Take Me There

by Carolee Dean

  “If I talk to him and get him to agree to see you, could you meet me there Monday morning?”

  “He’ll never allow that.”

  “Maybe I can get him to change his mind.”

  “He won’t.”

  “Please, Mom,” I beg.

  “All right then,” she says with a sigh filled with regret and loss and a hundred other emotions I can’t begin to understand. “If you can get him to put my name on his list, I’ll meet you up there Monday morning.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Dylan.”

  “Yes.”

  “Happy birthday, honey,” she says right before my time elapses.

  I get into the truck, turn around, and head to Livingston. By the time I get there, it’s already six o’clock and I’ve been driving for nearly five solid hours.

  “I thought you weren’t coming,” my father says when I see him.

  “I had some stuff to sort out.”

  “Like what?”

  “I figured out the combination to that box, and I found out what was inside.”

  He studies me to see if I’m bluffing. So to prove my point I say, “Fourteen, thirty-eight, twenty-two.”

  His expression doesn’t change, and yet a total transformation comes over him. Like in those old Westerns where the cowboy’s face suddenly goes slack, and the camera angle widens to show that the Indian up on the mesa has just shot an arrow through his heart.

  My father takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Well then,” he says.

  “Stop jacking with me, Dad. All I ever wanted was the truth.”

  “That’s the problem. People think if they can add up all the facts, they’ll end up with the truth, but that’s like sewin’ body parts together in the hopes you’ll get a man.”

  “Mom is coming Monday morning to see you. You gotta put her name on the list.”

  His whole body goes stiff. “You leave your mother out of this.” He lowers his voice to almost a whisper. “I won’t see her and she knows it.”

  “Please,” I beg him. “Just talk to her. One time. She really wants to see you.”

  “Did she say that?” he asks, softening ever so slightly.

  “She still loves you.”

  He shakes his head and runs his hands through his graying hair. “Why?” he asks, but not like he expects an answer.

  “Please.”

  He pounds his fist against his head. “Why, why, why? After everything I’ve done to …”

  “Dad?”

  He looks up at me as if suddenly realizing I’m sitting there. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Come on …”

  “That’s the best I can do,” he tells me in a voice that warns I shouldn’t push him too far.

  “Okay.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday. I’ll have Mr. Cartwright call you at Levida’s house and give you my answer.”

  “I can live with that,” I say, realizing I don’t have any choice.

  “Good.” He suddenly seems at peace, and I know he’s already decided what he’s going to do, though he won’t tell me.

  I don’t ask him any more questions. Instead we talk about everything else, and it’s just like that first day I came to visit him. I tell him all about Levida and that stupid pig of hers. I describe how Jess found me, only to leave me again. I report how Wade has hooked up with the preacher’s daughter. And I forget, for a while, that I’m talking to a man on death row, until the guard’s voice comes over the speaker and says it’s almost time for me to leave.

  “I started reading your book,” I say.

  “That’s good.”

  “There’s a letter in it to me.”

  He smiles. “A teacher of mine once told me that when you write something, you should think about who you’re writing it for. Picture in your mind the one person you most want to read it and why.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. She said if it means something to that one person, it will mean something to others as well.”

  “Your time is up,” the guard says over the intercom.

  I stand to leave, but my father says, “Wait!” over the red telephone. “Let me just look at you a minute.” He smiles at me proudly. “I know you been in some trouble, son, but you turned out good. That’s all I ever wanted,” he tells me. Then he puts his hand against the glass and I put my hand against the glass. “I love you,” he says.

  “I love you, too,” I say back.

  And then I leave.

  It’s nine o’clock at night before I get back to the farm. I walk into the house and smell apple pie baking. Wade is standing at the sink, washing the dirt off a huge zucchini squash from Levida’s garden. “Hey, you okay? You left kinda fast this afternoon.”

  “I talked to my mom. She’s going to meet me in Livingston Monday morning.”

  “That so?” Levida says, walking into the kitchen with an armload of zucchinis from the garden and Baby Face sniffing at her heels.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Your daddy said he’d see her?” she asks, plopping the long green vegetables on the counter next to Wade.

  “He said he’d consider it.”

  “Humph,” she replies, like she doesn’t believe it. She seems more irritated than usual, which I didn’t know was possible. Then she looks over at the dining table, and I understand why. The box holding the .22 is sitting open on the table. My grandmother glares at me, so angry that she’s shaking. “About time to get dinner on the table,” she tells Wade, then storms into her bedroom and slams the door.

  I turn on Wade. “You showed her the gun?”

  “Nah. She came up to the trailer after you left and saw the box.”

  Levida storms back into the kitchen, having taken off her dirty overalls and slipped into a pair of jeans and a man’s white cotton shirt. She opens and slams cupboards, setting various serving dishes on the counter with notable thuds. Taking a meat loaf out of the oven, she throws it onto a serving dish, then surrounds it with boiled potatoes she hasn’t bothered to mash. Next she pours green beans and gravy into bowls. She carries the dishes over to the table and sets them around the rusted metal box, like it isn’t even there. Then she walks past me over to the stove, like I’m not there either, fills a basket with rolls from the oven, and hands it to Wade. “Go put these next to the gravy,” she tells him. We all sit down, Wade and I sharing awkward glances while Levida passes the serving dishes.

  We fill our plates and eat in silence with the strange centerpiece staring up at us. “Do you want to talk about the gun?” I ask.

  “What gun?” she says, stabbing her dinner roll with a butter knife.

  “I’m sorry. I was wrong not to tell you about finding the box.”

  “What box?” It’s obvious she isn’t going to make this easy for me, but I guess I deserve that.

  “I didn’t know what was in it until this morning.”

  “More gravy, anyone?” she says, picking up a bowl.

  “You haven’t been to see my father in eleven years. Why do you care what’s in that box when you don’t give a damn about him?” My anger and frustration are mounting. “Why haven’t you seen him in all this time? Why won’t you go to him? And don’t give me that bullshit about him destroying all your dreams. He’s your son!”

  Levida places her fork on the edge of her plate, coolly and deliberately. Her voice is ice. “He asked me to do something that went against my nature.”

  “What?”

  “Keep my mouth shut. And I been keepin’ it shut for over a decade. So here’s what we’re gonna do,” Levida tells me, her voice beginning to rise. “We’ll keep this gun sitting here between us in the middle of the table for the next eleven years with the understanding that we will never, ever talk about it. The word will not pass our lips. What happened out there”—she jumps to her feet and points up the hill—“will never be spoken of again, and if it is … you will not see my face again.” She holds her fist up to her mouth to hide the fact that
she’s crying, and then she runs out the back door.

  And I realize: The silence and separation wasn’t her doing. It was my father’s. He has shut out everyone but me.

  “Maybe you should go talk to her,” Wade says.

  “I know,” I reply, even though I have no idea what to say or do. I didn’t even know the old bag was capable of tears.

  I walk out the back door and don’t have to go far. Levida is standing out in the grass, hosing off Charlotte, whose pitiful face and entire right side is covered in mud.

  I walk over and stand nearby, my hands in my pockets.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” she says to the pig, as if she’s betrayed a child. “I didn’t realize you been standin’ outside in the heat for so long.” She rubs her hands across Charlotte’s body, wiping away the filth.

  “You don’t have to keep quiet anymore,” I tell her.

  Levida drops the hose, reaches me in three long strides, and starts to weep all over again.

  I put my arms around her, and she feels tiny. She cries and cries and cries, and when she is all cried out, she takes a bandana out of her pocket and blows her nose into it. “Your daddy and that ambulance chaser he calls a lawyer wouldn’t put me on the witness stand,” she says.

  “What would you have said if they’d let you testify?” I ask.

  “The truth. I would have told the jury that a man in a mask broke into my house, tied me up, and demanded to know where your father was. I would have said that shortly beforehand I’d been awoken by the headlights of a Cadillac making its way up the road to your trailer. I would have said that the masked man left as I saw your father coming toward the house from the workshop with your granddaddy’s shotgun. I would have said I heard gunshots from up on the hill and then your daddy turned and ran toward the trailer. But afterward I didn’t hear any more gunshots.”

  I consider what she has told me. “So by the time my father got up to the trailer, Jack had already been shot.”

  “As far as I can figure. I was sittin’ there, tied up, not able to do anything. Not even able to get to the phone to call the police. I started yellin’ for you. ‘Dylan,’ I called. You were supposed to be asleep in the front bedroom. I kept callin’ for you, but you didn’t call back. I didn’t know where you were. I was out of my mind. Didn’t know what had happened to you or your daddy. Then I saw him in the moonlight, down by the barn, takin’ something out of his back pocket that looked like a gun. He went into the barn, and a few minutes later he came out. Came up to the house. Untied me. He was cryin’. Told me he had some plan to get out of that awful business he was in, but it backfired and Jack was dead. I told him to find you. He said he already did. Said you done run up to the trailer for some fool reason and he’d taken you to Travis Seagraves’s place. Then he gave me a big brown envelope filled with certificates of deposit and bank account numbers. He said there was enough money in there to take care of all of us. He told me to give a third of it to Jack’s widow, keep a third for myself, and use a third to take care of you and your mama.

  “After he gave me the money, he hugged me and told me to call the police. Then he left. I figured he’d run off to Mexico or at least flee the state. I had no idea he’d gone back up to the trailer to wait for the authorities.”

  “He didn’t run?”

  “Didn’t even try.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. “After he went to jail, I put my share with the money I left for the Goldens.”

  “You didn’t keep any of it?”

  “Just enough to hire that ambulance chaser he found to represent him, along with a private detective to try to locate you and your mama. But by then you were long gone. That uncle of yours knew where you were, but he wouldn’t tell me. Against my better judgment, I gave him the third your daddy intended for you and Mollie. I never trusted that man, but I didn’t have much choice except to hope he’d do the right thing.”

  I try to process all she has said. “If the shots were fired before my father went up the hill, he couldn’t have been the one who killed Jack.”

  “I know.”

  “But he wouldn’t let you testify to that effect.”

  “His lawyer told me they decided I was an unreliable witness. The jury would just think I was tryin’ to protect my son, and if the DA cross-examined me, I might fall apart on the stand.”

  “And you never told the newspapers or the TV reporters what you knew?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “They wouldn’t have believed me. Besides …” She looks down at the dirt. “The day you take away a man’s right to choose his fate, he starts to die. I saw it happen to your granddaddy.”

  “You can’t possibly think my father chose to be where he is.”

  “I believe he looked at his options and did what he thought was best. Who am I to say? Maybe he was right.”

  36

  I WAKE TO THE SOUND OF A HONKING HORN AND LOOK OUT the window to see Levida sitting in the diesel pickup. I slip on my pants and am surprised when Wade and Dorie both come out of the back bedroom, half-dressed. I slept so soundly I never even heard them come in last night.

  “What time is it?” Dorie asks in alarm.

  I look up at the cuckoo clock. “Eight thirty,” I tell her.

  “My daddy is gonna kill me,” she says, buttoning her blouse.

  I walk out the front door, while Dorie crawls out a back window. “What’s going on?” I ask Levida, surprised to see her in her black dress.

  “It’s Sunday. Time for church,” she says.

  “After what happened there last Thursday night?”

  “Put a shirt on, and tell lover boy to do the same.”

  There’s no use arguing, so I go back to the house and put on one of my father’s cotton shirts. It feels good to wear it today.

  “Put a shirt on,” I tell Wade. “We’re going to church.”

  “Do you think Dorie’s father will shoot me?” he asks.

  “He’s a preacher, Wade.”

  “He’s gonna know what we’ve been doing. He owns a twelve-gauge, you know.”

  “Everybody in this town owns a twelve-gauge. Besides, don’t you think he’ll get more suspicious if you don’t show up?”

  “Good point. He might come lookin’ for me.”

  Wade throws on a shirt, and we get into the backseat of the extended cab diesel.

  When we get to the church, no one will talk to us. People walk right past us. Like the gun in the middle of the table.

  The exception, of course, is Pastor Bob. He hugs Levida before she goes off to sort through her music. Then he shakes my hand and slaps Wade on the back. “I want to thank you for what you did with Dorie last night.”

  “Uh,” replies Wade, his jaw hanging open like it’s become unhinged.

  “She told me how the two of you stayed up all night with Widow Spencer. I’m sorry to hear her rheumatism is giving her so much trouble that she can’t sleep. You’re a fine example of Christian charity, Wade. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he manages to say.

  For my friend’s sake, I’m glad the preacher is so stupid and naive.

  “I know it isn’t easy being the preacher’s daughter. Living next door to the church. You’re the first boy who’s shown any real interest in her.”

  “I should probably find her,” Wade says, awkwardly backing away.

  “You go right ahead. She’s in the fellowship hall setting up for the potluck.”

  When he leaves, the preacher turns to me. “Would you consider Wade a loyal friend?”

  “Loyal?” I say, not sure what the preacher is after.

  “Does he stick by people, keep his promises?”

  “To the death,” I say truthfully.

  The preacher nods his head. “I’m glad to hear that.” And I realize he’s neither stupid nor naive.

  Levida plays the church organ like there’s no tomorrow, and I think about
how brave she is to show her face here every Sunday. She hasn’t just lost her husband and her son, she’s lost her friends. Her place in the world. Maybe she has a right to be bitter.

  Pastor Bob gets up in front of the congregation and opens his Bible. “Matthew, chapter five,” he announces. Then he looks straight at Wade, who sits next to Dorie in the front row. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Then he looks at my grandmother, sitting at the organ in her black dress. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” He looks at his daughter. “Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.”

  Then he looks at me, his dark eyes boring their way through my soul. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they SHALL BE SATISFIED.”

  It’s like he’s made a prophecy right then and there. Justice will win. I know it has to be true. The preacher read it from the Bible.

  “And blessed are the merciful,” says Pastor Bob, looking up and down the aisles until people start squirming in their seats. “For they shall receive mercy.”

  He goes on to spend half an hour talking about the pure in heart and finishes with a prayer, while carefully avoiding the subject of my father, but by avoiding it, he seems to drive it home even more.

  The preacher has nerve. I’ll give him that. It takes a lot to stand up to people. Especially if they sign your paycheck. Even if it is only by what you don’t say.

  An easy peace settles over me. The peace that comes from knowing there is nothing you can do, that decisions are out of your hands. I look at the cross hanging above the preacher, rub the cross on my hand. I pray for myself, for my father, for my mother, for Jess and Wade and Dorie and Levida.

  After church everybody starts heading downstairs to the basement for the potluck. Red and Dakota glare at me as if they don’t care a rat’s ass for the part of the reading about mercy.

  “I think I’ll go on back to the farm,” I tell Levida.

  “You run now, boy, and you’ll spend your whole life runnin’.”

  “I’m not running. I’m just avoiding trouble.”

  “In my experience, it always finds you.”

  “Maybe. But there’s no reason to go looking for it,” I say.