Faithful Unto Death

by Stephanie Jaye Evans

  The way He had the Garcias.

  While I jogged I was trying to think out what to do. I’ve spent some time with Alex. Honey has attended our church ever since before I came as the new minister. Back then, before the children had chosen sides, toddler Jenasy would be at her side, along with infant Alex on her hip. I remember her showing off Alex as a baby, dressed in these precious little Feltman suits. A tad too precious for my taste, but if Annie and I had had a boy, maybe Annie would have dressed him up like Little Lord Fauntleroy, too.

  I’d sat in on a good number of Merrie and Jo’s youth classes and activities, and because Jo and Alex were in the same age group, I’d had a chance to see how Alex behaved himself. He was a hotheaded kid, quick to lose his temper, impulsive. Alex had thrown a rock through a window at church camp one year, and the youth minister told me that Alex had apologized, truly full of remorse, as he hadn’t meant to hit the window, he had meant to hit the Curry kid standing in front of it. Since the Curry kid was a lion of a boy and more than able to take care of himself, I didn’t hold that against Alex, though he had to pay for the window. The church met in the old building back then, and during one Vacation Bible School, I caught Alex and three other guys, in their underwear, sitting on the bottom of the baptistery. Seeing how long they could hold their breath. Apparently the question as to who could hold his breath longest had come up, and one of them had the great idea, “Look, here’s some water. Why shouldn’t …” Yeah. I wasn’t that happy about that. Long time ago.

  I’d gotten into some trouble myself when I was young. If a teen acts too good, I always think there’s a problem; if an adolescent boy acts too good, then I know there’s a problem.

  Alex was smart and articulate, so of course he was snarky. That’s how you learn to use those skills. I hadn’t seen any real meanness, though, so it gave me hope he would probably grow out of the sarcasm. He’d always seemed like a good kid, but I wasn’t buddy-buddy with the boy. I wasn’t buddy-buddy with any of the kids—I leave that to the youth ministers. In my position, it’s better to have a little distance.

  So how was I supposed to get that angry, grieving sixteen-year-old to tell me what he wouldn’t tell his mother or his granddaddy? Alex didn’t need his minister, he needed a lawyer, and I already had Glenn Carter working on that.

  I passed some other joggers: a tiny Asian woman with her hair knotted tightly on the top of her head, a spandexed guy so big he made me look small. Guy’s privates were getting so much action I thought it might be safer for him if he wore a sports bra down there. Probably an ex-athlete, though I didn’t recognize him. Shortly after, I came up to a winded Dr. Fallon.

  I stopped to greet him. After our meeting in the hospital the day before, I felt Dr. Fallon and I could get along fine. I would no longer have to dread bumping into him. Fallon pulled a sports towel from his waistband and carefully wiped his face and hands before offering me a handshake. I hastily wiped my own hands on my shorts. I told him I hadn’t known he was a jogger and he said he hadn’t been until a few weeks ago, but that his daughter had finally gotten him out running.

  I said, “The daughter in California?” and he answered, “The daughter from California,” and started up jogging again, so I waved and picked up my pace. I’d never met Fallon’s daughter. One of his sons and a daughter-in-law and grandkids came on Sundays. Either the daughter never made it to Texas to visit, or she declined to join Fallon in church. Seeing how intense Fallon could get, I wouldn’t have blamed her if she gave the Sunday morning thing a miss.

  I was glad his daughter was looking into her dad’s health. Fallon wasn’t that old, he was somewhere in his seventies, but he looked awful out there jogging, gray and drawn and generally unwell. You’d think that a doctor, with all the information and all the finances it takes to maintain good health would, well, maintain it.

  By the time I had jogged up to my own backyard, I was winded, too, but only enough to know I’d done my body some good. I wondered how many miles a week Wanderley jogged.

  It didn’t catch my attention that the back gate wasn’t latched; I’m not always as careful as I should be, considering the gate opens onto the levee. I did notice that the door that opened off the back of the garage was open. I’m careful to keep that door shut and locked because you can get into the house from the garage. You can, a stranger can, and four-footed guests can, too. So I keep the door shut and usually locked.

  When I put my hand on the doorknob, there was a dry crust of mud on it.

  Imagine here a long, creaking twenty-five seconds as my body stops cold and my brain ratchets into gear.

  Now, only Annie Laurie and I do any work in the garden that’s going to get your hands muddy, and we clean up after ourselves, so I didn’t think it was likely we had left mud on the doorknob. And the mud wasn’t around the knob, the way it would be if a muddy hand had grasped the knob; the mud was on top of the knob, the way it would be, I thought as I stepped back for a better look, if someone had, say, opened the door and swung it wide—put a foot on the knob in order to get a boost up to the top of the door, hung on the gutter to keep balance—and then hoisted themselves onto the roof of my one-story garage.

  My eyes traveled up and I saw, sure enough, a trail of muddy footprints, red clay against the black composition roof.

  Those footprints went straight to Jo’s bedroom window. Jo’s window opens onto the conveniently low, one-story garage roof. That garage sits in a yard that backs up to the levee. And that levee, again conveniently, is intersected by Elkins Road. My eyes took all that in in two blinks.

  All I saw then was red.

  Twelve

  I may not be the tallest pine tree in the Big Thicket, but I’m no shrub, and those footprints on my roof led me to one inescapable conclusion.

  Jo was leaving the house unobserved, and the only time she would need to do that, since Annie and I are reasonable and loving parents, and not the fascist dictators some people would make us out to be, is at night. When a fourteen-year-old should be home. In bed. By herself.

  I did, at least, know no one could have been in her room. Baby Bear is a good-natured mutt, but if someone had climbed through Jo’s window, Baby Bear would have chewed him to the bone, cracked the bones for the marrow, and left only the buttons, buckle, and zipper. Newfoundlands are ferociously protective. I like that in a dog.

  It’s a good thing Jo was in school. At least, I assumed she was in school. Evidently, I had been making several unwarranted assumptions recently.

  I took those stairs two at a time, Baby Bear at my heels ready for whatever new game this was going to turn out to be, and burst into Jo’s room like I was going through the Oklahoma defensive line on homecoming day.

  Nothing.

  I don’t know what I expected to find. Been afraid to find.

  I was glad I didn’t find it.

  Three years after we’d been in this house, Annie Laurie and I took the carpet out of the fourth bedroom, the one we used as a guest room and sewing room, and we installed a wood floor. Both Merrie and Jo were taking ballet, and it seemed like a good investment. Annie Laurie’s mother is a big believer in ballet lessons for little girls. She says it gives a “young lady” grace and poise and a good carriage. I didn’t know young ladies still had carriages anymore. It sounded as odd as referring to someone’s “countenance.” But I figured all that stretching and bending would make the girls more limber for sports that could get them college scholarships.

  Annie Laurie and I put the floor in ourselves with a how-to book and supplies from the Home Depot on the Southwest Freeway. Along one wall we mounted floor-to-ceiling mirrors and a ballet barre. It took us the better part of a week, and we couldn’t have done it if the girls hadn’t been away at church camp. As it was, we covered up some uneven plank ends with baseboard and wood filler. You have to be the kind of person who looks for mistakes to notice that.

  Both girls were tickled when they got home from camp and saw the transformation. Annie
Laurie and I left them to their unpacking, and went downstairs to start dinner.

  We heard some strange thumps and bumps and what sounded like a mighty struggle. The commotion grew in intensity until I went upstairs to investigate.

  Jo had dismantled the guest room bed, and had wrestled the full mattress out to the hall landing. She was having trouble with the box springs. I mean, she was only eight or so, and the box springs weighed more than she did, no question.

  Tall, blond Merrie was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, laughing.

  What on earth did she think she was doing, I had asked Jo, though it was perfectly clear what she was doing. Jo was appropriating the new dance room for herself. I told her no, the dance room was to share with Merrie and with any overnight guests we might have, and I took the box springs from Jo to put it back in place. All sixty-five pounds of Jo—and at least five of those pounds were carried in her long dark braids—grabbed hold of the box springs and pulled back so hard she actually pulled it from my grasp. She sat there, eyes brimming, face set and furious, absolutely quivering with defiance.

  Naturally I wasn’t going to let her get away with that kind of behavior, and I was reasoning with her, kindly but firmly, not making any headway that I could see, but sticking to my course, when Merrie came over, squatted down on the floor next to Jo, and said, “You want the room that bad, Monkeyface?”

  Jo nodded, which was more of a response than I’d gotten from her so far, and Merrie said, “Dad, it’s no big deal. Let her have the room; you can make her old room into the guest room. Jo will let me use the barre when I want to, won’t you, Jo?” Jo nodded again, less convincingly this time.

  Merrie gave her little sister’s braid a yank and said, “Come on then, I’ll help you move.” And from that time, it was Jo’s room.

  Jo’s room looked the same to me as it always had. Two twin brass beds that had been Annie’s grandmother’s when she was a girl. Jo’s bed wasn’t made up, of course. The blankets were helter-skelter and the sheets were every which way, but I don’t let myself get worked up over that. I wasn’t wild about the clothes flung all over, across the rails of the bed and on doorknobs and lying on the floor. Jeans and Tshirts and little bitty bras and panties so tiny I don’t see any point to them at all, but Annie Laurie says to let her worry about the panties, so I do.

  Jo’s room had a built-in bookcase against one wall with all the horse books Marguerite Henry ever wrote—I mean everything, all fifty-eight books, and that’s no small accomplishment even taking into account eBay and Amazon.

  Those books were from Jo’s horse-crazy days, and I’d read two of them to her, Misty of Chincoteague, which was okay, and King of the Wind, which I liked a lot. Jo loved all of them—she would trace the Wesley Dennis illustrations with her finger—but she never became much of a reader on her own. Annie took Jo to an educational specialist, who ran a bunch of expensive tests and came up with the idea that Jo had a reading disorder of some sort, but that’s a lot of hooey. No one in my family has ever had one of those ubiquitous disorders being marketed all over the place. Jo won’t apply herself; that’s what her problem is.

  Instead of books, the shelves of the bookcase mostly held ballet trophies and worn-out toe shoes and framed pictures of Jo in different ballet costumes. My favorite picture is the one where she got the fairy queen role. That was two years ago—quite an accomplishment because the part usually went to an older girl. It had been a while since I’d really looked at the picture, and I picked it up.

  In the picture, Jo is sitting on the stage with her back to the audience, her legs bent under her in kind of a complicated way, the filmy green dress spread out and sprinkled all over with silk daisies.

  Usually when Jo dances, her hair is slicked back into a bun on the top of her head, but in this picture, all that long, silky wavy dark hair is down her back. She’s looking over her shoulder so that the photographer has caught her in profile, her little chin tilted up, her gaze off on some imaginary world none of the rest of us could see. She looks like a queen. Not a princess. A queen. A little beauty.

  I remembered bringing her a big bouquet of long-stem yellow roses, and when she was done dancing, making those elaborate, graceful bows that ballerinas do, I was still so caught up in her performance I nearly forgot to lay them at her feet. Merrie had to put an elbow in my side. What a good night that had been. Magic.

  The memory of that night drained all the haste and anger out of me. I couldn’t remember the last time Jo and I had had a really good time together. It seemed like she was always angry at me nowadays, like there wasn’t anything I could say that didn’t get on her nerves or make her downright mad.

  Annie Laurie tells me that it’s normal, but it never happened between me and Merrie. We never got to a point where we couldn’t talk to each other. Merrie tells me everything. Jo and I have to have Annie to play go-between just to get us through dinner.

  I felt depressed and anxious, not to mention hot and sweaty and itchy, and I spent a long time in the shower trying to wash away the depression with the sweat. Baby Bear sat right outside the shower and watched with interest while I bathed. I’ve tried shutting him out. The French doors don’t lock and Baby Bear is very interested in watching me shower, so I’ve given up on privacy.

  I wasn’t but half dressed when the phone rang.

  It was Rebecca.

  “Bear, Cruz called. You know who Cruz is? She’s that lady who works for Honey Garcia.”

  I said I knew who she was.

  “She called to tell you the police have picked up Alex Garcia. They’re holding him for questioning in Richmond. At the juvenile detention center, thank Heaven for that at least.”

  “Why ‘thank Heaven’?”

  “Lord, don’t you know what goes on in the adult prisons? Why, adult convicts would be lined up at a young boy’s cell door and—”

  “Okay, Rebecca. You might want to be more careful what you’re Netflixing, you know that? Listen, would you call Glenn and alert him to this new development—”

  “I already have and he’s sending someone over there. A woman; he says don’t let her fool you, she’s as tough as nails and twice as sharp and all she does is criminal defense.”

  “Well, we hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  There was a short silence and I grabbed a sport coat.

  “It already has, hasn’t it, Bear?” I could hear her other line beeping. “Got to go, Bear, keep me in touch.” And she hung up.

  Thirteen

  By the time I had made the twenty-minute drive past the George Memorial Library to the juvenile detention center in Richmond, Alex was already closeted with his mother, his lawyer, and Detective James Wanderley. The police wouldn’t let me in to see Alex until they were through with him, and when they were through, they would let him go home. I could visit with him then. I knew the lawyer Glenn had sent over would be more than capable of handling whatever came up during questioning.

  I’d just wasted an hour going to Richmond and I’d missed all my morning appointments because of my unexpected visit from Dr. Garcia. I didn’t want to miss my afternoon appointments, too.

  Two or three times a week I make hospital visits. I drive into town to the Medical Center; that’s where many people go, even though we have an excellent Methodist Hospital branch here in First Colony. Houston’s Medical Center is the most prestigious in the world, so if you have a serious problem, cancer or heart trouble, say, you’ll likely end up in the Medical Center, though a lot of the very same doctors have offices in Sugar Land, too.

  That’s what I had scheduled for this afternoon, and I didn’t want to change my plans. I had to, though. Before I could get to my car, HD’s Bentley pulled into the lot and the fighting cock himself jumped out.

  I tried to look small and anonymous and slink off to my car. HD saw me. You don’t make that kind of money if things as big as me slip past you.

  HD waved me over, bellowing, “Preacher! Come on with me. I’
ll get this sorted out. You come on.” He strode on past, it never occurring to him that I might not follow.

  I followed.

  He burst through the door in what I was quickly coming to imagine was his signature entrance. He called out to the nearest officer, who was quietly conferring with a weeping woman.

  “Boy! I’m HD Parker and I’m here to get my grandson out of prison!”

  The officer lifted his large, dark head and stared at HD.

  I said, “He calls me ‘boy,’ too.” I didn’t think HD meant it the way it sounded.

  “Where you got him locked up? Get your keys and get your supervisor and get him on out here. His name is Alex Garcia, but he’s no Mexican.”

  Maybe HD did mean “boy” the way it sounded.

  The officer’s face didn’t twitch. If he was irritated, he didn’t let it show. His voice was even and polite.

  “My name is Officer Laplante. And this isn’t a prison, sir, it’s a juvenile holding facility and my understanding is that your grandson is being questioned. If you would like to have a seat in the waiting room, someone will be with you as soon as there’s any information we are permitted to share with you.”

  HD gave a squawk.

  “Permitted? Permitted! You’ve got my grandson! You’re treating him like a murderer! That boy is no murderer. He’s in the Honor Society at Clements High School. Kid plays on the golf team, got a negative three handicap.”

  Ummm, I was going to have to check up on that one. Negative three? For sure? That would make him competitive with Tiger Woods. Clements High School has a good golf team, but give me a break. HD was partial to hyperbole. That or he was delusional.

  “Sir.” Officer Laplante spoke louder this time, and let some of his authority show in his straight bearing. “I need you to calm yourself down and take a seat in the waiting room. No one is treating your grandson like a murderer. We’re holding him until—”

  “How long? How long you holding my grandson? I’d like you to come right on out and tell me to my face, right here, right now, how long you plan on keeping my grandson in this, this hellhole of bestiality and pederasty …”