I throw myself down on the couch and watch Sarah stroke Woogie’s graying muzzle with her knuckles. I’d even rather she be serious about a boy than get involved with a group like Christian Life. First Rainey, now my daughter. Why isn’t it enough for the women I love to get up and go to school or work and then come home and plop down and watch the brain drain or even read a book? Life is complicated enough without getting heated up about whether some supernatural force is “breaking in” to human history.
Freud, if I remember my freshman psychology course at the University of Arkansas a hundred years ago, said that God is a wish and a pretty infantile one at that. An obvious conclusion if you think about it, given the rest of his psychology. As children, we can’t get enough of our parents; as teenagers we can’t get far enough away;
and in marriage we look for them all over again. If he was correct, we aren’t left with a particularly appealing portrait of the human psyche. But ever since the first ape saw his reflection in a pool of water, he has demanded a more grandiose explanation of his existence, Sigmund Freud notwithstanding. It is surprising he wasn’t strung up by his tongue. If I tried to say something like that, the women in my life would burn me at the stake. Fathers, I have learned in the last couple of years, aren’t supposed to commit heresy. Our job is to pay the bills and keep our mouths shut.
“Do you want me to help you pack your bags?” I say, knowing how pathetic I sound.
Sarah’s expression softens and she comes over to the couch and sits beside me.
“That’s what you’re worried about,” she says.
“You’re thinking you won’t see me anymore.” She pats my knee as if I were a child being comforted by his mother.
So, Rainey has been talking to her. I look around the den and realize how much Sarah has made it her own since her mother died. A year ago she persuaded me to buy an almost brand-new recliner for peanuts at a garage sale, and after my best friend Dan Bailey burned a hole in the coffee table before Christmas, she found another one at an antique shop and shamed me until, on New Year’s Eve, I broke down and bought it. Last winter a friend got her interested in ceramics, and now every flat surface in the room has some bizarre, gnome like figure crouching on it. Not great art, but I don’t know what’s good unless I can read a label or a name. I’m not a visual person, as Rainey charitably puts it. I pull off my jacket and lay it beside me.
“These groups can suck you in,” I warn, “and before you know it you’ve become psychologically dependent on them.”
Great, I think. I’ll have to pay somebody to kidnap her and then deprogram her.
“It’s a church,” she laughs, “not a concentration camp where they brainwash you. Rainey wouldn’t be involved in anything like that.”
“I should tell you that Chet Bracken’s dying of cancer I say, abruptly changing the subject.
“That’s why he’s asked me to help him. It’s a secret though.”
Sarah’s face softens, as I knew it would.
“How much longer does he have?” she asks, her voice immediately anxious. Her mother’s death was sheer agony.
He’s going down fast,” I say, milking this moment for as long as I can.
“He’s afraid he won’t be able to do the trial.”
“Has he got a family?” Sarah asks, biting her lip.
“I don’t know a thing about him,” I say, regretting I have told her. Why did I? Leverage, obviously. I know where my daughter is vulnerable. She was only thirteen when her mother died, and she still hasn’t gotten over it. I’m pathetic, I realize. I didn’t take this case because I’m sensitive to cancer victims. And yet, Chet’s revelation has touched something in me. He has absolutely nothing in common with Rosa except that he’s a fighter, too. Maybe there are more connections here than I am permitting myself to realize.
“That’s so sad!” Sarah says, staring past me.
“Isn’t he young?”
You asshole, I think miserably.
“Yeah, he’s young.”
With a somber expression now on her beautiful face, she goes to her room to do her homework, leaving me to sit in the den wondering why I’m so afraid of change. If I come down on Sarah too hard, she will resent me even more than she already does. Did Rosa go through some kind of religious rebellion when she was a teenager? She never mentioned it, or I wasn’t paying attention. Regularly as clockwork, she went to Mass in Colombia and then here, so it never was an issue. Until her mother died, Sarah never missed, either. It’s easy to have a perfect attendance record if you have no choice.
After Rosa’s death there was nobody to go with her, because I sure wasn’t about to go thank God for taking Rosa away from my daughter at the beginning of adolescence
I stare blankly at Leigh Wallace’s file and think I should have faked it and taken Sarah to Mass these last few years. If I had, she wouldn’t be so vulnerable now to the garbage that comes out of these fundamentalist churches. Who am I kidding? What could be more fundamentalist than the Catholic church? Abortion?
Women in the church? The difference is these people at Christian Life take themselves so seriously. I never cared what Rosa believed as long as she agreed to use birth control. How she rationalized her faith didn’t concern me so long as she did what I wanted. Guilt settles down around me like an occupying army as I remember how much pressure I applied to my wife not to have more children after Sarah.
I had just gone to work for Social Services as a case worker and was making next to nothing, but Rosa wanted to stay home and raise our child. I knew that would lead to more kids and told her that she had to face the fact that I was never going to be rich. How could that be? Wasn’t this the United States, where everybody who wanted to work hard became a millionaire Reality set in after a year, and she went back to work as a nurse. After ten years of marriage on a state salary, I told her I wanted to go to law school at night.
Thrilled by my display of ambition, she began to talk about the two more children we would have after I passed the bar exam. Weren’t all lawyers rich in the United States? Poor Rosa. She’d still be working the night shift. For the hundredth time, I wish she were here to deal with her daughter. Our relationship has been on a roller coaster lately. Woogie, who never changes, nuzzles in against my thigh. I rub his left ear gently. At moments like this, I think dogs are at the top of the evolutionary chain.
Chet bracken’s “farm” is really no more than a few acres in the western part of the county. Though trees abound in central Arkansas, there are none around the structure that must be chet’s residence, unless I am badly lost. As I come upon an honest-to-goodness log cabin, my mind serves up pictures shown to grade school kids of the pioneer experience at its hardiest: isolated huts hunkered down in the sod against the prairie wind. I have unlocked and relocked a second cattle gate and traveled, as directed, seven-tenths of a mile, so either I am about to surprise some unsuspecting family or I have for once followed directions to the letter. I pull up in the gravel driveway and think that I would plant some shade trees. Yet, perhaps Chet doesn’t see the point. As exposed as this house is (despite the gates), I doubt that a young widow would want to stay out here by herself. I check to make certain I have Leigh Wallace’s file and walk up the steps to the front porch, realizing that I am making all kinds of assumptions about Bracken’s family. For all I know about him, he lives with his mother.
A boy of about seven comes to the door to answer my knock.
“I’m Trey,” he announces solemnly.
“Are you Mr. Page?”
“That’s me,” I allow, smiling at this boy whose jug ears seem to confirm his lineage more persuasively than any birth certificate.
“Is your dad home?”
“Yes, sir, he’s out back,” Trey says seriously, offering me his tiny hand to shake. Trey’s jeans are not totally clean, but his right hand is neither sticky nor grimy to the touch. For a child his age he has a surprisingly strong grip. I can imagine his father lecturing him to l
ook the other person in the eye and, if he’s a man, to squeeze his hand as hard as he can. The business of becoming a little Chet is about learning to deal from strength. The intimidation can be learned later. Yet, perhaps this isn’t fair. This child has learned his manners, no more, no less. Still, it is unnerving to be greeted so firmly by a kid who barely comes to my waist. He leads me through the house, and though it is clean and picked up, it is difficult to imagine that a woman lives here.
The living room is square like the main area of a lodge, lacking only deer antlers over the enormous fireplace to convince me that Chet uses this structure as a clubhouse for hunting and not as his principal residence. On the walls are pictures of ducks, geese, and other wildlife.
The furniture is functional and sturdy. As much money as he has surely made from criminals, he could have three or four places like this scattered around the state.
“Mom,” Trey solemnly introduces me as he leads the way into the kitchen, “this is Mr. Page.”
Turning from the stove is a rangy, plain woman with short, graying hair, who is wearing an apron over bib overalls and a red long-sleeved jersey. She is stirring something on the stove that gives off a gamy scent.
Given this rustic setting, I wouldn’t be surprised if she announced we were eating bear meat. Anything smaller than an elk wouldn’t seem fair competition for Bracken.
She smiles pleasantly at me and says, her voice country but pleasant, “I’m Wynona Cody, Mr. Page.”
Bracken’s marital status, unclear before I came, still appears muddled. Is this his mistress or just a liberated woman?
“How are you?” I ask, wanting to dig, but realizing the ground probably won’t be hard at all in a few weeks. High-visibility lawyers like Bracken, who are always in the news with their clients, only seem to be all work and no play. Despite all the gossip about him. Bracken has kept his private life well hidden. I wonder what his “family” at Christian Life knows about him.
Wynona stirs the pot on the stove.
“I hope you like Brunswick stew,” she says, laying a blue lid over the pot on the stove.
Squirrel meat. I haven’t had any since I was a boy in eastern Arkansas.
“I remember my mother fixing it,” I say, nodding. I remember how the meat used to stick to my teeth.
“Trey,” she says, “take Mr. Page out back to talk to your dad and then come back inside. I won’t be ready in here for a while.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Trey seems disappointed, but there isn’t a lot of give in his mother’s voice. Behind the friendly smile is a hint of steel. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be Wynona who taught Trey his hand shake. I follow him out a door off the kitchen and see Bracken sitting out on a deck that runs the width of the cabin with his feet up on a rail. A cooler is at his feet, and a beer is in his hand.
“Dad,” Trey says casually, “Mr. Page is here.”
It sounds a little shocking to hear Bracken addressed so lovingly. Nervously, I clear my throat and look beyond Bracken to the woods no more than fifty yards away. The sun is about down now, giving the dense growth to the rear of the cabin a forbidding look.
“Pull up a chair. Page,” he says gruffly. He smiles at Trey, who grins and shoves his hands in his pants.
“Trey, show Mr. Page how you can shoot.”
Leaning against the wall is a .22 rifle that Trey lugs to the railing of the porch. He is too short to cradle the stock against his shoulder, so he steadies it under his arm and begins blasting at a tin can near the edge of the forest. The metal jumps as if it has acquired a life of its own as Trey sprays it around the shorn grass. Bracken watches with obvious satisfaction. I wonder what it would be like to have a son. I wouldn’t trade her for anything, but Sarah has always been more than a match for me. Though Rainey disagrees, I have little to teach her except what to avoid when it comes time to choose a mate. Since her mother died, I haven’t been the most consistent of fathers too many nights I left Sarah alone while I went prowling around bars after lonely women who were eager to scratch a similar itch.
“He can sure pop ‘em,” I say admiringly.
“Can he try?” Trey asks, stopping after firing five rounds.
I haven’t shot a rifle since I was twelve. My dad (before he went completely nuts and before my mother confiscated his guns) and I used to shoot turtles and gar off the St. Francis River bridge about ten miles from town. I was a decent shot then, but today only manage to hit the can one out of five shots. I offer the rifle to Bracken, but he waves it away. How much pain is he in, I wonder. It is easy to forget that he is probably doped up right now. With only a little time left, how can he think about law at all? What is death like? My mind resists contemplating its absence. Bracken doesn’t have that luxury. If I were in his condition, I’d be tempted to say the hell with it and concentrate on keeping the cooler full. Other people are a mystery. Bracken may be spending the time he could be working on the Wallace case bargaining with God as if he were trying to cut a deal with a tough prosecutor. Given Bracken’s reputation for insisting on absolute control, I’d like to be a fly on the wall during that conversation. The door opens, and Wynona waves Trey inside. Bracken looks up and gives her a warm smile.
“We’re lucky we’re not counting on Page,” he chuckles, “to defend Leigh in a shooting match.”
She winks at the men in her life.
“Y’all practice all the time,” she drawls.
“Be another twenty minutes.
Come on in. Trey.”
Reluctantly, the boy walks into the house, and I watch while Bracken unloads the rifle and checks the chamber.
“Good kid,” I say.
“I thought he was gonna crush my fingers when he met me at the door.”
Bracken reaches down beside him and picks up a rag from the floor and begins to oil the rifle.
“It’s hard to explain to a boy his age you’re not going to be around much longer. They don’t get it. Take a brew if you want.”
For the first time, I feel some empathy for this man.
Until this moment, his intensity and my own unacknowledged envy of his success had made us seem like beings from different galaxies. His need to dominate our previous encounters has repulsed me in a way that might say more about myself than him. He is successful because he leaves nothing to chance. I don’t have his drive or single-mindedness. The fact is, I am flattered silly that he has asked me to help him, even if it means nothing more than sitting through the trial like a utility player on a team with an all-star infield. I lift the lid off the Igloo and pull out a Heineken. No light beer, but I guess there wouldn’t be much point.
“I don’t get it either. My wife died a few years back, and I still haven’t figured it out.”
Bracken pauses from his labors to take a sip from his can of Miller.
“Dying young is going against the grain, all right.”
Going against the grain? Well, I didn’t expect Chet Bracken to burst into tears. I want to ask him about what he’s personally getting from Christian Life, but now it seems an invasion of privacy.
“I read the file and copied it,” I say, withdrawing the Wallace folder from my briefcase.
“If Leigh had kept her mouth shut, they couldn’t have charged her because they wouldn’t have had any real evidence. All they would have had was a wife discovering her husband’s dead body and a neighbor’s testimony they argued the night before.”
Bracken shifts in the green canvas chair at the mention of the case. He nods, his plain face gloomy.
“We’ve talked to everybody who claimed to be at the church that day, and not a single one of them can testify she was there during the time she says she was. Worse, two people flat out contradict her story that she spoke to them.”
On Bracken’s property there is a garden off to the right of the cabin I hadn’t noticed until now. Maybe he does live here.
“You think she could have been having an affair and was supposed to be at the church
and can’t bring herself to admit where she was?”
Bracken pokes his rag, which he has tied to a stick, down the barrel.
“Not at all likely,” he grunts.
“She and Wallace had been married less than a year, and the word is she was crazy about him. Her daddy complained she was spending too much time at home with him instead of being at the church.”
So if she thought he hung the moon, why would she kill him? At the edge of the woods, I detect some movement. I think I’d be nervous at night out here.
“Was Wallace a member?”
An ugly sound comes from Bracken’s throat.
“Not in good standing,” he says, spitting over the railing into the yard, which is blooming with yellow forsythia and pink redbud trees. A butane tank only a few feet from the deck is mostly hidden by dense shrubbery, out of which arises a birdhouse for martins.
“Shane Norman wouldn’t have let his daughter marry Wallace if he hadn’t joined his church, but right after they married, he quit coming much.”
A small gray rabbit hops into the cleared field and cautiously sniffs the shot-up can. I am reminded of the days when my father and I used to hunt rabbits when I was a kid, and I look to see if Bracken will load the rifle.
He yawns and looks down the barrel.
“Maybe Wallace was playing around,” I guess, “and she caught him at it.”
Satisfied with his job. Bracken props the rifle in the corner against the beam supporting the roof. My father never fired a shot without cleaning and oiling his guns afterward. I think those acts of maintenance somehow gave him as much satisfaction as firing the guns. When his schizophrenia and drinking got bad (eventually he hung himself at the state hospital in Benton), my mother took the guns and gave them to her brother, telling my father someone had stolen them. He had to know what she had done (burglary of the home of a white person in a small town thirty-five years ago was as rare as a comet sighting), but, probably as a result of his illness, he preferred the theory that a crime had been committed. Bracken glances in the direction of the rabbit which has tentatively hopped a couple of feet toward the garden.
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