Billy Goat Hill

by Mark Stanleigh Morris

  “You could look at it that way. But I saw how you took care of your brother. You stood up, you took the fire of the circumstances, and you made it work. But I think you’re paying for it now. The self-destructive behavior, the booze—it’s pretty classic stuff.”

  “How about hereditary?”

  “Maybe, but it’s not an excuse. How about your father? Do you ever hear from him?”

  “I don’t know if he’s dead or alive.”

  “You said you made an effort to find me. What about him? Did you ever try to find him?”

  I exhale a deep breath. “No.”

  “How come?”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am serious.” She gives me an assessing look. “How do you feel about the idea of forgiveness?”

  “Maybe I’ve done things that can’t be forgiven. Why? Do you need to be forgiven for something?”

  The question really seems to throw her, so much so I can’t help wondering what nerve I’ve touched. “I wasn’t thinking about you needing forgiving, Wade. I was wondering about your ability to forgive. I am very interested in the subject of forgiveness.”

  I think of Duke Snider. I speak his words out loud. “We must find a way to forgive, or we only end up blaming ourselves.”

  She stares at me like I just shouted over a loudspeaker the combination to the lock on the vault of her most private secrets. “Yes, that says it quite profoundly.”

  “Someone told me that once.”

  “Someone?”

  An awkward moment follows, leaving me perplexed and uneasy. I feel like I just walked in on a forbidden conversation. Not that the last twenty-four hours have been normal, but something about this reunion has already gone askew, and I can’t for the life of me grasp a single thread of what it might be. I want less mystery, not more.

  “Look, I really appreciate your showing up. For years I’ve dreamed of seeing you again. To be sitting here with you is a miracle in itself. I appreciate your bailing me out of jail and paying my debt with Buster. I’ll pay you back as soon as I possibly can, but…”

  “But what? There doesn’t have to be any buts. I’m here—and you need help. What you just said—I agree this has all the earmarks of a miracle. Let’s go with it. Let’s see what God has in mind. I’m only a couple of steps ahead of you in this God thing, but from what I’ve experienced already, the changes for the better in my life, I don’t think there is anything God can’t do. With God all things are possible, and it’s never too late. I’m an example of that.”

  “But…”

  “Look—I think we should pray.”

  “Maybe tonight I’ll give it a try. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’…I think I remember how to do it.”

  “How about right now?”

  “Here—in a Denny’s restaurant?” I look around, trying not to show how self-conscious I feel. I can lose my mind and break the windows out of a bar, I can nearly skull my own wife with a baseball bat, I can wake up on a fiberglass jail bunk and brush aside the pity of a concerned friend, but to suggest that I openly pray in a public restaurant—now that is something I can’t do.

  She spreads her hands out on the table. “Right here and right now.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Sit there with your eyes open if you want.”

  “Wait a sec…”

  “Dear Lord, it’s me, Cherry again…”

  Geez. I close my eyes.

  “…and I’m here with Wade Parker. Father, You are the Creator of all things. You are holy, and we worship You. Lord, we need Your help. We cannot do this by ourselves. Only You have the power to right what is wrong. Father, please help Wade turn away from the darkness of alcohol. Draw him in toward Your loving light. Help him to adopt a heart of forgiveness so that he may relinquish the past and look forward to the future. Father, please forgive our sins and help us to sin no more. We ask these things in the precious name of Jesus—amen.”

  “Uh, amen.” I open my eyes, and to my surprise, a tear spills down my cheek. I feel warm and kind of safe-like. Esther tried to get me to pray with her many times, but I never gave it a sincere effort. I wish I could tell Esther I am sorry.

  “How do you feel, Wade?”

  “I don’t know, warm, I guess, a little emotional. I’ll tell you one thing for sure, I haven’t thought about a drink since you started talking this spiritual stuff.”

  “Another miracle, maybe?”

  “Maybe. What will really be a miracle is if Luke still speaks to me after he finds out what I did to Melissa at Buster’s last night.”

  “Why don’t we go call him?”

  “He won’t believe it when I tell him about you.”

  “Let’s pray about it. Just kidding,” she says with a grin. “I’ll pray for you. Here’s a quarter; the pay phone is that way.”

  “Just kidding”? But I did feel something. God, if You are real, if You can hear me, I am sorry. Please forgive me. Please help me. Please bring Melissa back to me.

  The way Luke says hello, practically shouting into the phone, makes it pretty clear he is furious with me. I figure he’s already heard about the show at Buster’s and is ready to read me the riot act. Miss Cherry stands next to me at the open phone booth door, lending moral support.

  “Where in the heck have you been, Wade?”

  “I know, I know. I really screwed up this time. You’ve been right all along. I’m just as bad as Earl was. I’ve got to do something drastic, AA maybe.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Yeah, right—like you didn’t hear what I did to Melissa? I’m really going to need your help this time, little brother.”

  “I’ve been trying to find you. You haven’t answered your phone. I went by your house and left a note on your front door.”

  Good. He’s already talked to Melissa. “I know she’s probably so mad right now she won’t talk to me. But she’ll listen to you. I need you to tell her how sorry I am. And you’re never going to believe who bailed me out of jail.”

  I look at Miss Cherry, both of us anxious to tell Luke about her.

  “Wade!”

  “What?”

  “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

  “Come on, Luke. Don’t mess with me. I’ve had a rough weekend. You said you left a note for me. What? Have you heard from Melissa?”

  “No. I haven’t been able to reach her, either.”

  “I guess she’s really mad. It’s going to take some real doing to get back on her good side.”

  “What did you do?”

  “You mean you really haven’t heard what happened at Buster’s?”

  “No. I don’t know anything about Buster’s.”

  Miss Cherry offers encouragement with her eyes. She nods her head, gently nudging. “I figured word would be all over town by now. Me and my bat put on quite a show, so I’ve been told anyway.”

  “No, nobody said anything about you and your bat. I’ve been all over town trying to find you.”

  “Oh.” It finally sinks in that something other than my idiotic behavior is on his mind.

  “Wade?”

  “Yeah—what is it, tell me.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve got some real bad news.”

  The cracking edge to his voice scares me. Miss Cherry takes my hand, sensing the wrongness of the conversation. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “Lucinda—is dead.”

  elissa comes home right away. A death in the family, unpleasant as it is, brings people together who might otherwise refuse to acknowledge the need to speak to each other. In this sense, my mother has delivered a final kindness to me. Her untimely death brings the return of my wife and a new beginning to my life—a strange exchange for a spiritual fledgling to grasp. I asked God to bring my wife back, not take my mother away. The grand mystery continues.

  Melissa places one condition on her return. I must join AA. I agree to this requirement with the understanding th
at it will likely take a long time to fully win her back. If I have gained one thing from my unorthodox beginnings, all those years of watching out for Luke and nearly two decades of waiting for the dead man’s reprisal—it’s patience.

  Miss Cherry is concerned that my impetus for starting AA be unencumbered by false motives. How can winning my wife back be a false motive for sobriety? I think any reason is a good reason, if it guides me into the program. We shall see.

  Melissa was instrumental in smoothing the jagged edges of my estrangement from Lucinda. Her efforts, coupled with the ameliorating influence of time, had brought me around to a let-bygones-be-bygones frame of mind. I invited Lucinda out to dinner one rainy night not long before her death. The dinner went well. We had been a long, long storm, my mother and I, and to be settled and calm was an amazing achievement. We enjoyed several subsequent visits before her accident froze the status of our relationship midway to full reconciliation.

  Mistaking an off-ramp for an on-ramp, a drunk driver hit Lucinda head-on on the San Bernardino Freeway near the top of Kellogg Pass. There must have been a preceding moment of horror; save that, her demise was instantaneous and painless. I felt the added sting of irony when I learned my mother had been killed by a drunk driver, a member of my own dangerous legion.

  As a part of my program in AA, I met with and forgave the young woman who took Lucinda’s life. By then, Miss Cherry’s fascination with forgiveness had already taken root in me, or I never would have been able to do it.

  Miss Cherry encourages me to reconcile my thoughts about Lucinda, to let go of the bad and keep only the good.

  Although I am no longer angry with her, the door to the Lucinda part of my past still does not quite lock. Occasionally, winds of resentment rise up and rattle the door open. There remains a nagging feeling that Lucinda was trying to work up the courage to tell me something—something vital. That I will never know what was bothering her only compounds the already burdensome feeling that my life is based on some arcane punishment; that I am the product of events, circumstances, human influences, and things of mystery far more complex than slingshots and mockingbird feathers.

  Like an unscratchable itch, the unknowns of the past remain as irritants to my otherwise improving existence. It is also the mulch from which my newly germinated seed of forgiveness sprouts. This is the way it is. “With God’s help,” Miss Cherry says, “you shall endure the past, relish the present, and look forward to the future.”

  Patience and endurance—one more respectable character quality and I’ll have the beginnings of a list of virtues. One day at a time, as we recovering alcoholics say.

  Deputy Bob Serrano and Miss Cherry are my sponsors in Alcoholics Anonymous. With their unflagging help, I finally openly admit I am powerless over alcohol. Empowered by their friendship and Melissa’s love, I am coming to realize just how unmanageable my life had become.

  As the haze of alcohol slowly evaporates and hindsight becomes clearer and clearer, I begin to see just how hard I have slammed on the bottom. Inversely, I begin to see how blessed I am to be in recovery. As I accept the truth about my strange, poisonous, deceitful friend, that it has defeated me, I take my first step toward liberation. Miss Cherry assures me the God who I still do not know is right here by my side.

  In the beginning, it was humiliating. “Hi. My name is Wade… I’m an alcoholic!” But I am finding there is noble virtue in humility, not in humiliation. The older brother is becoming more like the younger brother, a philosopher. Growing stronger, I’m moving closer to the idea that true peace comes not from the feckless friendship of alcohol, or from material things, or even from the love of other human beings. The big dumb donkey is slowly letting go of the fear that does not want him to believe that true peace resides in believing in and relying on God.

  The prayers of Rodney and Esther and the steady conviction and dedication of Luke, Melissa, and Miss Cherry are contributing mightily to the restoration of my soul.

  Miss Cherry plays a pivotal and ongoing role in my program. Our one-on-one testimonials help create open-mindedness. She tells me of her struggle with the pressures of police life. And though always in an oblique manner, she shares bits and pieces of her relationship and eventual breakup with the Sergeant. I am fascinated with every new speck of information, each precious little fit in the million-piece jigsaw puzzle.

  She confides that there have been other boyfriends, but that no other man has been able to take the Sergeant’s place in her heart. She often speaks of her life with the Sergeant in terms of its consequences. She left him—that much she makes clear. But she also describes her life after him in terms that I find most curious. It is almost as if the downturn of her life had been expected, part of a deal, the agreed-upon price that had to be paid.

  Sometimes she describes herself and her “consequences” in ways that make me think of her as a soldier ordered to do something that exceeded her conscience, and rather than carry out her duty, or perhaps to stop carrying out her duty, she deserted or resigned in shame. Whatever it was, it took a toll.

  As we spend more and more time together, I begin to sense that, like mine, her conscience still bothers her. About what, I do not know. Something though, perhaps an unspeakable dark secret like my own, has eaten away part of her spirit, leaving her empty and aching inside. Her passion for the study of forgiveness is driven by this, I think.

  She remains beautiful on the surface, like a pearly nautilus. But loneliness, her unscratchable itch, has crept inside and taken up residence in the lovely shell.

  She tells me how her drinking gradually got out of control and landed her in Alcoholics Anonymous. I find all of this easy to relate to as I embrace the same outcome, which doubly roots our camaraderie in a common history.

  We talk about many things, though on the subject of the Sergeant she remains careful, guarded. When I probe too deep, she changes the subject, but just enough to keep from turning me off or discouraging me in my own quest for sobriety.

  She isn’t the only one to hold back secrets. I am equally incomplete with my candidness, as I, too, resist crossing the big line when exploring the great plains of my past. It is crazy how adept we both are at walking that line, even dancing on it once or twice, but never crossing over.

  As time passes, she and I whittle away at the layers of our history. I remain mired in the perspective of the adoring boy infatuated with the beautiful mother figure. She walks the beat of the lady cop concerned about the welfare of two young hooligans naive of the hazards on the wrong side of the tracks. A hundred times we talk into the wee hours of the morning, long after Melissa and Kate have gone to bed. We whittle and whittle and whittle, and always I am left floating within the margins of my unease, nagged by the sense that something unspoken still holds the key to the dark mystery of my childhood.

  It is much the same as my impression of Lucinda in those short months before she died. She wanted to tell me something—I know she did—and I can’t seem to shake it. Unspoken truths are like spirits stuck in limbo.

  Like long-term passengers in a private elevator, together we ride, up and down, down and up, sharing the journey with great mutual affection. Almost always we have fun. Almost like a loving mother and an adoring son dancing every dance at a fairy tale ball. But never does our elevator stop on that certain forbidden floor, where the Devil plays a waltz for erstwhile dancers with sub rosa pasts.

  Notwithstanding my progress in most other areas, my secret life as a child murderer stays buried deep in my psyche, an indelible tattoo that my timeless timidity has conspired to emboss under layer upon layer of scar tissue. In prayer, I whittle away at the scar, but I just can’t bear to let Miss Cherry see the tattoo. It is quite a dance.

  About all of this I pray—day after day, week after week, month after month. I ask God to give me continued endurance and the patience, and He seems to be bringing me along. So far so good, I guess. He must know what He is doing. I wish you would tell me what I’m doing wrong,
God. What is missing? What have I left out?

  Today, I’ll clean the garage in the memory of my mother. I remember how Lucinda used to clean when she was upset or frustrated. Clean and work, that was her. Man, did she clean a lot after Matthew died. After Earl left she literally scrubbed the kitchen linoleum down to bare wood in a couple of places. Luke and I had to watch out for splinters.

  An hour into the garage clean-up, Melissa comes out to check on my progress. “Want some lunch?”

  “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”

  “You’ve made a good start. Is that the throw-away pile?”

  “Yep. You might want to look through it first.”

  “What’s that box over there?”

  “That’s my Esther keepsake box.”

  “Can I see?”

  “Sure. I haven’t looked at the stuff yet. I was going to go through it later.”

  “Want to take a break and look together?”

  “Okay.”

  We avoid an oil stain and sit together on the concrete floor. Instantly, I remember that night when the cops helped me lay Mac down on the garage floor, and how after a while I went outside and talked to Esther by the fence. “I believe somehow all things work for God’s purposes, and I just want you to know I will always keep you and your family in my prayers.” My eyes turn wet and glassy as I begin to remove other memories of Esther from the box.

  Melissa puts her arm around me and kisses my neck. “You loved her very much, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I’ve always felt like I let her down.”

  Melissa hugs me. “You’re doing so well now, honey. I’m so proud of you, and I think Esther would be very proud of you, too.”

  “Did I ever tell you how you remind me of Esther?”

  “No. You say I look like Miss Cherry, except for the hair color and skin tone.”

  I grin. “You are gorgeous like Miss Cherry,” but you remind me of Esther in a different way. She was so full of grace and kindness. I think she put the whole world before herself. I’ve talked about her husband, Carl, a million times, what a handful he was. Esther used to love to tend her backyard flower garden, and sometimes she would carry on conversations with an invisible person while she worked. I could hear her through the fence. One time I asked her who she was talking to, and she said, ‘Why, I’m talking with my best friend, Jesus.’