by Gary Parker
“Drop the guns,” shouted Luke. “It’s all over.”
“You’re putting a lot of good people in danger here,” said Carver. “All I have to do is give the signal and these two will make an awful mess.”
“You won’t do that.” A voice from the right surprised Connie, a voice she hadn’t expected to hear. She turned and watched as Wilt Carver eased out of the black night into view.
“Stay out of this, son. It’s not your business.” Robert Carver held up his hand to stop Wilt.
“It’s all my business, Dad. I started this a long time ago. I’m going to finish it tonight. Luke Tyler called me. Said Connie needed my help. I promised her I’d help her if I could. So this has gone far enough. I’m going to do what Jack asked me to do, get out of this political nightmare. I should have stepped out when he first came to me, but I didn’t have the courage. He didn’t want to hurt me, he said. Just wanted me to get help. He knew what I needed, a way to cleanse myself of the guilt that stained me, the guilt that stained everything I did, everything I wanted to do.”
“How did Jack know about it?” asked Connie, her voice shaking.
Wilt dropped his head for a moment. Everyone stayed frozen in place, anxious and poised.
“Sandra told him. When she showed up back in January and took him to Justin, he found out about Joseph Mussina, the man in Kansas City. He wanted to come to me, ask me to start an investigation. But Sandra wouldn’t let him. He asked her why. She refused to answer. He pressed her. Finally, she broke down and told him. Then Jack came to me with all of it.”
“Do you know about Johnson Mack?” Connie asked.
“I know he’s the brother of Mussina. Just found out a few days ago. I’ve found out a lot of things in the last two weeks. The last thing I plan to do before I resign is begin an official inquiry into Mussina and Mack and their activities in the gambling industry. I don’t know if I can get them for the murder of Jack’s parents, but maybe I can pin something on them. Get them out of the gambling business anyway.”
“You’re in over your head, son.”
Wilt faced his father. “I’m sorry, Dad,” he said. “I have no choice. Jack was right. I have no right to lead others after what I did. I know that now. I have the guts to leave this fishbowl, go back to something normal. Try to repair my family, save my marriage.
“If I had known you would go this far, I would have acted on Jack’s advice the instant he came to me. But I didn’t. Didn’t have the courage. Then, after his death, I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea you had anything to do with his murder, thought it was the gamblers. But tonight it ends, all of it. I ruined things once, I’m going to fix them this time.”
He stopped talking and took a step toward his father.
Robert Carver remained still, stunned into rigidity. Someone coughed, but everyone else remained in place, as if waiting to see what father and son would do next.
Suddenly, one person moved. Twenty feet from Robert and Wilt Carver, Brit shifted his feet and shouted. “Nothing ends!” he screamed, aiming his pistol. “Nothing—”
He fired into the dark and the bullet ripped through the quiet. He sprinted to his left as the bullet popped into Wilt Carver’s side and knocked him to the ground, a quick spurt of blood gushing from his white shirt. Everyone but Brit hit the ground as the gunshot exploded in their ears. Brit continued to sprint, his feet skipping across the gravel.
Prone on the ground with Katie beside her, Connie looked up just as Brit rushed past. She grabbed at his ankles, but he jumped over her outstretched arms and she missed him.
“Get him,” yelled Luke, pushing up from the ground.
To her right, Connie spotted Tick moving low along the trail, his gun ready. Furious that she missed Brit, she jerked herself up and dashed after him. Her heart jumped into her throat.
Brit was running toward Reverend Wallace! Opening her mouth to scream, she saw Luke Tyler suddenly stop and take dead aim with his pistol.
“No!” she shouted. “No!”
Reverend Wallace fell to the ground and rolled to the side toward the ditch.
Brit rushed ahead, his stride picking up pace, his blond ponytail streaming out behind his head. From Connie’s back, a shot rang out.
Brit kept running, no more than fifteen yards from the van.
He raised his pistol, and Connie knew he would shoot Reverend Wallace within seconds, and she could do nothing to stop him.
Too horrified to scream, she stopped trying to get up. Her eyes on her pastor, she began to pray.
Connie watched the next few seconds pass in slow motion and every movement etched itself forever in her mind.
Brit pointed his pistol directly at Reverend Wallace.
Reverend Wallace closed his eyes.
Brit’s finger twitched on the trigger.
A shot fired. Brit’s gun kicked upward as it fired too. He toppled toward the ground, his gun falling from his hand and onto the gravel trail.
Everything shifted into normal speed for Connie, and she rushed toward Reverend Wallace. At his side, she threw her arms around him and hugged him close. Luke stood over Brit, his gun cocked. Brit lay motionless on the gravel, a pool of blood dripping from his shoulder.
Wilt Carver suddenly appeared, his shirt stained with blood and his father, his head down in shame, at his side. Tick showed up, too, with Lennie in tow.
Katie, blindfold and earplugs gone, stood holding Tess’s hand. Connie grabbed Katie with one arm and left the other wrapped around her pastor.
Her eyes glistening with tears of joy, Connie found herself surrounded by a circle of friends, all of them hugging and shouting and celebrating together. Squeezing her daughter with every ounce of strength in her body, she stood in the center of the circle and began to laugh and cry all at once. Her friends reached out to her and to each other, each of them laughing and crying too. The circle firmed up as arm linked with arm and friend embraced friend. There they stood in the middle of the trail on a moon-hidden night, a circle of praise and joy, each person touching another and everyone feeling the touch of God.
CHAPTER
30
Two days later, on Friday afternoon at just past 5:30, Connie parked her van and stepped out. A hint of a breeze played across her hair, and the last of the day’s sun warmed her back.
Reading the headstones as she walked, she picked her way through the cemetery to the spot where Jack rested. Just ahead, a cardinal flitted into the hickory tree that draped over Jack’s burial plot. Connie stopped for a moment, watched the bird, and took in the beauty of the quiet place. Blinded by grief, she had seen so little three weeks ago when she buried Jack, had missed the towering hickory trees and gentle slope of the green grass.
Moving again, she reverently approached his gravestone.
It seemed impossible that so much had happened since Jack’s death, that her whole world had changed. But then she realized death did exactly that to the survivors, changed their whole world, shook it up, reconfigured their hopes and dreams, their attitudes and opportunities. She sighed. Jack’s death had certainly done that to her. Everything had changed.
She ached inside as she climbed into bed at night, an ache she suspected she would feel for a long time to come. But strangely, she felt stronger, too, stronger to face the ache and whatever else life threw into her path. She knew that Jack’s constant encouragement had started the process of growth in her, had birthed the notion that she could achieve certain things. But his death speeded up that process, thrust her forward out of necessity, made her act when she might have hesitated. The cardinal chirped, and Connie smiled. A cardinal. Jack loved the Cardinals. How appropriate that one of the gorgeous birds kept vigil over his spot. She stepped to Jack’s grave and knelt down beside it. She placed her hand on the grass that covered him. A tear dripped from her eyes.
“It’s been three weeks,” she said. “I’ve wanted to come back, but couldn’t for some reason, too painful I guess. But I’m here now
.” She stopped and wiped the tears from her face.
“Sandra and Justin are still with me,” she sniffled. “And Wilt . . . he’s okay. Spent one day in the hospital then went back to his office. Started an investigation of the men who killed . . . killed your mom and dad, started it before he resigned last night. He’s trying to do the right thing, Jack, just like you taught.
He’s talking to Reverend Wallace, too, trying to figure out his life.”
The cardinal chirped again and Connie lifted her head and stared at it. It peered back at her for a moment, then darted down from its perch in the tree and landed on the top of Jack’s gravestone, no more than four feet from her.
Connie looked at the gravestone, reading again the epitaph written on it.
JACKSON LEE BRANDON
1957-1997
A HUSBAND AND FATHER WHO DID THE RIGHT THING
She shifted positions, moved closer to the gravestone, ran her fingers over the words. The stone felt cool to her touch. Her tears fell heavier now, a gush of water down her cheeks. She closed her eyes and pondered what the next day would bring.
What was the right thing for her to do? A rush of ideas flooded her mind.
She needed to see her professors at law school, postpone her final exams until the fall. She needed to decide how to invest the insurance money, money the company had promised would come to her within a week. She needed to read Jack’s novel, then send it to some publishers. She needed to throw her assistance to the men and women still working toward the June vote on gambling in Jefferson City. She needed to clear the air with Luke Tyler, thank him for his help, but tell him she couldn’t imagine anything more than friendship. She needed to do all that and more.
She opened her eyes and ran her hand across the ground.
Her tears slowed, then stopped completely. She took a deep breath and patted the ground.
“I promise to teach the children,” she whispered. “With the Lord’s help, I promise to teach them what you believed, your faith and your love for the Lord. I promise to raise them in the truths of Jesus. That’s the right . . . the right thing for me. No matter what, I’m going to do that.”
She stopped talking but remained seated for several seconds. Then, her eyes dry, she stood and sighed heavily.
“I’m going to leave now,” she said. “Time to get on with it.
The kids need supper, and then we’re going to see Justin at the hospital. He says he has some stories about you he wants to tell.
Seems he watched you play a lot of baseball and eat a lot of ice cream. I have a feeling he’ll live until he gets all those stories told. I hope it takes a long time.”
She paused and bit her lip. Then she said, “I love you, Jack Brandon. I always will. Thank you for loving me.” She twisted away to leave. The cardinal chirped. She turned back for one more look at the grave. The cardinal jumped off the headstone and whirled up into the sky, its wings flapping in the direction of the Missouri River.
Connie smiled and left the grave, her face toward her van, her face toward the future. With God’s help, she knew she would make it. That was the right thing to do.
