by Billy Coffey
Abel shakes his head, afraid to say the thing he must. “I don’t understand.”
“Do not turn away,” the thing that is Reverend Johnny says, “for the way is dark. It is dark.”
The light in his eyes narrows to a beam. Johnny Mills remains aloft only a breath longer. He is then jerked higher, far above the car, and it is as if he is flicked away like a nuisance by a great and unobserved hand. His body buckles forward before being flung into the darkness. Abel hears a cry of shock and pain and lets loose one of his own. He spins, hobbles his way quick to the side of the barn. Nothing of him feels guilt at leaving the preacher there, alone and broken in the night. Nothing of Abel begs him to turn back and offer what aid he can. He only runs. He runs and runs, cursing legs that do not work and hips that make the world tilt and tumble.
PART III
TREASURE
-1-
It is with a glad heart that Lisa Shifflett greets this morning. Early sun floats through the window looking out onto their little backyard and the field beyond. Light puddles into a square spot on the kitchen table that frames the day’s first cup of coffee and a half-eaten bowl of oatmeal. Dare she admit it, the word she finds to describe what she feels is one she’s struggled with these past years:
Hope.
She is not proud of what happened last night, though she cannot argue with the results. Not only has she secured enough charity to pay off the bills at both the market and the pharmacy, there is even a good bit left over. To hide away or (she smiles again) maybe splurge on something nice. A new Going Out dress, maybe. New shoes for Abel. Maybe even a momma-son date to the movies in Camden. The matinee, of course—no need to get carried away.
Her mood only dampens some when she glances down the narrow hall to the first closed door on the left.
It was strange the way Abel acted last night. Not that Lisa believed their trip would result in any other behavior from her boy, and really she would be bothered much more if Abel hadn’t acted strange at all. She has long heard of the revivals that go on in the hill country but took them all as a bit of truth stretched long. That opinion has since changed. All the dancing and cavorting, that singing. A mob mentality is the phrase Lisa finds, which is just what people like the Reverend Johnny Mills need in order for their tricks to work. And then Abel stepping out into the aisle at the end. What had that been all about?
The way she’d found him after finishing her talk with that last preacher, that had been strangest of all. Standing there trembling as though he’d been racked by cold, pale as chalk dust. Silent all the way home and not a word when he went to bed, not so much as a “Toots love.”
Lisa knows the reason for that: because she went begging. It’s because she took advantage of people all fired up to do the Lord’s work in bringing healing to the world by putting herself and her boy right in front of them all. And was there really anything wrong in that? No. Abel may think so, but Lisa knows different. Knows better. All of those people had wanted to help—Lisa had batted an eye here and there but had twisted no arms—and she was in need. Her son was in need. And in the end everyone came out happy, the ones who had given and the ones given to. That’s what she’ll tell Abel. It’s good for the boy to know how things are. No sense letting him grow up wrapped inside some innocent fantasy. The world is a hard place, and always will be.
All that will be for later, though. Tonight. For now, Lisa sips her coffee and eats her breakfast and relishes her sense of victory. This day has found her bright—hopeful—and yet one morning of cheer isn’t enough to rid Lisa of a tiredness that has long soaked her bones. Her apron is wrinkled, still stained with yesterday’s meatloaf and gravy. The familiar bun in her hair, held tight by an assortment of pins and a white bow, makes her feel older than her years.
Yet even this exhaustion carries a kind of ease. She is alone for now, isolated from the crowds at the diner and from Abel as well, leaving her precious time to be only herself. These moments come few—the ride to work and back, the few breaks Roy allows, those seconds in the post office before turning the key and hoping not to find another bill she cannot pay and no letter from Fairhope—but these are when Lisa Shifflett is free to adopt the persona of her truest self. She must always bear a countenance of strength with her son, thin and fragile as it may be. She must push through or climb over whatever obstacle wedges itself between her and the better life she craves. Some, she knows, would call that pluck. Lisa considers it more a defiance against her own past and present, against her everything.
She hears the hardwood snap and looks up. Abel’s door is open only a crack. A single eye peers out.
“There you are,” she says. “I was gonna let you sleep in. First day of summer and all.”
The door doesn’t open wider. “Guess I got used to getting up early.”
“Guess so.” Lisa pushes the chair beside her out with a foot and pats the table. “Wanted to talk to you a minute anyway. Thought it’d wait till tonight, but I guess now’s best. This way it won’t be on my mind all day.”
Abel remains in place. The door opens only a crack more, as though he is weighing options that aren’t there. He slumps rather than walks to the table. Limping (as he always will) as he passes the pencil marks drawn into the corner of the wall that have measured his height, one line dated and then another and another, then ones so scrunched together that the dates couldn’t fit.
“Want some breakfast?”
“No’m.”
“You okay? You didn’t say much on the way home last night. Not much at all.”
“Tired, I guess,” Abel says.
“Looked more than tired to me. I came back, you was white as a ghost.”
He shrugs. “I don’t remember much.”
A lie. Lisa knows it the second Abel speaks. The boy has never lied well and knows the truth is the second rule they have—always tell the truth.
“Probably best.” She takes a bite of oatmeal and touches Abel’s arm—the good one, which will probably be the bad one sometime soon. “I know that was a trial, Abel. Especially after what happened at school. I wasn’t counting on going up there even after Mister Rexrode invited us. Then I went back to get your things, and he invited us again. More I thought about it, the more sense it made. Folk around here, they’re giving. They’ll empty their pockets right along with their minds when the mood’s right. I know that sounds mean. I had to have you there so folks could see how in need we are. It rankled my pride and I know it did yours. But there’s no harm in asking for aid when aid is needed, and I don’t got to tell you it’s needed right now.”
Abel only sits, staring at the table.
It is as if a noose has been slipped around his neck and a foot stands ready to kick the chair from beneath him.
“You didn’t take me up there for healing, then?” he asks.
“You think that’s why we went?”
Abel doesn’t say.
“I’d give anything in the world for that to happen, Abel. I would. But it’s just not going to. I just went for help.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “Asking for help.”
“I’m glad you see it that way. I was worried you wouldn’t. Spent all night tossing and turning, thinking how scared you looked. Must’ve been hard on you.”
“They didn’t see me. Hardly anybody did.” This, unfortunately, is no lie. “I didn’t mind it much. It was fine.”
Lisa chuckles a “Fine? Don’t know about fine,” and takes another bite. When Abel shrugs, she stops chewing but holds her smile. “You didn’t really believe all that stuff, did you?”
“I don’t know. Did you?”
“Only thing that was last night, Abel, was a show. Just Reverend Johnny and Preacher Keen up there waving their arms around like they’re conductors and everybody else instruments. People like that, they peddle sin. They sow it. Don’t always reap it as they should, but they sow it.”
“What’s sin?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “
All those things we do that we know is wrong but can’t help it, or sometimes can. Bible says there’s all sorts of sin.”
“You don’t believe in the Bible,” Abel says.
“Don’t need to believe in religion to believe in sin, sweetheart, or where to spot it. All them people healed last night? They might be better today or the next or the one after, but what desperation made them walk up that stage’ll come back. It always does.”
Lisa decides to end things here. Speaking more might only frighten Abel. He already looks awful pale, though maybe that’s just his arm hurting.
“But that’s none of our problems, we got our own. I never got a cent from that young preacher man last night. Only thing he gave me’s his phone number, which I’ll never call. Said it was for ‘praying purposes,’ can you believe that? Only hands that man wants to lay on me ain’t got healing in mind. But I got enough from Preacher Keen and the woman one from here to get us sitting pretty for a while. Where’s it?”
Abel can’t look at her.
“I looked in your pockets last night,” she says. “It wasn’t there, and you were so wore out I didn’t bother asking. But go get it real quick. I need to stop by the market after work to square things with Darnell, then I thought we might take in a movie. What you think? Bet there’s some superhero thing playing.”
“I gave it all to you,” Abel whispers. “Last night on the way back.”
“No, you didn’t.” Lisa’s smile yields to something between a grin and a frown. There is fear and panic in her next words and a fervent hope that somehow this is all a misunderstanding that will soon be made right. “Abel, you didn’t give me that money.”
“I think I need to go back to bed. My arm hurts.”
“Abel—”
“It was a lot.” He still can’t look at her. “You gave me that money and it was a lot. That’s a big responsibility for a kid. How was I supposed to know all that was for our bills?”
“Oh my god, Abel. What did you do?”
“You could have given it to anybody. You could have kept it. Nobody was gonna go through your pockets—”
He flinches at the sound of Lisa’s hand striking the table, rattling her cup and bowl and spoon. It sounds like a chair being kicked out from under somebody.
Her voice comes soft and shaking: “Abel, please. What did you do with our money?”
“I gave it to Reverend Johnny.”
It appears as though Abel can’t decide which surprises him more, that he has said it with such ease or that he has said it as a scream through a curtain of tears. Now he looks at her. Not so as to punctuate his confession with a defiance of his own but so she can see his hurt. Lisa, however, sees none of it. She only stares at her balled fists, vaguely aware of the bit of oatmeal clinging to her bottom lip.
“When?” she asks.
“After the show. I seen Reverend Johnny sneak off. I thought you took me up there to get me fixed, that’s why I stood up. But Reverend Johnny said I don’t got belief. He said he’d give me a word because that don’t need belief at all, just money, and I thought a word was good enough”—spitting it all, wailing the words—“and then something happened to’m, like something got in’m, and it scared me so I ran.”
For a long while Lisa thinks the two of them will remain that way forever, her frozen in place with that dangly bit of oatmeal, him bawling into his cast. It would be her own hell. A person doesn’t need heaven to know hell, just like a person doesn’t need religion to know sin.
“It’s gone?” she asks. “Our money’s gone? How could you do something like that?” Not yelling it, Lisa would never yell at her boy. It’s more a whispering of the words and a fear of his answer. “How could you do something like that?”
And now Abel says something so ridiculous, so utterly incomprehensible, that Lisa can barely translate it in her mind:
“There was a hundred cars on yesterday’s train.”
“What?”
“There ain’t never been a hundred cars, Momma.”
Anger builds now. Lisa tries to swallow it but finds it only leaks up again, stinging the backs of her eyes, making Abel’s face shimmer. “I don’t understand what that means.”
“I thought it meant something. I thought it was a magic, like Reverend Johnny.”
His explanation—if it can even be called such—produces in Lisa the very opposite of what she knows Abel hopes. The first tear falls wet and hard.
“Magic? Abel, magic? Do you see any magic here?” She points to the stack of mail on the table, all those bills. “Do you see it here?” To the refrigerator he must know is empty and the cupboards more bare than not. “Abel, we needed that money. They’re going to take everything from us.”
“Maybe we can find Reverend Johnny,” he pleads. “We can get it back.”
“Reverend Johnny’s probably as clear from here as anybody can get.”
“Then maybe the preachers can give us more.”
“No, they won’t.” She swipes at her eyes, not caring that Abel sees, that he’s worried and afraid. “You think they’ll give me more today after giving me all they had yesterday?”
She folds her arms across her chest, right where the meatloaf has dried, and bows her head.
“I’m sorry, Momma,” he says. “Please don’t cry.”
She moves for her purse and keys. “I have to go to work.”
“Momma.”
“I have to go.”
The last noise that shakes the Shifflett house this morning comes when Lisa slams the front door. Her tears come harder now, a weeping so fierce that she begins to fear for her own fragile body.
Far away, the morning train whistles.
-2-
He stands as tall as he can manage in front of the door. Far away, too far for him to either notice or care, the morning train calls.
The task of cleaning begins only when Abel realizes his momma will not be coming back anytime soon, cheeks wet and eyes a painful red, to say she’s sorry. Nor, he guesses, should she. Sometimes he thinks he’s being slowly changed into another person, someone wholly different, with a heart full of impossibilities and a brain just large enough to believe them. Yesterday morning it was Chris. Then Reverend Johnny last night. Abel handing over all that money they needed for what may as well have been magic beans.
Clean, that’s the only thing he can do. Yard work (especially anything involving a whirring metal blade) is forbidden by Lisa, though she is more than appreciative of the dusting and vacuuming and straightening up that Abel provides. The dusting and straightening up part is accomplished in little more than an hour. Vacuuming takes a bit longer—not easy, given only one good arm.
The phone never rings. A part of Abel thinks it will, or at least hopes. There has never been a day he has not longed for his mother’s voice, the chime in it and the way only she can make him laugh, but what he wants even more than those things now is to know he is not the burden he feels himself to be. To know he isn’t the reason why they struggle so and why they’re so poor, why his momma always looks so tired. That it’s the world does those things to them because it’s so big and so mean, and not the fact that he was born broken.
By eight thirty, both the entire front of the house and Abel’s room sparkle, but even the sheen of sweat in his hair is not enough to budge him from despair. He cleans the kitchen next, then the bathroom. Then sweeps the front porch. Lisa’s tiny bedroom is last. He’s tired by now and in need of a good rest or at least a visit to Dumb Willie. Still, he pushes on. It is, Abel knows, his way of saying he’s sorry. Sorry for losing that money (though not for asking a word from Reverend Johnny; Abel is still unsure what exactly happened behind that barn last night, but he knows it was something worth paying a hefty price to witness), and sorry for what he did to Chris.
But here’s the thing—Abel knows none of it will be good enough. He could clean every trailer on Holly Springs, it wouldn’t make anything right.
There’s this as well: on
e room remains a mess. The wood door across from his momma’s bedroom is dented and scratched and hangs off center so that the top edge always sticks to the jamb. Abel hasn’t been in there for months—Christmastime, if he remembers right, when he and his momma dug out the tree.
Abel can’t go in there alone. That’s the rule. Lisa allows her son free range of the kitchen and living room and everywhere else, even the yard and garage, both of which are filled with all manner of sharp and tangled things. Never here, though. And Abel has always obeyed. It is not the threat of what will happen if he breaks that rule that keeps him away, but the fear of what could get broken in a single wrong step. Yet Abel also understands there are times when rules must be broken so a greater point can be made. Or, in this case, a bigger apology.
The knob turns easily enough, though the door itself budges only when he levels his shoulder against it. Inside, the air is stale and dark. Abel keeps his feet in the hallway and reaches in with his good arm, feeling for the switch. He hears a clack before light bursts from a single bulb hanging from the ceiling.
It has always been a play on words, this place that seems to exist in every home but goes by a myriad of names. Dumb Willie calls his family’s version of it the junk room. Abel has heard others refer to such rooms as the spare room and the storage room and even the generic bedroom, all of which he discards as an utter lack of imagination to describe the place where families hoard the detritus of their lives. He himself came up with wreck room. The phrase possesses a subtle humor that Dumb Willie is not able to grasp and Lisa has never seemed interested in, though Abel is satisfied that his momma has adopted the term. And really, what better name can there be for a place that contains such an eclectic arrangement of discarded toys and outgrown clothing, old receipts and broken pieces of furniture, and so many boxes stacked along the walls that they appear as walls themselves?
He sinks to his knees, knowing that will force him to navigate with extra caution. The carpet is an ancient brown that hides most of the dirt but none of the smell. A wide enough path has been created through the room to the window. That is his first task. He yanks hard on the shade, drowning the walls in morning.
