by Wiley Cash
“What the hell happened?” he asked. He drew his pistol.
“Put that away,” I told him. I pointed down to Julie. “You need to stay right here with her,” I said. “Make sure she keeps that arm up just like it is. I’m going in to call the ambulance. You stay with her.” He knelt down beside Julie. Her chest heaved, and she started crying.
I looked over the hood of Chambliss’s car where Ben lay in front of the bumper. I couldn’t hear him choking anymore. He’d rolled his head back and to the right like he was trying to get a look at the house behind him where Jess was still hunkered down on the porch. His eyes were open wide and fixed on whatever it was he’d been trying to see.
“The ambulance is going to be here soon, Ben,” I said, but as soon as I said it I knew it wasn’t going to make any difference for him.
I looked toward the house when I heard Jess’s feet coming down the porch steps. I didn’t want him finding his mother all shot up too, so I ran up the driveway and caught him before he got all the way out into the yard. I picked him up and carried him back up the steps, and he kicked his legs and threw his arms around like he was trying to fight me. Something warm came through the front of my shirt, and I knew that he’d wet himself and it had soaked through his underwear.
“You shot my dad!” he hollered. “Daddy!” He called out for his mother too, but she was crying and didn’t answer, and I wondered if she could even hear him.
“Come on, now,” I said. “Let’s go on back inside the house. The doctors will be here soon and they’re going to fix everybody up. It’s going to be all right.”
“You shot my daddy!” he said. “I saw you!” I could feel his whole body shaking like each sob was the last and hardest he might have inside him. I held him and tried to keep his head against my chest so he wouldn’t be able to look over my shoulder and see out into the yard. Once we got inside the house, I sat him down on the sofa and pulled the curtains closed behind him and shut the front door.
“Just sit right here,” I told him. He was still crying, and his whole body shivered. He pulled his feet up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs. “Sit right here and wait one second,” I said. “I’m going to make a phone call and have the doctors here real soon. It’s going to be all right.” I stepped back away from him and looked around the front room for a phone, but I didn’t see one. I looked back at Jess. “Where’s your telephone?” He just stared up at me without saying anything, so I kept my eyes on him and kept backing away toward the kitchen. I peered in the doorway and saw a telephone hanging on the wall right inside.
I took the phone off the cradle and held it to my ear, and when I went to slip my finger into the rotary I realized how bad my hands were shaking. I dialed 911 and stretched out the telephone cord and walked as far back into the front room as it would let me. Jess was still sitting on the sofa. He had his chin resting on his knees, and his eyes were closed. When the operator came on, I identified myself and told her that we needed a couple of ambulances immediately, and, just before I was about to hang up, I looked at Jess and thought about how his mama was sitting right out there in the driveway near the husband who’d just tried to murder her, and I made a decision that surprised me more than just about anything that had happened that morning.
“Wait,” I said to the operator. “While I got you on the line, can you put me through to James Hall, over in Shelton?” I listened while the number was dialed, and then I heard a soft click before it began to ring. It must’ve rung six or seven times before he picked up. I looked down at my boots and held the phone to my ear and listened as he fumbled with the phone on his end. The clock on the table by the front door said it was 8:33 in the morning.
“Yeah?” he said. I could hear him breathing heavy into the phone, and I imagined him on the other end, his eyes closed, hoping that I’d dialed the wrong number and wouldn’t be bothering him again once I’d figured it out. “Hello,” he said. He sounded like he’d either just woken up or maybe hadn’t even been to sleep yet, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was hung over.
“Jimmy,” I said, whispering, keeping my voice as low as I could so Jess wouldn’t hear me. “It’s Clem Barefield.”
“Who?” I left the front room and walked all the way into the kitchen. I leaned against the counter and closed my eyes.
“It’s Clem Barefield,” I said again.
“What do you want?” he asked. I opened my eyes and looked around the kitchen and tried to think of what to tell him about what had happened.
“I’m over at Ben’s,” I said. “And Jess is here with me.” I paused because I figured he’d want to ask me some kind of question, but he didn’t say anything, even though I imagined that his eyes were open and he was wide awake now. “We had a little trouble over here this morning, and I just thought you should come down here and be with Jess. He needs somebody to be here with him right now, and I just didn’t know who else to call.”
“What’s happened?” he asked. His voice was clear and sharp, and I sensed something in it that hadn’t been there before—panic maybe, or fear, or both. “Why are you out there?”
“There was just some trouble,” I said. “We can talk about all that when you get here.”
“Let me talk to Ben,” he said.
“I can’t let you do that right now, Jimmy,” I said. “Just get here as soon as you can. Jess needs you here.” I could hear him moving on the other end of the line, and I thought I heard him stumble. Then the sound of something falling to the floor. He whispered something to himself under his breath.
“Jimmy,” I whispered. “Are you okay to drive? I mean, you haven’t been drinking?” The line grew quiet, and I could tell that he’d stopped moving and was standing still. I could just barely hear him breathing.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask me that,” he said. He hung up. I held the receiver to my ear until I heard the dial tone kick in, and then I turned and sat the phone back in its cradle. I understood that I’d just made the kind of phone call to Jimmy Hall that he’d never considered making to me, but that didn’t make me feel one bit better about making it, and for a minute I thought he might’ve had the right idea about trying his hardest to disappear all those years ago. I walked back into the front room and saw that Jess had his eyes open and was staring at me.
“Did you call my grandpa?”
“I did,” I said. “He’ll be here real soon.” I looked around the room and considered whether I should stand and wait or if I should sit with Jess or maybe even go back outside and get one of the paramedics to come into the house and sit with him once they arrived. Jess lay back against the sofa and folded his arms across his chest. He closed his eyes, and then he opened them slowly. They were full of tears.
“Did you call my grandpa because my daddy’s going to die?” I shook my head no and walked across the room toward him.
I thought about how I’d stared into that shotgun’s empty barrels just a few minutes before, and even though my hands were empty too I felt the heft of my pistol and the kick it gave when I fired. In my head, I heard myself say, I wish I could’ve done it all different, Jeff, but by the time I kneeled on the floor in front of him I’d caught myself. “Jess,” I said aloud. “Jess.”
THE AMBULANCES HAD KILLED THEIR SIRENS ONCE THEY’D PULLED up into the yard, and if somebody hadn’t known everything that had taken place out in the driveway that morning they would’ve thought me and Jess were just two strangers sitting together on the sofa and waiting for something to happen. I’d covered him with a blanket and gotten him a glass of water from the kitchen and some toilet paper from the bathroom, and I’d sat both on the coffee table in front of him, but he hadn’t touched either one. We’d hardly spoken since I sat down.
It was so quiet that you could almost make out the voices of the paramedics outside, and occasionally I’d hear Robby say something, but I couldn’t quite understand it. But I could just barely hear the sound of another car coming up the drivew
ay from the road, and I listened close as it stopped and somebody opened and closed its door. I knew it was Jimmy Hall, and I stood up from the couch and walked to one of the windows that looked out onto the driveway.
Chambliss’s car sat facing the house. The doors on both sides were open, and I figured the paramedics had covered Chambliss’s body by now. I could see that they’d covered Ben too where he was laying out in the gravel by the front left bumper. They’d lined up two ambulances on the passenger’s side of Chambliss’s car, and I watched a couple of paramedics strap Julie onto a gurney and lift her into the open doors of the ambulance closest to the house. Robby stood by her, and I could tell that he was talking to her, but I wondered just how much she was able to hear.
Jimmy Hall must’ve parked his truck in front of the ambulances at the bottom of the driveway. I watched him as he made his way up through the yard past them. He wasn’t wearing a hat, and his gray hair was matted down with sleep. He stopped for a minute and watched them lift Julie up into the back of the ambulance, and then he turned and stared at Chambliss’s car: the busted windshield, the blood-covered seats, the back window red with the same. When Hall walked past him, Robby turned like he was about to stop him from going any farther, but his eyes caught mine where I stood in the window. I raised my hand and motioned for him to hold off. Robby looked away from me and watched Jimmy as he walked along the side of Chambliss’s car toward the front bumper. He came around the bumper and stopped when he saw the blue sheet that covered Ben. Robby looked up at me again, and then he looked back at Jimmy Hall. He hadn’t moved yet, and Robby just turned and walked toward the cab of the ambulance that would carry Julie to the hospital.
I watched Jimmy Hall as he walked toward that blue sheet, and I watched as he kneeled down beside it. I wanted to open the front door and holler at him, let him know that he shouldn’t do it, not because I was afraid that he’d damage the crime scene or contaminate the evidence but because I knew that he might not be ready, might not ever be ready, for what he’d see under there. But I also knew that fathers want to see what’s become of their sons, and sometimes they can’t forgive themselves if they don’t. He reached out his hand and touched the sheet, but I turned away before I saw him lift it. I figured I at least owed them both the respect of that one last private moment.
Jess had opened his eyes again and was sitting on the edge of the sofa. “What’s going on outside?” he asked.
“Your grandpa’s here,” I said. I stepped away from the front door and stood in the center of the room and waited. Jess looked over at me, and then he turned and looked at the door too. We could hear Jimmy Hall coming up the porch steps and then the sound of the screen door creaking as he pulled it toward him. He opened the front door and stepped inside the house. We stood staring at each other for a second, and then he looked over at Jess.
“Hey, buddy,” he said. I heard Jess shift his weight on the sofa, and then he sniffed like he was about to cry. He stood up, and Jimmy walked across the room toward him.
“Wait,” I said. I stepped in between him and Jess, and I looked down at the fingers on Jimmy’s right hand. They looked like somebody had taken his prints by dipping his fingertips in blood. He looked down at them too, and he turned his hand over and looked into his palm like he expected to be holding something that wasn’t there. I leaned toward him and tried to whisper, even though I couldn’t say it quiet enough to keep Jess from hearing me. “You need to wash that off your hands, Jimmy,” I said. “You can’t let him see that.” I looked at him and nodded my head toward the kitchen. He looked down at Jess, and he tried to smile.
“I’ll be right back, buddy,” he said. I heard his footsteps follow me out of the front room. I walked into the kitchen and ran the water in the sink. Jimmy came up beside me and put his hands under the tap. He still hadn’t said a word to me yet; he’d hardly even looked at me.
“Jimmy,” I said, “I can’t begin to tell you about what all happened out there this morning; I don’t know how to make sense of it myself. But I know that boy is going to need you right now. He ain’t going to have nobody else for a long time. It looks to me like his mama’s going to be all right, but right now it’s just you.” Jimmy picked up a yellow bar of soap from where it sat on the lip of the metal sink. He spoke without looking at me.
“Did you shoot him?” he asked. I sighed loud enough for him to hear me, and I looked away from him and through the window where I could see out into the fields that ran alongside the house. Ben’s burley had been cut and staked, and it sat out there in the fields waiting for somebody to haul it in. I knew it’d be ruined if it sat out there for too much longer. I looked back at Jimmy. He’d turned the water off and was drying his hands on a dish towel. “Did you?” he asked. He folded the dish towel neatly and dropped it by the sink.
“I did,” I said. “But I can promise you I tried not to, Jimmy. I would’ve moved heaven and earth to keep from doing it. I wish it wouldn’t have ended this way.” He raised his head and stood there staring out the window toward Ben’s fields.
“Me too,” he said. He turned and walked back into the front room. I followed him, but we both stopped when we saw that Jess had left his seat on the sofa in the corner of the room and opened the front door without us hearing him. He stood in front of it now with his back to us looking through the screen door. We could all see that the paramedics had strapped Ben’s body onto a gurney that was being loaded into the last ambulance. Although the blue sheet still covered Ben’s body, his bare white feet stuck out from under it.
Jimmy put his hand on Jess’s shoulder and turned him away from the door, and then he closed it softly, its hinges barely making a sound as it shut. He put his arms around Jess and pulled him toward him. Jess’s shoulders heaved, and although I couldn’t see his face, I figured he was crying. I heard the ambulance’s engine crank outside in the driveway, and then I listened as it rolled down through the gravel toward the road.
I thought about how I’d meant what I’d said to Jimmy, that I wished it all could’ve been different. I stood there and watched the two of them hold on to each other, and I found myself praying that maybe this time it would be.
Adelaide Lyle
TWENTY-FIVE
IT WAS JUST A SAD DAY WHEN THEY HAD THAT FUNERAL FOR Ben at the cemetery outside of Marshall. A whole big crowd of people were there, some of them from the church he’d never stepped a foot into, some of them folks he’d known from town and from growing up and living in this county for so long. I hadn’t seen Jess since the Sunday night they’d brought Christopher’s body out to my house, but I saw him there standing with his grandfather by his daddy’s graveside. His little button-down collared shirt and his tie made him look even younger than nine years old, especially with all those adults standing around him in their black funeral clothes. He had his hair combed over to one side and his hands in his pockets. I could tell that he’d been crying.
Jess’s grandfather had brought him. His mama wasn’t there, which didn’t really surprise me too much. I reckon Julie’s heart had already left Ben behind while he was still alive, and his dying wasn’t about to make that leaving no different. As for Jess, she’d already tried to leave him once, and I reckon she just decided to stay gone for good.
Jimmy Hall had on him a nice clean shirt and a tie just like his grandson’s, and I could tell that he’d gone and bought new clothes for him and Jess both. He had his hair combed down too and a whole mess of Brylcreem keeping it in place. He’d shaved, and even though his face was just as red as a beet it looked like he hadn’t been drinking. I watched his hands during the service, especially when he raised them and let them drop onto Jess’s shoulders, his fingers closing around them gently and pulling that boy back against his body, holding him there, letting Jess lean against him while he bowed his head during the prayer. Jimmy Hall kept those hands steady, even as he lifted one of them to his eyes, even as he shook the hands of the other men who’d come to pay their respects to hi
s boy.
One of those men was the sheriff, but you wouldn’t have known who he was just by looking at him. He wore a tie just like most of the other men did, but still, it seemed strange not seeing him in his uniform. I think he might’ve been ready to give it up by then, and he would give it up altogether not long after. I reckon he lost his will for the job after what all had happened, after what he’d had to do. But it was something to see him standing there by Jimmy Hall, both of them just a few feet away from Ben’s graveside, and even then only twenty or thirty yards away from where Jeff had been buried twenty years before. These two men who’d hated each other for so long stood there side by side with nothing but their dead sons in common between them, both of them having believed, at least at one time or another, that the other man was to blame. They’d hated each other until they were both broken, and I reckon that’s when they decided it was time to leave all that behind and get on with their healing.
It’s a good thing to see that people can heal after they’ve been broken, that they can change and become something different from what they were before. Churches are like that. The living church is made of people, and it can grow sick and break just like people can, and sometimes churches can die just like people die. My church died, but it didn’t die with Carson Chambliss; it was dead long before that. But I can tell you that it came back to life once he was gone. A church can be healed, and it can be saved like people can be saved. And that’s what happened to us. At one time we were like a frostbitten hand that’s just begun to thaw. First the tips of the fingers come alive, and suddenly they can open and close. And then the palm begins to feel again. Upturned. Waiting. Witnessing. We began to feel again too.
