The punching bag still swung slightly. The room clouded with dust and debris. He pressed the cut on top of his hand against his jeans and as he held it there he noticed a widemouth vase in the corner. Unscarred. Hidden beneath one of the tables he had thrown aside. It sat uneven as if resting on a stone. He stood up and stepped across the damage and picked it up. Held it with both hands. Looked at the bottom at the cursive M she put on all her work. Touched his finger to the groove and ran it along the shape of the letter. He looked down where it had sat for so long and he noticed a latch attached to the floor plank where the vase had been.
He knelt and set the vase on the floor. He touched the latch but did not lift. Instead he sat down and wondered. Wondered if he had been the one to put it there. Wondered if beneath was something else he had hidden away. Maybe beneath was an answer. He touched the latch again. Imagined the other Jack having done this and there could only be bad news on the other side if that was who was responsible and this thought made him pull the latch and lift the plank.
A gray lockbox sat beneath the floor and he took it by the handle on the lid and raised it out and then he felt in the space beneath the floor for a key. There wasn’t one. He tried to pry it open with his hands and when he couldn’t he took the box and the vase and he left the potter’s barn and returned to the kitchen.
He set the lockbox on the table and then he stood at the sink and washed the vase. The sole unbroken piece of what remained of her life’s work. The filth in a brown swirl down the drain. Then he washed the cut on his hand. Grabbed a dishrag from a drawer and wrapped it around the cut. He looked at the wristwatch he had swiped from the mechanic and it was 3:41. I don’t have time for this, he thought. Go see Maryann. But he believed the box had come from the other Jack and he couldn’t make himself abandon it. He then took a knife and he sat down at the table with the box. He worked the knife between the lid and the box rim and pried it up until the lock popped and he folded the box open.
There were no notes from himself. No treasure or secret or promise from his past. Inside was a stack of envelopes and he lifted them out. A spider crawled out from the lockbox and he thumped it away and then he set the stack on the table. He picked up the first envelope and it was addressed to Maryann. And so was the next. All of them were addressed to Maryann and all of them came from someone with the initials JKM, which was the only inscription where the return address should have been. He counted and there were seventeen and they were stacked in what seemed to be chronological order. On some of the letters the postmark had faded away but on others he noticed the dates and the letters began in 1979 and stretched to June 1983. Most came from New Orleans but the last few arrived from Savannah.
He pushed his chair away from the table and tried to figure. You were twelve years old when you came to live here and that was in the summer of ’82. So you were here when she hid these. When she decided they belonged in a lockbox underneath the floor. And this is something she doesn’t want you to see. Something she doesn’t want anyone to see.
But here it is.
Round Three
22
THERE WERE THINGS ABOUT HIS LIFE HE COULD NEVER KNOW. What the people looked like who made him and what their names were and how he got his own name. If he had been held as a baby or left to himself and did he have a crib and was there a moment when he was loved. What was the weather like on the day he was born and did anyone help him learn to walk or did he just figure it out trying to either get to or away from something.
Secrets that existed through no fault of his own. He had not chosen to be born to those who did not care. He had not chosen to be a child dropped off at a secondhand store. He had not chosen the void. His secrets were simply a part of the world, withheld from him by a hand greater than his own.
He stared at the stack of letters and this was different. Maryann had kept this box under the floorboard in the potter’s barn for a reason. This was her secret and she had made the decision to hide it away. He imagined her now at work at the wheel. Her wet hands molding the clay and her foot pressing the pedal that spun the stone wheel and her mind not on the creation in her fingertips but instead adrift with whatever dreams or heartbreak or ghosts she had hidden beneath the floorboard only steps away.
He wasn’t sure if he should read them. Or if he wanted to. The letters were more than thirty years old. The last one written a year after he had come to live with her. It was her choice.
He stood up from the chair and moved to the sink. He lifted the vase and set it in the center of the small table. Took a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water. Emptied his pockets. What was left of the cash and the brass knuckles. He took more Tylenol and looked at the three pills left in the bag, trying to save them until the fight was closer. He craned his neck. Raised his arms over his head and stretched, his body like some twisted cord that could not be undone.
He sat back down and opened the first letter. A smooth cursive hand, written in pencil. The script smudged and erased and rewritten in several places. The pages soft as if handled again and again. He read it and set it aside and opened the second letter. And then the third.
One after another and they all said the same things. Please come with me. Please. You and I both know we can’t live the life we want to live in that little town. It’s just not possible. You have to come with me. I know about your family and what they will think. I know what you feel about your responsibilities to all of it but we cannot live there. You know that. I just want us to be together.
As he went further through the stack the letters became more emphatic and the voice began to accuse. Maybe this is not what you want. Maybe you lied to me. Maybe none of it is real. He felt the hands reaching through the words and trying to grab hold of Maryann. Pull her forward. Dig her feet out of this black and fertile ground.
I will come get you. I don’t want to think of you alone. I don’t want to think of me alone. Please. Over and over the letters spoke of courage. Love. Beginnings. Endings. Regret. Being the way we are supposed to be.
He read until he reached the last letter. Its envelope did not hold multiple pages like the others but only a scrap of paper and he knew it to be some final declaration. A hard goodbye. He could tell by the way the note was ripped on the edge. It was a small scrap of paper resting there in its envelope but he felt its weight, so much heavier than all the others. So he did not take it out but instead closed the envelope and laid it on the pile.
In the quiet of the house he was struck by the revelation that she was more like him than he ever had imagined. She knew loneliness. Displacement. The feeling of living in a world you don’t understand. And then he wondered what his role had been. Had he helped to keep her here. Had he given her an excuse to hide away. To be afraid. Did he get in the way.
Go and beg, he thought.
He pushed away from the table. Moved through the empty rooms of the house. Burn it all down, he thought. Just go ahead and burn it all down. He tried to see himself as a boy and tried to see Maryann but the house only felt like a coffin now. A holding for some unavoidable end. Take what is left. Burn it all down. And then go and beg Big Momma Sweet for your life so you can be sitting right next to her when she dies away from home. The place she gave everything to. Live through the night so you can be there and you can feel every grain of betrayal as you look at her lost and dying eyes and hide behind the curtain of what she doesn’t know. Because you’re nothing but a coward so go ahead and burn it all down. Do the last thing.
He passed through the hallway and returned to Maryann’s bedroom. Opened the jewelry box. Removed his notes of warning and they floated to the floor in waves of resignation. Inside the box were pearl necklaces and diamond earrings and emerald rings. Gold bracelets and their gold charms. Lockets and necklaces adorned with rubies and petite diamonds that for a hundred years had been draped around smooth necks and dangled between pale breasts. He closed the lid and picked up the jewelry box and he crumpled his notes to himself and
tossed them into the closet. He carried the box under his arm to the kitchen and set it on the table with the letters. He flexed his rigid fingers and then he dropped the last three pills into the Tylenol bottle and scooped the money and brass knuckles from the counter and stuffed it all back into his pockets. He set Maryann’s letters inside the lockbox.
He checked the time on the watch. It was past four o’clock but that didn’t seem to matter anymore. He removed the watch and set it on the table and then he walked over to the kitchen window and slammed his hand through the screen trying to kill the wasp, just as the truck pulled into the driveway.
23
JACK WALKED IN THE HIGH GRASS AND WHEN HE CAME TOWARD the truck she was standing there with her hands in the pockets of her cutoffs. He looked past her and across the road and then around the yard as if there might be others.
“What is it?” he said.
“You remember me?” Annette asked.
“You aren’t easy to forget,” he said. “Even for me.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing.”
She shifted her feet and took her hands from her pockets and pressed them together. “Thanks again for helping out back at the store.”
“I didn’t really do anything,” he said and he moved to his truck’s door. “Why was he messing with you anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
Jack nodded and said I guess it’s none of my business anyway. He opened the truck door and set the lockbox and the jewelry box on the seat next to the motel Bible and his notebook.
“What’d you do? Follow me?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“What for? You a cop?”
“Do I look like a cop?” she said.
“Not one like I ever seen,” he said and he sat down behind the wheel.
“Then can I talk to you a second?” she said and she put her hand on the truck door. “The woman at the gas station asked you about being a fighter or something. Is that right?”
“I was.”
“When?”
“Once upon a time.”
“Is this your house?”
“No. Not really. Who are you again?” he said and then he turned the key to the ignition. But the truck did not crank. He pulled back the key and then tried again. The engine strained and he pumped the gas but it did not catch and smoke began to seep through the front grille.
“You’re gonna need a ride,” she said.
“Stupid ass motel mechanic,” he said and he slammed his fist against the top of the steering wheel and as his temper rose he felt a surge in his headache. He rubbed at the back of his neck. You got to be kidding me, he thought, and he imagined the man in the bathrobe laid up on the bed in his motel room. Watching television. Laughing about Jack believing he was a capable mechanic. He looked across the driveway to her truck. “Yeah. I guess I am.”
“Where to?”
“A nursing home on the other side of town.”
“I’ll take you if you’ll let me ask you some questions,” she said.
“I don’t understand whatever it is you think you need to be asking me but if it’ll get me where I’m going then fine.”
He pushed open the truck door and got out with the jewelry box and the lockbox and the notebook.
“You’re forgetting something,” she said and she pointed at the Bible.
“Hold this,” he said and he handed her the boxes and notebook.
He opened the Bible and took out the foreclosure notice. He read it over again and then stuck it back inside the Bible and brought it along. They climbed in her pickup and she circled in the yard and when they came to the end of the driveway he told her to turn left.
He picked up the pack of cigarettes from on top of the dashboard and took one out and he found a lighter in the cupholder between the seats. He then pointed ahead and told her to take the right up there at that old café. He turned on the radio but she reached down and clicked it off.
“I’m serious,” she said. “Can you listen now?”
They came to the small redbrick building with MAMAW’S CAFÉ painted above the front door and Annette turned. Jack said you can ask me whatever but that doesn’t mean I’ll have an answer. He sucked on the cigarette and then he reached out and laid his hands on the dashboard and said stop.
“What is it?”
“Stop. Just pull over,” he said and he tossed the cigarette out the window. He had been eating Tylenol and trying to salvage that last of the pills for what his mind and body would suffer later in the night but the Tylenol was no match for what lived inside. The pain sharp between his shoulder blades and sharp in the back of his neck and he bent and pressed his forehead against the dash and said pull in over there and get me some water. Please right now. His back and legs clenching in small convulsions and she did not argue. She stopped in the parking lot of the café and hurried in and returned with a cup of water and he pulled two red pills from his pocket. Took the cup with a shaky hand and swallowed the pills. Drank the water and dropped the cup on the floorboard.
“Don’t drive,” he said.
“Are you all right?”
“No. Just don’t move.”
He wrapped his hands around his throat and pressed his fingers into the back of his neck as if trying to cut off the pain. He pressed against the top of his vertebra and something like a growl came from his throat. She wanted to do something but he had said don’t move. So she watched him writhe and listened to his stunted breathing. Her hand on his shoulder. Wanting to ask what she could do but knowing he couldn’t answer. He only rocked with his hands pressing against his head and she got out of the truck and went back inside. Got a plastic bag filled with ice and when she returned he had stopped rocking. She reached inside the open window and held the ice against the back of his neck as he whispered oh God.
He then moved his hands from his head and took the ice from her. Placed it on top of his head and leaned back in the seat. Annette lit a cigarette and began to pace across the parking lot, smoking and kicking at rocks and preaching to herself in rhythms of assurance and faith. One step has led you to the next and to the next and here you are and there is something here larger than anything you have seen or done before. Something. This is no strip club and this is no carnival. This is something beyond your own understanding. The jewelry box and the lockbox and the notebook and the truck and the old fighter in the Delta with a name that meant something. She looked at him through the window. You could be on the edge of some miracle. Or he could just be some junkie or worse and here you are the fool. Chasing when you should be running away. And then she cursed her own lack of conviction and she situated herself on her own front pew and waited for whatever was burning inside of him to subside long enough for her to ask her questions.
“My name is Annette,” she whispered. Practicing the way it sounded. Imagining her mother having sent a note or a photo of a baby with her name scribbled across the back to the man her mother only pretended not to remember. Imagining the magic of the four words once he heard them. The pain falling from his face when she said my name is Annette. She paced and whispered the words and watched him and waited and in the doctrine of her mind this would do it. He would recognize her name and realize who she was and a new day would begin.
He finally calmed. His arm resting in the open window and his head leaning on his arm. Eyes closed. The pain lessened to the point where he could be still.
She got in the truck and asked if he was okay. He lifted his head and nodded.
“Do you want to keep going?”
“Yeah.”
She drove slowly across the parking lot and out onto the road. Up ahead two tractors crept along and she passed them and asked if he could talk again.
“No,” he said. His heavy eyes. His bruised face from the wreck. The strained expression.
“Just let me help you then.”
“Help me do what?”
“Whatever you need. Are we almost there?”
“Yeah. Not far.”
Along the roadside teenagers held up signs that read FREE CARWASH and they waved cars toward the parking lot of a grocery store. At a rare red light a log truck had shorted a right turn and its back wheels had crushed a curb. The traffic waited while a city crew shoveled the broken concrete onto the back of a flatbed. Jack squinted but then moved his eyes over to Annette. Up and down her arms and up and down her legs. He saw there was addiction in her like there was in him. He wished his own could have at least been so artistic. The crew shoveled away the last of the concrete and the line of vehicles moved through the intersection.
“Swing in up there,” he said. “The next driveway on the right.”
She turned in at the sign for Friendship Village Retirement Care. Followed the driveway to the front and looped through the parking lot. She parked in front of the row of hedges that lined the beige brick building and turned off the ignition. She then hurried around to Jack’s door and put out her hand and he took it. He eased out and stood hunched, holding the boxes and the notebook, and she kept fingers to his elbow and walked with him until they were inside.
The Fighter Page 14
