Steal Away Home

by Billy Coffey

  “Give me your answer first. Tell me what you seen at that train. Speak it true, then stand there and say you don’t understand why I can’t go with you. I got to stay for when Daddy comes back. And my church needs me. It’s the first thing I ever had in life to give me purpose, and I won’t leave it.”

  “I’m trying to save you. Why won’t you let me?”

  Her head turned, one side and the other forming a single No.

  “That’s the thing, Owen. You still think you speak to the girl I was ‘stead a the girl I am. That girl’s somebody you could save, but not this one. This one’s been saved already.” She came to me, held my hands. “Don’t matter what I want now. I can’t go with you. God don’t want me to. He says I got to stay because my time’s drawn near.”

  “God don’t talk to you,” I said.

  Micky delivered her line with the smooth elegance of practice: “God speaks to everybody. It’s just so few listen.”

  I pushed past her, wanting air. Wanting bright sun and wide skies and a forest that swallowed me whole.

  Micky called after me, “Where you going?”

  “Stay here. Too many people looking for you. Clancy’s got your barn all taped off. Shanties can get along fine without you for a while. So you just sit here and wait on Earl”—mumbling the last, because I knew even then Earl Dullahan would never be seen around Camden again. “Meet me at the hill tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you love me?” I stopped midway back to the path along the river, forcing myself to face her. “Can you at least tell me that?”

  She stood in the small doorway, straddling an edge of light and dark. “Of course I love you, Owen. I always have.”

  I wished I could believe her. Part of me did. The other half—the heart inside me that had given so much to Michaela Dullahan and gained so little—was simply tired. Never in my life had I reason to doubt what Micky felt for me. Never once had I asked her to prove her love. I would have that day were I not so afraid of her answer. But I knew as I left that old cabin and met the path leading home I would have her answer soon, finally and for certain. Whether she loved me as I loved her, or if our love was but one more thing meant to be left in childhood.

  Either way, I would know.

  -6-

  Jeter is up and what remains of the crowd is on their feet, the stands filled with calls and yells and screams for their captain, calling forth the ghosts. Mike goes once more to the dugout phone. He plugs an ear with his finger and looks at me, making me look away. In the vastness of Yankee Stadium’s center field stands Country. He pounds a fist into his glove, seeming to will the next ball his way, as all the best ones do. Johnson settles down enough to get Jeter on a fly ball to right. Richard calls off Country for the ball and fires his throw in to Hairston, keeping Knoblauch at second.

  It’s two down but Mike has seen enough. He makes the long walk out to the mound and holds his left arm aloft, touching it with his right as he signals the bullpen. The infield gathers in a huddle. Fordyce slaps Johnson on the butt as the bullpen doors open. It’s B. J. Ryan coming out—a good call, bringing in a lefty to face the left-handed David Justice coming up next. Though the game seems far out of the Yankees’ reach, it does not feel such a way. It is certainly not far enough out of reach that Mike Singleton will chance sending a rookie catcher up to the plate in the top of the ninth out of nothing more than pity and a favor to a grizzled veteran.

  I take Country’s bat in my hands, hoping the feel of Betsy can calm my nerves. The polished black wood holds the nicks and scars of hits untold. I flex my hands around the handle. Wiggle the bat to marvel at its balance. Country is still out there and still pounding his glove. Only once does he pause to look out at the crowd before and behind him. It reminds me of the way I must have looked years ago standing inside Cleveland Stadium.

  Mike hands the ball off to Ryan. He turns and makes his way to the dugout and he spots me holding Country’s bat. I let the bat wave in my hands. When it stills, my eyes settle on a small imperfection at the very top of the barrel. I move the bat closer for a better look. Rub my thumb across the spot. Where the wood should be smooth I find a ridge instead, sanded but not enough, and notice the grain there does not match the wood around it. I rub the spot again. Country isn’t watching.

  I reach beside me for a bottle of water left by one of the players and open the top, putting my finger over the opening as I turn it over. With the water I make a swipe over the circle of Betsy’s top. The dirt clears away, leaving a smaller circle with the diameter of a dime in the center.

  Fordyce lets one of Ryan’s pitches get by him. The ball reaches the backstop, getting Knoblauch to third. I don’t care because I cannot peel my stare off what I’m holding in my hand, Betsy, and the knowledge I hold as well—Bobby Kitchen, Country, the man SportsCenter calls the Kentucky Krusher, is using a corked bat. He’s bored a hole into this Betsy’s cap (And how many before? I wonder. How long has Country been doing this?) and hollowed out the barrel. One inch, that’s all it takes, one inch around and ten inches deep. Fill it with cork, glue a plug to the end. Sand it all down and add a bit of paint. Rough it up real good. No one will know. No one.

  Bat like that can add twenty feet to a fly ball and two million to a contract. Turns outs into home runs.

  Gets you off the beaten path and onto the bypass to Cooperstown.

  I set the bat down beside me. Can’t touch it. Can’t think. Justice singles, sending Knoblauch home and narrowing our lead, yet I am too overcome by what I know to care about the game. I am not angry; there is no room in me for righteous indignation. Country will be judged should he be caught, but he will not be judged by me. Let the papers find out. Let the reporters squeal. Let the fans turn their backs to him. I know. A man will do most anything in this world if he thinks it will get him what he loves most.

  He will do it every time.

  -7-

  Nothing of the entire summer stood so plain to me as when I left Micky begging my name from the shadowed doorway of Earl’s cabin. I knew my choice. It arrived with the clearness of sight restored, the way a hard cry will wash your eyes and leave the world glassy and cloudless after. The cost demanded was great. The price meant nothing. Nor could I claim any longer the thing I decided to do would be done in love’s name alone.

  Could love kindle such rage? Provoke me toward such action? No—what I felt for Micky was not so flaccid a thing as love but something beyond, more alive, savage as a blade’s edge.

  I would make her see that a life with me offered far more than a life mired inside Shantytown. What purpose Micky may have carried into the world was woven with my own. Why had she forgotten that? How could she have misplaced what we had always known: that apart we were but half a person, but together we made a whole? Isn’t that what we all long for at the end of things? To be whole?

  By the time I reached home it was close to five in the evening, meaning I had to hurry and be gone before Mom and Dad were let out of work. The note I left was enough to let them know I wouldn’t be back until late, no need waiting up. I changed into old clothes I could throw away, put an extra pair of jeans and a fresh T-shirt into a bag. The only things I needed I found in the junk drawer by the sink, the shed out back, and the garbage cans left at the edge of the house—four items, all of which were small enough to be jammed into the bag of clothes without much notice.

  The air stood calm and a perfect sort of dry. Grass crunched like glass under my shoes. People talked for years about that summer of 1990, I suppose many still do, but when their tongues wag of that long-ago it is not of Michaela Dullahan alone they speak and shudder. The drought that year ruined crops from Virginia to Georgia and left every yard in Camden a brittle, thirsty brown. It had been weeks since Dad mowed. He’d never miss a thing.

  I drove away from the neighborhood and left my truck hidden in some trees before backtracking with the bag and its contents all the way to the hill. There I sat and waited for the sun to fall
beneath the ridges. I remember no breeze that late evening, not a single bird’s call. Never once did I reconsider what I meant to do. Not a single time did I believe it would damn me.

  Beneath the cover of twilight I set out down Micky’s side of the slope and followed the trail toward the Dullahan home. My sole worry was she had not heeded my warning to keep from Shantytown; Micky would be waiting at the path’s end or meet me someplace upon it, tell me God had warned her, ruining it all. Yet as darkness settled, turning the woods silken silver, even that disquiet fell away and left me free. Not once did that thick canopy turn my thoughts inward. The wilds held back their reaching grasp, handing me over to myself.

  The path ended. I did not bother to swing wide of the windows; the house lay dark, Earl himself a long way gone. The sloshing in my backpack came like a river’s roar. I walked straight down the center of the dirt road beyond Micky’s house and veered away only when it was time. The wider path to the opposite side of the road carried me the rest of the way. In the dim moonlight I could make out the bright-yellow police tape hung in a square around the barn’s front, crisscrossed at the door. A bit of it had worked itself free. I shrugged off my pack and left it on the ground. No light came at me from inside. The barn looked a dying thing. I would take what life of it remained. From the knapsack I took the three empty two-liter cola bottles I had snatched from our trash, each now filled with gas Dad kept for the mower. I unscrewed the cap on one and hooked the other two in the fingers of my left hand. My thumb went over the bottle’s mouth. I began at the door and worked my way around the barn to the right, sending a thin stream of gas at the base of the dry wood. One bottle, two, three, until I had come around to the door again. The last of the gasoline came out in a line extending from the front of the barn to the end of the path. I tossed the last bottle into the trees and reached for the matches in my pocket.

  Micky’s voice rose up from inside me: Don’t matter what I want now.

  I plucked one match free and struck it. A thin curl of sulfured smoke rose, nothing more.

  I can’t go with you, Owen.

  Another match. I held it tight against the strip and pushed downward.

  God don’t want me to.

  The flame burst into an orange and yellow tip at the end of my finger.

  My time’s drawn near.

  Never in my life had I felt imbued with such power as when that spark met the rest of the matches still in the book. I dropped it all into the dust. Blue fire wriggled like a serpent toward the barn. It met the door and blew to a soft whoomp from which conflagration burst. A wall of heat and light crashed into me, singeing my clothes and face, yet I did not shrink from it. My arms instead opened as if to embrace light born in darkness. From its glow, my cold heart warmed.

  All those years I had clung to Micky as I would my better self, only to find in the end she ran from me toward some vision, some passing fancy, as though she could find more comfort in the arms of her imaginings than in my own. Yet there is where I stood for my claim, plunging my stake into the hard heart of all the world’s cruelty. God would not have what was meant as mine. I would take Him from Micky’s soul and Micky from this place of pine and ruin. I could save her more than He could. And if I should be judged for that—for the very love Michaela Dullahan preached—then I vowed to let it be so. I would greet my burning eternity and dip my finger into the cool waters of our togetherness. I would suffer with gladness.

  The fire gorged itself on the tinder of dried and rotting boards. Yellow flame yielded to orange above the roof and rose in thick ochre, blackening the sky into a demon’s face uttering howls for mercy. And then I realized the voice was no demon. Someone was banging on the wall. What spell had overtaken me snapped when I heard the screams coming from inside. I woke as confused as one who had gone walking in his sleep.

  Micky. It was Micky in there.

  I answered with a scream of my own. Part of the roof collapsed into a storm of falling embers. Smoke poured from the opening. I ran and rolled the door free. The fire raged dim enough that I could push through. I covered my face with my shirt. Smoke stung my eyes. Bales of straw lit from the hot air alone. A body lay curled near the back, not blond hair but a shock of red. I crawled on my belly and picked up Todd Foster in my arms as a bit of the roof fell around us, timbers and struts crashing down, blocking our way. Flames higher, consuming us. Todd grew heavy in my arms. I kept to the center of the barn and away from the worst of the flames. We reached the door as the east wall of the barn fell with a noise of all things ending.

  -8-

  I laid Todd Foster in the soft bosom of a pine among the many he called home and stared in horror at the thing I had done. Add my abandonment of him to the long list of sins I committed that day, placed somewhere below Micky’s death but above the lies I told. Place it anywhere, I don’t suppose it matters. By then I heard the shouts of distant voices and horns blaring as Shantytown came alive. I counted it at mere minutes before the first people burst down the path, carrying pails and blankets and what water they could manage. No one saw me. I sprinted as though the devil nipped at my heels, which was only some removed from the truth.

  All about those woods hung a thick layer of black smoke that reached into my lungs, making me retch. The taste was black in my mouth.

  I had the strawberry moon to guide my way and the few stars the moon let shine. Not far I came upon the road and hid as a group of men and women and children ran past. Kept to the trees until I reached the Dullahans’. From there I ran bent and heaving until I reached the clearing and my final judgment. A figure stood at the edge of the slope leading from the hill draped in a white dress. I knew her shape even in the dimness. The soft curl of hair set against the broken outline of the limbs, head tilted downward to the right. I was too late. Micky too early. Whichever it was counted as nothing, because there could be no hiding now. Even then I knew it should be no other way.

  Micky kept motionless in her spot. I lowered my head and trundled up the slope feeling no less than a prisoner come under death, making his final walk to the gallows. My clothes reeked of smoke, my arms were blackened. Far down in the Pines burned what remained of the only purpose Micky had found in her life, yet her eyes never wandered from my own. Shame flooded me, and the fear it bore lay so great upon my heart I could not even look away. At the top of the hill I turned rather than face her wrath. Where for years I had looked out upon that nightscape to behold the dark swelling wave of the Blue Ridge, a ball of glowing orange now lay in that muted sea. Silence reigned where I had once heard song.

  Beside me came, “Owen. What have you become?”

  Only that—not What have you done? but What have you become? Everything in me longed to reach for her, hold the mere tip of Micky’s finger. I deserved no such comfort.

  There beneath the strawberry moon, I buckled under my own tears.

  “There’s no reason to keep here no more. You’re unchained, Micky, from everything. We can be together now.”

  “No one is unchained.”

  My heart (was it my heart? even now, I cannot say) leaped to stifle such a lie, wanting to tell Micky my words were true even if she would not believe them. I beheld her in spite of my fear. Yet in Micky’s face I saw neither anger nor the pain of my betrayal, nor even the sadness of seeing all she had come to love aflame. In that moment, I had never seen one so free.

  She said, “I waited for Earl. I sat there until the sun went and then visited some folk in the Pines. I went back one more time in case he was there, but Earl ain’t never coming back, is he? Because nothing in him ever changed. The bad of him was too much. That’s when God spoke to me.”

  “God don’t speak to nobody.”

  “He did me. He tole me I done all I could. Everything asked. I fought it, because nothing seems done. But He give me a feeling, like how you get to the last page of a book and know there’s only one way you want it to end. That’s how it was. I come down to say good-bye to my momma and I hoped I’d
see her soon.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” I said.

  “I will and you’ll hear it. There’s no going on for me no more, Owen. My time’s come.” She smiled, and in the parting of her lips I saw not the gladness of a thing completed but a sweetness of its recollection. It was the very expression I had seen on her face between two iron rails at the edge of Brutal Simpson’s field. “I’m going to die on this hill,” she said.

  My hand held her at the wrist. “Nobody knows you’re up here, and no one will blame you for this. Clancy said he’d clear things. It’s Earl they want. He stole that money. I’ll call Youngstown, talk to Coach. Tell him I got to bring you along. Mom. They’ll help, I know they will. I’ll keep you safe.”

  Her hand swung free. The space between us grew.

  “But you’ll never be able to keep us safe from yourself. You got no idea what you did down there. The hurt you’ve caused. It won’t go away.”

  “You think I took pleasure in it?”

  Her eyes, so full of sadness. “Yes. I expect you did, some.”

  “What I did down there was for you.”

  “I know that. I knew it when I left the cabin. Knew it as soon as I stood up from under this oak and saw that flame of fire. I knew it was you before you stepped out from those trees. And I knew why.”

  My foot kicked out at the soft ground under us, meeting a root growing from the oak. Across the other side of the hill, somewhere in town, a siren called. If Micky registered the sound, it seemed of little importance. She stood as though waiting—like she was packed and ready to go, only not with me. Even after all I’d done, I felt I was about to lose her forever. I could not bear such thinking.

  I said, “You went away from me. All I wanted was you back.”

  “What you feel for me is only a shadow to the place you hold in my life. Always has been. I love you like no other in the world, Owen Cross, and that is why I would move heaven to keep you well. Your love saved me once, but it’s a greater love that will see us home. That’s all life should be, really. All I ever wanted was to help people find their way back home. You most of all. We’d fail each other in the end. Don’t you see that? Like baseball will fail you. What you seek from me or some game is something we can’t give you.”