by Hank Early
“I won’t let you do it. I owe it to Wanda.”
“You owe it to her? The woman who left her kids to go look for…” I started to say drugs, because really, was there anything else she would have left for, but noticed that both kids were watching me closely.
“You can say it,” Virginia said. “I know about the drugs, and Briscoe’s too young to understand.”
I swallowed. Briscoe’s mouth hung open, and he stared at me expectantly, and I wondered if maybe Briscoe understood more than they knew.
“I just don’t get it,” I said. “Why do you owe her?”
Ronnie had wandered off to the other side of the house. When he turned around, I saw he was upset. “Wanda stood by me when I was on the needle bad,” he said. “I thought I was going to die, and I would have too if she hadn’t reported me for the B and E. They put me in lock-up and I was forced to get off the stuff. Saved my life. Now, she’s got the same problem. I want to help her. So she can have her kids back. I know it don’t seem like it, but she loves them kids.”
I sighed. Normally, this would have been where I would have called Mary. She would have known just what to do, would have given me the soundest advice. Now I was alone to figure it out myself.
“For now, let’s get them out of here and find them something to eat.”
“McDonald’s,” Briscoe said. “McDonald’s.”
“He don’t know too many words,” Ronnie said, “but he sure as shit knows him some Mickey D’s.”
“Mickey D’s!” Briscoe shouted, standing up and lifting his arms to the sky.
I walked over, smiling despite everything, and picked him up.
“I don’t have a car seat or anything,” I said.
Ronnie gave me a look like he thought I was making a joke. “Briscoe ain’t never sat in one, so he won’t know the difference.”
Virginia looked at my truck warily. Something told me she’d come by that caution honestly. “Where are we going?”
“It’s going to be fine, Virginia. Uncle Ronnie is going to take care of you.”
She gave him an odd look, one that seemed to suggest she wasn’t quite sure Ronnie could take care of himself, much less two kids. I had to agree with her on that one, though the more I hung around Ronnie, the more I was starting to believe he did care about them, and the whole holding up his sister thing had been more about trying to get some of Lane Jefferson’s money than anything else.
“Is there something you want to get from inside first?” I said.
She shook her head. “Briscoe’s gonna want his truck.”
I nodded and walked over to pick it up, shaking the dirt off it.
“I did have some books,” Virginia said, her voice not much more than a whisper, “but Mama loaded them all up in the car and took them to the thrift store. She got seven dollars for all of them.”
“Your mama’s doing the best she can, Virginia,” Ronnie said.
I shook my head. No, she wasn’t. Not even close, but I kept my mouth shut and made a mental promise that if I did nothing else, I’d get the girl some books.
We all crammed inside the truck, Ronnie in back with Briscoe, and Virginia up front with me. Ronnie, who’d been in tears just moments before, looked as happy as I’d ever seen him as we pulled away from the shack and drove to McDonald’s.
23
After some hamburgers, we drove back up Ghost Creek Mountain toward Ronnie’s. I wasn’t sure if he believed I was going to let the kids stay with him or not. The truth was, I was planning on asking Rufus if the kids and me could crash with him for a night.
When I pulled up to the church, Ronnie grunted. “You don’t think I can take care of these kids?”
“You don’t have enough room even if you wanted to. Besides, they’ll just be next door. Now, I know you and Rufus have had your differences, but you know he’s a good man.”
“I don’t know shit about him being a good man. Only thing I know is that he creeps me out. Fucker moves like a panther and doesn’t need eyes to judge me. What’s that about? You’d think living next to a blind man would be the best thing for a man who’s been judged on sight for his whole life, but no. This is the one blind man who can just sense that I’m a loser. Hell no, I don’t want them staying with him.”
“I want to stay in the church,” Virginia said. “It’s…” She shook her head, staring at it in the oncoming dusk. “Creepy.”
“You got that right,” Ronnie said.
He put his hands in his face for a minute. “Fine,” he said. “They can stay with the blind bastard.”
With that, he opened the backdoor of my truck and slid out. He walked quickly toward the creek, hands stuffed in his pockets. He crossed it and broke into a jog, heading for his house. Just before going in, he turned, and said, “What about tomorrow?”
“We’ll go early,” I said. “I think I’ve got a place they can stay tomorrow.”
He nodded and went inside.
I turned back to my truck. Virginia was standing near it, holding Briscoe. “Let’s meet Rufus,” I said.
* * *
I never had any doubt that Rufus would let the kids stay. Rufus loved kids. Which was odd because he scared the shit out of them, at least at first.
Virginia warmed up to him when he made her a cup of hot chocolate over propane heat and told her stories about the wolves he heard sometimes when the moon was full. In reality, they were coyotes, but Rufus knew how to work an audience.
Briscoe fell asleep on one of the padded pews Rufus had kept, and seeing him sleeping peacefully in the place that had caused me so much pain over the years made me feel good, at least briefly. Then I remembered that Mary was still gone, and I was no closer to finding her than I’d been the moment we found Johnny lying on the ground by the stream. Hell, if anything, I was farther away after his bogus confession.
I checked my phone, hoping against hope there was a message from Mary, or at least something good from Patterson, but no one had called or texted me. I tried Mary’s phone for the hundredth time and waited while it went straight to voicemail. I hung up before I heard her voice. It was too painful. Too soon.
I called Susan Monroe next. She answered on the second ring.
“Earl Marcus?”
“Hey, Susan.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I said, but my voice was breaking as I spoke the words. “She’s going to be okay.”
“Yeah, this is your thing, right? Finding people?”
“Yeah, but even if I don’t find her, she’ll be okay. Mary’s tough.”
“Is there anything I can do?” she said, and she sounded sincere. I’d always liked Susan because she was a genuinely nice person. Some people could fake it well—like Ronnie’s grandfather, Billy. He’d been my father’s right-hand man and best friend for most of his life, and he’d fooled me for a long time with the bright, optimistic persona he projected, but in the end I’d realized it had been nothing but a projection all along. Susan wasn’t like that. Susan truly wanted to help, and though it was a small thing, at that moment, it felt like a big one.
“Would you be willing to let a couple of kids stay with you?”
“Kids?”
I explained the situation the best way I knew how. When I finished, I said, “I’m just not going to be able to watch them, and, well, Rufus could, but people think he’s creepy, and it might come across weird if he did.”
“Say no more. I’ll definitely do it. The only issue is that I have to work tomorrow.”
“The girl loves to read,” I said. “And she’s responsible. Would it be okay if they sort of hung out with you?” I felt like I was pushing it now, but what could I do? These kids needed somebody.
“That’s a great idea,” she said. “We can let the little one play in the children’s room, and the older one can keep an eye on him while she reads. I’m delighted she’s a reader.”
“Yeah, I think somehow she overcame her family genetics.”
“We all have to do that in one way or the other.”
“Yeah,” I said, wondering if she understood just how close to home those words hit. “I think that’s true. Listen, I’ve got an early morning tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry about it. Tell Rufus I’ll come by and get them on the way to work.”
“Thanks so much, Susan.”
“It’s not a problem, Earl. I know what you’re going through right now. When I lost Ed, I was devastated. Lost.”
I didn’t respond. Mostly because I had no idea how to.
“I’m sorry, that was terrible. I didn’t mean to compare the two. Mary’s not dead. It was stupid, Earl. I was just trying to let you know … well, if you ever need to talk, I’m here.”
“No, it was fine, Susan. And I really do appreciate it.”
When I hung up, I turned and saw that Rufus had fallen asleep too on his own pew. He was snoring softly, his face drawn and worried in the flickering candlelight. Virginia sat beside him, her legs crossed, her face far too serious for a twelve-year-old. She was looking right at me.
“What?” I said.
“I know what happened to her.”
My mind didn’t process her words. Maybe I was too afraid to.
“What?”
“I know what happened to her.”
“To Mary?”
She nodded solemnly.
“Go on.”
“Old Nathaniel. He has her.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen him.”
“When?”
“At night, from my old bedroom window at Mr. Lane’s place.”
“Who is he?”
She looked confused. “He’s Old Nathaniel.”
“But Old Nathaniel isn’t real. It had to be someone dressed up like him. Was it Lane?”
“Lane’s too short.”
“What?”
“Old Nathaniel is tall and strong. And fast.”
“Did you see him often?”
She shook her head. “Mostly during the full moon. It makes the cornfield look like an ocean of gold. It lights up everything.” She shrugged. “Maybe he’s there every night and I just can’t see him. But in the moonlight, you can see a lot, even the paths in the cornfield.”
I tried to think when the next full moon was, but the truth was, I had no idea.
“So, what do you think Old Nathaniel wants with her?”
“He hates black people. He wants her to suffer. That’s what I heard from my friend.”
“What friend?”
“Addie. She lives in the trailer park across the river. Sometimes, I cross the river and play with her. She never comes to my side. She knows better.”
“Smart kid.”
“Sometimes I would sneak Lane’s phone to my room if he left it lying around, and I’d text Addie when I saw the lights.”
“The lights?”
“Yeah, the times I saw Old Nathaniel, I also saw lights in the cornfield. Bright lights. I asked Lane about it, and he made me start sleeping on the couch. It didn’t matter—I’d still sneak up there at night and watch.”
“How often did you see the lights?”
“Not a lot. Just sometimes. But whenever I did, I always looked for Old Nathaniel. Sometimes he was there and sometimes he wasn’t.”
“What about Lane? Did he ever leave the house at night and go into the cornfield?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. He always said he was going to his friend’s house, Mr. Tag.” She made a face.
“What? You didn’t like Mr. Tag?”
“He was creepy, but not in a good way like your friend. Creepy in a bad way. A really bad way.”
Mr. Tag. I’d heard that name somewhere before too. Then it hit me. Tag was the name of the man Lane had been visiting on Summer Mountain.
“Is there anything else you can tell me about Old Nathaniel?”
She shook her head. “He’s real. That’s the truth.”
“Do you know what pot is? Marijuana?”
She laughed. “Are you kidding? Of course I know what it is.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not used to kids. I don’t know how much to … expect…” I trailed off. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. But yeah, I’ve known about pot since I can remember. I know about all the drugs. Coke, meth, LSD, OxyContin.” She shrugged. “Ronnie said never to do drugs because he almost died. I wouldn’t have tried them anyway because … well, look at Mama.”
My heart broke again. I wanted to hug her, to wrap her up in the kind of hug that would let her know somebody cared about her, but I stayed put. I wasn’t sure how she would take it. What kind of hugs she might have already experienced from men who had different motivations.
Instead, I pressed ahead. “Do you know if Lane grows pot?”
“That’s what everybody says.”
“But you haven’t seen it?”
“No.” She lay down on her pew.
“Sleepy?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”
I yawned, realizing just how sleepy I really was. I needed sleep. I was going on forty hours without it. I was already starting to feel the cracks in my thinking, my reasoning. I leaned back on my pew and closed my eyes.
“We’ll talk more in the morning,” I said.
“Okay,” she said.
I was asleep when I heard her voice again. I don’t know how much time had passed—maybe just a minute or two or maybe several hours. Her voice came from a great distance, as if she were calling from the bottom of a deep well, and there was a strong possibility I dreamed the entire thing: she said something about mirrors, something I didn’t remember the next morning, but somehow the seed slipped inside my mind because my dreams that night were of great mirrors in the sky, reflecting my falling body as I tumbled into the black water of a river that was beginning to feel more and more like my destiny.
24
The next morning, a snarling prison guard led Ronnie and me to a large concrete room with several tables and chairs. It was empty except for what appeared to be some parents making a heartfelt visit to their distraught son. The guard looked at his clipboard as we entered the room. “Jesus, you guys sure do have a lot of friends in prison. Who the hell do you want to see first?”
“Lester,” I said. The guard’s eyes widened, and his snarl dissipated a little. “Hey, I read about you. You put your brother here, didn’t you?”
“No,” I said. “Lester was a victim.”
The guard laughed. “Right. Sit wherever you want. He’ll be out in a minute.”
Hoping to avoid the drama playing out in the rear of the large room, we sat as far from the other family as possible. Still, I couldn’t help sneaking glances. The kid couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, and seeing him with his parents, in tears like that, made him look even younger. The mother reached across the table and put her arms around his neck, pulling his head toward her shoulder. He began to sob.
Ronnie chuckled. “Fucking pathetic.”
“Shut up,” I said. “Have some decency.”
“Now you’re a family man, huh? You’re a real piece of work, Earl. Must be nice to go with whichever way the wind blows.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means here you are feeling all misty-eyed over family shit. Your family never did nothing for you or Lester. And the thing is, you know it.”
I was about to point out that he’d done some things for his family over the past few days, but before I could, the door in the back of the room swung open, and Lester appeared. My breath stopped, and I looked away, not wanting to meet his gaze. Not like this.
Lester looked broken. Not just on the outside either. Sure, his shoulders were slumped, and he’d gone totally bald, and there were new dark spots on his face that looked serious enough to see a doctor about, but there was a deeper brokenness there too. The kind that was unmistakable. The kind that resided in the eyes and was always searching for
something to latch on to, the kind that was always seeking help without the hope it would ever come.
I forced my eyes back up to meet his. I was surprised when I didn’t see any anger there. That too seemed to have been broken. I stood up and reached out for him. He embraced me limply. I didn’t want to let go. My brother was a ghost, and I couldn’t help but feel responsible for his death.
He nodded at Ronnie, and I noted that he didn’t seem surprised to see him with me.
“Hey,” I said. “How are you making it?”
He sat down across from us and clasped his hands beneath his chin in a prayerful gesture. “I’m alive.”
I swallowed hard. “Lester, I’m sorry it’s taken me so—”
He waved me off. “Don’t. Please. Let’s just be brothers for a few seconds,” he said. “With none of the damage.”
“Okay.”
Ronnie cleared his throat. “You had any trouble in here?”
He shook his head. “Nah.”
“Good for you. I had a friend who was sent up on a five-year stint. When he came out, he told me the first week was brutal. Said every swinging dick in the place got a piece of him. They turned him out. Was fucking terrible.”
“Ronnie,” I said. “Jesus. Take it easy.”
“It’s okay, Earl. I’ve seen that happen to others. But I was lucky.”
I was curious now. “How so?”
He looked at me with something like pride, and I saw that he wasn’t completely finished yet. There was a still a small spark left inside of him, even if it was from the wrong kind of fire. “Daddy.”
“Daddy?”
He nodded. “He’s a legend, Earl. I never realized how much so, but when me and Billy got here, word was already going around that my daddy had risen again. That me and Billy still talked to him, and that if you knew what was what, you’d leave us alone.” He shrugged. “And they pretty much did.”
He leaned in, searching my face. “Did you ever find him, Earl?”
Ronnie shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. I thought he was going to let it all out of the bag, but Lester wasn’t paying any attention to Ronnie anymore. His eyes were on me, and me alone.
