Gradle Bird

by J. C. Sasser

  “Come out of the house, Delvis!” Sheriff Hill’s voice vibrated through a loudspeaker outside, its sound blunted by the bolted up door. “We won’t hurt you! We just need you to come out!”

  Delvis stared at the door with his brows pitched up in triangles. He looked to her, his eyes a mixture of fear and resignation. “I ain’t never been so scared in my whole entire life,” he said.

  She rose from the bed and gripped Delvis by his bicep. “Don’t be afraid, Delvis. I’ll go with you. I’ll be with you the whole time.”

  She led him to the door and placed his hand on a lock. “Turn the bolt, Delvis,” she said.

  His hand shook on the bolt, but he would not turn it. She gently placed her hand atop Delvis’s and helped him unlock the bolt. They jumped when it snapped unlocked, its sound like a gunshot in the silent, death-filled room.

  He unlocked the bolts one by one, and as he unlocked each bolt, they gradually succumbed, as they were brought closer and closer to the reality of the world outside. After he unlocked the last bolt, he walked to the bed where Ceif lay and neatly folded down the blanket covering his body. He slid his hands under Ceif’s knees and shoulder blades, and lifted him into his arms. Ceif’s head fell back, limp like a sleeping child.

  He carried Ceif to the door and waited for Gradle to turn the knob.

  Gradle pushed the door open into the rainy night. A shine of lights blinded their faces, and the hot wet air grew tense with the click of gunmetal. Grandpa rose from the porch steps. His tall silhouette blocked them from the blinding lights as he led them forward with his shotgun drawn.

  “Put your hands up!” a man yelled from behind a police car. “Freeze and put your hands up!”

  Delvis ignored the commands and continued walking toward the light.

  “Freeze or we’ll shoot!” Sheriff Hill’s voice blew through the speaker.

  Delvis walked through the rain shimmering in the spotlights. He walked past the patrol cars and past four guns cocked and aimed at his chest. He walked toward Sonny Joe who leaned against his Chevy’s hood smoking a cigarette.

  Sonny Joe drew in a quick rip and threw the cigarette on the ground. He climbed into the cab, locked the doors, and cranked the engine. His headlights beamed against Delvis’s chest, making Ceif light up like a star.

  Delvis stopped in front of the truck’s hood and stared at Sonny Joe, paying no mind to the men at his back who all had their fingers trained on slippery metal triggers. Time slowed. Seconds felt like hours, as Delvis and Sonny Joe communicated in silence.

  Sonny Joe got out of the truck and walked toward Delvis. Their eyes held fast to each other. They were both wet and trembling. Sonny Joe held out his arms, and Delvis lay Ceif in them.

  Delvis raised his arms high up over his head, and Sonny Joe bowed his head over Ceif’s body and wept.

  The men swarmed Delvis. There was a series of shouts and orders, a jag of chaos, but Delvis remained calm.

  “It’s not his fault!” Gradle yelled, as the men yanked Delvis’s arms behind his back and cuffed his wrists. “Delvis!” she screamed, trying to cut through the men to get to Delvis. She kicked and scratched, but Grandpa’s hand reached out and stilled her. “Delvis!” she yelled. Tears smeared her cheeks. “Don’t be afraid!”

  The men shoved Delvis toward the patrol car, and as they forced their hands on his head to push him into the seat, Gradle broke free from Grandpa’s grip. She ran to Delvis, clawing at the men in order to see his face.

  “Don’t be afraid, Delvis,” she told him. Her fingers found his cheek.

  “I won’t,” he said, smiling. “She’s holding my hand.”

  “Who’s holding your hand?” Gradle asked.

  “The Tooth Fairy,” he said.

  The door slammed. Blue lights spun. An officer tapped the roof, and Gradle, rain soaked and shaky, watched the car drive off with Delvis, wondering why she ever thought it was possible to bring any more magic into his already magical world.

  GRADLE SAT ON the porch steps in the middle of a pink sunrise, staring at the portrait Delvis had drawn of her. She worried about him, wondered what they were doing to him, and if he was afraid, or if somehow his extraordinary mind had managed to convince himself to be brave through it all. She folded the portrait, put it inside her bra, and watched the sky grow bright.

  A bicycle creaked a distance down the sidewalk, and from it a boy threw newspapers onto dew-sparkling lawns. He crossed the street before passing the old Spivey house, stopped on the other side of the median, and stared at her. She waited for him to warn her that Ms. Spivey was gonna scratch her back, but instead he raised his arm and waved.

  She waved back, and he threw a paper that landed at her feet. She removed the green rubber band and unrolled the paper to the front-page news: LUNATIC MURDERS CRIPPLED BOY.

  She stared at the photograph the editor had chosen, a mug shot of Delvis, his eyes captured in a perfect moment of wild fury that powerfully suggested truth to the headline. Twenty-four hours hadn’t passed and already the town had produced a paper with the news, and even though there had been no judge, trial, or jury, they had already convicted him. She shoved the paper under her arm and ran down the sidewalk toward the north side of town.

  She climbed the steps to the two-story jailhouse and banged on the front door. The glass panel rattled in its casing. She cupped her hands against the glass and peered inside the vacant foyer. Everything was still and asleep and had not yet risen to the newborn sun that lit her in a subtle rose. She banged on the door again and twisted the knob.

  Down the dark hallway, Sheriff Hill’s image came into view. He was half dressed in khaki pants, a white undershirt, and bedroom slippers. His eyes were sleep-swollen, his face was dark with a lather of morning stubble, and a cup of coffee steamed in his hand.

  “Visiting hours aren’t until two this afternoon,” he said. He took a drink of coffee.

  She shoved the newspaper into Sheriff Hill’s chest. His coffee rocked out of his cup and spilled on the floor. “He’s not a lunatic. And he’s not a murderer.”

  Sheriff Hill snapped the paper open and read. The palm of his hand raked down the front of his face and settled over his chin. “I don’t have any control what words the editor picks to put in his paper,” he said.

  “What words would you pick?” she asked.

  “Writing headlines is not my business,” he said.

  “It’s a big misunderstanding,” she said. Her chin started to quiver. “Delvis is the victim.”

  Sheriff Hill’s left brow peaked. “I’m afraid Ceif Walker is the victim in this crime.”

  “So is Delvis,” she said.

  “That’s a reach for a man who confessed to killing a teen-aged boy with a .357 Ruger.”

  A woman stuck her head out of the kitchen with a skillet of bacon that fogged up the bottom floor with the smell of burnt salt and grease. The sheriff nodded at her and smiled. He turned back to Gradle. “Everybody in town knows Delvis. “Most won’t find this surprising.”

  “Nobody in this town knows him.” She paced the room and stopped at the foyer’s window to watch a woman across the street pick up the newspaper from her porch and cover her mouth with her hand. “I can explain everything.”

  “Tell me what you know,” Sheriff Hill said, leading her back to the kitchen.

  They sat across from each other at a small breakfast table with nothing but a worn Bible on its top that reminded her of Ceif.

  Sheriff Hill slapped the newspaper down and held his coffee mug between his hands as his wife filled his cup. Her eyes shifted from the front-page news splayed across the table to Gradle.

  “Nance, this is Gradle Bird,” Sheriff Hill said. “She moved into the old Spivey house not too long ago. She’s a friend of Delvis’s.”

  “I’ve always loved that old house,” she said. “And I’m glad to know you’re Delvis’s friend.” She picked up the newspaper from the table and tossed it in the trash. “How do you like your eggs
cooked, Gradle?”

  “I don’t have a preference,” she said, gulping down the fresh squeezed orange juice that seemed to appear in her hand like magic.

  One by one, Nance took an egg from a basket, closed her eyes, and prayed a silent prayer over each one before she cracked it into a bowl, as if each egg encased something sacred. She hummed and sang while she beat the eggs with a fork.

  Gradle tried not to stare at the woman, but she couldn’t keep her eyes away. Her beauty alone pulled Gradle into a safe, calm orbit. She was both lady-like and man-like, was taller than the sheriff by a head. She had blue eyes and wore a bright red stain on her lips. Her black hair was pulled back into a slick neat bun and made her neck look a mile long. But her movements drew more gravity than her looks. It was as if everything she did had a higher purpose, that there was a deeper meaning in her lowering the gas on the burner, sectioning a grapefruit, running the water over her bleeding fingertip, which she made no fuss about when she sliced it with a knife.

  “Tell me what you know,” Sheriff Hill said. He smiled after Gradle startled and turned his way.

  Gradle hugged her shoulders and acknowledged the sheriff. While she had met the man before, she felt as if she was meeting him for the very first time. In his kitchen at the table he was someone different than the man she thought he had been. He was no sheriff. He was a husband, a man, but one that she didn’t think ordinary. She sensed Nance was on her and Delvis’s side already. Perhaps the sheriff would get there, too.

  “It started the day I went with Sonny Joe and Ceif to throw firecrackers at Delvis’s house,” she said. Tears gathered at the back of her throat. She wondered what else there was, what else had happened. So much had. She remembered that day and the days after. She remembered the day she wrote Delvis the letter and the day he wrote her back. She remembered the day she washed his feet, his guitar serenades, her running away to him when there was nowhere else she wanted to go. She remembered pulling his tooth and him cussing out the electricity meter. She remembered him cutting her hair, drawing her portrait, and helping her see who she was.

  “His dog broke loose from its chain and attacked Ceif. And he shot and killed his dog to save Ceif’s life.” She stared at the steam rising from Nance’s eggs and wondered where the hunger she felt just moments ago had gone. “I felt so bad about it, I went to his house to personally apologize for what I’d done. And we became friends,” she said. “That’s what happened.”

  “That’s it?” Sheriff Hill asked. “An innocent boy is dead because Delvis Miles became your friend?”

  “Yes, sir.” She forked a bit of egg into her mouth. Her mouth watered, and she felt the food rise up her throat. “I should’ve never invited Sonny Joe and Ceif into Delvis’s world.” She pressed tears into her cheeks. “Because in his world everything is real.”

  Sheriff Hill cleared his throat. He put on a pair of reading glasses and reached for the Bible.

  “Can I see him?” she asked.

  “We usually eat our meals with our prisoners, but we couldn’t get Delvis to come down this morning,” Nance said. She stood behind her husband and placed her hands on his shoulders as he flipped through the Bible’s pages. “Maybe you can get something on his stomach,” she said, handing Gradle a plate.

  The sheriff nudged his glasses up his nose and flipped slowly from Genesis to Revelations and back.

  “First Corinthians,” Nance said, combed his hair back with her fingers, and kissed the top of his head. “Chapter one verses twenty-seven through twenty-nine.”

  Sheriff Hill turned to First Corinthians and marked it with the Bible’s satin ribbon. He tucked the book under his arm and grabbed a key hanging from a nail driven into the kitchen’s doorframe. Where the key hung, a small sign warned: THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.

  The sheriff led Gradle up a flight of stairs to the second floor of the jailhouse. The air felt considerably cooler there, perhaps from the cement floor and cement walls that covered everything in a thin sheet of grey ice. All of the cells were empty except for the last one where Delvis lay facing the wall, curled up like a dead worm.

  “Delvis,” Sheriff Hill said, “you have a visitor.”

  Delvis did not move. He remained as still as the metal cot that supported his curled body.

  “She brought you breakfast,” he said, opening the jail cell door.

  Sheriff Hill took the plate from Gradle and placed it on a small desk. He stood over Delvis, opened the Bible to the place he had marked, and read, “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are. That no flesh should glory in his presence.”

  He knelt down at Delvis’s bed, placed his hand upon Delvis’s shoulder, and bowed his head. “Oh loving God, have mercy. Take away the stain of Delvis’s transgression. Create in him a new, clean heart. Restore to him your salvation. In your name we pray. Amen.”

  As Sheriff Hill rose from his knees, the sound of someone playing the piano climbed its way up the stairs to the second floor. Gradle’s ear bowed in its direction. The music was delicate and calm, the kind of music lyrics would ruin.

  “That’s Nance,” Sheriff Hill said, as he closed the cell’s door behind him. “She only plays when we have residents.” He looked at Delvis who lay silent, facing the wall, unmoved by the music. “When you’re ready, Gradle, you can tell me what really happened. I’ll leave you two,” he said. He walked down the stairs, the tap of his footsteps folding in with the music.

  She held onto the cold bars and pushed her face between them. “Delvis? It’s me, Gradle.”

  Neither her voice nor her presence seemed to make a difference, and this was something altogether new because in the past they had made all the difference to Delvis in the world. She slumped down to the floor in a heap. Her cheeks pressed into the cold metal bars, and she waited for Delvis to move, for his breath to lift his chest, for his pinky toe to twitch. He gave her nothing. Her hope grew dim and grey like the walls that surrounded her, and slowly she drifted off, holding hands with the music, into a demanding sleep.

  At one point her eyes lifted when Nance brought her a pillow and at another point later when Sheriff Hill brought up lunch. But for the most part her eyes kept sealed in a chamber of darkness.

  “Gradle, you should go home,” Sheriff Hill said, nudging her shoulder with a plate of supper in his hand.

  Gradle removed the pillow that had fallen behind her back and peeled her face from the bars. Delvis had not moved. His legs were still drawn up toward his belly as if he’d been punched in the gut.

  “I can’t leave him,” she said.

  “You’ve stayed here longer than the rules allow,” the sheriff said, unlocking Delvis’s cell. Sunset came through the barred window up high, a tender, disintegrating pink. “Here’s your supper, Delvis.” He removed the cold, untouched lunch plate from the table and replaced it with a supper plate. He knelt by Delvis’s bed and prayed the same prayer Gradle had heard him pray at breakfast and now recalled hearing bits of it during lunch as she went in and out of sleep.

  Sheriff Hill left Delvis’s side and closed the cell’s door behind him. “Go home, Gradle,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “I’m not leaving,” she said.

  “Go home.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m his real true friend.”

  “If you don’t go home,” the sheriff said, “I’ll have to arrest you.”

  “Arrest me,” she said. She held out her wrists for him to cuff.

  Sheriff Hill cleared his throat and unlocked the cell next to Delvis’s. He stepped aside as she led herself in. She grabbed the bars after the sheriff closed her in behind the heavy steel door. “Can’t you help us?” she whispered to the sheriff.


  He twirled the ring with the key around his finger once and bowed his head. It was enough to let her know he couldn’t. His back turned, and her eyes followed him down the hall as far as they could track. He disappeared, but his footsteps echoed loud, as if there was nothing left behind them to absorb the sound, no metal bed, no mattress, no table, no chair, no prisoner, no soul.

  She sat on the skinny bed, stared up at the tiny barred window, and watched the sunlight dissolve. Down below she heard dishes washing in the sink and them being put away into the cupboards. And soon after, she heard the piano stool scrape against the wooden floor and Nance play up to them a beautiful bedtime song.

  Gradle removed the mattress from the cot and placed it on the floor against the divide separating her from Delvis. She wanted to be as close to him as she could. She lay down, facing the wall, and curled her body into a C. Her palm pressed against the cement, hoping to find warmth from Delvis’s body. It was cold, but she kept her hand there, reaching out to him, hoping to touch him somehow, for him to feel her pulse through the cement wall, through the bits of rock, through the invisible pores. So badly, she wanted to make a connection, to make him believe everything would be okay, but a large part of her believed it wouldn’t be, and she knew a larger part of him believed the same.

  The lights in the cell clicked off, and she was left in a dark so dense it took extra muscle to move through. She drew her lips close to the wall.

  “I forgive you,” she whispered. In the silence and darkness, Delvis let out a breath that Gradle heard as a bellow, as if her words were the assurance he had been waiting for his entire life.

  ANNALEE FELT DELVIS’S limbs go limp and heard his breath even out and succumb to a deep, peaceful sleep. She let go of his hand for the first time since the men had pushed him into the patrol car. She ran her hand through his hair, around the side of his cheek, and cradled his face in her palm. The room was dark, except for the space near the high window, where light from the moon bled in. But even so, she could see him, every bit of him, down to the rise and fall of his heart.