Billy Goat Hill

by Mark Stanleigh Morris

  Please don’t go, Rodney. I want you as my best friend. Please don’t die! I don’t want you to leave me. I need you.

  I imagine he replies. The Father has called me home, son. It’s my time. Don’t be sad. I’m here with Doris, but I’ll never be far from you. Remember, Wade, Jesus is the best friend you can ever have. He loves you very much. Only Jesus can set you free. I love you, Wade.

  But, Rodney, there is something I need to tell you!

  I am with Him now, son. Believe on Him with all your heart, and we will be together again.

  But there’s something I need to tell you, and now it’s too late. It’s not fair!

  Then I remember something Billy Graham said. “Seek Him, trust Him…and you will know the Truth.”

  And again I imagine I hear Rodney’s counsel. Remember, Wade, Jesus is the best friend you can ever have. He loves you very much. Only Jesus can set you free.

  It’s not fair!

  The ambulance drives away slowly—no siren, no lights. Luke would have preferred emergency flashers and squealing tires. I sit on Rodney’s porch, weeping, not understanding, wanting to lash out at something, anything, everything. The neighbor is inside Rodney’s house talking on the telephone. He is a nice man. He says he’s known Rodney for over twenty years. He says Rodney told him all about me and that Rodney loved me very much. With a longing as deep as the ocean, I sit with my head in my hands, my chest aching with the worst of all things—a broken heart.

  Kirk scratches at the screen door, whining and wanting to come outside and play. He is young and doesn’t yet know how to behave at a time like this. Mac would know. I wish Mac would come and comfort me.

  The neighbor hangs up the telephone and lets Kirk out on the porch. The puppy goes straight to Luke, and the two of them head for the lawn. Luke is eight now, old enough to realize what has happened, but he didn’t know Rodney. Somehow, perhaps because he’s in his own kind of shock, or perhaps thanks to a small miracle, he doesn’t cry. It’s better for me that he doesn’t cry.

  The man comes out on the porch and sits next to me. He’s holding a Bible. “I know your heart is breaking, Wade. Mine is, too. Would it be okay with you if we just sit here and pray together for a bit?”

  I nod. “Rodney told me a lot about Jesus. Do you think he’s with Jesus now?”

  His eyes are red and puffy like mine. “Yes, I do. We can say a prayer for Rodney right now, if you like.”

  “Okay.”

  I look over at Luke and then close my eyes.

  “Dear Father in heaven, we praise and worship You. Thank You for blessing us with the privilege of knowing our precious friend and brother, Rodney Bernanos. We trust in You, Father, and we know that all things work for Your purposes and according to Your will. Comfort us in our loss and sorrow, and help us to live our lives with the same love and joy for others that Rodney so freely gave to us. We pray in the holy name of Jesus. Amen.”

  “Amen.” I appreciate this man. He seems a lot like Rodney.

  “I think old Rodney’s heart just finally gave out,” the man says, sniffling. “He had two heart attacks last year. I’m going to keep Kirk for him.” He put his arm around me. “We both lost a very good friend.”

  I nod, shaking uncontrollably from the staggered gasps and bitter chills that come from the unanswerable why of life and death. The prayer did comfort me, but I feel crushed by the weight of the unanswered why. The only rationale my mind can convey is beyond unbearable.

  Maybe God has taken Rodney Bernanos away from me as punishment for killing that man at Three Ponds.

  I whisper, “I n-need to go h-home now.”

  “Okay. Someone is coming to pick you guys up.”

  “Who?”

  “Sergeant Cavendish. They were able to reach him by radio. I gather he happened to be close by. He should be here soon.”

  It must have been him in the backyard. But how can I possibly ask him about it?

  “This was Rodney’s Bible, son. I think he would have liked you to have it.”

  “Okay.”

  For the next few days, Luke takes good care of me. He is proud that he didn’t run away this time. As for me, I just don’t see how I can go on.

  Four long days have passed since Rodney’s fatal heart attack. Having his Bible, knowing where it is and that it now belongs to me, has helped to buffer and soften the worst of the loss. I haven’t opened it or attempted to read any Scripture. I just let the knowledge that I have it comfort me.

  The Sergeant and Lucinda have just met for the first time in person. I suspect they have spoken on the telephone before, though neither has said so. Yesterday, Lucinda finally agreed to let me attend the funeral with the Sergeant, but only after insisting she had to be here to meet him when he picked me up.

  I sit in Queenie with Rodney’s Bible on my lap while they chat on the front porch for a couple of minutes. Seeing the two of them talking face-to-face makes me nervous. The Sergeant knows things. One wrong word from him, the slightest innocent slip of the tongue, and Lucinda will turn into the last thing I need right now.

  We are well on our way to Rodney’s funeral when the Sergeant speaks to me for the first time. We have shared a respectful quiet up until now. The important thing is that Lucinda smiled and waved to me before we drove off, which gives me a high level of confidence that the Sergeant said nothing to betray me.

  “Your mom is pretty.” His cheerful tone is as much for his benefit as for mine.

  “She works and cleans too much.”

  “Oh.”

  I am too depressed to see or hear the bright side of anything. Caught up in my own grief, I don’t realize how much the Sergeant is hurting. I have lost a very important new friend, but he has lost his closest loved one. I am not capable of thinking about it that way.

  “How come Miss Cherry didn’t come?”

  “She didn’t really know Rodney. They only met once several years ago.”

  She didn’t know him? That seems strange. I am surprised Miss Cherry, as close as she is to the Sergeant, didn’t know Rodney. But that certainly isn’t a reason for not coming along. She should be here, at least to lend moral support. But I sense it’s a sore subject with the Sergeant, so I don’t push it. My curiosity slowly disperses in a somber cloud of fresh memories of Rodney as Queenie glides on.

  The funeral looks like a reunion of Gulliver’s Lilliputians. Twenty-five jockeys enter the church dressed in full riding gear. It is a colorful tribute to their departed friend, though quite a bizarre sight. It pleases me immensely to witness such admiration, to know Rodney was liked and respected by longtime friends from his horse racing days.

  Beautiful Queenie, polished to an ivory sheen, looks out of place in the funeral motorcade—a white sheep in a family of black sheep. We ride along solemnly, the minister’s powerful invocation still governing the mood. The Sergeant tries to cover his tears so as not to upset me further, but it is a long, sad ride to Forest Lawn, too long for me to keep quiet.

  I want to tell him I saw him in Rodney’s backyard right before Rodney collapsed and see what he has to say about it, but the nerve won’t come. My desire to speak up gives way to gutless reticence, and the trip becomes excruciatingly long. When finally we turn in the main gate at Forest Lawn Cemetery, there is no relief from the layers of melancholy besetting me.

  The long procession of cars winds up a grassy, headstone-crowded hill. We stop, Queenie the eighth car back from the long black hearse carrying Rodney. I look back at the crawling line of vehicles trailing far down the slope. The people at the end have a long walk up to the gravesite. We wait while Rodney’s friends and extended family mournfully trudge up the rise, all of them except the jockeys wearing the black apparel of death.

  Standing at the gravesite with all of these people, I feel like a stranger. But I’m glad I am here. I go numb when they lower the casket into the hole. It is so final.

  I give a small wave good-bye to the descending coffin and wonder if Rodney h
as seen Matthew, maybe said “I love you” for me.

  Rodney’s grave marker reads:

  RODNEY LUIS BERNANOS

  “A child of God… In the home stretch.”

  1884-1960

  Back in Queenie, neither of us has much to say, both of us thinking to ourselves how much we already miss Rodney. I almost ask the big question, then chicken out and turn the car radio on instead. The dial is full of Christmas music and commercials touting the appearance of Santa Claus at a dozen different places at the same time. It only serves to further set the pessimism solidifying within me. I turn off the radio in the middle of Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.”

  “I’m not in a Christmas mood either,” the Sergeant says.

  Finally, I decide to speak up. I will try to work my way up to the hard question. “Do you remember that first morning at Rodney’s restaurant, the morning you picked me up on the bridge? You said sometime you would tell me about when Rodney saved your life. How about telling me now?”

  The Sergeant looks at me, and his face lights up. “You’re quite a kid, Wade Parker. Were you reading my mind?”

  “No, sir, I’m not a mind reader.” I smile at him. “I guess maybe we both were thinking about the same thing, about Rodney I mean.”

  “So, you want to hear the story, huh?”

  “Yes, sir—if you don’t mind.”

  “Okay…ahem,” he says, clearing remnants of funeral emotion from his voice. “When I was about your age, I guess it was a year or two after Jakey Blume died, I got myself into a real jam one day.” He laughs heartily, and the atmosphere of the funeral vanishes. “I mean a real jam!” He laughs harder yet, his eyes growing big.

  “What kind of a jam?” I start to giggle.

  “Well, let me see. As I remember it, a friend and I were walking down York Boulevard one day. It was April, and it had been drizzling off and on for days, just enough to keep things damp. So we paid no mind that the sky had turned angry with black clouds aching to burst. I had a silver dollar my dad had given me. I always carried it with me like a good luck charm. You know what I mean?”

  I nod and reach into my pocket to touch the ball bearing.

  “I had been flipping the silver dollar in the air, and my friend was calling heads or tails. You know, just goofing off, something to do. I kept trying to toss the silver dollar higher and higher, and eventually I dropped it. Off the sidewalk it rolled, over the curb, into the gutter, and down into a storm drain.”

  “Oh man! I lost a couple of baseballs that way.”

  “That’s just the thing. I was determined not to lose my good luck charm.”

  “Yeah, right—tough luck.”

  “Nope. I went down the drain after it.”

  I’m not sure if I should believe him or not. He seems serious though, without that little give-away twinkle in his eye that I have come to know so well. “Are you talking about those little skinny openings in the gutter where the water from the street goes?”

  “Yes, water and everything else that people don’t want, but most important, my silver dollar.”

  “I don’t think I can fit my body through those openings. How could you?”

  He smiles crisply, his lips pinched tight in the middle. “You don’t believe me?”

  I fear I may have made him mad, and it knocks down the nerve I have been building up to ask him my question. I try to rephrase. “Well, I’m just saying—”

  But he cuts me off. “I was a skinny little runt, much smaller than you, more the size of Luke.”

  I bristle inside. Luke’s not a runt! It is obvious he doesn’t appreciate being doubted. “Isn’t it dangerous to go down there with all the garbage and spiders and who knows what else?”

  “Isn’t the Crippler dangerous?”

  “Yes. But it’s fun.”

  “That’s my point exactly.”

  “I don’t get it. What’s wrong with having fun?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with having the right kind of fun. Like I said before, you’re quite a kid, and I think you’re smart enough to figure these things out for yourself.”

  “Figure what out?”

  “Confused?”

  “Yes—a little, I think.”

  “What I mean is—sometimes when we’re kids we know when something is dangerous, and we do it anyway. It’s when we don’t know that something is dangerous that we can really get into serious trouble.”

  He has me going in circles, and I give him a blank look.

  “Okay, forget about that for now.”

  Forget what? I feel stupid.

  “Anyway, inside the gutter opening, it dropped down into a concrete box that was about four feet long, three feet wide, and just deep enough to stand in. It was very wet in there, but I easily saw my silver dollar lying on the bottom. I squeezed through the opening and dropped down into the box, and that, my smart friend, is when my problems started.”

  He grins at himself in the rearview mirror, glances over at me, and then turns his attention back to the road.

  “Well, what happened?”

  “I dropped to the bottom and accidentally kicked the silver dollar. It slid into the drain pipe that empties the water from the box down to the big storm drain pipes that lie thirty feet or so below the street.”

  “That’s where my baseballs went, I suppose. So long silver dollar, too, huh?”

  “Nope. I went down the pipe after it.”

  “Geez! Were you crazy or what?”

  “No—not crazy. I just failed to think clearly and realize the danger.”

  A light turns on in my head. “Okay, I get it.”

  “Good.” He nods with satisfaction.

  “So what happened next?”

  “The pipe was just big enough for me to squeeze my shoulders in. It was dark and spooky, and I was very nervous, but I figured my silver dollar hadn’t gone far. So I pushed with the toes of my shoes, inching my way into the dark pipe with my arms outstretched in front of me. All the while, my fingers were feeling around trying to locate my good luck charm. I got in there about six or seven feet and finally found my silver dollar.”

  “Boy, you sure were lucky.”

  “I wish.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think, smart guy? I was stuck, which might not have been so bad—if the clouds had held their load. The rain started coming down in buckets!”

  “Geez Louise! How did you get out?”

  He looks at me for a long moment, and then he answers my question in a tone deeply respectful of the incredible hero we both loved. “We just finished burying the guy who saved me from that storm drain.”

  How amazing. Then, almost against my will, the words jump from my mouth. “Sir, can I ask you something important?” My stomach flip-flops and I stop breathing.

  “sure.”

  “Were you in Rodney’s backyard right before he had the heart attack?”

  Clearly startled, he glares at me with a look of anger I have never seen directed at me before. “No. Why?”

  He was there! “Well, the thing is…I thought I saw you—saw Rodney slap your face in the backyard.”

  “What? That’s pretty ridiculous, don’t you think?”

  “I guess.” Why is he lying?

  “I don’t know what you think you saw, but I even had some detectives look into…well, let’s just say everything looked normal at Rodney’s house. After he passed away—I mean. You know?”

  “I guess.” There’s no use pushing it further.

  He clears his throat again, quite differently from the way he cleared it a few minutes before. “Would it be all right with you if I finish the story now?”

  “I guess.”

  Shifting moods like a chameleon changes color, he gives me one of those careful, cryptic grins, like that night on Billy Goat Hill, and instantly I am reminded of Miss Cherry. Thoughts of her seem to visit me whenever I am feeling low, or when the Sergeant displays a mannerism or expression I asso
ciate with the first night we met.

  Not at all intending to change the subject but relieved to have my mind on something else, I ask, “Do you think I could see Miss Cherry again sometime?”

  “I thought you wanted to hear the rest of the story.”

  “I do. It’s just that sometimes you make me think of Miss Cherry.”

  “You know, the other day she asked me about you and Luke.”

  “She did?” My spirits zoom skyward. The look on my face gives me away.

  “You like her, huh?”

  A tingling blush crawls all over my cheeks. “Yes, sir, I think she’s real fine.”

  It no longer matters that he was in Rodney’s backyard. I trust that he has his reasons for not telling me the truth.

  “I like her a lot, too.” He pauses for a moment, thinking, and then blurts out, “I plan to ask her to marry me!”

  I turn sideways in the seat to face him. He looks so happy. “Really?”

  “Yep. You’re the first one to know—well, not counting Rodney. I told him last week.”

  I am pleased on all three counts—that he wants to marry Miss Cherry, that Rodney knew about it before he died, and that the Sergeant likes me enough to tell me.

  “Do you think she’ll say yes, Wade?”

  An elaborate idea pops into my head, and suddenly I’m the one clearing his throat for dramatic purposes. “No, sir, I think maybe she’s going to marry someone else.”

  He chokes once and fights off a coughing spasm. Red faced and watery-eyed, bona fide worry etched deep into his brow, he says, “What!” Cough! “Who?”

  Gotcha! That’ll teach you not to lie to me. I turn away from him and gaze out the side window, trying my hardest to look like a person struggling to find the least painful words to express some terrible news.

  Queenie hums along, sharing a silent giggle with me. I feel him glaring at the back of my head. Finally, when he can’t stand it any longer, he slaps me on the shoulder, harder, I’m sure, than he means to. I flinch.

  “Spit it out, Wade.”

  I turn around and face him squarely. “Well, sir, as you know by now, I get around this part of town pretty darn well—for a kid, anyway.”