The Last Road Home

by Danny Johnson

  Clemmy forced herself between them, staring down Lightning. “Boy, you better not raise your hand to your daddy.” She looked at her husband. “Roy, just stop and let them tell us.” Lightning sat back on the couch. Clemmy pointed at him. “Start talking.”

  Lightning sulked at first, but then slowly admitted how he brought the seeds from Georgia, and had talked me into planting a crop. “I never thought it would turn out like this, I swear I didn’t.”

  “Lightning, you’ve always thought somebody owed you something, that there must be an easy way to fill your pockets. Now look at you. You’re probably going to prison, if you don’t get hung from a tree. I’m regretting you ever came back,” Roy said.

  Lightning looked like he’d been whipped with a knotted rope.

  Clemmy sat with her head in her hands. “Them folks you shot, are they still laying dead up there?” She looked up at me.

  I nodded. “This stuff is way over my head. I don’t know what to do.”

  Roy shook a finger in my face. “What you’re going to do is not one damn thing but keep your mouth shut. If there ain’t nothing to tie you to them, I can’t see how anybody would have any idea who did it. If they find out, they might arrest you, Junebug, but Lightning wouldn’t live to get to the courthouse.”

  “You think Fancy needs to go to a hospital?” I asked Clemmy.

  She shook her head. “I’ll come down here every night to clean and rebandage her shoulder. If she does turn bad off, we won’t have a choice.”

  Lightning had not mentioned the money. “You got anything else to put in?” I asked him.

  When he lifted his head, his eyes were deep black, lifeless, and scary. “Don’t guess so.”

  An awkward silence fell over the room. These old walls had heard a lot of stories over the years, but I guessed none as wild as this one. Clemmy looked up. “It’s three o’clock. Roy, you go back to the house. I’ll stay here with Fancy and be home before sunup. What are we going to tell Mr. and Mrs. Wilson if they get to asking about Fancy?”

  Roy rubbed his hand back and forth over the top of his head. “We’ll say she’s gone to visit your sister in Fuquay, that your sister’s sick and Fancy’s going to stay with her until she gets better. How long you figure it’ll take her to get well?”

  “At least a month, maybe more. I can make up the cleaning Fancy’s been helping with at the big house.” Clemmy closed her eyes. “We’ll go on like nothing has happened, and pray she don’t get an infection. You keep her out of sight, Junebug.”

  Roy stood to leave and I walked him to the back door. “Junebug, I can’t believe you let yourself and Lightning get mixed up in such shit.”

  I let out a breath. “You’re right, Roy, you’re absolutely right.” What I didn’t say to him was that the only reason Lightning was still alive was because Fancy was. She was the only thing that mattered to me, and I would not have hesitated to kill Lightning and leave him in the mud with Twin.

  “Come here, Junebug. Let me put something on that cut.” Clemmy wiped the blood and dabbed on some salve. “That should do it. I’ll sit with her. You boys get some rest.”

  Lightning went to the bedroom and I stretched out on the couch. “Why?” kept circling in my mind. Why did I need to kill Twin like that? I could have done something other than blowing his brains out, maybe used my shirt and smothered him, or dragged him to the lake, dumped him in, and let God decide how he died.

  But there was something else, something hard to admit. When I crooked my finger around that trigger, it was as if a voice began to whisper in my head, “Go ahead and shoot him, he deserves it, see what it feels like.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Clemmy left before daybreak. Fancy seemed to be sleeping evenly, not wheezing the way Grandma had. I sat in a chair and laid my head beside her arm, dozing. I saw Twin’s head blown to pieces and myself running around to pick up the parts, trying to put them back together. Then Grandma showed up, asking me if I was getting too hot plowing the garden.

  Lightning walking around in the living room woke me. He poked his head in the door. “How’s she doing?”

  “Still sleeping.”

  “Want me to make some breakfast?” He was calm, even friendly-sounding.

  “Maybe fix coffee and we can put in a lot of sugar and milk and try to get her to sip a little.”

  Fancy groaned and shifted. Her eyes blinked a few times. She searched the room, trying to get a fix on where she was.

  “Hey, Fancy, how you feeling?” Her hair was still matted and pasted to her head. There was no brightness in her eyes.

  She winced from the pain when she tried to move. “You all right?”

  I rubbed her arm. “I’m okay.”

  She moved her left hand to the bandaged shoulder. “Guess it wasn’t a dream, huh?”

  “No, but you’re going to be fine. Your momma patched you up real good.”

  She gripped my fingers and closed her eyes. “I love you, Junebug.”

  My breath caught halfway down my throat. I’d thought it, felt it, even dreamed it. I squeezed Fancy’s hand. We’d crossed every line but that one, and at this moment I wanted to say it back, even formed the words in my mouth, but it scared me. When I was little, Momma would say, “Keep your dreams to yourself, Junebug, ’cause if you tell them they might not come true.” What a horrible thing to tell a kid. I had loved her, Grandma, Granddaddy, Grady, and each time I wanted to tell them I stopped, but they died anyway. Afterward I wished I had. “Think you’re able to drink a little coffee?”

  She shifted again. “Maybe.” Fat tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Just rest easy. You’re going to have some pain, but it’ll go away in time. Stay still and I’ll be right back.”

  “Is Lightning okay?”

  “He’s fine.”

  I blew on the coffee to cool it, and Fancy took small sips. I mixed the vinegar and soda, got her to drink that, and then poured tonic in a spoon. “Take this medicine and you can sleep as much as you want.” In a few minutes she was breathing heavy.

  I went back to where Lightning sat at the kitchen table. “You stay with her while I go clean the blood out of the truck and see what I can do with the rest.”

  When I started for the back door, I could feel Lightning’s eyes on my back. “What’d you do with the money?”

  I ran my fingers through my hair, pulling until it hurt, and turned around. “It’s put up right now.”

  “I never thought things would happen that way, Junebug, you got to believe me.” He put on a face like a scolded puppy, but his eyes were as blank as a clean blackboard.

  “What I believe is this was exactly what I told you might happen.” I slammed my hand down on the kitchen table. Dishes and cups bounced to the floor. “Your sister is lucky to be alive and so are we. And what do you think we’re going to do if the sheriff finds out we were involved? Instead of the money, you better be concerned how a noose is going to feel around your neck when they swing your ass off a tree limb.”

  Lightning recoiled and a flash of fear replaced the coldness. “It’s not like that, Junebug.”

  I held my hand up. “I don’t want to hear anymore, Lightning. Let it lay.” I forced myself to calm down. “I’ll be back in a little while. You look after your sister.”

  I found another sheet, got some bleach and lye soap from the pantry, and carried them and a bucket of water to the truck. In the light of day it looked worse than I thought. Fancy’s blood was splattered on the paper bags and cloth seats, glass was everywhere, several holes were in the tailgate, the back window was broken, and the windshield had red smears. Stuck in the dashboard was the stub of the bullet that must have gone through Fancy. I dropped the bloody sacks of money in the barrel in the pack house cellar, and scrubbed most of two hours to get the inside of the cab reasonably clean. By the time I finished, the five-gallon bucket of water had turned red. I would never get all the blood out of the old seats, but they were dark from dirt and age anyway, so
the stains should blend in and not be noticeable. The windshield and vinyl cleaned up easily.

  I walked around the outside of the truck trying to figure a way to somehow try and cover the bullet holes in the tailgate. Since they were pretty close together, a sledgehammer we kept for splitting wood might do the trick. A few swings with the heavy maul meshed them into one big dent. With a couple more whacks, it was hard to tell where the bullets had hit. At the feed barn was a five-gallon bucket of silver-gray paint Granddaddy kept to coat the tin roof of the house. I soaked the sheet in the thick liquid and wiped the tailgate real heavy, making it appear to have been bumped hard and the paint was to keep it from rusting. There was no disguising the broken back window, so I knocked out the glass and used plastic and black tape to seal it until I could get it fixed.

  I surveyed my handiwork. It looked like shit. I cussed myself out, then got a wrench and just unbolted the tailgate and hid it under the woodshed. I slid down in the grass and leaned against the rear wheel, tired enough to pass out.

  When I went back into the house, Lightning was sitting with Fancy.

  “She wake up anymore?” I asked.

  “Ain’t moved since you left. You didn’t give her too much medicine, did you?”

  “Same as your momma gave last night.” I listened to her breathing and put my hand to Fancy’s head like I’d seen her do to Grandma. Everything seemed okay. We went to the living room and sat down.

  “Lightning, nobody else in Durham knows about us and would come looking, is there?” I was so exhausted I had to hold my face in my hands and look through my fingers.

  He studied the ceiling for a minute. “Can’t think of anybody. The only time I spent around Twin was at his house, and the only person I ever seen with him was the one at the creek. I know I can’t show my face in Durham anymore. He’s bound to have friends.”

  I pulled my hands down, staring at him. “You just said nobody had ever seen you but them.”

  Lightning looked irritated. “That don’t mean he didn’t tell somebody.”

  “Shit. You think they would have any idea how to find you?”

  “The folks who know Aunt Pearl would know my name, and if she was scared enough, she might tell them where Momma and Daddy live.”

  “Then we need to warn them.”

  Lightning shook his head. “Even if they did find out about me, it would take a lot to be riding down here making any trouble. All coloreds know that Chatham County is Klan country.”

  I thought for a minute. “That makes sense. All we can do is make sure not to put our heads above ground. Christmas will be here in another month, and folks will have their minds on other things.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Fancy began to rest a little better, less fits and starts, and stay awake longer over the next few days. Clemmy told me to ease back on the paregoric. Sometimes she would dream and holler out, but as soon as I touched her, she calmed down.

  The following Sunday, not wanting to prompt any unwanted visits from Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, I went to church. When the service ended, I walked out with them. Mr. Wilson put his hand against my chest to slow down and let Mrs. Wilson go on ahead. “You hear about the nigger killings up by the creek?”

  I stuck my hands inside my pockets. “Killings? What happened?”

  “Nobody rightly knows for sure. Bull Jones told Frank May it looked like a nigger drug deal that broke out in a gunfight. Two were lying dead beside a Cadillac, and the car had a trunk full of something called marywanna. You ever heard tell of it before?”

  We reached his truck. “Can’t say as I have. What is it?”

  “Bull told Frank it’s dope niggers use. When they smoke it, makes ’em go wild. Bull said what didn’t make sense was whoever killed them left all the drugs. At first he thought it might have been somebody in the community, but nobody is taking credit for it.”

  I leaned my butt against the front fender. “Dang.” Maybe we should have thrown the marijuana in the creek. “They have any idea who killed them?”

  “Bull figures other niggers; said he weren’t going to worry over it too much.”

  “That’s crazy stuff.” I started to walk off.

  “You ain’t seen nothing of Lightning, have you?”

  I turned around. “Haven’t seen too much of anybody here lately.”

  At home, I was surprised to find Clemmy in the kitchen setting out dinner. “I fixed enough for y’all this morning. Thought you needed a decent meal.”

  “Appreciate it. It’s for sure neither one of us can cook worth a dang.” I took a chair opposite Lightning. “How do you think Fancy is doing?”

  “So far, so good. I’m going to chop up a little bit of these potatoes and greens and try to get her to eat something solid. She needs to get her bowels moving so we’re sure everything is working proper.” Clemmy went in with Fancy and shut the door.

  I watched Lightning while I chewed on a chicken leg. “Talked to Mr. Wilson after church this morning. He told me the sheriff found Twin and his man.”

  Lightning kept his head down. “Yeah, what’d he have to say?”

  I gnawed slowly on the gristle of the leg bone, wanting him to feel as uncomfortable as possible. “Mr. Wilson said he didn’t think Bull Jones was going to waste a lot of time on it, but he sure would like to find you.”

  Lightning wouldn’t look up; he pushed the food around on his plate. “That so?”

  I scooped up the rest of the peas with my spoon, enjoying twisting the knife in Lightning’s gut.

  * * *

  On Tuesday, I was busy splitting kindling in the woodshed when Bull Jones drove in the yard. “Morning, Junebug.” He let go a mouthful of brown spit.

  I squatted down eye-level with the letters CHATHAM COUNTY SHERIFF painted on the door. “Sheriff. What brings you out this way?”

  “Hear about the killings over at Northeast Creek?”

  “Mr. Wilson got to telling me about it Sunday.”

  He kept looking toward the stable and at the house. “You ain’t seen nothing of Roy’s boy, have you?”

  “Nope.” I stood up and leaned my hands against the top of the car. “You figure he might be mixed up in it?”

  He pushed his hat back and scratched his head. “What I know is all of a sudden I got too many nigger problems, and I don’t like it. Takes up time I need to be doing something else.”

  “If I see him, I’ll sure get word to Mr. Wilson.”

  He laughed, spraying bits of tobacco juice. “If you see him, shoot the sumbitch and I’ll come pick him up. By the way, you got a gun, don’t you?”

  “Yep.”

  “What kind?”

  “Twelve-gauge my granddaddy left me.” As far as I could remember, nobody had ever seen the twenty-gauge I got for Christmas when I was thirteen.

  “That’s right, long-barreled shotgun. I remember that thing; he sure won a lot of turkey shoots with it. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, go get it and let me look at it.” Bull eyed me like he wanted to see what I might do, but maybe it was my imagination.

  My bladder suddenly needed emptying. “No problem, be right back.” I didn’t over-hurry but didn’t waste time either.

  Lightning peeped around the door of the bedroom. “What’s going on?”

  “Squat down and slip out the back door. If he comes in the house, we’re screwed.”

  I found Granddaddy’s old gun. When I reached the car, Bull got out and looked it over, sighted, then broke the barrel down and sniffed. “Don’t seem like you’ve used this much. Ain’t been hunting lately?”

  I stood back from him, arms clasped behind. “Never seem to have the time.”

  “That’s a mighty fine shotgun. Don’t see many with a barrel that long.” He handed it back. “All right, Junebug. You got plenty of shells, don’t you?”

  “Couple of boxes.”

  He started backing the car out. “You take care now.” I stood until he disappeared around the curve, then went onto the porch and
kept watching.

  “Junebug,” Fancy called from the bedroom, “what did the sheriff want?”

  I walked in beside her bed. “I took care of it.”

  She reached her hand out for me. “You’re a good man for looking after me.” She hadn’t mentioned the love stuff anymore, so I’d put it off to the paregoric making her mind a little mixed up. But then maybe she hadn’t said it again because I hadn’t said it back. Now I didn’t know any way to approach it without it sounding stupid. I needed to tell Fancy how much I loved her, because I surely did. “Fancy, I . . .”

  She slid over in the bed. “Will you lay down with me?” I pulled off my shoes and stretched out beside her. Fancy turned on her good side and we lay nose to nose. “What were you going to say?”

  “Just wondering if it would be okay if I slept in here with you tonight and got off that couch.” What a chickenshit I was. My face warmed with flush.

  “Sure you can.” Fancy took my hand. “I want you to, been a while since I felt your body against mine.”

  “Ain’t going to be none of that, there’s no way you’re up to it.”

  That night I lay awake a long time. I never wanted anything to come between Fancy and me, but sometimes I wished I’d never started down this road. Nothing seemed clear now. The one thing I’d never wanted to be was an embarrassment to Grandma. The image of a newspaper appeared in my head. It had a picture of me on the front page being led to jail in handcuffs. The headline read: “Local boy gone bad: dope dealer, murderer, and having relations with a Negro.” So, yeah, right now I’d settle for normal again.

  CHAPTER 38

  Six weeks passed, and churchyard talk about the killings on Northeast Creek died down. Fancy’s arm was stiff and sore, but seemed to get stronger every day. She began to ramble around the house, doing her best to fix meals for the three of us. Clemmy was worn out, her face sagged, she’d lost weight, and I was glad she could rest some now. It had gotten so each time she came to the house, she would give me a hug. I believed she understood I truly loved Fancy and would do whatever it took to protect her. Occasionally, I would catch Clemmy watching Lightning, like she was trying to recognize the child he used to be. Her eyes would turn soft, and her shoulders would sink.