by Bret Lott
The Suburban passed by, tapped its brakes again out front of the Whaleys’, moved on.
I stayed put.
I leaned my head against the steering wheel again, rested it there for what seemed an hour, then sat up, stared at the Whaley house for another hour. I stared for one more at the moonlit silver of the Mercedes in front of me, then leaned against the steering wheel again, closed my eyes.
I tried not to think of anything, tried only to take in one deep breath after another.
But of course I was thinking.
What happened had been thirty-five years ago. Thirty-five years. And I wondered: How do you continue? How do you go on with your life after what’s happened to your life has happened? After you watch someone you know step in front of a train? After you’ve been drugged and bad things done to you, and after you’ve chosen to stay quiet for the shame of it all, then live with the guilt of knowing you didn’t help her when she was alive or after she was gone?
How do you end up, after what Mom’d been through, anywhere but at target practice, and imagining the black silhouette fifteen yards in front of you is the evil shit who’d kissed you on the cheek in the foyer of your own house?
I knew where those train tracks were, just the other side of I-26 from Northwoods Mall. I knew Sunset Memorial Gardens, had seen it any number of times when for one reason or another we were driving Ashley Phosphate. There was a bowling alley we went to once or twice out that way when I was a kid, a Glass Masters I’d had the windshield on the old Chevy LUV changed out at one time. Mom used to shop at a Hamrick’s up where Ashley Phosphate hit Dorchester, back before the money came in.
But the only reason I remember the cemetery is because it was such a plain place, just a spread of grass fronting on the four-lane street while I was on the way somewhere else. A line of sago palms across the front of it, memorial plaques flat on the ground, an asphalt entry without even a gated arch above it. Just that piece of ground, the green of it.
And just past it, crossing Ashley Phosphate, the train tracks.
I thought of Unc, and Parker, my dad, who’d left when I was a kid, and Alton Tyler, the three of them teenagers with their hands in fists, walking up the driveway of Prendergast’s house in order to do to him and his friends what they could.
I thought of Mom.
I opened my eyes, sat up. I blinked a couple times, not certain if I’d fallen asleep. I pulled out my iPhone, checked the time: 10:26. Not even twenty minutes since we got here.
And because I had the same old nothing to do while I waited for Unc to come back, and because Tyler’d been one of those three to beat up Prendergast and his pals, and, finally, because it was my habit while out here to go somewhere other than where I was, I opened once more the Maps app on the iPhone, typed in “Echaw Bridge, Wambaw Creek SC.” Where Tyler had taken off to last night, only to show up on the evening news.
Here came the gray map, a line for the road, a tiny blue squiggle for the creek, a red pin sticking up. I pressed Satellite, got the photos from space, and saw a minuscule bridge across a creek, green trees everywhere around. That red pin still plugged into the middle of nowhere.
For a moment, Tyler’s job seemed like it could be a good one. To have a boat out at night and wandering around creeks, trying to get the jump on duck hunters baiting a blind. Or writing up shrimp baiters for hauling in too much catch, or stalking through a piece of woods to make sure turkey weren’t being shot out of season. Just being outside, on the marsh or in the woods or on a creek, out in that middle of nowhere, and trying to make sure people played by the rules.
But then I thought of nights like last night. I thought of his silhouette in the searchlight of his boat, him kneeling way up on the hull and leaning over the edge, the Maglite in his hand moving back and forth on the creek as he looked at the woman. Then the call to visit a body in a trunk and whatever ugly surprise that had involved. I saw Tyler in his Boston Whaler speeding down Goose Creek to the Cooper, having to trailer it back at Bushy Park Landing, and driving like hell to make it all the way to Wambaw Creek in the one hour he’d figured it would take. Only to look down into a trunk, and one more body.
I thought of how sometimes when it rained it poured.
I heard a tap at the passenger window.
Unc, I knew, finally back. Package delivered. Now maybe we could head on home. And I decided, in just that instant of a tap on glass, that once we got back I’d spend the rest of the night on the floor outside Mom’s door, then hold her close as I could the second she came out tomorrow morning.
“It’s open,” I called out, and put the iPhone back in my pocket.
The door opened, that dome light again, and here was Thomas Warchester Whaley the Fifth—Five for Short—leaning in, and grinning.
“Leland thought you could use a little company out here,” he said. “Sent us to come visit you.”
I blinked.
The last time I’d seen him was six months or so ago, me dropping off Unc inside. Whaley Five’d just gotten a job with a bank up in Charlotte, something to do with computer systems, and’d taken the opportunity to crow to me about it.
And to tell me he’d just been out to Frisco—he’d really called it Frisco—to visit Tabitha over at Stanford, and that her work out there was going great.
I’d nodded, seen Unc to the first stool available at the closest table, and walked out.
Now here he was again, wearing a navy blazer and pink button-down shirt, and with the way the jacket fell open for his leaning in, I could see in his shirt pocket three pens, tight in a row.
“Don’t act so happy to see us,” he said, and stood up, stepped a little aside. He leaned his head in again, said, “Brought somebody here wants to say hey.”
Someone stood in the dark just past the dull glow from inside the car, and I squinted, saw in the same second Tabitha lean forward into the light, give a small wave.
Hey, Huger, she mouthed.
Tabitha.
I took in a breath, felt myself shake my head in disbelief over this: Tabitha. Here.
“Cat got your tongue?” Whaley Five said, and leaned into the light again, still grinning.
“Hey!” I said, and again, “Hey!” and felt my hand fumbling for the door handle beside me without taking my eyes off her, then the door popped open, and now I was quick coming around the hood. Whaley Five had closed the passenger door, stood at the curb with his arms crossed and leaning against it, Tabitha beside him. Though it was dark, I could see she was looking at the ground.
“Tabitha!” I said, and started to reach my arms out to her, but realized just then she hadn’t been smiling when she’d leaned into the car. I could see in the dark she had on a light jacket, held a purse by the strap with both hands in front of her, the strap long enough to where the purse almost touched the ground. She was still looking down.
And it came to me, the idea that trying to hold her even just to give her a hug might be a very bad thing to do.
Because two years ago, in Palo Alto—the last time I saw her, after the text explosion we’d had on the phone, followed by me backing my Tundra out of the garage at the house and then driving fifty-two hours straight to a parking spot in the lot across the street from Lyman Graduate Residences, the Maps app leading me all the way—I’d tried the same thing. To hold her in my arms. And I’d also tried to tell her I loved her, and that I’d never stopped loving her.
She’d been out on the sidewalk in front of the building before I even crossed the street from the lot, behind her the four-story curve of windows and tan stucco and rust-red architectural beams of the apartment complex. What seemed more like a Spanish fortress at her back than anything else.
She’d stood with one hip out, arms crossed, jaw jutted forward, all exactly like she does. She was shaking her head, her eyes creased halfway closed, and had on an old pair of jeans, a gray sweatshirt, her hair pulled back with a white headband.
She was beautiful.
I stepped
up onto the sidewalk, and she uncrossed her arms, pointed her index fingers a little above me and then straight at me, then with her right hand pinched her fingers and thumb together, touched the corner of her mouth, then her cheek.
She did it five times. They were quick moves, and sharp, and fierce, each point of her fingers two shots into my chest, each touch to mouth and cheek a fist to my face.
Go home go home go home go home go home.
The three years we’d been together—from my sophomore year until I was a senior—she’d taught me some sign language, enough for me to understand most of what she had to say, and enough that I wouldn’t forget. The finer points she’d always had to spell out for me. Words like traumatic and minimization and cognitive dissonance. Those sorts of words the psychologists used, after what happened out to Hungry Neck.
She put her hands on her hips, looked at me hard, her chin still out.
That was when I put my arms up to hold her, took a step toward her. But she took a hard step back, shook her head.
You killed a man, she pounded out. But you forget you saved me. You saved my mother, and your mother, and Unc.
I let my arms drop then, looked at the ground. It was late afternoon, a cool March day. Leaf shadows from trees on the median behind me moved on the sidewalk.
I looked up at her so that she could read my lips, took in a breath to speak. I had the words ready, had practiced them a million times the whole way here. I was ready.
But nothing came.
She looked down. She let out a breath, her hands still on her hips. Then she looked up at me, her eyes the same perfect brown they’d ever been.
Slowly, carefully, she signed, You have a purpose. Get through the past. Then be Huger.
She closed her eyes, let her chin drop. Then she turned, walked away up the sidewalk to the rust-red and glass doors into the building, pulled one open, and went inside.
That was the last time I’d seen her.
I’d find out later it was Mom to call and tell Tabitha’s mom I’d been on my way, Miss Dinah then texting Tabitha, so that all she’d had to do was wait for me to pull up the requisite hours later.
But I didn’t even think of that, of how she’d been outside and geared up for me.
Instead, all I did was turn, walk back to the truck. I pulled open the door, felt breathe out at me the funk of a cab after that many hours of driving without stopping for more than an hour now and again, when sleep had screamed at me too hard to let me see the road. It didn’t matter, though, that smell. Or the floorboard and passenger seat thick with Red Bull and Monster and Amp cans, Sonic and Burger King and In-N-Out wrappers.
None of that mattered. Because she was right, and I’d come all this way only to be delivered what I knew already: Get through the past.
I climbed in, pulled closed the door, sat there a few seconds. Then I said it, the line I’d rehearsed all those hours, those words I’d taken in a breath for out on the sidewalk. I said it, there in the cluttered and foul and Tabitha-free cave of the cab.
“I love you,” I said out loud, “and I’ve never stopped loving you.”
I looked at the apartment complex again, a Spanish fortress inside of which resided the woman those words were meant for. And I heard how cornball they would have sounded if I’d actually said them to her. But even worse, I heard how pathetic they were now that I’d spoken them to no one.
I started up the truck then, backed out, and headed for home.
Now here she was, a few feet in front of me.
“If I were you,” Five said, “I’d consider at least saying hello.” He still had his arms crossed, I could see, his head tilted in a way that said even in this dark, She’s mine.
So I waved at her, the move big for the dark out here, and saw her look up, finally, and nod.
And then I remembered, inside the bang and jolt of seeing her face suddenly inside the Range Rover, and of Five the one to usher her out to say hey, and of seeing her standing here, right here—inside the rush of all this shock and dark and panic that felt like I’d never even left the funk of the cab of my Tundra, never yet emptied the debris across the floorboard of my life, never yet moved an inch toward getting through the past and toward being Huger, I remembered: it hadn’t been Unc at the window. That hadn’t been him to tap the glass. The mission hadn’t been accomplished, and it wasn’t time to go home.
We were here to drop off goggles. We were here to walk away from Prendergast and the pile of shit we’d stepped in. We were here to finish something.
And I’d been given a story of my mom, that story still pounding inside me.
I looked over my shoulder, saw the Whaley house still there and lit up. As if it would have gone somewhere.
I turned back to them, said, “Did you say Unc sent you out here?”
“Yep,” Five said, and pushed his hip off the passenger door. Tabitha hadn’t moved. “He told me you were lonely out here, needed some company.” He let out a small laugh, the sound a kind of squashed snort. “A couple minutes ago he comes up to me, says he heard my voice and didn’t know I was here, then tells me I need to come and visit you. Then I introduced him to Tabitha.”
I could see him uncross his arms, reach a hand to Tabitha’s shoulder from behind, place it there.
Tabitha quick looked back at him in the dark, her hands in front of her and still holding tight the purse strap.
“Leland’s a crazy old fart. He finds out Tabitha’s with me, and he kind of goes hyper, hugs on her and smiles and all that, like they were long-lost friends, tells us we both need to go on out here and see you.”
I could see his head move a little, look down at Tabitha, and I turned back to the house again. Maybe Unc was on his way out, I was thinking. Or maybe he was planning to stay the whole time. Why else would he send them both out here, if not to help me pass the time?
“Five,” I said, looking at the house and hoping I’d see Unc walking back along the line of cars between here and there, “they actually are old friends.”
“I know that,” Five said, his voice a little indignant, and I turned back to them.
Here was Tabitha, right in front of me, and I started, felt myself nearly jump. I still couldn’t make out her features for the dark, but I could see the whites of her eyes, her looking up at me.
She reached out to me, took my right hand in both hers, that purse at her elbow now. She held my hand palm up between us, then let go her right hand, settled it in my palm, the moves all gentle, her hands warm on mine.
Slowly she spelled out, Too dark to read lips.
I took in a sharp breath without even thinking on it, held it. This was how she’d taught me to sign, all those years ago back at Hungry Neck, whether sitting on the couch in the front room of Unc’s trailer, him in his recliner and watching TV, or at her house and parked at the dinner table under the watchful eye of Miss Dinah, their ramshackle house filled with more books than the county library branch in Ravenel.
Or in the cab of my old Chevy LUV somewhere out on the property, parked and alone.
But always her hand in mine. Letters and letters and letters, each placed in my palm like a warm puzzle piece, each leading to the next and the next and the next, until here was a word between us, and another, me giving back to her words of my own then too, until there’d appeared like a lost continent language between us, made with our very own hands.
A language I still hadn’t forgotten.
I breathed out, nodded: Yes, it was too dark out here.
She started in again, but this time even more slowly, even more gently: How are you?
I blinked, swallowed. I tried to smile, though I knew she probably couldn’t see it. I turned her hand over, held it palm up in mine, settled my other hand in hers.
Fine, I lied.
Because how could I tell her any of what we were in the middle of just this second?
How could I tell her of a body? Or of my mom?
And how could I tell her of wha
t it felt like, right this instant, to have her hand in mine, and Five a few feet behind her, bringing her here from inside his very own home?
She put her hand back in mine, spelled out even more slowly, Liar.
And I spelled right back, Bingo.
She shook her head, still looking up at me.
“No secrets,” Five called out, and took a couple steps toward us, his hands on his hips, I could see, the blazer flared out for it. “What’s she saying?” he said, the smug I’d only ever heard on his voice gone.
I looked past Tabitha at him. “She says she could never love a man who packed only three pens,” I said.
Tabitha’s shoulders moved up and down then, and I looked at her, saw her lean a little forward: she was laughing, and this fact made me feel good for what seemed the first time in a decade. We were still holding hands, and I spelled, Light inside car, let’s—
But then it hit me. She’d read my lips, had to have in order to get the joke of those pens in Five’s pocket, and only now did I take into account the pair of headlights only a few cars away coming up the street from behind her, toward us and the Range Rover. Yet one more straggler here for poker, those headlights as he approached enough light for her to see my face.
She stood up straight then, looked at me, and now I could see her face, her smile, her teeth and cheeks and her chin and the way it curved just so, just so. I could see her eyes, too, and the brown of them, all of her slowly going clearer, sharper, because now there was light on her from behind me, light growing and growing, and I realized there had to be headlights coming toward us from that direction, too.
“What the fuck?” I heard Five say, his voice quiet, and I looked up from Tabitha, saw him clearly now too. He was turned from us, looking down the street behind the Range Rover, and the fact it wasn’t just one set of headlights coming up on us, but a whole string of them moving along the street, and I turned, looked behind me and back toward the Whaley place, where another string of headlights was moving toward us, too. A whole lot of headlights.
