Chasing Fireflies

by Charles Martin

  She nodded. “Only if you’re right.”

  Unc toweled off his face and said, “I’ve been right my whole life. I’m not about to change now.”

  We loaded into Sally and backed out. Sketch stood in the drive, arms folded, blocking the car. Scared but unmoving.

  Unc rolled down the window and studied him. “Well, if you’re gonna hang around here very long, you might as well see what you’re getting yourself into. You coming?”

  He nodded.

  Unc pointed at the scars on his arms. “You might not like what you see.”

  Sketch shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged.

  Unc opened the door. “Well, I won’t stop you.”

  He climbed in and clicked into his seat belt. We drove to town, where the streets were heavy with morning traffic. Unc drove around the bank once, saw Uncle Jack’s Escalade parked outside, and then drove right up onto the sidewalk, knocking over the newspaper bin and parking in front of the door.

  The security guard ran out, saw Unc, and pointed. “You can’t park—”

  Unc ignored him, walked into the bank, and began climbing the stairs. Behind me, I heard the security guard get on his radio and say something about calling the police. This promised to be a short visit.

  Unc topped the stairs just as Uncle Jack was walking out of his office. He held some papers in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other, and his reading glasses were down on the end of his nose.

  Unc never even paused. He took three steps, reached thirty years back into the past, and caught Uncle Jack with an uppercut that lifted him off his feet, rocked his head back into his spine, and sent him back through his office door. His secretary screamed and started fumbling with the phone. Before Uncle Jack could move or moan, Unc was on top of him. He picked him up by his tie and hit him with another vicious right that sent him stumbling backwards into the great oak desk. He bounced into it and spit out several teeth, his mouth and nose spilling blood. He lifted a hand in front of his face while bracing himself on the desk with the other, but Unc tagged him a third time before he could see straight. The last blow caught him square in the chin and shot him backward across the desk, where he spilled on the ground like a corpse. Unc walked around the desk and sank a knee deep into Jack’s rib cage.

  “Brother, enough is enough. I spent my whole life being afraid of what you might do rather than living it. This ends today. All of it.” He shoved Jack’s head beneath the desk, flipped the latch on the trap-door, and threw it open.

  Jack’s eyes grew wide.

  Unc sat him up and pointed. “I know, brother. I know a lot. There’s some I can’t prove, but some I can . . . some I will.”

  The State of Georgia and those who work for its governing municipalities have always believed in massive firepower when it comes to the handguns that their law enforcement officers carry. The two officers who walked in, guns drawn, were no exception. I could’ve stuck my pinky up the barrel. I know this because both were about a foot from my face.

  One was screaming at Unc, “Hands on the desk!”

  The second turned to me and pointed his Glock in my face. “You too, paperboy.”

  “What for?”

  He didn’t like my response, so he body-slammed me onto the oriental rug, carpet-burning my face.

  Unc obeyed and smiled as they smacked his face onto the desk and zip-tied his hands behind his back with all the speed of a calf-roper. A half a second later, they hog-tied me and then lifted me off the carpet, cutting the circulation to my hands. About then Lorna ran through the door and grabbed Sketch.

  Unc stopped and looked at her. “Better call Mandy. Oh, and send me an RC Cola and a MoonPie. I’m hungry.” He turned to me. “You want anything?”

  I tried to say something cute, but the officer lifted my wrists into my armpits, and I decided not to be stupid.

  They tried to shove us through the door, but Unc was bigger and stood his ground. He turned to the officers. “Guys, I’m going. But I’m walking.” He turned to Uncle Jack and shook his head. “You never should have shot that beagle.”

  Uncle Jack kicked the trapdoor and shouted at his secretary, “Get me a doctor!”

  Unc laughed and walked out the office door. Sketch and Lorna stood in Jack’s office, the kid’s eyes round.

  Jack wiped his mouth on his shirt and screamed at me, “What’re you looking at?”

  “Funny . . . we didn’t really miss you at the funeral.”

  He picked up a paperweight and heaved it across the room, but it missed me by a few feet.

  We walked down the steps. Unc’s hand lay flat across the lower part of his back. The middle knuckle was cut deep, and blood covered his fingertips. If it hurt, he didn’t seem to mind.

  They shoved us into the back of a squad car, but then the guy driving looked into his rearview mirror and said, “I got a better idea.” He opened the door; they grabbed each of us and paraded us like a couple of circus elephants two blocks down to City Hall. We passed an old lady coming out of Jack’s First-something-or-other church. She recognized Unc, shook her head, and turned away, muttering.

  Unc turned away, nodded, and said, “Afternoon, Ms. Baxter.”

  Several steps down the sidewalk, he turned to me. “Don’t mind her. She’s a good woman, she just don’t know no better. You live with a lie long enough, and pretty soon it starts to sound true.”

  I looked behind me as she waddled to her car. “Why didn’t you get in her face and tell her what you think?”

  He shook his head and smiled. “Remember . . . words that sink into your heart—”

  I watched him walk—his wet boots sloshing as his feet slid up and down inside the heels that had not dried from last night.

  “I know, I know . . . they’re whispered, not yelled.”

  He nodded. “You’re learning.”

  Chapter 41

  After some routine niceties, they gave me one phone call. Mandy’s voice mail picked up, so I left her a message. Then they walked us downstairs and threw us into my home away from home. I walked over to my concrete block, scratched through TWICE with the side of a quarter and wrote 3X in big block letters.

  A few minutes later Mandy showed, a digital voice recorder tucked in her shirt pocket. She sat down outside the cell, crossing her arms and legs and raising her eyebrows. “You two have been busy.”

  I was about to open my mouth, but Unc beat me to it.

  He sat back, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. “Jack always did like to gamble. To say it was in his blood wouldn’t be fair. It was hard-wired into his DNA. We used to kid about it when we were young. Then he got older, things changed, and what was a hobby became an addiction. The night of the storm, I knew he was down cutting the cards, but . . . well . . .” He turned to Mandy. “Ain’t you gotten us out of here yet?”

  “You in a hurry?”

  He nodded and looked at me. “Yup. First time in a long time.”

  She probed. “What’s the holdup?”

  He chewed on a hangnail and spit it across the cell. “Been trying to get my nerve up.”

  Mandy laughed. “For how long?”

  “Nigh on to three decades.”

  Lorna walked in, leading Sketch by the hand. “You ’bout done?”

  I was starting to get aggravated. “You guys are talking in code, and I don’t understand a thing.”

  Lorna gave Mandy a receipt. “Five thousand dollars.” She looked at Unc. “Bail bonds are expensive.”

  Unc fingered the receipt. “Bonds. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”

  An hour later we walked out into the noontime sun. Mandy tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I’ve got to get to the office. Things will heat up this afternoon.”

  Unc shook his head. “Not if you want to be my attorney.”

  She held up his hand, eyed the cut across the middle knuckle, and then looped her arm inside mine. “I’m not sure I want to be your attorney.”

  Unc dro
ve all five of us through Dairy Queen, where he ordered lunch and five dipped cones. Sketch slammed a cheeseburger and French fries, then went to work on his cone, which was dripping down his hand, but he didn’t seem to mind. Absent was his chess set. Present was a smile covered in vanilla and chocolate.

  We drove into the Zuta to find a television news truck parked along the highway, the transmitter telescoped forty feet into the air. The reporter was giving an update as we drove in. He stuck the microphone in Unc’s face, but Unc ignored him and drove slowly by. Sketch waved, then pointed to the NO TRESPASSING sign.

  Unc stopped at the barn, grabbed two shovels, and drove us further back into the Zuta. The only two people who seemed to know where we were going were Lorna and Unc, but neither was talking. When we got to the water, I threw Sketch up on my shoulders and waded in.

  Mandy balked. “High heels and a skirt don’t exactly work here.”

  Unc waved her on.

  Lorna turned and smiled. “Trust me. You don’t want to miss this.”

  Vicky sat right where I left her. The water level had receded some, but her floor wells were full and the hood still bubbled. I patted her on the bumper. “Hang in there, girl. I’m coming.”

  Unc threw a shovel over each shoulder and led us through Ellsworth’s Sanctuary. By the time we reached the grave sites, his shoulders looked like each shovel weighed a thousand pounds.

  I set Sketch down and stood next to Unc, who stood over his son’s grave. To our right, the ground above Tommye’s grave still lay mounded, covered in shale and loose rocks that had been uncovered in the rain. Unc looked at me. The right side of his face was twitching, and his eyes were blinking a lot.

  After a few minutes, Lorna patted him on the shoulder. “Liam . . .”

  He nodded, licked his lips, which were cottony-white, and whispered, “What kind of man are you?”

  “What?”

  He stepped closer. “I said, ‘What kind of man are you?’”

  “Unc, what’s that supposed to mean? What’s this . . .”

  He pointed at me. “Don’t call me that. Not anymore. I don’t want to be your uncle anymore.” He handed me a shovel and said, “Dig.”

  I looked down, eyes wide. “Where?”

  He sank his shovel into the ground above his son’s grave and didn’t say a word.

  I leaned on my shovel. “Have you lost your mind? I’m not digging anywhere around here.”

  Unc paid me no mind. He just kept digging. In ten minutes, he was shin-deep and reaching further. I looked at Mandy. She shrugged and mouthed the word, “Dig.” Sketch sat on the ground, sketchbook tucked up close under one arm.

  I jumped down into the growing hole and gently stepped on my shovel. An hour later, we were chest-deep and winded. Unc had taken his shirt off, which was good ’cause between yesterday, last night, and this morning, it was starting to stink.

  We dug another thirty minutes when I said, “You know, these things are usually encased in concrete.”

  He didn’t even look up. “Who said anything about concrete?”

  A few minutes later, my shovel tip struck wood. Unc hit his knees and began shoveling off the dirt with his hands. When he had the lid uncovered, he stood up on top of it, his head and shoulders just clearing the top of the hole. He wiped his head on his forearm and filled his chest with salty air. Then without another word he knelt, grabbed the handle, and lifted one half of the lid. I closed my eyes and waited to hear a sucking in of air as the seal was broken, but none came. Not wanting to see a worm-eaten body or bag of white bones, I opened my eyes slowly. Sketch was leaning over the hole, peering in. Mandy too. Only Lorna sat back, not looking. Unlike the others, she was looking at me.

  Unc propped open the lid with his shovel, reached in, and grabbed a green trash bag wrapped in duct tape. It was about the size of an Igloo cooler but only half as deep. He climbed out of the hole, sat Indian style on the ground, and began searching his pocket for his knife, but the kid beat him to it. Sketch opened the smaller of the two blades, held it out handle first, and Unc took it gently. He slit the tape, slid off the bag, and pulled out a plastic storage case. He flipped open the latches, popped off the lid, and pulled out something about the size of a legal folder that was maybe three inches thick. Then he began cutting what looked like an inch worth of plastic wrap and tape. Whatever was inside had been protected and made as watertight as it could get with plastic.

  Unc pulled off the remainder of the plastic wrap and exposed a large, black, legal-sized notebook stuffed with yellowed, but dry, papers. Curious, Sketch scooted up next to him and looked across his lap. Unc stared out through the cypress trees rising up out of the Buffalo, and it looked like his lips were struggling to make words.

  Sketch looked over his lap and down into the casket, searching for the body. But there wasn’t one. When he was satisfied that a mummy was not about to rise up out of the earth, he pointed and raised his eyebrows.

  Unc shook his head. “Ain’t no body.” He pointed downriver. “I dumped it out there, long time ago.”

  I spoke first. “You dumped your own son in the river?”

  Unc shook his head and looked at me like I was the one who’d lost my mind. “’Course not.”

  “Well then, who got ditched in the river?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. He was dead. I didn’t know him.”

  Mandy’s face was sheet white. “Mr. McFarland, I think you might need an attorney.”

  Unc paid her no mind. “When they took me to the morgue and pulled back the sheet, I knew right away. It was a close match, real close, but the body on that table didn’t belong to me. He was no relation of mine.”

  “How’d you know?”

  He smiled. “Ear lobes. His were connected. My son’s were not.”

  Mandy looked at him, then me. Sketch reached up and started fingering his ears.

  I wasn’t following him. “What do you mean?”

  He pulled on his own ear. “Like this. The bottoms are loose, not connected down on the jaw line.”

  “Well, then . . . who was the kid on the table?”

  “Heck if I know.” He shrugged. “All I knew was that I didn’t kill him, and more importantly”—he paused and rubbed his hand across the cover of the notebook—“that meant my son might still be alive.”

  When I’d interviewed the driver of the prison truck that drove Unc back from the funeral, he had told me that Unc looked mad, not sad. And that he had not cried. I had never made sense of that. The Unc I knew would have cried his eyes out. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  He shook his head. “What did I have to gain? Yes, I was real sorry for whoever was looking for that kid on the table, but when I started putting the pieces together, I doubted anybody was. I figure he was dead long before he got burnt. I kept my mouth shut, because if I had said anything, I would have let whoever took my son know that I knew the body wasn’t his. If I said nothing, and my son was still alive, I could help keep him that way by keeping my mouth shut.”

  I shook my head. “Well . . . what if he’s still alive?”

  “He is.”

  “Well, where? Why don’t you go get him?”

  Unc looked at Lorna, then Mandy, then me. “I did.”

  The questions swirled. “But? What about the . . . the ransom note? It was a fake?”

  He nodded and smiled. “Keep going.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I grew up playing cards with my brother. I knew when he was bluffing long before he could.”

  “But you went along with it?”

  He nodded again.

  I sat back, the video of our life flashing across the backs of my eye-lids. I described what I saw. “He knew that you knew he’d taken the bonds, and he needed something to keep you quiet.” I turned to Sketch, then back to Unc. “Well . . . what was it?”

  He pulled a single sheet of paper from the notebook, then reached up, touched my ear, and looked across at Suzanne’s
grave. “Your mother wanted to call you ‘Junior.’”

  I looked at the sheet of paper. It was a birth certificate. Across the top it read, WILLIAM WALKER MCFARLAND JR. BORN MARCH 31, 1976.

  Unc put his hand on the back of my neck and held me as if he were afraid I’d escape. He swallowed. “I told you once that the second hardest decision I’d ever made was signing those papers and letting them take my son. Making him a ward of the state. That’s ’cause the hardest . . . the hardest thing I’ve ever done has been living every day, watching him grow into a man that I’m danged proud of, and not telling him. Of living that lie my whole life.

  “But I couldn’t risk losing you a second time. Dying was hard enough once. I’d rather not do it twice. Then by the time you got old enough, and saw how the town saw me, what they thought of me, the story that has dogged my past, I was afraid you wouldn’t want me.” He nodded at the birth certificate, pulled me toward him, pressed my forehead to his, and tried to laugh. “I told your mom I wasn’t about to call you Junior. Told her I was giving you the most valuable thing I had. So I gave you my name.” He lifted my head and whispered, “Told her we were gonna call you . . . Liam.”

  The name bounced off the insides of my head, rattled down my neck, circulated through me, and hovered above my chest.

  He looked at me, his lips tight. He nodded. “Liam.” The whisper jolted the word loose, flipped it a few degrees, and then it slid down into the hole in me where it echoed like a gavel.

  “But . . . why didn’t you . . . ?”

  He shrugged. “Wasn’t worth it.”

  “Wasn’t worth it? But you lost everything.”

  He shook his head and smiled, his lips quivering. “I gained everything.”

  “What?”

  “You . . .” He put his hands behind my head. “You’re my inheritance.”

  “But . . .”

  “Son . . .”

  The word stopped me.

  He filled his chest. “’Cause nothing”—he poked me in the chest—“not one single thing . . . compares to you.”