by Chris Cander
Gabriel turned and sprinted into the house while Danny followed, cupping the luminescent bug. The screen door banged shut and, from inside, Gabriel shouted, “Daaaaddy! The phone’s ringing!”
“Hello?” Danny said, then whispered, “Gabe, look in there for a jar.” He jutted his chin toward the cupboard he thought most likely to contain one.
Through the spiral phone cord, he heard an unusual din. Music in the background. A faint shout, laughter. “Hello? Is this the Pollock residence?”
“Yes,” Danny said, sighing. He should have known, some drunk calling to ask for Gabriel’s prophetic opinion or prediction. Still focused on the task at hand, he interrupted the caller’s request to say to Gabriel, not bothering to whisper or even move the mouthpiece away: “That’s a good one. Unscrew the lid for me.”
“This here’s Goudie calling from the Shelter. Pub downtown?”
“No sense in you bothering, Goudie. I’m not passing along any damn requests to my son.” Danny shook his head and exhaled an indignant huff, then walked around the table to slam it back down on the cradle.
“Wait!” The voice came across faint, suspended as it was in midair between Danny and the hook, but adamant. “It’s nothing like that.”
Danny pressed the phone back to his ear. “Well, what is it then?” He carefully dropped the lightning bug into the jar and screwed the lid. Then he found the ice pick and tapped a few airholes through the metal.
“It’s your father-in-law. Stanley? He’s been in here two, three hours, getting pretty sauced. ’Fraid I didn’t realize it until it was too late. Then he started in on some kind of crazy talk about needing to get his grandson away from town before the kid spilled his guts and got him strung up. Started in on how people don’t want their skeletons dragged out of their closets. Then he started crying right there, just like a baby. Saying everything was his fault and he couldn’t go on holding it all in anymore, just sitting around waiting for his own lynching. I tell you, I’ve tended bar twenty-three years and I’ve never heard such carrying on.”
Danny handed the jar to Gabriel and put a finger to his lips, mouthed the words Just a minute. “All right, well, give him a cup of coffee and tell him to sit tight. I’ll be down to pick him up.”
“That’s the thing. He ain’t here. He left a few minutes ago, saying something about going to the cemetery. I’d have gone after him myself, but there’s nobody here to hold the fort and the place is packed. I sent someone after him, but he already came back and said he lost track of him. I asked around and that’s how I got your name. Looked you up in the phone book. State he was in, I think you’d better go get him. He’s got no business trying to get all the way up the holler if that’s where he’s headed.”
“I’ll go,” Danny said, remembering the wretched panic in Stanley’s voice when he’d begged him to take Gabriel and Lidia away. “Thanks for letting me know.”
He hung up the phone and turned to Gabriel. “Buddy, we’ve got to run an errand. Can you go get your shoes on?”
“An errand? But it’s night.” That face full of innocence, those wide, wise eyes.
“I know. Crazy, ain’t it? But it’s something we gotta do.”
“Can I take my lightning bug? He’ll light the way.”
“Sure. That’s a good idea,” he said, brushing the hair off Gabriel’s sticky face. “Now get your shoes on fast as you can, okay? We need to get moving.”
Their street was lit by porchlight and lampposts and the single traffic light they encountered during their brisk walk toward Main Street. But once they passed the Shelter and the other shops downtown and crossed over the rickety bridge that suspended them over New Creek and the railroad tracks, nothing could guide them toward St. Michael’s cemetery save the prisoner firefly, the light of the full moon, and the well-worn path of memory.
“Where are we going, Daddy?”
“Granddaddy’s gone up to the cemetery. We have to go pick him up and take him home.”
“But why?”
“Because he’s … sick. And he needs some help getting home.”
“That happens sometimes.”
Danny reached down and smoothed Gabriel’s hair, neither of them breaking stride. “I suppose it does.”
Gabriel knew the route well, because it was the same one he and Lidia took whenever they went to visit Alta. Once Lidia had started going to confession several months before, Gabriel learned the landmarks that led them to St. Michael’s: first the dirt path up from the bridge, then the crushed summer smell of sassafras and swamp azalea, then the willow tree whose branches dipped into the creek. Go straight as the creek flows, and they’d be headed toward Alta’s, but veer left at the slow-rotting stump of a downed sugar maple tree, and that meant St. Michael’s or the cemetery.
Walking confidently ahead of his father, Gabriel hummed a medley of lullabies, holding his punctured jar aloft so they could see where they were going. They heard the rise and fall of cicadas screaming, the crunch of each other’s footfalls, the rush of creek, the occasional plaintive trill of a screech owl. But otherwise, they felt alone under the stars in the woods on an early Saturday night, everyone else either in town or at home.
Everyone, that is, except for Myrthen Bergmann, who was marching primly home from a day of prayer and cleaning and organ playing. It wasn’t until they were only a dozen yards apart that Danny heard the footsteps on the soft, dry ground.
“Mr. Kielar? Is that you?” he called.
“Who’s there?” Myrthen answered in a clipped, prideful tone. If she felt any fear at encountering a disembodied male voice in the wooded dark of night, it couldn’t be detected over the bell-clear annoyance in her own.
“It’s Danny Pollock,” he said, softer now, their voices on a crash course.
“Lidia Pollock’s husband?”
“One and the same,” he said, and nodded at her as she came to a pert stop a few feet in front of him.
She looked down at Gabriel. “Whatever are you doing out so late with that child? I only hope you’re going up to light a candle.”
“No, no,” he said, respectful. “But that’s not a bad idea. Maybe we’ll stop in on our way home.”
Gabriel stepped quietly behind his father’s legs, clutched a fistful of denim with his free hand. “Gabriel, say hello to Miss Bergmann,” Danny said, reaching around and prodding his shoulder lightly.
He could feel Gabriel’s head shake.
“Gabe, that’s not polite.”
“Daddy, let’s go,” Gabriel whispered.
“Sorry about that,” Danny said to Myrthen. “He’s anxious to see his grandfather. We’re on our way to pick him up.”
“Pick him up? Now? Here?”
Danny scratched his cheek and took a breath. “Well, seems he’s got himself in a tight spot. I was told he was heading to the cemetery, and, well, I need to go help him get on home.”
“Well, I’ll say a cemetery at night is no place for a child. Why in Heaven’s name did you bring him with you?”
“My wife — Lidia — she’s spending the evening with a girlfriend. I didn’t really have a choice but to bring him.” Danny thought a moment about the icing of apology in his voice and he straightened up. “Listen, thanks for your concern, but we’re doing fine. We need to be moving on now.” He nodded again and slid his hand down to detach Gabriel from his pants. “Let’s go, buddy.”
“Here now, it won’t do for you to take that boy with you. Especially if there’s trouble waiting for you once you get there. Why don’t you let me take him back to the church and let him wait for you there? Father Timothy’s gone on to bed by now, I’m sure, but I have a key and I’ll be happy to look after him.”
Danny thought for a moment, then nodded. He hadn’t had time to consider what scene Stanley might create once he got there — or what he may have already. It might not be a bad idea to keep Gabriel from seeing his own grandfather in whatever state he might be in. “I wouldn’t want to ask you to change yo
ur plans. You must’ve been headed home.”
“My home is where our Lord is, and He’s with me everywhere I go. Let me take Gabriel. He’ll be safe with me.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Of course not,” she said, and unfolded her hands to extend one to Gabriel. “Come along, son. I’ll tell you a story along the way.”
“No, Daddy,” Gabriel whispered, inching even closer. “I want to stay with you.”
Danny crouched down and held both of Gabriel’s soft forearms gently. “Gabe, I need to go get Granddaddy, and it’d be better if you were with Miss Bergmann right now. It’s hard to explain, but I need you to stay with her. Just for a little bit.”
“I don’t want to.” It wasn’t a whine. It was pleading, plaintive, desperate. His eyes opened wide as a screech owl’s. “Please, Daddy, don’t make me go.”
Danny stood up. “Buddy, I have to. You’ll be fine. Miss Bergmann said she’d tell you a story. How ’bout that, huh? And you can tell her all about how we caught your lightning bug. Okay? I won’t be long, I promise.”
Then Gabriel started to cry, dropping the jar so he’d have two free hands to fling around Danny’s legs. Danny smiled weakly at Myrthen, who stood erect as a cross and arched a single brow. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Gabriel, you come along with me now. Your father needs to take care of some family business and you don’t need to bear witness to it.” She offered her hand once more, moonlit and pale, palm toward the ground.
Gabriel squeezed Danny’s leg harder.
Harder than he meant to, Danny bent down and held Gabriel’s forearms, gave him a tiny start, and spoke in a dark, deep voice. “Stop this right now. You have nothing to cry about. You’re just going to go with her to the church and wait for me. Nothing’s going to happen. I’ll get Granddaddy and then come back and get you. Now you stand up. Straighten up.” He let go of Gabriel’s arms and picked up the jar and handed it to him. “Go on now. I won’t be long.”
Gabriel stopped the sobbing sounds, but the tears continued to stream down his face.
“Thank you, Miss Bergmann. I won’t be too long.”
“Never you mind,” she said without turning back. “We’ll be just fine.”
“I love you, buddy,” he called to Gabriel, who’d already begun his forced march into the moonlight. He didn’t reply. Only the faint metallic sound of a lid being unscrewed and the soft thump of a jar hitting the mountain floor could be heard.
Danny watched his son trudge off into the dark until he couldn’t see them anymore, hoping that Gabriel would turn back, just once, so he could wave, give him their private I-love-you sign. But he hadn’t, and so Danny turned and continued up the path toward the cemetery.
Some years ago, somebody had pried a gap into the row of thin iron posts that circumscribed the cemetery. The posts were as old as the earliest graves, about six feet tall and set about six inches apart, most likely installed to keep out the deer. The cemetery had only one gate on the eastern side, so Danny assumed somebody thought there needed to be another entryway. The narrow slot required a body to turn sideways upon entering, but the footpath that led to it confirmed that visitors used it often. Danny could see it easily in the moonlight that dappled between the sugar maples. He slipped inside and disturbed a covey of nightjars nesting on the ground, sending them flying into the trees with a whoosh. Once they settled, Danny strained to hear human sounds above the rush of wooded silence.
In the distance, he thought he could hear a voice. He took a few steps in the direction where Lidia’s mother lay buried. Another voice, a sob perhaps. He nodded to nothing in particular and hooked his thumbs into his jeans pockets and set off to find the source.
Danny found Stanley just where he thought he’d be, staggering around on the plot of grass between the graves of his wife and his son, mumbling. Staying a few yards away, in the shadow of a grave marker in the shape of an angel, he listened to his father-in-law’s incoherent grumble. When Stanley fell to his knees on Eagan’s grave and started clawing at the earth with his hands, yanking chunks of fescue and dry moss out by the roots and digging into the dirt like a dog, Danny came forward.
“Stop that, Mr. Kielar,” he said, not unkindly. He reached down and put a firm hand on his arm. “Stop that, hear?”
Stanley jerked his arm away and nearly toppled over, then planted his hands on the ground to steady himself. Danny thought he’d settled down, but a moment later, he flung himself into another heat of frantic digging. This time Danny tackled him, wrapping both arms around the older man’s chest and heaving him, not easily, off the grave. The two men fell between Anna and Eagan. Once Danny extricated himself, Stanley rolled onto his back and let his arms flop down at his sides. Danny considered pinning him down with a knee on his chest, but then Stanley began to weep. He lay there with his eyes closed and his mouth open, his torso shaking from silent sobs. After a moment, he dragged a dirty hand across his face and rubbed his eyes until he looked like he’d just finished a shift underground digging coal.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Kielar?” Danny asked.
Stanley blinked a few times and stared at the moon that hung full and glowing directly overhead. “Dreaming. I was dreaming. Last night. Eagan and Anna and all them miners coming to tell me what wrongs I’d done. So angry, all of ’em. Worst was my Anna. My beautiful Anna. Telling me things. And when I woke up, I couldn’t tell if it was real. I had to come here to see if they really were dead. They were so real, all of them. Sittin’ right there at my kitchen table, Anna pouring black coffee for everyone. Walter Pulaski. His boy, Abel. Piggy and Pie Eye. Fossil. Gibby and Cross. All the rest of them. And Eagan.” He rolled his head from side to side on the grass, and new tears glinting in the moonlight. “Eagan wasn’t retarded. He was wearing his army combat uniform and cap and he sounded just like my daddy, yelling at me for being weak. Said I was a sonofabitch for signing him up, said I was the stupid one, not him.” A wrack of sob escaped him. “I never thought of him as being stupid. He was my boy. I loved him.” He rolled over onto his side, tucked his knees up and his elbows inside them, tears flowing into the dirt by his right cheek.
Danny swallowed hard, and thought about Gabriel. That little body, back turned, trundling away into the dark of night. What must Stanley have felt like, knowing he’d never get to see his son alive again, thinking it would have been partly his fault for letting him go off to war. Or making him go. How do you move on from that?
Without changing his fetal position, Stanley spoke, clear and calm. “I’m having them dreams again. I don’t know if my own grandson knows the truth, or whether he’s going to tell it, and I think maybe I ought to just say it myself and get it over with. I don’t know how much more of it I can take.”
“Mr. Kielar,” Danny started. “Stanley. I know when we talked a month or so ago, back at the Shelter, I said I couldn’t just take my family and up and leave like that. But things haven’t passed over as much as I assumed they would. It’s been hard on Lidia. Been hard keeping it all from Gabe. All these people wanting things from him. It’s nonsense, it is. I know he’s real smart, but he’s not what they’re saying he is. Even Father Timothy said so. Lidia talked to him. Not that I give much mind to that either. But anyway, I’ve been thinking about what you said, getting away from Verra for a while. And, well, I once thought I’d like to go to law school. And, no offense, I really hate working the mines.” He sat back and crossed his legs. “I sent away to the City University of New York for an application. I worked on it every night for a week and sent it off the first of June. ’Course there’s no guarantee I’ll get in. But I thought you’d be interested to know: I hear what you’re saying, and I don’t want any of this to affect my wife or my son, or you for that matter. So maybe that’ll ease you up a bit.”
Stanley dropped his face into his open palms. He sat like that for a moment and then spoke. “I’m losing everybody one by one,” he whispered.
“But isn’t tha
t what you wanted me to do? You said so, plain as day.”
Stanley reached out and grasped Danny’s forearm without looking up. “I did. And I thank you. But you’ve got to know. I’ve already lost damn near everything. You three are the last I have.” He pulled back his hand and sat up, taking a sober breath. “But it’s good, it’s a good idea. Get you above ground, save Lidia and Gabriel from the fear of losing you every shift.”
“I’ll make sure nobody — ” Danny stopped short, craning his neck toward a shriek in the distance. “What was that?”
Stanley shrugged in slow motion, fatigue and alcohol dulling his motor skills. “One of them owls, I’d guess. On the hunt.”
But Danny turned his ear toward it. It didn’t sound like an owl on the hunt. It sounded like something that’d been hunted.
Myrthen led Gabriel down the worn path to the entrance of St. Michael’s. The light of the full moon was so bright it cast shadows along their way.
“Come on now,” Myrthen said without turning her head. “It’s not much farther.”
“I know how far it is,” Gabriel said.
Myrthen raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond. She wasn’t used to children, impertinent or otherwise. Perhaps this was how all almost-four-year-olds were.
But she remembered Gabriel wasn’t like all almost-four-year-olds. She slowed her step, fell back a bit, softened her voice. “How do you know so many things, Gabriel?” she asked, sidling to him and matching his gait.
The ground crunched beneath them, crickets called.
Silently, Myrthen prayed: Lord, You are a true and faithful witness. Whether this be good or evil, I will obey Your voice.
“I want to go home.”
“You can’t go home now, Gabriel. You heard your father. You’ll stay with me until he returns for you.”
