The Weight of Glass

by Stuart Heatherington

  *****

  Sunday morning breathed light into the face of Christ. Eyes of promise for the believer; pale reflections in a story of glass. It was the scene from the road to Damascus. Saul of Tarsus was blinded by a vision of Christ. “And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid, but they heard not the voice.” I recalled the passage. Saul lay on the road, covering his eyes, as Christ appeared over him.

  Physical exhaustion clung to my limbs while I sat in the pew. I knew if I closed my eyes, sleep would lay hold of me like a buzzard picking over a carcass. It would tear away at the meat of those earlier hours, examining the morning with clear repetition. Devouring it front to back from the beginning. Where 3:00 am shaped the face of a clock in the window. And a second floor room carried the long shadow of a boy down an old knotted rope. The trip to the church and—

  “Wake up.” Amy nudged my arm. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I jerked my head off my chest, still yawning beside Amy. It was everything I could do to stay awake in Sunday school and it took the urging of elbows for that. In an effort to keep myself alert I began looking around at the congregation. A gathering of familiar faces milled in through the vestibule. Large hats swam on the heads of ladies with plaid jackets and dresses, men in their threadbare suit coats and ties, children glistening in their Sunday best.

  Music flowed from the lips of silvery pipes. And the choir, like self-appointed monitors, sat restlessly smug in their robes, gloating over the congregation. The worst of them was Becky Odel. Feet bouncing off the petals on the floor, her fingers splayed out over the organ keys in a show. She wore a long, yellow dress, cut short in the sleeves, and her beautiful, blond hair, with not a strand out of place, sat perched atop her head in a tight woven bun. By the beginning of the second song her face was an exaggeration of happiness. Lyrics escaped her mouth in great big volumes of nothing.

  My skin crawled a little to watch her. She made me sick.

  “Are you not going to answer me?” Amy asked.

  “I’m fine, just tired,” I said, rubbing my eyes. For two days I had not felt well. Light-headed spells of weakness filled the afternoon at times. I was dropping weight. The locker room scale tipped nine pounds lighter than it did two weeks ago. Food no longer sat in my stomach without a fight.

  As Warren stepped out through the choir room door, gripping his Bible in both hands, a wave of doubt entered my mind like a swarm of bees from across the sanctuary floor. It swelled and crackled under my skin to the point I thought I would explode. And I wanted to take it back. Take it back so badly I could taste it. And each step made it worse, until he brushed off the middle of three chairs and took a seat.

  Slumping down in the pew, a thick liquid curdled in my throat. I wanted to crawl on the floor an escape. But then Warren raised the hand he’d dusted the seat off with and held it under his nose. It was a subtle thing, a brief gesture that held little meaning for anyone else. Except me.

  Watching him, I leaned forward. The cords in my neck rippled tight. Anger had found a blind spot. And I was reminded of their sex on the sanctuary floor. The contour of her bottom spread like a broken heart. He had taken her in that chair. Probably many times. Too many to count, I thought. And now he smelled the scent she left behind.

  My eyes strayed over to the alter where I’d caught him having sex with the wife of another man and wondered how many people bowed their heads there to pray for comfort. If their lust permeated the carpet as a reminder of the deed. I thought of the lies he told, of the thin line that existed between good and evil, and hope and doubt, and the ability of it all to be shattered on the rock of faith. For me, it was gone. In its place, emptiness had found a home.

  The associate pastor, Thomas Igby, a heavy man, waddled to the podium. “Will you please rise and take your hymnals and turn to page 241 and Love Lifted Me. We will sing and lift up the name of the Savior that has given us eternal life, Jesus Christ. Join me now.” His hand already swayed in rhythm. “I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore, very deeply stained within—”

  That was when Pastor Igby noticed no one was singing. Not to be undone, a stringently focused Becky Odel continued to play, and Warren, whose eyes remained closed, bowed in prayer, never saw the initial reaction of the congregation. However, it was impossible to miss. It came in the form of gasps, followed by the thud of hymnals hitting the floor and a wave of cathartic whispers, the sound that accompanied women right before they fainted and the angry huffs of their spouses as they reached to catch them.

  Amy nudged my arm and brought up the photo for me to see. I held it out from my face, staring at it blankly. It didn’t elicit any kind of response. Nothing at all.

  The music stopped and Harold Buckles, a senior deacon, whose job it was to ask for prayer request that week, sat slack-jawed next to Warren, a copy of the picture in his callused fingers. He simply placed it on the pastor’s leg and left. In that time, it stayed balanced a second or two. Then it slipped from Warren’s pants and floated to the ground. At the point he opened his eyes, I was sure I saw a measure of panic flittering around the dark shape of his features.

  Sinking down, he picked up the picture from between those bright, polished shoes and raised it back to his lap. His eyes sliced through the sanctuary, taking in the breathless turn of stares or the show of backs offered in their haste to leave. He looked over at Becky Odel, who stood by the organ, picture hanging from her hand, down by her side, face more terrified than anything, but begging for guidance out of eyes already brimming with tears. Warren looked away from her pitiful display and did nothing, even when she turned and ran.

  I dropped the picture to the floor and climbed out of the pew. There was nothing left to see. It was almost done.

  *****

  Two days later I followed him in the dark. He’d gone to clean out his office like a coward, under the guise of night. Holding the church shovel, I waited for him to leave. Counted the steps it took from when the light in his office clicked off and hid behind the bushes until he emerged from the door. He carried a box of his things. But it didn’t matter.

  I stood pivoted on both legs, hands wrapped tightly onto the handle like a bat. There were no second doubts when I hit him in the back of the head. The swing had been bone jarring as I cut it up and in around his skull like I was pulling a pitch to the opposite field. My hands rang from the shovel blade. Before me, his body pitched forward onto his knees and he fell into a heap of his books and papers, head striking the ground face-first. Blood flowed from the wound, coating his ears in round bands before I rolled him over.

  Warren’s nose appeared perfectly broken across the seat of his eyes. Further down, blood caked his lips, where a deep gouge split the tissue in half and folded back on itself. The color purple seeped under the gash, stemming out from the top of the nose on down into his cheek. I jerked a burlap feed sack over his face, pushing the wrinkles down around his neck, and cinched the cord with a hard knot. Next, I bound his arms behind his back and brought over the wheelbarrow.

  At the edge of the hill, leading to the river, I unloaded his body. It flipped end over end into the rocks along the bank. Back at the shed, I stored the wheelbarrow, tipping it up against the wall, and closed the doors tight.

  I managed the leaf-covered bank, holding the shovel out in front of me. Along the bottom, near a hedge of boulders that ascended out of the riverbed like five stone plates off the back of a buried dinosaur, I found the Coleman lantern I’d left. I pumped it with fuel, turned it to its side, lit a match, and brought up the flame. A second was spent adjusting the height and then I carried it down river, weaving between rocks and crossing the sandbar. With one foot I jammed the shovel blade into the soft earth under a birch and hooked the handle of the lantern onto its tip, steadied it, and made the walk back.

  Shadows died out on the river’s edge. Warren’s body lay limp against the sand and rock. I looked down both ends of the river. There was nothing. Everything lay s
till in and among the boulders. The dry riverbed rolled out through the night, neither coming nor going. Darkness surrounded the trees and fed them, and grew it deeper back into the night and further still until nothing could be seen.

  I hauled the length of my stepfather on my shoulders. Across rocks and shale and sand I followed the lamp, dumping his body on the ground in a heap. I breathed air into my lungs and pulled the shovel from the earth. Navigating my way through the trees, I hung the lamp from a limb and stabbed the shovel down in the dim light of the woods.

  Unfastening Warren’s pants, I pulled his belt free and looped it around his feet and fed the loose end through the buckle and dragged him across his back the last thirty yards. Once inside the clearing, I loosened the belt from his feet, sat him up against a water oak and refastened it around both the tree and his neck and drew the buckle tight enough to keep him from moving. I dropped down to his chest and listened to his heart. A smile funneled across my lips. He was still alive.

  Dirt piles surrounded the hole in time, the opening falling away as I lengthened the walls and shaped the floor. I expected to be digging until mid morning, but was at my chest inside the first two hours. Over the next thirty minutes I shaved off another foot, laying down on my back and peering out of its depth. Through the canopy of leaves above, I could see a rush of stars burning faint in the sky. The smell of cold dirt filtered into my nose in rich earthy tones. Something I found not entirely unpleasant. For a long time I crossed my legs out of the corner and lay, eyes closed, in the folded arms of the damp earth and breathed her in. I dwelled on the things which brought me there, and felt the terrible pressure of it all lift off of me, the decompression of shame and guilt.

  After a long rest, I rolled over and stood up in the hole. I tossed the shovel up onto the dirt and climbed out to see my work. The depth was right, I figured.

  I looked over at the lamp. Black fog filled the chamber of glass and cast a dirty reflection on the legs of the Good Shepherd. Still cinched over his head, the heavy burlap drew down in wrinkles around his shoulders like the dead skin of chickens, lips gasping at it when he breathed. Sucking in, sucking out. He stirred for a moment and I watched him come around, struggle to breathe at the belt bound around his throat as he tried to pull himself forward. The water oak swayed with his movement, choking and lifting him off the ground, his feet pushing back to get air.

  There was a certain satisfaction in seeing him struggle, like pulling the wings off an annoying fly, and I wondered if he had felt the same thing when he had knocked me unconscious in the shed.

  I moved around behind him, unfastened the belt from the tree and ripped the leather away. He twisted to his side and fell over. Deep, ragged breaths formed under his hood. Even then, he didn’t say anything.

  Blood soaked the edge of the cord at his throat and matted the brown burlap to the back of his head. I looped the belt around one of his feet, up above the sock that no longer carried a shoe and yanked it tight. I dragged him to the hole, both arms fighting his weight. When he hit the dirt bottom on his back it jaw-rattled his teeth and the air blew out of him in a blistering groan. After a few minutes I could see him working his hands around from behind his back, feeling the dirt.

  I kicked a foot of earth across the wall of the grave so he’d know. It showered his head and shoulders. I didn’t want there to be any doubt.

  “Are you going to kill me?” His hood cocked up to the ridge of the hole in a different direction from me, back toward the light of the lamp.

  I didn’t answer, but took the shovel and tossed another load of dirt across his bare legs.

  “Ahhhh, God. No! Please don’t do this,” an almost incoherent babble. Crying inside his sack. “Please…I sinned, I did, but we all come short of the glory of—”

  Fuck you! I dropped to my knees and pushed the top of the mound with my hands. Brown earth, roots, sharp rock and debris, a landslide of dirt rained down on him.

  In that instant he began to scream, his voice a violent mix of cold understanding and panic.

  It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.

  He carried on that way for a while, the reality of being buried alive probably burning in his mind. Screams rose out of the hole into the tree tops high above our heads. They rose and fell and circled back through the dark. Eventually, I pushed them out of my ears the way I placed a toy in a box and slid it under my bed to be forgotten.

  I let the sound of the shovel scratch through the surface of the dirt. And when he stopped, I dumped it over his head, bringing him to his knees in a rush of fear, shoulders banging the sides of the hole, as his body twisted and slid out of the far corner, him circling the walls again and again. The sound of his cries. Watching it, I hated him. And I hated myself for becoming what I had. Him.

  My heart quickened and the flood of adrenaline spilled through me and I could feel the tears sliding down my face all at once, all of the pain spilling out of me like a backwash of dirty water.

  He made it to his feet and yelled for help and I let him. Pleas laced with terror by then. He hit the side of the dirt wall with his face, fell over and landed against his bound arms and struggled for his feet once more.

  When he came up the second time I swung from across the ground and connected with the side of his head. It had been more than a glancing blow, but not nearly lethal enough, I knew. And the base of the shovel separated with a dry cracking sound and it snapped off like a foul ball, blade tumbling through the dirt and coming to a stop in the corner. His head crashed down beside it.

  My eyes quivered back and forth in the hole, and I crumpled over at the waist. The handle of the shovel pressed into the top of my knees. There was a crippling sound in my throat as though there were bands that held me together and they had wound past the point of breaking. Something unraveled inside me.

  You don’t have to do this.

  I dropped the handle on top of his body. And in the darkness of the thing I watched the rise and fall of his chest from where he lay on his side and turned and took the lantern from the limb where it hung and made my way back to the dry riverbed. Gravel crunched from under my shoes, as I looked back along the property line that stretched to the woods and further down below the trees and out over the river, past the bend and the sandbar, to the place where I knew the hole would be. Someone would find him in the morning. See his car sitting there empty and begin a search that would finish when they heard his screams from the trees and the cane.

  I began to walk home, following the long road. At one point I paused in the night and considered going back. I almost did. Enough of me still wanted him dead to do it, to finish what I had started. But I knew it was too late, too late for him, and too late for me. I couldn’t kill the monster in the end. I could only close my eyes and wish him away.

  22

  No one said anything when I finished. I stood against the screen of the porch and felt the wind on my back and, closing my eyes, began to cry.

  “I’m sorry, Amy.”

  She stood up and made her way across the floor and embraced my neck. “You don’t need to be sorry for anything.”

  “I could have done it. I had a chance to kill him and everything would’ve changed.” I cried to her. “But I failed you. Everybody. None of this should have happened.”

  She touched my cheek and kissed me there, lingering close at my side and ran her hand along my face and kissed me again. “I love you. Look at me.” She lifted my chin to hers. “I love you. And this is not your fault. None of this is.”

  “But I could have changed this.”

  “It wasn’t up to you. We were children and he treated us like we were animals. And you can’t blame yourself, Lee. It was him.” She held me close. “It was always up to him.”

  “No, goddamnit.”

  “Just let it go,” Amy whispered to the dark behind me. “You’ve kept it a part of you for so long. Just let it go.”

  But I knew I couldn’t. Some memories are carried beca
use we choose to. Some we set to the side. But in the end, the things we leave behind never truly leave us. They’re the decisions we never made, the people we chose to forget, or the ones we could never really save. The problem with leaving memories behind is that they’re the things we remember most. They never go away. How can they, if we never let them?

  23

  The next morning I walked down the hallway to the screened porch door. The house was still not awake. My tennis shoes sat by the hammock and I worked them onto my feet without tying the strings and looked around as if I might have forgotten something, hands patting pockets, and headed down off the deck only after I decided there was nothing.

  Under the carport, around past my Lexus, I found the storage room that housed the bikes, my hand searching blindly for the pull string that I knew was there, the light clinking on with a tug and sending the string and its weight flying upward with a snap. Near the back and standing on one end were two red hulls, a pair of sit-a-top Ocean Kayaks that had been bought years ago. I moved the double-seated bike outside and opened up the room enough to get access to one. Hanging from the wall were a pair of oars and a couple rather ancient life vests. I grabbed one of both and stretched the PFD over one shoulder, then the other. When I managed to fit the kayak through the door, I laid it out, oar wedging under the seat and then fitting snuggly through the bungee cords that crisscrossed the bow and hoisted it back up. At the edge of the carport I realized what I had forgotten. I set the kayak down with one end pointed into the sand and sprinted the stairs to the top of the deck. As my hand grabbed the door I noticed movement inside the porch. Sitting in one of the rockers closest to the house was Amy. She held the container with Darla’s ashes in the crook of her arm.