by Billy Coffey
“You okay, boy?”
I’m not. I’m not.
-2-
I could not keep away from her. My heart would not sanction it.
All that next day I swore I would allow Micky what she most wanted—not me, but her beloved vision. Her ruined pines and ruined Shanties. I scrubbed Bubba’s cars and kept to myself. Each hour that passed I vowed to go home and not to our hill. Spend the evening with Dad. In the end, I couldn’t. I’d heard it often said the truest love lay in setting free what you loved most, but whoever came up with such drivel had never loved at all. I had to go, it was that simple. I had to walk the hill that night if only to say I was sorry, for everything.
Micky would suffer under no obligation to forgive me. My only hope lay in her feelings for me—for us—which may not have been love anymore but were surely still strong enough for us both to lean upon. But she was not on the hill when I arrived, nor did I see any mark beneath the oak. And though I waited until I could no more, I knew I would wait all night and still be alone. Micky was not coming. It was foolish to think otherwise given the things I had said to her, and yet that night proved I was not the only fool. My father, too, had deceived himself, along with so many others in Camden. They all believed what had sprung forth in Shantytown was a thing soon to fade, but were Dad and the rest with me on the hill that night, they would have known different. They would have stood as I stood listening to that warm wind swooping down from the mountains through a vast sea of pines, bringing with it not only the sounds of night but of worship and song.
-3-
Three days I waited. Three nights in bed while soft voices leaked through the crack at the bottom of my door, muffled whispers and disjointed sounds that made me feel as though I shared my room with two grieving ghosts. To this day I do not know what my parents spoke of as they talked and argued over Mom’s long nights at the library and her continued insistence that Michaela Dullahan spoke truth. Never once did either speak of those late-night conversations beneath the covers of their darkened bedroom. And while the words themselves leaked through my bedroom wall only some, the passion with which they were spoken always did. I can only imagine my father missed his wife, missed her simple presence, and the only way he could ever express such heartache was in anger. The only evidence of that given me was Mom’s worried and wearied face and my father standing at the edge of a muddied puddle in our backyard, a watering hose in his hand.
My trips to the hill became more than escape. They were cries for a bit of sameness in a life that had changed so completely in the space of a month. I found myself caught between the universes of youth and adulthood, past and future, Camden and baseball. The sense of isolation bared its teeth with every walk I took up the slope to find nothing but the wind my company. There were no marks left by Micky. Not a single river stone or shiny rock. The only bit of nature out of place was the growing collection of bundled dandelions left as evidence that I had come and waited. That I was sorry.
For two of those nights I sat facing the Pines as an echo of song washed over me much like the whispers of my parents, cloaked in a muted language I could not know. The last night greeted me with silence alone. I did not know which I preferred.
Then on a Wednesday toward the middle of June, Bubba sent me on an errand down to the hardware store for new sponges to replace the ones I’d already worn out. I’d come down Main Street along the sidewalk past the library where Mom’s car sat in the lot when I spotted Earl Dullahan’s old truck at the bank. He’d parked by the entrance and left the driver’s side door open. My first thought was he’s in there robbing the place, though that consideration did not last. Micky’s father no longer had need of blatant criminality. Not when there were so many Shanties to pillage.
Micky wasn’t with him. As I moved forward I saw that someone else occupied the passenger seat. A few who passed lingered to stare, but Todd Foster paid them no mind. His expression remained as one who looked upon the world with newness, as though there wasn’t a thing he did not mind.
His eyes found me, and his face lit with a smile I could not reckon. I walked from the curb into the lot and around to his window.
“Owen,” he said.
“What you doing here, Todd?”
“Come with Earl. He’s gettin’ some money for the church. Church needs money right now.”
“That ain’t no church down there, Todd. It’s a barn.”
“No.”
“Michaela not with you?”
“She had other things to do. What you want Michaela for?”
I looked away. “Don’t want her for nothing.”
“See her tonight if you want. Anybody’s welcome. Church is right through the woods a ways a bit from their house. You should come, Owen. Lots a people do.” He spoke the next in a way I saw as filled with secrets. “More’n anybody in town thinks.”
“I know what y’all are doing up there. It ain’t right.”
“What ain’t right? That we’re all coming up in the world? That we take care a ourselves now ‘stead a depending on townfolk to do it? You go on then, Owen. You ain’t gotta believe. You tell me all you want about how we’re so evil, I don’t feel your words. And you know why? ’Cause I’m loved. I’m loved more than anything, and I’m special.”
The bank door opened. Earl Dullahan walked out holding a bag that looked filled to bursting. His white beard dangled in the breeze, and his pants, stained by sweat and unwashing, carried a stench that backed me away. He eyed me.
“You that boy what hit that ball. My girl speaks a you.”
I did not know which of that to focus upon, that Earl had called Michaela his girl or that Michaela spoke of me, and so chose the only thing that remained.
“What you got in that bag, Mister Dullahan?”
“That ain’t none a yours to mind, son.”
“How many families’ money you got in there? What you do with all that?”
Earl stepped forward, letting the bag dangle. It did not seem possible how a man so small in both size and honor could back me away, but he did. “Listen here, baseball boy. I ain’t no Shantie you can step upon. I am a man of repute now. You best not forget it.”
He moved toward the truck. Todd regarded me with a measure of pity.
“You must be so tired from your hating,” the boy said. “It costs so much. You don’t have to be that way, Owen. You are loved, but you don’t know it is all. You go looking for it every place but where you is, and that’s why you won’t never find it. I feel sorry for you.”
From somewhere out of sight, he produced a single dandelion. Todd held it through the open window like an offering.
“I don’t want that,” I said.
Earl sputtered the engine to life. The weed fell between us as the truck pulled away and into traffic. Just before they disappeared, Earl threw up his hand and waved. I could hear his laughter even from that far away.
-4-
I finished up the day’s row of cars and got home to find Dad’s truck already in the drive and him on the porch. One hand balanced a can of beer on the rocking chair’s arm. Beads of sweat gleamed from it against a downing sun. A ring of sweat had formed where his work shirt was buttoned against his neck. Set atop the small table beside him were four empties and two Arby’s bags wilting in the sun. He did not bother to raise his head as I came up the sidewalk and onto the steps. Did not even hear me call to him and ask how he’d managed to get away from the school so early. His gaze was instead on the thing he held in his right hand—twirling it, as I had seen so many others do in the early days of that summer. My first thought was that somewhere between the high school and home he’d run across Earl and Todd—that would explain where my father had gotten the dandelion he held. Then I saw the others scattered in a pile around his cracked brown boots.
“What you doin’, Daddy?”
Still he did not look at me. Only twirled that weed and said, “Got these things ever’where this year. I didn’t spray the yard when winter broke. Alway
s do that, but this year I didn’t. Said it wouldn’t matter. Farmers said it’d be a dry summer and dry it is. We ain’t mowed but what? Twiced? That sound right to you?”
“I guess.”
“Whole yard’s gone brown already, ain’t even July yet. But these things,” he said, holding that dandelion up, “they still growin’.”
“They’ll dry out ’fore long and turn to seed. Won’t even notice them after that.”
“Turn to seed.”
“Yes.”
“Turn to seed and spread. That’s what they do. World ain’t never be rid of them.”
He dropped the flower from his hand and let it land atop the others, then scooted them all with his boot toward the edge of the porch and off. Where they had lain was now a streak of green and yellow.
“That our supper?” I pointed to the bags on the table.
“Eat it if you want.”
I said I’d wash up and turned to the door. I was partway inside when Dad spoke again: “Went to see your momma little bit ago.”
“You did?”
“Got off work early. Thought I’d go down get us some food, take it to the library. We ain’t et supper together in a while. ’Less it’s Sunday.”
He slurped at the beer in his hand. I wondered how many he’d had that evening. My father was never a drinker but for during a ball game on the TV and occasionally after working out in the yard. It was not a sin doing so. Saint Paul, he always said, advised the use of drink to calm the stomach. Of course that was wine. According to my father, if Budweiser had been readily available in the olden times, it would have been the apostle’s preferred drink.
“Why’d you bring it home if it was for you and Mom? She too busy to eat?”
“She weren’t there.”
I stepped back out onto the porch and let the door close. “What you mean she weren’t there?”
“Car weren’t there. That’s what I mean. Didn’t see it in the lot. You know anything about that?”
“No. I was by there today to the hardware store for Bubba. It was there then.”
“It’s her usual hours. Weren’t there when I come by. I took them bags a food in there anyways. Like a fool. Ast the woman at the front, ‘Where’s my Greta? I got her and me some supper.’ Know what I get told? ‘Greta gets off at five. Don’t you know that, Paul?’ That’s what she says to me. Like I’m some idiot don’t even know what time his wife gets off work. So I says, ‘She’s been workin’ late, ain’t she?’ And that woman tells me, ‘Late? Ain’t none of us work late ’round here. Overtime ain’t in our budget.’ That’s what she said.”
He let those words settle. A robin sang from the roof of the house and another answered from the pine trees in the backyard. I let them finish while I tried putting together what my father was saying.
“Then where’s she been?”
He looked at the smear by his boots. In words as flat and dead as any I had ever heard my daddy speak, he said, “I think she been down at that Shantie church.”
“Momma wouldn’t do that.”
“Wouldn’t?” His eyes cut to me. “You been a party to the things she’s said ever since that Dullahan girl come back to church and brung her hill folk along. Your momma’s heart’s bent toward the things them people preach. Talk a love and peace and worth and whatnot. Like syrup, it is. Yessir, that’s just what the poor and broken pine to hear. They’ll even pay money they don’t got to hear such a thing. It’s a weak mind thinks a hard world can be overcome by gentleness. That’s your momma. Always has been.”
I said, “She ain’t down there,” but it was not a statement of fact. It was more a wish, I believe now. More a pining of my own, as though even then I knew my father was right.
“I’m goin’ down there to see.”
“You going to Shantytown?”
“I am.”
He stood, wobbling as the rocker shot forward to clip the back of his knees.
“You ain’t driving,” I said.
“Then you drive me.”
“We can’t go to the Pines.”
He came toward me stammering like the fool I always knew he was, the loving fool who wanted nothing more of life than for his son to be more than he himself had become. I saw in my father’s eyes the bloodshot red of hurt and despairing rage. He shot a finger forward, which landed in the center of my chest, backing me against the door.
“You will not stand in judgment of me,” he said. “I’ve enough a that from your momma. This is my family. Do you know what I’ve given? What I’ve endured? I will be called to testify in front of the Lord’s throne, boy. And what will I say then? That I allowed my own family to stray from the path laid out for them? That I did nothing?”
He pushed past me and fumbled at the knob, forgetting that it turned, then pushed open the door. His hand swiped at the hook inside. I heard the jangle of keys falling and saw him stumble once more. A hand to the doorjamb was all that saved him.
“Let me,” I said. I took him by the back of his gray pants and eased him out of the way. Dad walked off toward his truck. I picked up the keys and locked the door behind me, but only before glancing at the chipped and fading sign above the key rack. The one that had in so many ways guided all my father had done and given in leading us down the crooked and overgrown path of our lives:
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
-5-
I had only Todd’s words to guide me. The Shantie church lay through the woods just a ways beyond Micky’s house, which offered me little in specificity. The road Momma and I had taken only a few weeks prior remained as unchanged as it had the day of Constance Dullahan’s burial, less an artery clogged with potholes and dust than a pathway into some backward time. Then, I had been greeted with blank expressions and mistrustful eyes that served as a warning I had intruded upon a place not my own. Now I saw no one. As the sun dipped to the caps of the pines along the steep ridges above, I met not a single beast, whether mongrel dog or feral cat. It was as if Shantytown had been emptied through some merciful rapture, leaving behind only the refuse of lives ill-spent and the brittle husks of shacks and trailers.
We stopped at Micky’s house. Earl’s truck rested at an angle to the porch. Dad pounded upon the door but there was no one to answer. Through the living room window we glimpsed a mass of canned food lined against the wall. Diapers and cans of formula, bags of potato chips and boxes of cereal, whole pallets of bottled water. The single window around back held the same layer of grime as the wood siding. Dad’s balance failed him, leaving me to stand on my toes and peer inside. Micky’s sheets lay in a tangle. A new dress hung from the knob of her closet door. Her drawers hung open by several inches like she had fled. Then I looked closer and saw those drawers too stuffed with clothing to shut. On top, running the dresser’s full length, were stacks of money bound by thick rubber bands. Piles of them, dozens upon dozens. It was more money than I had ever seen in my life.
Daddy slurred, “What’s in there?”
“Cash. Earl could open his own bank with what they got in there.”
The sun dipped behind us. Long shadows crept from the woods like oil leaking from some unseen crack in the machinery of the world. We walked back to the truck. I told him we should go home, that wherever the Shantie church was we’d never find it, not out here with dark ready to fall. And I meant those words. It would come to nothing good should my father find that barn. Even if Momma wasn’t among them, Daddy’s fury would not be quenched that night. It was as if all the hardness of his life and all those shattered dreams had come to a final boil, and rather than grieve or lay down his brokenness at the feet of the God he swore he served, what my father did was make Micky the cause of it all. I said we were going home. Told him to sleep on things. Maybe he’d wake in the morning knowing the foolishness in his heart.
But then in that waning light we heard something rise up from that spoiled land. Creeping from the trees and tangles toward us like shadow as well, only of li
ght rather than dark. My father held still as Shantytown began to sing. He moved off as the noise came louder, leaving the truck and me as he crossed the road and into the far trees. I called to him, though he did not turn.
The path beyond lay too wide and straight to be a game trail. Through gray evening I saw light not far ahead, pulsing with the soft thunder of melody. The path yielded to a glen. In the middle rested a leaning structure that blended so well with the weathered oaks and elms that it looked a place of spirits.
Dad stopped. I came alongside.
It is said every house of prayer takes on the character of the god worshipped there. First Baptist rose tall and stately from Camden’s ordinary ground and sported a cross-topped spire at the crown of its roof reaching heavenward but never far enough. Its clean angles and pristine grounds were symbols of a holy separation. If I held to any deity, it was that. Yet there in the ruins of Shantytown I beheld evidence of another God, no less holy, who reached down in full knowledge that we could not reach up. A Lord not from wood and soil, but of them and among them, as He was of and among us all. A dweller of the broken places.
Upon sight of that crooked building of gaps and rot, I was overcome by a sense of transcendence. I had been churched ever since our arrival in Camden, dunked in the river and told I was forgiven, but in my secret heart I held Beauty as no more than what we ourselves fashioned to give our lives meaning, and Truth nothing more than the sore reflection of those ideals by which we navigated our darkness. To acknowledge a Source beyond those things was something not even Simpson’s field could persuade. Yet bearing witness to that patched barn, the fresh boards, the sturdy nails, the burning lamps from within and a music like defiance spilling from every crack, I nearly believed. Nearly. And perhaps I would have had I not first stumbled upon Micky’s horde of goods and cash inside their home.
The doors were shut. “We’ll go around,” Dad said.
We kept inside the tree line and moved off in a wide arc before cutting across to the barn’s right side. Dad pressed his hands against the wall and pushed his face to a hole between the boards as though he were a little boy denied entrance. Another gap formed lower to the ground. I took to my knees and peered inside. Night had nearly fallen, giving us cover enough. Above the clearing, bracketed by pines, stood the growing outline of a moon nearly swole.
