Lone Star Noir

by Bobby Byrd

  “You know he did, Chief,” I said.

  “He’s probably run off again. My guess is he’ll show up in a few days, just like last time. These things happen.” He moved some papers on his desk and looked at Charlene as he spoke. “When he comes back, you should sit down and have a long talk with him.”

  The wife was so nervous, I was afraid she was going to start chewing her handkerchief. I took it from her gently and put it in my pocket.

  “Isn’t there anything you can do?” I asked.

  “Not much,” he said. For the first time, he looked vaguely sympathetic. “He’s seventeen. As far as the law in Texas is concerned, he can leave Andrews whenever he wants. We don’t do much unless there’s some sign of foul play.”

  “That’s that then,” I said, and we left the station.

  On the way home, Charlene asked me what I wanted to do.

  “I guess we wait,” I said.

  After that day, the wife and I started fighting. We’ve always been a placid couple, but here was Charlene, snorting like an angry horse, face beet-red, screaming how this and that and the other thing didn’t make her happy or satisfied or what have you.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked her once after the screaming was over and she was sitting on the couch across from me, her hands in her lap, open and turned up toward the ceiling.

  “It’s too late,” she said. She was staring at those hands, not me, when she said that.

  “Do you want a divorce?” I asked, appalled and, frankly, ashamed. I spend so much of my time counseling couples on how to mend broken marriages and here I was facing it myself, no clue how it all happened. How did it happen? What had happened?

  “That’s not what I meant, Charles,” she said. “That’s not what I meant at all.”

  She looked up at me then and I realized, all of a sudden, Why, she and I have the same eyes, the same eyes as the boy. I broke down weeping. All these years, thirty-three years now, I was looking into a mirror when I looked in her eyes, and I’d never realized it before.

  “Do you believe in miracles?” she asked.

  She’d asked me this question once before, back when she was supplicating the Lord to touch her barren womb and give her a child, just like Hannah in the Old Testament. And when her belly was swollen with the boy and her eyes swollen with joy, I reminded her of her many prayers, and that is when we decided to name him Samuel, which means God heard.

  “Of course,” I said. “Isn’t our boy’s life a miracle?”

  “No, I mean real miracles,” she said, her voice flat, emotionless. “Do you believe that we could pray and ask God to send our boy back—my boy back—and here he’d come, walking through that door, as if he’d never gone anywhere at all?”

  I didn’t know how to answer her, so I said nothing.

  I couldn’t get the question Charlene asked out of my head. Many nights, I can’t even count how many, I propped myself up on my elbows and stared at her face while she slept. I counted every single wrinkle—forty-two in all, if you included the soft folds of skin on her neck. Sometimes I think we don’t pay attention to all the tiny changes, and then one day we wake up and realize we don’t recognize the person we married.

  I thought about the facts of our life together—how we married when we were so young, too young, I realize now, only eighteen and nineteen years old; how we tried to have a child for so many years before she conceived; the way she always had to work, because my salary as a minister in a small Southern Baptist church could never quite pay the bills; the way she wasn’t just a good mother, she was a great mother, because she’d wanted a child for so long before Sammy came; how our life had been made up of endless church meetings and hospital rounds. Charlene was a nurse, and we made a good pair, her healing bodies and me healing souls. She’d always worked with babies, newborns, and that’d been hard for her for many years when we were struggling and struggling to get pregnant. But, as she’d always said, sometimes what doesn’t kill you makes you strong.

  Still, as I thought about all our years together, I realized more than ever how facts about a person can’t even come close to explaining them.

  Sometimes when I counsel young couples about to get married, I like to tell them that the amazing thing about marriage is the way your spouse remains a mystery, even after decades of living together. After more than three decades, there are moments when I realize I don’t really know Charlene. Who she was. Who she is. Who she’s going to become.

  Night after night, while Charlene slept, I sat in my study and remembered our lives together. The years before the boy were a haze made up only of Charlene’s desperate prayers. His birth, seventeen years ago, marked a complete transformation in our lives. It felt like we’d been wandering in the wilderness for years and the Lord had suddenly flung open the door to the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey.

  My biggest regret in life is the fact that I was out of town on the day of his birth. We were living in Amarillo at the time and I happened to be attending the annual Southern Baptist Convention on the day he arrived, early but healthy. I rushed home as soon as I could, and when I walked through the door Charlene was nursing him in the big rocking chair we’d bought when she found out she was pregnant.

  I went and knelt beside them to kiss and welcome my baby boy, the one we’d been waiting for—all our lives, it seemed, now that he was here.

  Sometimes—and it feels like a sin to say this—the day I was saved by the Lord and the day I knelt by their feet, the first time I saw Sammy, blur together as if they were the same day.

  Still, I’ll admit I was surprised by the look of him. Charlene and I are both slight, and even as a baby he was big-boned and long, with ears and a nose I didn’t recognize. Some men might have wondered but I did not. I knew he was my son. I knew the way I knew Charlene would be my wife the day I met her.

  We were never happier than after he’d come into our lives. It had been Charlene’s biggest heartache, the wait.

  Around that time, there was a need for a pastor here in Andrews. I’d applied before the Convention and when the call came just days after Sammy’s birth, she begged me to take it. She wanted to raise Sammy in a small town, with small town values, she said. So we left Amarillo and made ourselves a home here.

  Sammy was the darling of the church, a good student, and an excellent football player. I suppose there were girls that liked him, but we never talked about it. I warned him that carnal desires can ruin a man’s life and we left it at that.

  Andrews had been a good place to raise a son, I thought, though when he started driving to the county line to drink, I was reminded of what the Lord said after He discovered that Cain had murdered his brother Abel, how sin is always crouching at your door, how it desires to have you, but you must learn to master it. No matter where you go, you cannot escape what is lurking in your heart.

  A few weeks after the boy disappeared, Charlene stopped coming to church, not even bothering to explain why. The good church ladies—her friends, my congregation—they all asked after her. I said she wasn’t feeling well.

  That’s when I hired Guy Neely, P.I. Asked him to find the boy, wherever he was, whatever he was doing, it didn’t matter.

  “Just ask him to please come home,” I said. “Tell him his mother’s soul hangs in the balance. If he doesn’t care about his own soul, maybe he’ll care about hers. They were always close.”

  Neely was a tall man, and his snakeskin cowboy boots only added to his height. He towered over me, the way the boy always had. He was the sort of man who chews gum and tobacco at the same time. While I talked, he was chewing gum so fast I wondered if his jaw would come unhinged.

  He spat dark juice into a small cup. “You’ll excuse me for being blunt,” he said. “But what if your son is dead?”

  “Then bring his remains home so his mother can have some peace.”

  I had high hopes, even if the trail was a few weeks old. I was pretty sure the boy wasn’t dead. He was j
ust hiding—from us, from God.

  Or maybe he was seeking something he would never find.

  Neely came to the house on a Monday.

  He looked over the boy’s things, what little he’d had: the bookshelves with only one book, a Bible; some T-shirts; a pair of boots. He sat at the foot of Sammy’s bed, looking around. Then he hung around in front of the garage, observing the neighborhood where our son had grown up, where we’d spent most of our adult lives, right after Sammy came along. He was chewing tobacco and occasionally spitting on the sidewalk.

  I thought about asking him not to spit. But I didn’t.

  Neely regarded the two of us. “What was the first hint that something might be wrong?” he asked.

  I looked at Charlene. She looked at the traces of tobacco juice staining the sidewalk.

  “There’s always been something wrong,” she said, “since the first day I brought him home from the hospital. I always knew he wouldn’t stay, he was too perfect, too good, too right for us.”

  She’d said things like that before during the years Sammy was growing. Charlene had been a fearful mother, possessive in the way she watched over him, as if afraid someone was going to come along and snatch him away. It had sometimes seemed like the fear would devour her.

  “And more recently?” Neely asked.

  “And more recently …” She stopped.

  “He started to drink recently,” I said, to fill in the blanks. “He’d drive off down toward Odessa, get drunk. Chief brought him home a few times.”

  “Kids his age will do that,” Neely agreed.

  “No,” I said. “This was different. He was upset about something. Angry.” I thought back on the day he’d sneered at me. Come to think of it, the way he’d sneered, it was almost as if he thought it was funny that I didn’t want him bringing the devil’s drink home. Like there was something of Satan already here.

  “Any idea what upset him?”

  I shook my head. Charlene mumbled something.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Did you say something?” Neely asked.

  “I upset him,” she said, louder this time.

  “Are you a difficult person to get along with?” he asked.

  “Not especially,” I answered for her. “Charlene has always been a good wife and a good mother. They’ve always gotten along.”

  “Then why do you think you upset him?” His tone was gentle.

  “He was upset by who I am,” she answered.

  Neely nodded, like he’d heard all this before. “And who are you, exactly?”

  She started to talk then. She had a hunger, she said. She’d had it for years. All her life, maybe, she said. It went deep. It had sharp teeth and bit her insides. Sometimes it felt as though the hunger was consuming her altogether. Sometimes it was all she could do, she said, not to give in to it.

  Neely was looking at her from the corner of his eyes, as if he was afraid he would startle her if he looked directly at her. “Is that so?” he said. “And do you? Give in to it?”

  “No,” she said. She smiled. “Okay,” she said. “One time. But only once.”

  When she said that, I looked away, down the street, to the end of the block, where cement dribbles out until it becomes the flat, dry brown of west Texas, stretching to the place where land meets clear blue sky, as far as the eyes see, just a hazy line on the horizon separating heaven from earth.

  The smell of Neely’s tobacco soured in my stomach.

  I thought of the Beatitudes. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. That had been the hunger in my life. What was hers?

  For the first time, doubts about the wife crawled right into my head.

  Charlene continued. “Do you know what I’m talking about when I say the word hunger, Mr. Neely? Have you ever felt like you’re starving? Have you ever looked in the mirror and all you see is a skeleton—that’s all that’s left of you, somebody you don’t even recognize because you’re so very, very hungry?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said, courteous but firm. “Can’t say that I have.”

  “Well,” she said.

  We waited for more. But she was done.

  My hands were shaking. I’m a preacher, so I know what sin is, the tragedy of it, the way it corrupts a person and turns everything they love to dust. But still I was surprised how calm Neely was. Like he’d seen everything under the sun already.

  I paid him for a week in advance, gave him Sammy’s Social Security number, and watched as he drove away. I wanted him to find something, and at the same time I was hoping he would not. The wife had scared me.

  I went inside, ready to ask Charlene about all that she’d said, but she was hunched up in bed, blankets over her head.

  “Charlene?” I said softly.

  She didn’t respond. So I went away.

  Neely returned two days later, with Chief, which surprised me. They came to the church. I saw them from the office window, and went outside to greet them, to invite them inside. Neely cleared his throat. He spit out the remainder of his tobacco juice before entering the building, left the cup outside on the sidewalk. I appreciated that.

  “Have you already found him?” I asked as soon as we were inside my office. I had closed the door. Stacey’s a good church secretary, but there are things she doesn’t need to know.

  It was Chief who answered. “We found him all right.” He had a stern expression on his face, which seemed to have calmed the winking-blinking facial tic.

  “Well, where is he?” I demanded. “How is he? Is he okay? Is he in trouble? Did you bring him back to Andrews?”

  “He was in Amarillo,” Neely said. “But he’s here now.”

  We were still standing and I made a gesture to open the door. “Take me to him.”

  “We have a warrant, Preacher,” Chief interrupted.

  My hand paused on the doorknob. “What has he done?” I asked, so quick, my mind going to a thousand scenarios, knowing how it’s possible to get going downhill so fast, you can’t stop yourself even when you want to.

  “It’s not what he’s done,” Neely said.

  “Then what? Who? Me?”

  “Your wife, it’s what your wife’s done.”

  “What’s she done?” My preacher’s voice—usually sonorous and controlled—was soaring. “You have a warrant to arrest Charlene?”

  “No, we have a warrant for your DNA,” Chief said.

  “What? Why?”

  “We can do it here,” Chief said, “or you can come on down to the station.”

  “Let me see the warrant.” My heart was racing. I scanned the paper quickly, but it didn’t tell me anything that they hadn’t already said. “What exactly is going on?”

  “Do you mind coming down to the station?” Chief asked, only he didn’t really ask, it was more like a statement. His mouth was bunched up, the lips pressed firmly together.

  Neely’s face had never been expressive, but now it was a blank slate.

  “Okay,” I said.

  We stepped outside my office, the two men following me.

  “I’m gone for the day,” I told Stacey. I could barely think for the questions swirling around like dust devils in my head.

  There were four cars in the parking lot—mine, Stacey’s, Chief’s, and Neely’s.

  “You’ll come with me,” Chief said.

  “Front or back?” I asked, still wondering how much trouble I was in.

  “Your choice,” he said.

  I sat in front.

  As we drove out of the parking lot, tires spinning in the gravel, I looked back at the small redbrick building with its white steeple and the wooden cross hanging over the door frame. Neely’s spittoon sat on the sidewalk, right in front of the sanctuary door.

  The sky was Texas-style blue, expansive and deep, clouds scudding across its face. Usually, that sky reminds me of the wide, wide mercy of God. Today, it made me feel like anything could happen, anything at all.
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br />   As we walked through the station, I caught a glimpse of Charlene sitting in a small room as a police officer went inside. Another officer was sitting across from her, a tape recorder in his hand.

  “… there was the cord wrapped around his neck …” I heard her saying.

  The door closed and I lost sight of her.

  And then there was Sammy, sitting in the hallway, his big frame impossible to ignore. He looked tired and dirty. He hadn’t had a haircut or a shave since he’d disappeared, and the beard and scruffy hair made him look like a man and a stranger.

  Oh Sammy. My Sammy.

  The breath caught in my throat.

  “Sammy,” I called, my voice high and unnatural and cracking.

  He looked up and our eyes met and again I was startled by their amber-green, so like his mother’s, so like mine. Samuel. My boy. The Lord heard.

  Neely pushed gently from behind, and we stumbled into a small room. Chief hustled inside behind us.

  “You really did find him,” I babbled. “And he looks all right, doesn’t he? Isn’t he all right?”

  “He’s fine,” Neely said.

  “Thank you, Lord,” I breathed. “Thank you.”

  The last thank you was directed at Neely, who nodded in acknowledgment. He seemed like a decent man, even if he wasn’t explaining to me what was going on.

  After they swabbed my cheek to get their DNA sample, Chief gestured to a chair, and I sat.

  “When can I see my boy?” I asked. I felt like a small child, petitioning an arbitrary adult.

  “Actually, we have some questions to ask you, if you don’t mind,” Chief said. The tic was back. It looked like a worm moving beneath the skin.

  “Sure,” I said, “anything I can do to help. What are you looking for, anyway? Why did you need my DNA sample?”

  “We don’t think Sammy is yours,” Neely said.

  I stood then, leapt to my feet. “No,” I said. “No, no, no! Sammy is mine, has always been mine.”