by Amy Harmon
I might die, but Jacob Dawson had to die too. I couldn’t let him live. Even if Eli saw me kill him.
And Eli would see.
He stood to my left, just beyond the length of my outstretched hand, standing there in his Batman pajamas, complete with hood and cape. He smiled at me a little, that same sad smile that made me wonder how much of the child remained. He didn’t have a body anymore, a body that could grow, a body that indicated the passing of years and the gathering of experience. But he wasn’t a four-year-old little boy waiting for someone to explain to him what was happening. He knew. And he’d been trying to tell me all along.
He’d been lingering to take me home.
Georgia
IT SOUNDED LIKE AN ENGINE back-firing in the distance, muted, unthreatening. But Dale Garrett and I both turned toward it, our ears cocked, brows furrowed.
“That was a gun-shot,” he mused, his eyes trained on the back of Kathleen Wright’s home across the field. And I started to run.
“Georgia!” Dale Garrett cried. “Stop! Georgia! Son-of-a-bitch, girl!” I didn’t know if he was behind me or if he was digging out his cell phone, but I hoped it was the latter. He was old and fat, and I didn’t want him killing himself trying to chase me across the field.
I don’t know how long it took me to get through the round corral, across the field, and over the fence into Kathleen’s back yard, but it felt like years. Decades. When I reached the back deck and threw myself at the sliding glass door only to find it locked tight, I screamed in frustration and dread. Moses had been out on that deck for the greater part of the day, but he’d still locked the damn door when he was done. I ran around the house, fear making my thoughts pop like firecrackers, whizzing around uncontrolled in my head.
A white, Chevy Tahoe with Juab County Sheriff’s Department written along the side in gold lettering was parked out front next to Moses’s black pick-up and as I rounded the corner and ran toward the front door, a black Hummer swung in, gravel flying as it lurched to a halt. David ‘Tag’ Taggert shot out of the vehicle with a gun in his hand and murder on his face, and I almost collapsed in relief.
But that was before I heard the second gun shot.
“Stay here!” Tag roared, running for the front door. So I followed him. I had to. And when he burst through the front door without pausing, the first thing I noticed was the smell. But it didn’t smell like paint this time. It didn’t smell like pies either. It smelled like gun powder, and it smelled like blood. And then Tag roared again, and I felt his arm jerk as he fired his gun, and then fired again. Another shot rang out and a bullet hit the dining room window. Glass shattered as Tag stepped over something and then sank to his knees. At first I thought he was hit and I reached for him, my view of the rest of the room blocked by his big back. Then I realized Tag had stepped over Sheriff Dawson who was sprawled, staring up at the ceiling, a huge knife sticking out of his chest, a gunshot wound to his head.
And then I saw Moses.
He was lying on his side on the kitchen floor, blood growing in an ever-widening pool around his body, and Tag was turning him, trying to staunch the flow of blood, cursing Moses, cursing God, cursing himself.
And just like when Gigi died all those years ago, when Moses was covered in paint instead of blood, when death was on the walls instead of in his eyes, I ran to him. And just like before, I was helpless to do anything for him.
Moses
IT WAS LIGHT, I FELT SAFE, and I was perfectly aware of who I was and where I was. Eli stood beside me, his hand in mine, and from a distance there were others too, coming toward me. If I had to paint it all, I doubt I could, but maybe paint could better capture it than words. Yet even with the soft effervescence and the unyielding light all around me, it was Eli who held my attention. He lifted his chin and contemplated me, searching my face. And then he smiled.
“You’re my dad.” His voice was clear and sweet, and I recognized it from the memories he’d shared with me, though it was easier to hear now, unfiltered, crystalline almost.
“Yes,” I nodded, gazing down at him. “I am. And you’re my son.”
“I’m Eli. And you love me.”
“I do.”
“I love you too. And you love my mom.”
“Yes,” I whispered, wishing with all my soul that Georgia was here. “I hate that she’s alone now.”
“She won’t be alone forever. It passes so fast,” Eli said wisely, even gently.
“Do you think she knows how much I love her?”
“You gave her flowers and said you were sorry.”
“I did.”
“You kissed her.”
I could only nod.
“You painted her pictures and hugged her when she cried.”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“You laughed with her too.”
I nodded again.
“Those are all the ways to say I love you.”
“They are?”
Eli nodded emphatically. He was quiet for a moment as if he was mulling something over. And then he spoke again.
“Sometimes you can choose, you know.”
“What?” I asked.“Sometimes you can choose. Most people choose to stay. It’s beautiful here.”
“Did you choose to stay?”
Eli shook his head. “Sometimes you can choose. Sometimes you can’t.”
I waited, my eyes soaking him in. He was so clear, so sharp, so present and perfect that I wanted to take him in my arms and never let him go.
“Did someone come for you when you died, Eli?” I said, almost pleading, needing to know someone had.
“Yes. Gigi did. And Grandma too.”
“Grandma?”
“Your mom, silly.”
I grinned at him. He reminded me of Georgia, but I felt the grin fade almost immediately. “I didn’t know if my mom would be here. She wasn’t a very good person,” I replied softly. It surprised me to hear him call her grandma as if she fulfilled that role as well as Gigi did.
“Some people mean to be bad. Some people don’t. Grandma didn’t mean to be bad.” It was such a basic concept, said with such child-like wisdom and such a simple acceptance of good versus evil, that I had no response but one.
“Can I hold you, Eli?”
He smiled and was immediately in my arms, his own arms around my neck. And I buried my head in his curls and felt the silk of the dark strands tickle my nose. He smelled like baby powder, clean straw, and freshly laundered socks. I caught a hint of Georgia’s perfume, as if she’d held him tightly just like this, right before he left her, and he’d carried her with him ever since. He was warm and wiggly and his cheek was smooth and soft as he pressed it against mine.
When we dream we don’t know we dream. In our dreams our bodies are solid, we touch, we kiss, we run, we feel. Our thoughts somehow create reality. It was like that here too. I knew I didn’t have a body and neither did Eli. And it didn’t matter. Eli was solid and whole in my arms and I was holding my son. And I never wanted to let go.
Eli pulled away slightly and looked at me seriously, his brown eyes so like his mother’s that I wanted to drown in them. Then he unlocked his arms from around my neck and held my face in his small hands.
“You have to choose, Dad.”
Georgia
MOSES DIED ON THE WAY TO THE HOSPITAL. That’s what they told me later. They wouldn’t let us ride with him, so Tag and I jumped in his Hummer and followed the ambulance, breaking speed records and stumbling into the emergency room when we finally reached Nephi.
And then we waited, clinging to each other, while they tried to bring Moses back. Tag’s face was white and his hands shook with horror as he told me that he believed Jacob Dawson had killed his sister, and probably all the other girls as well.
“Moses called me this morning, Georgia. He asked about the brand on Calico, about the circle A. And it nagged at me. I ended up calling my dad and asking him about it, just on the off-chance he knew something. And he tol
d me the circle A was Jacob Dawson’s brand. We bought a couple of horses from him the summer Molly disappeared. The horses we bought had that brand. My father even gave one of them to Molly.”
“Anderson ranches,” I supplied, numbly. “Jacob Dawson’s mother was an Anderson. She inherited the ranch and her brother inherited the mill when their father died. She handed the ranch and all the livestock over to Sheriff Dawson when he turned twenty-one.”
A slew of police came to the hospital—some of the officers were from the Sheriff’s Department, some from Nephi city—and Tag was taken in for questioning. I was questioned as well, though I was questioned at the hospital and allowed to remain there. The sheriff had been killed, and it was Tag’s bullet that had killed him, that and the knife in his chest that Moses had apparently wielded. I was afraid for Tag and for Moses, and I was worried that the truth might never come out.
Then my parents arrived and in hushed, disbelieving tones, they told me that Lisa Kendrick had been found bound and drugged in Jacob Dawson’s SUV. And suddenly everyone wasn’t quite as sure of the world as they once had been. Ironically, it was Jacob Dawson who had once told me, “You can never get too comfortable around animals. Just when you think you’ve got ‘em figured out, they’ll do something completely unexpected.” And he would know.
When I could no longer be brave, I found the little chapel, buried my face in my blood-stained hands and talked to Eli, whispering to him, telling him about Moses, about our story, about how he came to be, about how he was the best parts of both of us. And then I tearfully told him that I needed him to bring Moses back one more time if he could.
“Send him back, Eli,” I begged. “If you have any pull in that place at all, send him back.”
Moses
I TOLD YOU RIGHT UP FRONT, right in the beginning that I lost him. The day I met Eli, he was already gone. I knew he was dead. I knew, and yet it still hurt. So much. I didn’t lose him the way Georgia did. But I still lost him. I lost him before I knew him. And I wasn’t prepared.
And each day, as I grew to love him more, as I watched him, as he showed me his short life and his huge love, it got harder, not easier. In truth—since I’ve decided that’s all I have—I would gladly submit myself to anything else. Anything but that. But that is what was given to me. And I wasn’t prepared.
I can’t tell you how it felt to say goodbye. How it felt to choose. But in the end, mercifully, the choice was made for me, and I didn’t have to do either. I held my little boy in my arms, and I heard his mother’s voice from somewhere far off, telling him our story. A story about how Eli was born, how he died, and how, from beyond the grave he healed us. And Eli and I listened together.
The first few words of every story are always the hardest. It’s almost as if pulling them out, speaking them into existence, commits you to seeing it all through. As if once you start, you are required to finish.
And we weren’t finished. Georgia and I weren’t finished. I knew that. And Eli knew it.
“You have to go now, Dad,” he whispered.
“I know.”
I felt myself slipping, almost falling, much like the way it felt when I called down the waters.
“Goodnight Stewy Stinker,” I heard him say, a smile in his voice.
“Goodnight Buzzard Bates,” I said, my tongue so heavy in my mouth I could barely form the words.
“See you soon, Diehard Dad.”
“See you soon, little man,” I whispered, and then he was gone.
Georgia
THEY SHARED HIS STORY on the 10:00 news—the little baby left in a basket at a dingy laundromat in a bad neighborhood in West Valley City, abandoned by a drug addict and expected to have all sorts of problems. And they shared his story again, twenty-five years later—the story of Moses Wright, the artist who communed with the dead and brought down a killer.
Both Tag and Moses were absolved of any wrong-doing in the death of Sheriff Jacob Dawson. And they were cleared quickly when Sylvie Kendrick’s remains were found on his property, along with the remains of several, still unidentified girls. Lisa Kendrick made a full recovery, and though she doesn’t remember Sheriff Dawson abducting her, she does remember walking along the road and having a vehicle pull up behind her, lights flashing.
Jacob Dawson is believed to have killed more than a dozen girls in Utah in a twenty-five year period, and may be responsible for similar disappearances of girls matching the same profile in surrounding states. Considering that he had inherited one hundred acres of land, including the land that bordered the truck stop and the highway overpass where Molly Taggert was found, there was still a lot of ground to cover, and, sadly, a lot of bodies to uncover.
The whole town of Levan followed the story, watching the reports, pretending like they had the inside scoop, and making up what they didn’t know, just to feel important, just like the first time Levan made the news. It was a great story, and people love stories, just like they love babies.
And although people loved the story of baby Moses who grew up to be a seer of sorts, when the news cameras left and life returned to normal, it was a story that many people had a hard time believing and accepting. Like Moses said, if you’re afraid of the truth you’ll never find it. But that was okay. We didn’t especially want to be found.
We let people believe what they wanted and accept what they would. We let the colors blur and the details fade. And in the end, people would tell the story and pretend that’s all it was. It was a great story, after all.
A story of before and after, of new beginnings and never-endings. A story flawed and fractured, crazy and cracked, and most of all, a love story.
Our story.
Georgia
“DON’T MOVE, I’M ALMOST DONE,” Moses insisted, and I sighed and laid my head back down on my arm. He was obsessed with painting me. My pregnant body wasn’t especially beautiful, but Moses disagreed, including my round belly as one of his daily five greats, along with my legs, my eyes, my blonde hair, and the fact that my breasts were a full size bigger.
Who needed a photographer when your husband was a world-famous artist? I just hoped that someday nude paintings of Georgia Wright wouldn’t be hanging in some rich old man’s bedroom, or worse, in a museum where thousands of eyes perused my greats, daily.
“Moses?” I said softly.
“Yeah?” His eyes lifted from the canvas briefly.
“There’s a new law in Georgia.”
“Does it directly contradict one of the laws of Moses?”
“Yes. Yes it does,” I confessed.
“Hmm. Let’s hear it.” He set his brush down, wiped his hands on a cloth and approached the bed where I was positioned, draped in a sheet like a Rubenesque Madonna. I learned the term from him, and he seemed to think it was a good thing.
“Thou shall not paint,” I commanded sternly. He leaned over me, one knee on the bed, his strong arms bracketing my head, and I turned slightly, looking up at him.
“Ever?” He smiled. I watched his head descend and his lips brushed mine. But his golden-green eyes stayed open, watching me as he kissed me. My toes curled and my eyes fluttered, the sensation of lips tasting lips pulling me under.
“No. Not ever, just sometimes,” I sighed.
“Just when I’m in Georgia?” he whispered, his mouth curving against mine.
“Yes. And I need you here often. All the time. Frequently.”
Moses kissed me deeply, stroking his hands up over the curve of my abdomen, and the baby kicked enthusiastically, making us pull apart abruptly and laugh in wonder.
“It’s pretty crowded in there,” he said soberly, but his eyes danced. He was happy, and my heart was so full I couldn’t catch my breath.
“It’s crowded in here too.” I rested my hand on my heart, trying not to be an emotional pregnant lady and failing miserably. “I love you, Moses,” I said, cradling his face.
“I love you too, Georgia,” he said. “Before, after, always.”
Moses
I TRIED NOT TO HAVE ANY EXPECTATIONS. Life after death was one thing, life coming into the world was another. Georgia was calm. Beautiful. An old pro, as she put it. But I had missed the first time around, and I was afraid to blink for fear of missing something. And I was not calm.
Tag was not calm either. He had to wait outside. He was my best friend, but even best friends did not share some things. Plus, I didn’t think Georgia could give birth and keep us both from passing out.
It was all I could do to hold Georgia’s hand and stay at her bedside, praying to God, to Gi, to Eli, to anyone who would listen, to give me strength and self-control. Strength to be the man Georgia needed and self-control to resist covering the walls of Georgia’s hospital room in a frenzied mural.
When our daughter came into the world, screaming like it was ending, I could only cry with her. I’d turned into a crier. After years of controlling the waters, they seemed to be controlling me. But how could I not cry? She was beautiful. Perfect. Healthy. And when they put her on Georgia’s chest and Georgia smiled at me like we’d made a miracle, I could only nod and agree. We’d made two of them.
“Kathleen,” she said.
“Kathleen,” I agreed.
“I think she might have your eyes and your nose,” Georgia said, comforting our daughter who most definitely did not have my nose. Or at least not yet. But she did have my eyes. They were my mother’s eyes too. I could admit that now.
“Do you have your daddy’s eyes?” Georgia cooed.
“She’s going to have your coloring. Your hair,” I contributed, looking at the pale fuzz on Kathleen’s tiny head and the rosy hue of her skin. I was already wondering what colors I would use to match it.
“She’s got Eli’s mouth, Moses. Maybe she’ll have his smile,” Georgia’s own smile slipped a notch and my heart stuttered in my chest. We missed him. We missed Eli. And his absence was the only shadow on this moment.
