by Joe McKinney
She stepped inside, the sun behind her, shadowing her face.
“Well?” he said.
She came closer, and as the shadows left her face, he saw that she was smiling. She suddenly looked completely different, healthier than she had in weeks. He hadn’t realized how worn she’d been, how tired. Now there was a golden radiance to her, like a tan, but more than that.
“You’re looking at Smithson Valley High School’s newest Eleventh Grade English teacher.”
“All right!” He grabbed her and squeezed so tightly she gasped before breaking out in giggles.
“Paul, put me down.”
He dropped her to her feet, but kept his arms wrapped around her. “I’m proud of you,” he said.
“You better be.” She gave him a peck on the lips and slid by him. She looked at the table, and her eyes went wide with delight. “Is that dinner? Since when do you know how to cook?”
He shrugged, still smiling.
She looked at the table he’d set. The smell of the bread had filled up the small apartment. He watched, satisfied with himself, as she closed her eyes and took a deep whiff. “A girl could get used to this,” she said.
“When do you start?”
“Monday.”
“Monday? Rachel, so soon?”
“Yeah, I know, right. I haven’t even seen my classroom yet.” She paused there, turned away from the table and the smell of the bread. Hesitantly, she said, “And I guess we can start thinking about that house?” Her inflection at the end made it a question.
Paul had gone with her to the school the week before, and they had seen a little place with some land not far from the school. There had been a tax foreclosure notice on it, and with the forty thousand dollars from the sale of his parents’ farm that Paul had managed to stash in an IRA account, they could probably get it if they acted quickly.
“I think the timing might be right,” he said.
Now she was really glowing.
She said, “But Paul, would you really want to have that much land again? I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to work it.”
“I can show you.”
She put her manila folder down next to her dinner plate and eased into his arms, her hands on his chest.
“As long as you promise me something,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Absolutely no goats.”
And he laughed.
“No goats,” he said.
***
From the street, the little four bedroom ranch house looked to be in pretty good shape. Living in it, though, was another story, and restoring it quickly became a labor of love for him. Paul worked during the day with his old high school buddy Steve Sullivan in the Comal County Public Works Office, but in the afternoons he’d come home and work on the roof and mend fences and clear cedar and burn the cuttings in sandy pits along the road that led down to their pasture. He hauled endless loads of rocks out of the fields and got the barn back into working order.
Sometimes, when she was done grading and the light was fading in the east, Rachel would come out to the back porch with a glass of iced tea. He would trudge in from whatever project he was working on, dust falling off him with every step, his t-shirt browned with sweat and dirt, and they would drink tea and watch the sun set.
And sometimes, after he’d showered and changed, they’d head back out to the patio and watch the fireflies skitter over the tops of the knee-high cheatgrass and tell each other about their day. Those were the evenings Paul liked best.
***
That April, an attorney with the City of San Antonio’s Legal Advisor’s Office called him and told him that the city had settled out of court with the family of Curtis Lowe III, the black kid from the train yard. As far as the City was concerned, the matter was now closed. Paul asked him if the family was going to try to come after him individually, and the attorney told him no, the matter was closed. Paul thanked him and hung up. He was relieved down to his toes. It surprised him, the depth of his relief. The final loose end of the whole mess was done, and even as he stood there staring at the phone on the counter, he could feel his worries leaving him.
***
Rachel taught summer school that year, and one day she came home with news that Randy Peyser, one of the senior assistant football coaches at the high school, had just been offered a head coach’s spot at a school up in Austin. Brent Cobb, Paul’s old coach, dropped a few hints that he was in the market for a new defensive coordinator. He hoped Paul was interested.
During his interview with Coach Cobb and Principal Mark Hardesty, the subject of his leaving the SAPD after working there less than a year had come up. Paul was pretty sure it would.
“Being a cop on the east side of San Antonio is sort of like being a zoo keeper,” he told them. “There are shootings and fights and more drugs than you can imagine. It’s no place to work if you’re thinking of starting a family.”
“You and Rachel are thinking of having a baby?” Hardesty asked, his eyes opening wide with delight. He had a full head of gray hair, but his eyebrows were solid black and bushy, like two bloated caterpillars about to tumble off his forehead.
“We’ve talked about it, yes sir.”
“That’s great,” Hardesty said. The caterpillars teetered on the edge of falling.
Paul forced himself not to smile.
“Yes sir, I think so, too.”
“I think the world of Rachel,” he said. “Sharp as a tack, that one.”
Paul nodded.
Hardesty turned to Cobb and a silent question passed from principal to head coach. Well, what do you think?
“I knew he was right for this even before he graduated,” Cobb said. He gave Paul a wink.
“Outstanding,” Hardesty said. “I couldn’t agree more.” He turned to Paul. “You understand, you’ll need to complete a battery of teacher certification courses. And there is a time limit on those. You’ll be in for some hard work.”
“I can do that, sir.”
“Call me Mark, please. This’ll have to go before the board, of course. I don’t want to promise ice cream before we milk the cow, but from where I’m sitting, I think we’ve found our first choice. There is one other thing though, Paul. May I call you Paul?” Paul nodded. “Good. There is one other thing, Paul. We are looking for a new Spanish teacher as well. It might help your chances with the board if you were fluent in Spanish. How about it, can you speak Spanish?”
Paul smiled. “Si, se puedo,” he said.
***
Paul Jr. was born the next year, nine pounds, three ounces. Every checkup, the doctor would whistle and tell them he was off the charts for height and weight. He was going to be huge, just like his daddy. Rachel called him her little linebacker.
When Paul worked in the yard, Paul Jr. followed him everywhere, no shirt, his diaper sagging down to his thighs in the back. Sometimes Paul would sit on a chair in the yard and Paul Jr. would stand in front of him and watch in wide-eyed wonder as the Barber fifty cent piece flashed back and forth across the back of his daddy’s hand. Then the coin would disappear, and Paul Jr. would gasp. And when Paul pulled it from behind the boy’s ear, Rachel could hear him giggling all the way up at the porch
Those were Rachel’s favorite evenings.
***
Three years later, Coach Cobb announced his retirement, and the head coaching spot fell to Paul. His first year, they made it all the way to the State quarter finals before losing to Odessa-Permian High School. Paul was thirty years old, a husband, a father, happier than he had ever been in his life.
***
On a cool evening in May, Paul and four year old Paul Jr. were in the backyard, looking out over a wide expanse of cedar forest that stretched off all the way to the horizon. Paul liked to stand here in the evenings and watch the cloud shadows pass over the land. There were six heifers down in the lower pasture now, and Paul could see them milling around near the dirt road that wound through the bottom t
en acres of the property. A car pulled into the driveway and Paul Jr. jumped up and ran that way.
“Paul!” he said, running after the boy. “Stop. Wait!” He caught up with him and took him by the hand. “You don’t ever run into the driveway when someone’s pulling up,” he said.
“Okay,” the boy said. “Who is it, Daddy?”
Paul recognized the man behind the wheel right away. It was Keith Anderson. He had more gray hair and more paunch and he was even paler than he used to be. But he still wore his Mr. Rogers sweater over a white polo shirt and khaki slacks, and he still had the look of one who is forever overworked. Anderson closed his car door and waved at Paul. Paul caught a glint of sunlight off the silver badge on his belt and thought, Still a detective, eh? Couldn’t give it up.
Anderson crossed to the other side of the car, still walking with a faint limp, and opened the door for a woman who might have been Anderson’s age, or who might have been even older. It was hard to tell. She was skinny in a way that didn’t seem quite healthy. She might have been pretty once. She wasn’t now. Her eyes were rimmed with red and her skin had a washed out, almost gray pallor. To Paul, she looked bony and frail before her time, and there was an uneasy, dazed look about her that spoke of hard grief. Instinctively, Paul reached out to her mind with his, and found that he was right. He touched a grief so deep it took his breath away. Even before Anderson introduced them, he knew this was Jenny Cantrell.
“Why don’t you take Mr. Anderson inside to see Momma,” Paul said to the boy. “Mrs. Cantrell and I’ll be in directly. Go on now.”
“Okay, Daddy,” Paul Jr. said. He turned to Anderson. “Come on, Mister.” And then the boy was off to the house, Anderson chuckling under his breath at the boy’s unbridled exuberance.
When Anderson and Paul Jr. were inside, Paul turned his attention on Jenny Cantrell. She’d been crying; he saw that now. Paul reached into her mind again and sensed how numb to the world she really was. It was like looking into a November sky and seeing nothing but a depthless gray.
“Why don’t we take a walk,” he said.
He went around the back of the house and out to the spot where he liked to stand and watch the cloud shadows pass over the land, and she followed him without a word.
***
“Hello?”
Anderson stood in the doorway and waited. The boy had almost flown into the house. He was out of sight now, but Anderson could hear him calling into the depths of the house for his mother.
He was standing in a comfortable sitting room lined with bookshelves. He scanned the titles for a moment then stopped. Nothing looked familiar, no Dan Brown or Clive Cussler. Sunlight filled the room through the windows on the wall to his right. There was a small desk sitting in a patch of sunlight off to one side, and on that were a laptop computer and a ceramic mug stuffed with pens that read World’s Greatest Teacher and a framed photograph of Paul and Rachel and Paul Jr. smiling together in front of some kind of fountain. The room had a comfortable feel to it, a happy place, and that made him glad for Paul.
“Keith?”
Anderson looked up from the picture. He realized he had been lost in thought. Rachel was standing in the opposite doorway, Paul Jr. by her side.
“That’s the man, Momma,” he said.
“Thank you, baby,” she said.
She ruffled the boy’s shaggy brown hair and crossed the room to Anderson. There was an awkward moment where he wasn’t sure if they were about to hug or shake hands, and in the end they came together for quick hug and then stepped back.
“You have a lovely home,” he said. “A lot of books.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Motherhood had been good to her. Her figure had filled out a little, so that she didn’t look as skinny as she had when he first met her, and there was a softness about her face that he liked. She had been cute before. She was beautiful now, more of a mature woman than just a girl.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He pointed out the window behind him with his thumb. Rachel stepped up next to him and they stood shoulder to shoulder, looking out across the yard. They could see Paul and Jenny Cantrell talking, facing one another, their heads bent together. He was holding her hands in his, and he was saying something to her.
“That’s Jenny Cantrell,” he said. “She’s the widow of my friend Bobby Cantrell who...” The rest of the sentence clotted in his throat and he found he couldn’t speak it.
She looked at him quizzically for a moment before it sank in. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, I’m sorry, Keith. Is she...?”
“Not doing too hot, I’m afraid. These last few years, it’s like she’s just been going through the motions of life. Margie and I, we’ve been trying to help her, but she just keeps getting worse. Today the City dedicated a park to Bobby off of Evers Rd. She did okay during the ceremony, but afterwards, in the car, well...it wasn’t good. She’s hurting.” He looked across the yard at the two figures standing there, framed in a window of oak trees. They still hadn’t moved. “Anyway,” he went on, “we were out this way, and I got to thinking about Paul. I remember how he helped me. I was wondering if maybe...well, you know.”
She nodded. They both looked out the window. Anderson saw Paul reach into his pocket and then put something in Jenny’s hands. Paul closed her fingers around whatever it was. Suddenly, light lanced out through Jenny’s fingers. Anderson squinted, not sure what he had just seen. Maybe a trick of the light, the way sunlight dapples on water?
Jenny looked up into Paul’s face then, and her mouth fell open. Even from across the yard, Anderson could see her expression change. There was light in her eyes, and finally, something other than grief. Was that relief he was seeing?
He wasn’t sure.
***
Paul and Rachel and Paul Jr. stood at the head of the driveway and watched as Anderson helped Jenny Cantrell into the passenger seat of his car. Though a trace of the dazed uneasiness remained in her eyes, her face was glowing. Anderson closed her car door then went to his side, waved at them, and then drove away.
“What did you say to her?” Rachel asked. “She looks a lot better than when she came here.”
“Yeah, I hope so.”
“You gave her your Barber fifty cent piece.” It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t an indictment either.
“Yes.”
He had his arm around her waist. She moved it and turned and faced him. “Paul, are you okay? You look...I don’t know. What happened over there?”
Paul told her that they’d talked about her husband. His body was never found. She had buried an empty coffin, thinking that that would be a hole deep enough for her grief. Anderson had known even then that it wouldn’t be. An empty coffin had no meaning, he had told her. It was bottomless. You could never fill it. All that grief had to go someplace, somebody had to carry it. She had never wanted to believe that was true, but she had reached a point of absolute exhaustion. She had said she was too full of grief. That she had denied the truth of it long enough, and now that grief was crushing her.
“She told you all that?”
“Some of it,” Paul said. “Some I sort of inferred.”
“Inferred?”
“It was in her mind.”
Rachel searched his eyes. She touched his cheek. “What did you tell her, Paul?”
“I told her that grief was a type of energy. Like all energy, it is what it is. It can’t be created or destroyed, but it can be transferred.”
Rachel shook her head.
“You know, after all these years, I still don’t understand that kind of talk. I never would have pegged you for a mystic, Paul. Is your coin supposed to help her transfer that grief?”
“For her, the coin is just a prop,” he said. “Something to help her focus. I guess you’d call it a placebo. For me, it had real value. Emotional weight. Giving it to her was my way of transferring positive energy to her.”
“I’m confused. You said grief can�
��t be created or destroyed. If you gave her your positive energy, what happened to her grief? Did it go someplace else?”
“She still has the memory of it,” he said.
“But not the pain?”
“But not the pain.”
Paul’s powers were still growing, but he was a long ways from being able to explain them to Rachel. He had thought the call from the City’s Legal Advisor’s Office four years earlier was the end of the destruction his father had wrought upon their lives. He knew that wasn’t the case now. There was still a lot of work to be done.
But none of that mattered right now. What mattered right now was that Jenny Cantrell’s grief was where it belonged.
It had come home.
THE END
