When Mockingbirds Sing (9781401688233)

by Coffey, Billy

  Reggie looked at Barney and nodded for him to stand. He squeezed Allie’s hand, offered a ghost smile to Mary and Marshall, and walked to the front.

  The afternoon sun shone bright against a sky so clear that Barney thought he’d see Mabel and Jesus if he looked straight on into it. The plot he had chosen was near the entrance—better when it came to visiting, though he didn’t know how often that would be now—and was situated such that her stone would be visible regardless of which direction one faced from the intersection beyond. The streets would normally be busy that time of day; even in a slow place like Mattingly, there was always a going and coming. But as Barney looked out beyond the iron gates that would now forever hem in his wife, he found them empty but for three specks that approached from the distance. Barney adjusted his blue suit and tugged at the knot in his tie.

  “I reckon I been thinkin’ on things. That’s all I have now. Ever’thing else’s gone, an’ when you ain’t got nothin’ left all you got time for’s to think. I didn’t like what came to me. I got to thinkin’ that a body ain’t got to die for a person to go to hell. Sometimes hell comes when you’re livin’.” He turned and looked at Mabel’s casket, now closed and ready to be lowered. Dust to dust, the Book said, and that was true.

  “Y’all just sang ‘To God Be the Glory.’ I wonder if this is the glory of God an’ a great thing He hath done. I don’t think so. Mabel didn’t deserve the end she got. She used to run the Bible school in the summertime an’ the Christmas program in the winter. An’ she helped me out plenty, back when folks would come to the shop for toys to give to others. That ain’t how it is now. Now y’all come for toys you think I will give to you.”

  Nervousness moved like a wave that lowered heads and hunched shoulders in the crowd. The three specks coming down the street were closer now. Barney saw each speck was holding something aloft.

  “Life or God or whatever turned on her, just like y’all turned on us. Or maybe it just turned on me, and poor Mabel got caught up in it. Left her like a child who needed help to eat an’ move an’ clean herself. She couldn’t even speak no more. All she said was ‘I love you.’ I reckon y’all know that, though.”

  Signs. The three specks were carrying signs. And they were no longer specks, they were people. Two big ones and a small one in the middle.

  “Now, y’all tell me, could you live with your loved one in such a state and still give reverence to the Lord? What God worthy of reverence could allow such a thing to one of His own? How can He pardon the darkness of this world and allow it to strip my Mabel down?”

  “Barney,” Reggie said. The preacher stepped closer and placed a hand on Barney’s elbow, trying to guide him away.

  Barney jerked away and said, “Nosir, Reggie, I need to say this. I lost my business, I lost my wife, an’ then I lost my faith. And then I lost y’all too. All my friends. My Mabel’s life got shrunk down to the bare bones, where ‘I love you’ meant hello an’ good-bye an’ thank you an’ praise the Lord, an’ maybe that’s what it should mean for all of us. But it don’t. Lemme ask y’all this, and you can answer in your own heart—how many of y’all would be here today if I hadn’t won that money?”

  The people beyond the cemetery gates had stopped on the opposite corner. Barney watched as they huddled together and then spread out, hands high.

  “What’s that?” he whispered.

  A few heads turned in the direction of Barney’s gaze, Allie’s included. One of the people—the little one, Barney thought, and he also thought it was a girl—shouted something. More heads turned. Allie mumbled something that Barney couldn’t decipher. He didn’t know what was happening, but something inside whispered that he’d better get on with it.

  “I’m leavin’,” he said. It was as loud as he could make it, and it must have done the trick, because all but Allie turned back to face him. “I’m leavin’ Mattingly. Cashin’ in my ticket an’ goin’ away. Mabel always wanted us to retire down Carolina way, right along the shore. That’s what I’m gonna do. I don’t wanna be round people who only like me for what I got and not who I am, an’ that’s all I got to say about that.”

  Reggie stepped up to him and said, “Barney, you can’t mean that.”

  “Done made up my mind, Reggie. You’s always nice to us. None of that was about you. The Barnetts too.” Barney looked at Allie and said, “That goes for you and your folks too, Allie.”

  Allie didn’t hear him. Her head was turned in the opposite direction, past the fence to the street corner where the sign people were. The little one was shouting while the big ones were quiet. Nervous too.

  “That’s Leah out there screamin’,” Allie said.

  Leah called out again. Barney thought it was Let Mabel go to bed, but Allie said it was Listen to what the Rainbow Man said. The crowd pulled away from the service. Someone called out for Leah to shut her city mouth. Reggie stood near Barney. He did not beckon the townspeople to return. Mary and Marshall stepped closer to the fence. Allie reached out for Barney’s hand and led him as far away from Mabel as he would allow.

  Leah stuttered another shout. The sign she raised was the painting she’d shown everyone at church. Flanking her were Ellen and Tom, each of them visibly embarrassed yet refusing to do anything but keep their own signs aloft. LISTEN TO THE RAINBOW MAN, Ellen’s read. The letters were drawn in purple with the squiggly lines of a hand either too old or too young. Barney thought he knew which. DON’T BE FOOLS said Tom’s, his in the same style but with a yellow color.

  Leah yelled, “Luh-let the R-rainbow M-man save you buh-fore it’s too luh-late.”

  Several of the townspeople now moved outside of the open gate. They gathered on the opposite corner from the Norcross family, the empty road between them like a no-man’s-land.

  “Git on,” Brent Spicer yelled, waving his hands as if trying to scare vermin from his barn. “Don’t nobody want you here.”

  Leah called louder, “Tuh-ime’s running out. Puh-please listen to me.”

  “Don’t nobody want to hear you,” came another voice, and that drew more away from the graveside and through the gate.

  Allie held on to Barney’s hand. “What’s happening, Mr. Barney?”

  Barney thought, tried to reason things, but found nothing. He merely shook his head and said, “It don’t matter, child. It’s all been written with a pen that don’t erase. We got no power in this life; you just gotta let the world roll over you. You best learn that now.”

  What happened next played out in front of Barney like a movie. Leah continued to call, and the crowd continued to call back. Tom and Ellen gathered around their daughter, their signs slowly lowering until they settled at Leah’s chest as if making a shield to keep her safe. Sheriff Barnett burst through the crowd and stood in the middle of the street, yelling for a calm that Barney thought even Jake knew was not meant to be. The townspeople crept closer. Leah held her ground even when Tom and Ellen tried to back her away. Her yelling only grew louder, more defiant, her face red and her eyes wide and scared.

  No one saw the rock until it struck Leah in the head. Barney watched as she fell to the concrete curb like a discarded doll. She lay there motionless, just as Mabel had right before the light went out in her eyes. Ellen and Tom howled. Reggie yelled, “No!” and ran. Allie began to cry.

  Barney turned from the spectacle and passed his hand down the top of Mabel’s casket, the hell rising up around him no match for the hell within him. He thought the screaming and crying a natural consequence of the rottenness that lurked just beneath the goodness of his town. In the distance, a mockingbird called.

  8

  This was not how it was supposed to end. Not at a doctor’s office with an injured little girl, however guilty that little girl may be. The town—his town—was better than that.

  Dr. Henry March’s tiny office was situated only a block away from the cemetery. The close proximity of the two had long been a running joke, but on that afternoon no one was laughing.

&n
bsp; Fortunately for all involved, it just so happened that Doc was one of the few to remain behind after Leah was attacked. She was conscious but dazed. Though a patch of her black hair was stained crimson, she had been much calmer than either of her parents. Jake ushered Doc and the Norcross family into his Blazer and sped off, the situation so dire that he went to the extreme length of fastening his blue light atop the roof. Mary and Marshall remained behind to tend to Allie and Barney. Reggie supposed the care for the latter lay within his purview, yet he felt a greater responsibility elsewhere. He left shortly thereafter, and that was how Mabel Moore’s funeral began with nearly two hundred souls in attendance and ended with only four.

  Jake’s truck was parked directly in front of Mattingly Family Practice. Reggie parked and walked through the still-open doors. The bare waiting room held that peculiar mix of sterile and sick. Tom and Jake sat in two wooden chairs by the window thumbing through magazines that told last summer’s news. Tom looked up as Reggie approached.

  “What are you doing here?” He rose with such force that the chair banged against the wall. “Come to pray, or come to tell us to leave town? Either way, Reggie, I’m going to make sure the next bloody person the doctor sees is you.”

  Jake dropped his magazine, stood up, and guided Tom back down with a strong hand and a gentle warning. “I don’t want no trouble, Tom,” he said. Then, to Reggie, “You either, Preacher.”

  “No trouble,” Reggie said. He held up his palms as if to say there was nothing under his sleeve. “I just wanted to make sure Leah’s okay.”

  “Doc’s back with her now,” Jake said. “He said it was a glancing blow, not head-on. Looks like she’ll be fine.”

  Reggie closed his eyes. He thought Tom would scoff when he offered a Praise the Lord, but none came. “Tom, I know we have our differences, but I never wanted this. You have to know that.”

  But Reggie didn’t think Tom knew that at all. He thought the only thing Tom knew was that someone had smacked his daughter in the head with a rock. Nothing else mattered, and where to set the blame was pretty far down the list. As far as Dr. Norcross was concerned, the whole town was guilty. And maybe that was true.

  “Let me sit with you,” Reggie said. “Just to make sure she’s fine. I won’t pray and I won’t preach. I promise.”

  Tom crossed his arms in front of him and said nothing. Jake nodded at the empty chair across from them. Reggie sat.

  “Where were you when all that happened?” Jake asked.

  “With Barney at the graveside.”

  Jake raised his eyebrows. His black cowboy hat was turned upside down on the small table beside him. He worked the toothpick in his mouth and pondered.

  “You see who threw that rock?”

  “No.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “I’m sure, Jake.”

  The sheriff nodded an okay, though his smile said otherwise. Reggie was glad the questions ended there. Tom gave up leafing through his magazine. He tossed it onto the table, looked at Reggie, looked at Jake.

  “What kind of hole did you find, Sheriff?” he asked.

  Jake’s toothpick stopped moving. “What’s that?”

  “Barney told me that winning the lottery was a miracle and Leah’s rainbow man was real. That was Sunday. I doubt he thinks that now, but he believed it then. He said it wasn’t the first magic this town had seen, that you’d found a hole someplace called Happy Hollow. He said it was all connected. I didn’t know what that meant, and honestly at the time I didn’t really care. But something happened to me this morning, and I’m thinking about it now. So what kind of hole did you find, and what’s that have to do with my daughter?”

  Had Reggie been standing, the tumble he would have taken upon hearing that question could have certainly bloodied him enough to require Doc March’s care. As it was, the only muscles of any consequence that gave way were those surrounding his mouth. Jake at least managed to keep a proper façade of ignorance.

  “I don’t know nothing about that,” he said.

  Tom smiled. “You’re lying, Sheriff.”

  Jake took the pick out of his mouth, snapped it, and tossed it into the small plastic trash can beneath the table.

  “Tell you what,” he said, “once this is all over and if you decide to stay, you come find me. I’ll tell you what I found. I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Jake,” Reggie said.

  “Tom’s got as much right as anyone else,” Jake said. “Maybe more, considering his young’un. And besides, maybe Barney was right. Maybe it is connected.”

  The door beside the nurses’ station opened before Reggie could protest more. Ellen was out first, Dr. March last. Leah was sandwiched between them. She wore a tired smile and a bandage around her head that Doc swore looked worse than it was. Tom rose and gathered Leah into his arms, picking her up and turning her as if performing a dance. Leah opened her eyes and stared at Reggie. Her cheeks were streaked with the muddy brown of dried tears and dirt.

  In a calling in which woeful sights were abundant, Leah’s sunken eyes and beaten body were the most woeful Reggie had ever seen. He had always considered himself a good man—not perfect, but good—a man who’d given his life to God and longed only to see His face. Yet that had all been tested the moment he watched Brent Spicer pick up that rock, and it had been shattered when he knew the deacon’s intent and did nothing to prevent it. The Book said there was no great or small sin but sin alone, but that was one scripture Reggie now doubted. What he had done—what he had allowed—lay beyond forgiveness for a man who longed to look upon the face of his God. And as Leah looked upon him from the safety of her father’s arms, Reggie felt sure she knew all of this. She knew all of this and more—that in the eyes of God Reggie might as well have heaved that stone himself, and with no feeling but hate and no other purpose than to maim.

  Saturday

  Carnival Day

  1

  The worst day in Mattingly’s long and relatively quiet history began as if it would be among its finest. For Barney Moore, it began as good-bye.

  He sat on the edge of his empty bed and watched the coming morning unfold like petals on a flower. In a scraggly maple beyond the open window, his mockingbird repeated the mournful lullaby like a skipping record. Twice in the middle of the night Barney had gone downstairs to throw what rocks he could find. Twice that bird had been silenced. And twice it had sung again once Barney was back upstairs.

  No matter, he told himself. Let the bird sing. He’d never hear it again, anyway.

  The first rays of the sun lit the sides of the abandoned buildings along the alleyway a brilliant orange. There were plenty in Mattingly who would say they were afforded better vistas—mountains and hollers and pastureland and river—but Barney always thought his and Mabel’s view was just as good. Seeing that orange glow upon the old Foster’s Seed building and the boarded-up Billington’s Small Engine Repair meant that Barney was home, that no matter how bad things seemed or how much worse Mabel became, there was still the chance that a new day could bring change.

  He rubbed his hands over the suitcase balanced upon his knees, the contents of which represented the sum total of all that seemed necessary to take—three changes of underwear, two pairs of overalls, eight white socks, a Ziploc bag containing Mabel’s strand of hair, and his glasses. The lotto ticket was in his front pocket—a quick pat of the chest made sure of that—and his keys were waiting on the coffee table.

  “All right, then,” he announced.

  Barney nodded twice at the window and rose from the bed. It took all the willpower he could summon not to look at Mabel’s side of the bed, just as he’d avoided the pictures of them together that dotted the house’s shelves and table-tops. The part of Barney that could peek out from behind his mind’s gray curtain was afraid the bright eyes and pearly smile that defined Mabel’s better days would be gone, replaced by the furrowed brow and pursed lips of disappointment. It had only been hours ago that Barney was
convinced that leaving town was the right thing to do. But then sleep wouldn’t come and that bleeping bird had started chirping again. Doubts slowly entered, disguised as one reason among many why so few Mattingly folk had ever strayed from the town of their birth and ventured into the corners of the world.

  You don’t roam far from the bones of your loved ones.

  That didn’t matter in Mabel’s case, at least that’s what Barney had decided. There was more of her in the strand of hair in his suitcase than there was in the empty house that was buried on the wrong side of the ground over at Oak Lawn. She wouldn’t mind. Mabel had always loved the ocean. Besides, when you’re in heaven you’re no longer distressed about the world’s goings-on. You know that even if people are standing still, they’re still roaming about, looking for home.

  He’d have to leave soon. It was carnival day, and Barney wanted to stay as far away from that tangle of people as possible. They might try to talk him out of leaving or tell him how sorry they were. Or ask how their easels were coming along. It would take him a couple hours to make it to Harrisonburg and cash in his ticket. He’d tell them to wire it to his account—everything in this dad-gummed modern age was wires—and then he’d get on the road. Assuming the old Dodge could make it, Barney figured he’d be looking at the Atlantic from the Carolina coast by sundown. Whatever came after didn’t matter. There was only now. Leah had taught him that.

  The light on the answering machine blinked ERR. Barney didn’t know what that meant other than the messages had grown too big for the machine’s insides to handle. He took the keys from the coffee table and left. The mockingbird trilled. Barney imagined it was because he’d left the door open, but he didn’t retreat to close it.

  Downstairs, he took what cash had been left in the register since