by Billy Coffey
“Don’t you worry none,” she says. “Ain’t a thing wrong with who you are, Abel Shifflett. I promise that. That was a brave thing to tell me that, and brave’s what you got to be. It’s a long way yet to go, and the way is dark.”
“What?” Abel feels a tremble through his body that has nothing to do with tears. He lifts his head out from her arms. “What did you just say?”
“The way is dark. We got to be careful.”
Far to their right the trees shake, scattering the birds. All sense of dread is forgotten at the sound of Dumb Willie’s yell. He bursts into sight in the altogether, rolls of fat and muscle rippling at the long strides of his milk-white legs, his member swinging wild as he races past the spot where Abel and Dorothy sit. He leaps into the air and tucks his legs, the call coming “Canna . . . bull!” as gravity snatches him downward.
The sound of him breaching the water comes just before the splash, which not only reaches Abel and Dorothy but soaks them. Dumb Willie’s head rises from the pond. There is another whoop, a sound of pure release, and a smile that would shake light into even the darkest heart.
Dorothy whispers, “Let’s get him.” She gives Abel a nudge and leaps to her feet, not bothering (to Abel’s sudden dismay) to take off her own clothes as she plunges into the water, splashing Dumb Willie’s face and head. Abel swipes at his eyes and joins them. He gets in only as far as his ankles and holds his cast high to keep it from getting wet, though he kicks enough water into Dumb Willie’s face to make him choke.
For the first time in a long while and perhaps even forever, laughter fills this small patch of forgotten wood in the midst of a bustling mountain town. The noise is full and whole and worthy of wonder. It is magic, this laughter, and one not so small as to slip through Abel’s knowing. The feel of it lodges into the cracked places of his insides where not even his brittle bones dwell, telling him things will be all right now. Wherever that dark road leads, Dorothy and Dumb Willie will travel with him. And Abel’s daddy will be at its end, and healing, and the world will be made right. Yes, that is how Abel knows it will be. Just like Reverend Johnny told him and like the Preacher Keen said.
Because most every road is a dark one. Especially the ones that hold a light at their end.
-6-
Never before have so many people come together on this stretch of dirt and gravel. Whole lines of vehicles packed to either side of the road, clogging the driveway, abandoned in front of the Dead End sign and in the empty field across the way. Old pickups caked with mud and manure, faded cars with hand-printed windows, a pale yellow church bus. Sheriff Barnett’s black Blazer parked with one wheel in the ditch, evidence of his hasty arrival. And still more are coming. Lisa hears the noise of engines and tires struggling over the potholes, heading her way. Word is out.
She sits at the small table on the porch, a cigarette trembling in her right hand. Men approach the front steps but dare no farther. They hold their hats in their hands. Their lips move. She acknowledges them with an absent nod. The able-bodied among them
(Quite a word, she thinks—able-bodied)
will go off as soon as they see to her and join the search through town and the outlying woods. The rest—women mostly, mothers themselves—will keep behind to offer their prayers, their company, their silence.
It has not yet been four hours since she woke groggy and tired to find Abel’s bed empty. Everything since has blurred into one continuous nightmare. There was no sign of Abel in the backyard, no note on the kitchen table. She called Charlie Rexrode first—Charlie of all people, as though she’d known even then that whatever had happened could be traced back to Friday at school. Roy was next. Then, finally and once Lisa had found something of her senses, Sheriff Barnett. Charlie and Roy never answered. Both were at church by then, readying themselves to worship a God who is supposed to watch after sick little boys. Jake had picked up, however, his Sunday already interrupted. He was over at the Farmer house. Rita had called, saying Dumb Willie had up and gotten himself lost.
The sheriff had questions when he arrived, looking worried but acting calm. By then Lisa’s world had begun melting at the edges. Jake wanted to see Abel’s room, check for signs of intrusion. Lisa could think of nothing missing (“Except my son, Jake, where is my son?”) and found no comfort at all in that Dumb Willie was gone as well, nor even Jake’s guess (or had it been his hope?) that the two of them had likely gone off together to spend the morning fishing or exploring. Lisa had tried explaining that wasn’t possible. Abel always left a note when he was going off somewhere with Dumb Willie. He would say where he was going and when he was coming back, and would always sign those notes Toots love.
Then Jake had asked in a soft, embarrassed way if Lisa really thought they could be far, Abel being how he is. Lisa’s insistence, yet again, that Abel would never do such a thing without letting her know had brought further questions:
Abel been acting different lately?
Anything going on?
You two having any problems?
Jake not bothering to write down Lisa’s answers—no one can transcribe gibberish—only nodding every so often when she happened upon a word he could recognize. School. Chris. Money. Reverend Johnny.
Chris? Jake had asked. Chris Jones? You mean Royce’s boy?
She’d answered yes, and that was when Jake’s act of stoicism crumbled.
Royce called on my way over here. Said Chris is gone too. He wanted to know if I’d send the boy home if I saw him in town.
And so they’d come. Word had gone out and pews had emptied, townsfolk fanning out to the Farmer place and the Joneses’ in the hill country to the dead end on Holly Springs. There are faces here Lisa doesn’t know, hundreds of them, along with three vans from the television stations in Camden and Charlottesville. Their cameras are up, but the news-people are kept away. Lisa sees women who came to be strong and to comfort and men who gather in small groups, talking to Jake on the radio, dividing up the search. They promise Lisa all will be well even as most arrive with pistols strapped to their hips and long rifles slung over their shoulders, belying the unspoken belief (unspoken to her, at any rate) that something foul has happened. Something other than a misunderstanding and more than a miscommunication. Not Abel trying to wake Lisa that morning to say he’s going out fishing with Dumb Willie, Lisa so tired she’d forgotten. Not Dumb Willie seeking a respite from a “ma” and “da-ee” who treat their boy with as much dignity and care as one of their farm implements. Not Chris out doing what spoilt boys do, killing small animals or starting fires.
Or taking revenge.
Lisa curls her shoulders as a chill runs over her, and the women gathered fan themselves in the June heat. Juliet Creech, the preacher woman who two nights earlier had given Lisa fifty dollars in front of an old barn in the middle of nowhere, now brings a glass of water. She places it in front of Lisa and sits in the chair beside. Takes Lisa’s hand.
“Don’t you worry,” she says. “We’ll find them. We take care of our own, so you be strong now. You have faith.”
Of faith, Lisa has none. But she will be strong. She has always been strong.
In the distance comes the sound of baying dogs, hounds brought in to catch Dumb Willie’s scent. Jake has taken men from the Farmer home along the shortcut to Holly Springs. The woods are thick but not vast. Lisa looks up, meaning to follow the sound. She glimpses Abel’s empty window instead.
I must be strong, she thinks. For Abel and for me and for all these women here, these women who not seven years ago went about town whispering I was an abuser because they know enough of living to love but not enough to be weary. I must be strong so they won’t know my own wish—that my son is somewhere in those woods hurt, unable to move or call, and not that he’s run off because he thinks he’s become a burden. He’s so clumsy, my Abel. Only child I know can hurt himself sleeping, and if You let me find him, I promise I’ll do better. I’ll be a good momma. I’ll tell him about those letters. I’ll sa
y everything.
Everything.
That howling, louder now. Lisa stands and moves to the edge of the porch as three dogs and a small group of men break through the trees. The men are dragged to the front porch, the dogs’ noses pressed hard against the earth. They veer off, barking and slobbering, toward the field at the side of the house.
The women do not move until Lisa leaps down the steps. They proceed at no more than a steady walk; anything more will only reveal the sense of dismay that has crept into them all. In the field, Sheriff Barnett raises a sack the dogs have found in the tall grass. Shouts from farther on, where the railroad comes to a curve.
Now Lisa runs. She tells herself she must be strong and yet she runs. Past a swing set Abel never used and toys long unplayed with, beyond where the dandelions turn their yellow faces to the sun. Stumbling over hidden rocks that surely would have tripped Abel, leaving him hobbled and screaming for his momma even as his momma slept. Lisa runs as the others run after her. She runs and sees the men at the curve, standing glum and silent over the unmoving shape lying at their feet. A boy’s body, plump and disfigured, thrown away like the plastic bottles and empty cans that litter this part of town.
Chris, someone screams, and God and No and Call Royce. Lisa lifts her eyes farther up the tracks. More men are there, Jake running from the field. He comes to a skid among the gravel and ties and stands there staring down. His hands rise in an expression of either shock or surrender, knocking his hat askance.
“Abel?” Lisa takes a step in that direction as the others move to where Chris Jones lies, the spoilt boy who in death will no doubt be remembered as precocious and misunderstood. “Abel?”
Quicksand forms beneath her feet, just as quicksand was in the narrow hallway leading to Charlie’s office and is everywhere always, at the diner and the house, making her sink, sink. Jake turns his head. He sees Lisa coming and begins running toward her, waving his arms. Lisa hears his screams of No but does not listen, the men at the tracks stunned, one of them turning to vomit in the verdant grass.
“Abel?”
A shirt, a leg of blue jeans. The tracks smeared with red paint and litter and no, not paint but blood. Not a leg of jeans but a leg, the litter a tuft of blond hair and—
“Abel? Abel?”
Jake slams into her, screaming for Lisa to turn away, but she cannot, she is Abel’s momma and What happened to my boy? The smell of this place, a coppery, metallic stench. The sound of a million buzzing flies. And here is where Lisa Shifflett’s world ends, in this spot of grass and steel that has become a grave. She feels the air taken and the day grow dim. Jake’s voice is an echo in her mind. The last thing Lisa sees before she faints is the hardest irony of all.
It is the only unmangled thing left of Abel and all of him she will bury—the arm that lies at the track’s edge, wrapped in a yellow cast.
-7-
Whether it is a fact entirely unknown to others or one merely dismissed as absurd, there are things that do not escape Dumb Willie’s notice. A great many of them, as it happens, most of which are presented to him with a frequency that borders on the everyday yet that seem to be passed over by most people—smart people—with a stunning ignorance. It is this ability that allows Dumb Willie to see the hidden things that flow and weave at the underside of life. It is also this specialness that has allowed him to bask in a secret sense of pride that extends over nearly everyone. This includes even A Bull (whom Dumb Willie regards as the smartest person he has ever known), even if A Bull is dumb in his own peculiar way. Not dumb like Dumb Willie, but like how people in the dark are dumb because they can’t ever see what it is they run into. A Bull’s so dumb, he don’t even know he’s dead.
Dumb Willie smiles at the picture that forms in his mind—people running into things because they can’t see. The image is a fuzzy one, as most are, not unlike how the tee-vee gets fuzzy whenever Dumb Willie’s ma turns on the blender, yet it remains sharp enough to coax a laugh. It is a high sound that carries across the pond and into the trees, all the way to where Do-tee has gone in search of supper. Dumb Willie’s hungry but he likes these woods. He’s starving but not afraid.
It’s a venchure they’re on. Venchures are fun.
“What you laughing for?” A Bull say.
“Nuffin.”
They’re walking around the pond, exploring. A Bull, he ain’t talking. Dumb Willie thinks A Bull is quiet because he leaves no footprints behind when he walks. He looks behind and see his own footprints, pressed down hard into the mud, but A Bull don’t have footprints.
Do-tee’s got footprints, but Do-tee’s not her name. Do-tee’s name’s a seecrit.
Maybe A Bull’s quiet because he’s got to walk in soggy clothes. A Bull jumped in the river with all his clothes on, he’s so dumb.
Dumb Willie laughs again.
“We should get those rocks from the woods,” A Bull say. “We cain’t get’m around the water, or else they might blow up. I read it.”
“Oh. Kay A. Bull.”
Into the trees they go. It’s not the ones Do-tee went in but the others, ones on this side of the pond. A Bull says get this one, Dumb Willie, and that one, so Dumb Willie does. He hold the rocks in his arms while A Bull looks at his letters. A Bull likes those letters, they mean he ain’t a bass terd.
It’s enough rocks they get and so they go back to where they swam. A Bull lays the rocks in a circle while Dumb Willie finds dry wood, which he brings back by the armful and stacks nearby. Now some of the stack is brought into the middle of the rocks. Dumb Willie puts the smaller pieces in first, under a mound of dried moss. The larger ones are next, set against the small like a teepee.
“That’s good, Dumb Willie,” A Bull say. “Where’d you learn to do that?”
“Da’ee tole me. He say build the . . .” It’s a word. “Fyre. He say build the fyre, Dumb Willie, but I din’t . . . do it . . . right.”
“What’d he do when you didn’t build the fire right?”
He whisper, “It’s’a. Seecrit,” and puts a filthy finger over his lips, because Dumb Willie won’t say what his da’ee does. Not even to A Bull he won’t. It’s a bad thing what his da’ee does, and sometimes Dumb Willie thinks A Bull has no business going to find a daddy because some daddies are better lost. He hopes A Bull’s daddy ain’t one a those.
“It’s okay,” A Bull say, “you ain’t got to tell me.” He thinks a little and adds, “You ain’t tole Dorothy, have you?”
“Nuh.”
“You tell her anything yet, Dumb Willie? Like last night on the train?”
It’s a lie to tell him. It’s a seecrit. Dumb Willie doesn’t say anything.
“I like Dorothy. You like her too, Dumb Willie?”
“Yez.”
“But listen here, okay?” A Bull puts his good hand over Dumb Willie’s. “We got to be careful, even with Dorothy. People’s gone be looking for us soon. We got to get far away ’cause a what you did to Chris.”
“Chris. Stinks.”
“Stinks less’n you, Dumb Willie,” Dorothy say, and they both jump. She steps back through the edge of the trees. Dangling from one hand is a dead rabbit, already skinned. “But whoever it is, I bet he ain’t near as sweet.”
“Where’d you get that rabbit?” A Bull say.
Dorothy holds the dead thing high to her face. “You joshing me? We might be in town, Abel, but this here’s still the woods.”
“How’d you catch it?”
“Easy. Was its time is all.” She makes that grin. Dumb Willie sees it everywhere but in her eyes. It’s a pretty smile. “What’s wrong with you two?”
With Dumb Willie, nothing. He has witnessed his da’ee skinning many a rabbit and has no room in himself for disgust, hunger claiming it all. A Bull, though, has always been a bass terd. He can only look with shock upon the blood and smooth bits of muscle and fat, naked ears and those wide, blank eyes.
“How’d you get the fur off?”
“Ha!” Dorothy sho
ut. “Shoot, Abel, skinnin’ a rabbit’s about the easiest thing there is. All you do’s grab hold and yank.”
A Bull’s face goes clear white. There’s a shine in his eyes not-Do-tee says is from when he died, but the rest looks sick. Dumb Willie thinks it’s funny—here A Bull’s gone do like he made Chris, only out the top and not the bottom.
“I ain’t hungry,” A Bull say.
Dorothy dips her head like she’s done something wrong. “Sure?”
“Yeah.” A Bull’s cheeks bulge. He swallows. They bulge again. “Think I’ll just go over . . . there.”
He rises up and limps off for another part of the pond. Do-tee shrugs a little and watches, smiling like she knows a seecrit. She walks to where Dumb Willie sits and lays the rabbit there.
“That’s a good job there, Dumb Willie,” she say, making him grin and the slobber to pool at the sides of his mouth. “Let me get a match.”
She opens her leather bag and roots around, brings one out that she lights. A Bull’s still a way off, skipping stones into the water as the traffic goes by.
“Figured that’d be enough to send him scurrying,” Do-tee say. She lights the fire and blows at the flames, making them grow. Next comes the spit, built with four branches pushed into the soft ground. Now a long stick that Do-tee plunges into the rabbit’s mouth and down. It reappears from the other end brown and bloody. She smiles. “If not, guess this woulda done the trick. What’s matter?”
“You. Kill that?”
“No. That ain’t what I do. Like I said, was its time.”
She looks at him, then over to where A Bull sits. “Do you know who I am, Dumb Willie? It’s okay to say it, Abel can’t hear.”
“You the . . .” It’s a word. “Debbil.”
Do-tee laughs. It’s a good laugh that sounds like birds, like the sparrows sing in the morning. The sparrows are Dumb Willie’s favorite.
