Heaven's Crooked Finger

by Hank Early

  I could sense Mary’s confusion from where I sat. Or was it disappointment? I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t really have the luxury of caring.

  “When was this?” I said.

  “Oh, let’s see . . .” Crawford leaned back in his recliner. “I’m going to say it was April. I remember because I was leading a whole group of folks. It was one of my excursions.”

  Mary shifted in her seat. “Are you sure you saw RJ Marcus, Mr. Middleton? The Marcuses all favor. Earl and his brother look a lot like their father.”

  “No way. This was him. He was old. Looked sickly.”

  Mary—thank God because I was honestly too stunned to know how to proceed—took it upon herself to try to gather the relevant details.

  “Did anyone else in the group see him?” she said.

  “No. It was just me.” He motioned toward his legs. “I keep in good shape. I crested the ridge first by a good bit. He was standing right there under this overhang. He saw me, nodded at me, and then ducked back into a crevice in the rocks. Hell, I didn’t pinpoint him exactly, but I knew he looked familiar. I eventually put it together that it was your daddy. I mentioned it to Jessamine, and she told me they’d found his body a few months before. I didn’t believe her. Figured she got her stories messed up, so I looked him up online, and damned if she wasn’t right.”

  Mary scratched her head. I felt paralyzed. Except my knee. It was shaking so fast, it looked like I was having a seizure.

  “Could you be mistaken?” Mary asked.

  Crawford pinched his face up, offended. “No, ma’am. Now I’m old, but I ain’t stupid. It was him.”

  “And you reported it to the sheriff’s office?” Mary was all business, her voice quicker, her tone matter of fact.

  “Well, no. I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  He rubbed his face with the side of his hand. “Jessamine talked me out of it.”

  “And how did she do that?”

  He grinned. “That woman can do anything she puts her mind to.”

  “But how, specifically, did she convince you to not call?”

  “Well, she just said she’d been in this area for a long, long time, and it was her opinion the best practice was always to stay out of . . .” He trailed off, looking at me apologetically.

  “Out of what?” Mary pressed.

  “No offense, okay?”

  “I’m a big boy,” I said.

  He nodded. “Out of the Marcus clan’s affairs. She said it just didn’t pay.”

  Mary looked at me, as if to say it was my show now.

  I got my knee under control and said the only thing I could think of.

  “Can you take us there?”

  29

  After some negotiation, we decided on Saturday morning for the hike. I pushed for that afternoon, but Crawford quickly explained the hike would take us nearly four hours, and it would be best to start in the morning.

  Mary said the next day was out because she had to meet with Sheriff Shaw for a performance review. That left Saturday. It seemed like a long time to go without investigating this place, but I had little choice but to accept it.

  Mary drove me back to the old church that evening, but before I got out of the Tahoe, she stopped me with a question I had not been expecting.

  “What happened back then?”

  I didn’t have to ask her what she was referring to. I knew without a doubt that she wanted to know about what happened when I was seventeen.

  “I don’t like to talk about that.”

  “Yeah, but I just thought . . . since we’re sort of like partners . . .”

  “Look, I appreciate you letting me tag along, okay? But it’s a mistake to see me as a partner. I’m only here for Granny and to find out what happened to McCauley.”

  “Don’t forget your father.”

  “My father’s dead.”

  “I don’t think you believe that. If you did, you’d already be back in Carolina.”

  She was right, and it angered me a little because it had been so easy for her to figure out.

  “Look,” I said. “It’s not that simple. There’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about, so . . .”

  “Which is why I asked.”

  I shook my head. There was just no way I could tell her. I’d never told anyone about those things.

  Then she reached across to the passenger’s seat and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “I want to be there for you. I feel like . . .” She hesitated. Her voice had changed. It was softer. More intimate. I felt myself getting excited, but it was a lonely kind of excitement, because I knew I wouldn’t pursue her. My relationships over the years had all been like Maggie—infatuation, followed by torrid lovemaking, ending all too quickly in irreconcilable difference or sometimes just plain old indifference. Mary was different. She was a woman I deeply respected, and what I felt for her might not be so easily dissolved in a few one-night stands.

  Or maybe I was just too scared to try because of the possible part of me that would be vulnerable in a relationship. A real relationship.

  “I feel like we need to be there for each other. But . . . you’re keeping me in the dark.”

  She leaned closer, and before I realized it, her lips were inches from mine. I couldn’t resist and closed the gap between our mouths, kissing her deeply. She moaned and relaxed, nearly wilting in my embrace.

  She pulled away. “That was nice.”

  I nodded, trying to resist the urge to kiss her again.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “You can trust me.”

  I took a deep breath. “I know. But like I said, this is short-lived. We shouldn’t make too much of it. In a couple of days, I’ll be back in North Carolina.”

  She looked genuinely sad. Sad enough that she attempted another kiss. But this time I dodged it and opened the door. I’d given in to Maggie so many years ago, and I turned that to utter disaster. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  “Earl . . .” she said, but I didn’t hear the rest as I closed the door.

  30

  For about four months, Maggie and I were hot and heavy, whenever and however we could. Which was a lot. Teenagers are nothing if not resourceful about finding ways to have sex, especially when they live in an almost dystopian world of repression like the mountains we came up in.

  Later, I wondered how long she knew before telling me. Probably a good bit. A month, maybe more. When she did get around to mentioning it, she seemed almost casual about it, resigned to her fate.

  I was anything but.

  We’d just finished a hot and sweaty session in the high grass beside Ghost Creek, and she was pulling her dress back on when I commented on her breasts.

  “They’re getting bigger,” I said.

  She nodded. “Other parts of me too.”

  “Yeah? What other parts?”

  She rubbed her belly. I was too stupid to catch on.

  “You look great.”

  “What are you going to do?” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “When you get out of high school? When you grow up?”

  “Get out of here. That’s for sure. What about you?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Well, let’s do it together then.”

  She smiled. “What about tonight?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah. We could leave right now.”

  It was actually an enticing suggestion. But even I realized how unrealistic it was.

  “We don’t have any money,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said and sighed. She looked grief stricken.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m afraid things are going to change. With you and me. With us.”

  I shrugged. “I ain’t planning on changing.”

  “But you will.”

  “Naw.”

  She was silent for a few moments.
I watched as she pulled her dress up and examined her belly.

  “You ain’t fat,” I said. “You look healthy. Hell, you ought to eat more.”

  She seemed to ignore my statement. Her thoughts seemed far away.

  “You believe in any of the stuff your daddy preaches?”

  “What? Hell no. You know that. Any man who hands his son a live cottonmouth is full of shit.”

  She nodded, but her face seemed uncertain. Usually, she loved to hear me curse my father. The rebellion turned her on.

  “What if some of it’s right though? What if what we’re doing is wrong?”

  “Don’t feel wrong to me.”

  She said nothing, just continued to rub her belly.

  That was when it finally hit me.

  “Maggie?”

  “Yeah, Earl?”

  “Is something happening?”

  She just looked at me, but the answer was in her eyes.

  * * *

  Our meetings became less frequent. Part of it was just being freaked out by the whole idea of being a father. Not to mention her moods. Sometimes she was happy—nearly gleeful—but other times she was so morose, she’d talk about killing herself and the baby. There was no one for me to go to. There was no one to help.

  As she started to show more, I knew it was only a matter of time before everyone in our tight-knit community knew. I spent sleepless nights trying to figure out how to handle it. I was scared and weak. I didn’t want to be a man; I wanted to be a boy again and leave her to handle it alone.

  But something inside me wouldn’t let it go down that way. There was a burgeoning morality I felt inside me. Gone was the fire-insurance morality Daddy had tried so hard to instill in me. Now I simply wanted to do the right thing because I knew living with myself afterward would be too difficult if I didn’t. Maybe there was still a kind of selfishness there, a self-centeredness that crippled me into only seeing things within the framework of my own life, but I was still convinced it was better than the empty promises Daddy preached.

  I went to Maggie and told her I wanted to marry her.

  But I was too late. When I arrived at her house, her father greeted me at the door. At the time, he’d only just been elected sheriff, but he was still an overwhelming and intimidating presence. Shaw punched me in the stomach and then stood me back up. He dragged me from his doorstep—physically dragged me—all the way to the church.

  We went inside and found my father in prayer. When he looked up and saw me, he stiffened.

  “I hope you brought him here because he’s had a change of heart,” Daddy said.

  “No,” Shaw said. “It’s something else.” And then, lowering his voice because even the sheriff was a little afraid of my father, added, “It ain’t good.”

  “Well, go on,” he said. “An unrepentant sinner always bears dark fruit. If we deceive ourselves and pretend to not sin, then there is nothing but darkness inside us.”

  “Amen,” Shaw said. “His darkness has infected my daughter.”

  Daddy took this in, nodding his head very slowly. “He and your girl have had relations? How do you know?”

  “She’s come up pregnant, RJ. It took us half the day, but she finally told us he was one of them.”

  I think I gasped out loud. Daddy looked surprised too, and it took a lot for a person’s sin to surprise him. He expected the worst in everyone.

  “Did you say ‘one of them’?”

  “I did, RJ. I don’t know where we went wrong with her.”

  Daddy nodded. He didn’t look at me. I felt more like the physical embodiment of a sin than a son. I hated him more right then than I had ever hated him before.

  “Who were the others?” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Daddy said. “You done your part. You lay with a slut. Pure and simple. You’re just digging your path to hell piece by piece.” It was the first thing he’d said to me since the day he kicked me in the face. It wasn’t the last though.

  He turned his attention back to Shaw. “Round up the other boys. I’ll counsel them. Talk them through repentance. And then bring her to me on the morn. You know she’ll have to do more than repent for this, don’t you, Hank?”

  Shaw looked at the floor.

  “Hank?”

  “Yeah, RJ. I trust your wisdom on it. I must have done something wrong.”

  My father shook his head. “Don’t you worry, Hank. Most of the time, this kind of behavior can be traced to the mother. Besides, the one standing beside you is the one we need to focus on. An unrepentant sinner can infect an entire church. A community. Take him back to my house. Tell Josephine to put him in his room and not to let him out until I get home.”

  “Got it,” Hank said.

  He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the sanctuary as roughly as he’d pulled me in. Daddy stayed at the church most of the night, and I was still sitting up in my bed, alone and seething, when I heard him come in quietly, lumber down the hallway, and pause ever so briefly at my door before moving on.

  31

  After a night of heavy drinking with Rufus, I woke up late.

  I might have slept longer, but the sun came in hot through the stained glass, and I rose to find Rufus and Goose gone. I assumed they’d taken another walk and spent the next hour exploring what was left of the church, piecing together old memories.

  I kept coming back to two places—both nearby: The small corner in the front where I’d lain for five days, oblivious to the pain waiting for me on the other side. The other place was not far away from there, just outside the church’s double doors.

  I’d stood there and addressed the entire church once.

  I shuddered at the memory, the feelings of naked inadequacy as the congregation turned their eyes on me. The surge of adrenaline that I’d felt when I finally spoke the truth.

  The painful realization that there were two things that often followed the truth: freedom and pain.

  I’d had both, if only for a moment, and for that moment, I felt as if I’d been redeemed.

  But not now. Now I felt as if I was covered in the blood of my family, that I bore not only my own sins—which were more than enough—but also the sins of my father and brother and, if possible, the sins of an entire church.

  Realizing I had to leave the church or I would start drinking again, I pulled on my boots and walked outside. The day was already hot. Hot and dry. So dry it made my throat hurt. I glanced at the rental truck and figured I’d need to do something about that soon. It had already been five days.

  I made a quick call to book it for another week, and when I hung up, I decided it was a good deadline. If I couldn’t figure things out by then, I’d have to go back home.

  At least that was what I told myself.

  I drove down the mountain, thinking I’d head toward Jessamine’s for breakfast, but I never made it to the bar.

  At the bottom of Pointer, I noticed several sheriff deputy vehicles with their lights flashing. A group of deputies had gathered near the side of the road and were looking out over a jungle of kudzu and vines that crept from the road and over what appeared to be an old structure and the surrounding trees.

  I spotted Mary standing next to Hank Shaw. She appeared upset, as if she’d just been reprimanded.

  I watched as she raised a finger and pointed up past the kudzu to a little shack I’d passed dozens of times since coming home but had not really paid any attention to until now. It was in bad condition, and it appeared to have been years since anyone had occupied it.

  Stopping my truck a little past the line of sheriff’s vehicles, I got out and squinted into the morning sun for a better look. There appeared to be a trail in the kudzu—a sort of worn path—that led back up toward Pointer Mountain in one direction and past the shack toward Ring Mountain in the other. The path was barely discernible from the road. In fact, even standing where I was, looking down at the kudzu along the road, it was hardly noticeable. But it was there. Just the slightest depression in
the vines.

  Despite being overwhelmingly curious about what was happening, I decided it would be best to keep my distance and hope to get a better look later. I was heading back to my truck when I heard a siren chirp.

  I ignored it the first time, but then a deputy shouted after me, “Get down on the ground!”

  I dropped quickly and lay flat, cursing under my breath.

  The deputy jogged over and put his boot on my back.

  “Who are you?”

  “Just driving by. Stopped to see what the commotion was about. You fellas find something?”

  “I’m going to repeat my question. You’ve already ignored me once. Wouldn’t do to ignore me again. Now who are you?”

  “Marcus. My name’s Earl Marcus. I’m from Carolina. Just visiting.”

  “Marcus, huh? Any relation to Lester or RJ?”

  I thought about lying. Hell, I even opened my mouth, fully intending to say no, but then I heard Shaw’s voice call out.

  “What’s happening over there, Roger?”

  “Caught this one snooping around.”

  I waited, listening as several people approached. I was turned the wrong way. The only thing I had a good view of was the kudzu. I looked at the path again. It was barely noticeable. But it seemed important. Why would someone trek through there? It was a goddamn jungle, probably filled with all kinds of critters and bugs.

  “Oh, Lord.” It was Mary. I turned my head. She was standing beside Shaw, who was shaking his head.

  “Get him up.”

  The deputy named Roger pulled me to my feet. He was a short, barrel-chested man with small eyes and heavy jowls and a thick neck. He glared at me, making it very clear he wasn’t impressed.

  Shaw looked at Mary. “Why is he here?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, Sheriff.”

  “Don’t lie to me, girl.”

  “She ain’t ly—”

  Shaw turned on me viciously. “You close your mouth!”

  “I’m not lying. We haven’t talked yet. I was going to explain to him about our conversation earlier today, but I haven’t had an opportunity yet.”