The man in front of Barney turned around and spotted the ticket in his hand. “That’s a sucka bet, ol’-timer,” he said. He wore a tattered ball cap and the grime of a long day spent either in a factory or under the hood of someone’s minivan. Two of his front teeth were gone, replaced by a chasm of black. In his hand was a worn ten-dollar bill. “You play the scratchers. Scratchers where it be.”

  Barney thought yes, maybe, but the scratchers wouldn’t be enough to dig him and Mabel out of their hole. Scratchers would be a spade and a bucket. But the Powerball? The Powerball was a backhoe.

  Ball Cap paid for his scratchers and placed the stack atop a trash can by the front doors. He went through them one by one, shaking his head and cursing each time.

  “What you want?” the young cashier said. The girl was tattooed and had earrings in her nose.

  What do I want? Barney thought. He thought of Mabel and the Past Dues and Final Notices. He thought of Reggie, who at that moment was looking over Mabel, and he thought of Jesus, who at that moment was looking over Barney’s black heart. He shifted his weight and heard Leah’s thank-you crinkle in his pocket. He thought of how no little girl could create such a thing, and he thought of the rainbow man whom she said helped her. A spirit, Allie had said. It’s what you need, Leah had said.

  He handed the cashier his ticket.

  “Two dollars,” she said.

  And with that, Barney Moore dug through his overalls and handed over six quarters, three dimes, two nickels, and ten pennies that would come to define the short life he had left.

  Sunday

  Six Days Before the Carnival

  1

  Tom woke to an otherwise empty bed and smelled breakfast. He understood the notion that each new day was the Universe’s way of offering a do-over, but that was a philosophy he had never personally embraced. Starting life anew took time and persistence. Yet the world was full of people who believed their problems could be overcome easily. People who wept themselves to sleep each night only to wake believing everything was different—that everything had changed—only to repeat the cycle. And even though Tom pitied such people, he was also thankful for them. Those were the ones who gave him purpose. The ones who sought him out when their worlds crumbled. The ones he was born to help. And not only did Tom feel a kinship to them, he’d married one.

  He crawled from under the covers and eased into the hallway, careful of the weak spots in the hardwood floor. Leah’s bedroom door was still closed. She’d been up late—the thick wall of silence between Tom and Ellen had been somewhat balanced by the surprising jingle of Leah’s laughter through the thin walls between bedrooms—and he didn’t want the creaky boards to wake her. Not until he’d made sure the truce was back in effect. Tom had assumed it was when Leah unveiled her painting and Ellen had taken his hand, but no. After Leah had left with Allie, the warm front had lifted and the cold front had settled back in. Ellen hadn’t so much as sneezed in his direction the rest of the night.

  Her back was to him and bent over two sizzling pans, sausage in one, eggs in the other. Ellen stabbed at the eggs with a spatula and released a cloud of steam that worked its way into the fans above the stove. Sunshine flooded through the open windows, casting her yellow bathrobe in a warm glow.

  “Morning,” Tom said.

  “Good morning back.” The words were clipped, business-like, though when she turned Tom was happy to see a slight smile. “Hungry?”

  “Very.”

  “It’s almost ready. Our little Monet’s still asleep.”

  Tom thought of Sundays past, when he would wake hungry for more than breakfast. Back when he would find Ellen in a different kitchen bent over different pans and he would offer his good morning with a kiss on the back of her neck. Back then he was the one who would have said Leah was still asleep. He would turn the stove off and lead Ellen to the bedroom, where they would offer themselves in an act that was not only symbolic of their love, but also the means by which Tom could render himself numb to his life and Ellen could find a temporary awakening to hers. But now there was only that statement of fact—Leah’s still asleep—and nothing more. And in those three words was all the proof Tom needed that we could gaze upon as many rising suns as there were stars in the sky, but in the end their light could only shine upon our yesterdays and never erase them.

  “I figured we’d just let her sleep a bit,” Tom said. “She had a big day yesterday.”

  “She certainly did. That painting, Tom. Could you believe that painting? And she went down there to give it to Barney. With Allie. Leah’s never gone anywhere without us.” She shook her head and turned back to flick at the pan of sausage. “And then last night? How many times since the move have we lain in bed listening to her crying? And there she was giggling and talking to herself.” Ellen turned around again. Tears welled in her eyes. “It was all so . . . strange.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I’d call it strange. She said the easel had Barney’s love in it, and that’s why she could paint so much better. I don’t know what that means, but maybe the easel really does have something to do with it. The angle or something. Or maybe she just has some latent talent. She draws all the time. She’s bound to get good at it.”

  “That’s kind of a stretch, don’t you think? What she painted wasn’t just good, Tom.”

  A part of him thought, yes, it was a stretch. But even a savant had to be bad at some point, right?

  “I think we shouldn’t let that picture overshadow the fact that Leah made a friend yesterday. That’s why we did all of that, right? And she had a great time. As great a time as she’d allow herself, anyway.”

  But Tom knew rationality had never been the comfort to Ellen that it was to him. Far from offering his wife the value of another vantage point, his words had only brought to the forefront what the morning was supposed to have taken away.

  “I had a nice time. Mostly.” Ellen flipped the burners to low and pulled three dishes out of the cabinet to her left. “I try to let bygones be bygones, Tom. I figure that’s the only reason we’re still together, and I know I’ve caused as much hurt as I’ve been hurt myself. But this? No.”

  She walked pa
st him and set the plates on the dining room table. Ellen’s cheeks were flushed. Tom didn’t think it was from the hot pans.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I know.” She passed him again, this time to fetch three glasses. “That’s the thing. I know you’re sorry, you know I’m sorry. Sorry is all we say, and usually that’s good enough. But we all had a stake in that party yesterday, not just Leah. I need to be accepted by this town, Tom, and you go all half-cocked on the preacher. What in the world got into you? You said things would be better here. You said it would be different.”

  That was the moment Tom Norcross decided his wife had suffered enough. For too long Ellen and Leah had been shoved aside and relegated to ghosts on the periphery of his life, though Tom believed that to be just as much Ellen’s fault as his own. She likely believed that as well, realizing that no matter how much she tried and no matter how much she wished otherwise, Ellen could not counsel the counselor.

  But he would tell her now. He would tell her despite the fact that he’d told her something else once that ended up nearly costing them everything. He would tell her that his outburst in front of their new friends was not because of the Reverend Goggins but because of GLADWELL, MEAGAN and the false faith by which she had already been ruined. He would tell Ellen, tell her everything, and then she would hold him and his tears would dry against her yellow robe and they would walk down the creaky hallway to their bedroom and offer themselves as they had those Sundays past. Because each new day may not erase the days before it, but it could still be a first day. It could still be a beginning.