by Terry Kay
Maybe I should have picked up the boy hitchhiking on the side of the road, he thought. Maybe the boy could have told me which roads to follow to find Madison.
He had wanted to stop for the boy, had lifted his foot from the accelerator to touch the brake, but he had not stopped. The boy looked tired, standing with his suitcase in one hand, the other hand up, curled in a fist, thumb out in the hitchhiker’s begging sign language. When he passed the boy, driving slow, he could see the boy’s eyes watching him hopefully, a small, crooked smile on his lips. And he had thought of his own son standing on a roadside, taking the ride that would deliver him to his death. His own son would have had hopeful eyes and a small, crooked smile.
He leaned heavily against the seat of his truck and closed his eyes and fought to keep from crying. The presence of his son, of Thomas, entered him through the opened mouth of his deep, tremulous breathing and filled him with ancient regret. He had buried his son; he had never buried the hurt. He saw again the boy on the road, asking silently for a ride. His own son had died in a truck. He could not risk the life of another man’s son and he could not have the specter of his own son riding with him in the body of someone else.
He rolled down the window of his truck and forced himself to breathe slowly, evenly. The day had remained cool in the way that autumn-becoming-winter is cool, and as he sat in his truck on the roadside waiting for his dog to run in the fields, he felt a sudden chill shimmering on his arms. He knew the chill was only partly because of the autumn cool. He was alone. He was alone on a road he did not know, and it was late in the afternoon.
He called to White Dog from his truck, “Come on, girl. We got to go. Come on.” The dog heard him and raced back to the truck and jumped into the cab through the opened door. “We got to find out where we are,” he said to the dog. “Looks like we lost.” He laughed nervously. “Old man and a dog. Lost.”
18
It was an argument that Noah and Holman would regret. They said to Kate and Carrie, “Leave your daddy alone. He’s a grown man. If he wants to call to let you know how he is, he will, but that’s up to him. He knows how to take care of himself. Besides, if anything had happened to him on the way over to Hartwell, we’d know it by now. Somebody would’ve called us. Good Lord, everybody in the county knows who he is. He’s probably got trees in every yard in a forty-mile radius.”
“Well, I’m calling,” Kate said defiantly. “I don’t care what either one of you say.”
“I’m with Kate,” Carrie declared.
It was almost six o’clock in the afternoon and the sisters and their husbands were sitting in the kitchen of Kate and Noah’s home. For two hours, Kate and Carrie had sat at the table, drinking coffee, fretting, waiting by the telephone.
“When he blesses you out, don’t blame me,” Noah said. “No wonder he’s always aggravating the two of you. You got to give him some peace.”
“Noah’s right,” Holman said firmly. “Good God, once in a while a man’s just got to get off by himself, without everybody hanging over him like a cloud.”
“Shut up, Holman,” Carrie snapped.
Holman sighed and shrugged.
“Let ’em do it,” Noah said. “They ain’t going to be happy if they don’t.”
“Waste of time,” Holman mumbled.
The telephone call to the radio station revealed that it was Neal Lewis’s wife who had died. The station’s switchboard operator gave Kate the number for the Lewis residence.
“Sam Peek?” Neal Lewis said in his shouting telephone voice. “Ain’t seen Sam since Hattie passed on. Who did you say you was?”
“It ain’t like Mr. Sam to go off without letting somebody know where he is,” Clete Walton said quietly to Noah and Holman. “It ain’t like him. I’ve known that man all my life, ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.” Clete was the county sheriff. He stood with Noah and Holman outside the house in the thick, dull light of early evening, smoking a cigarette. Inside, Kate and Carrie waited fearfully for the arrival of their sisters and brothers.
“Kate thinks he’s been acting strange the last few weeks,” Noah said.
“Carrie, too,” agreed Holman.
“Well, old people get that way sometimes. Especially after they have somebody pass on and they left alone,” Clete said. “My daddy got that way after my mama passed on. God knows, it ain’t a good thing to watch happen.”
“Maybe that old truck broke down,” Holman said.
“I doubt it,” Noah said. “It was in good shape, even if Mr. Sam don’t know the first thing about changing gears. That’s what he could of done. He could of ripped them out.”
Clete drew deep from his cigarette and spewed the smoke through tight lips. “He ought not be driving that old truck off this farm. Don’t know why y’all let him do it.”
“I thought you knew him,” Noah said firmly.
“I do,” Clete replied.
“Then you know he ain’t about to be told what he can and can’t do. You ever tried to tell an old person what to do?”
“You got a point, Noah,” admitted Clete. He stepped on his cigarette. “Well, I got every car in the department out, looking the roads between here and town. Told them to stop at all the creek bridges and take a close look. Sometimes old people get scared going over them narrow wood bridges. Old man Darby Pilgrim drove off the one down below his house last year and damned near drowned before they pulled him out.”
“Good God, don’t say nothing like that in front of them girls,” warned Holman. “They’ll go slap crazy.”
“I won’t,” promised Clete. “I know how it is, boys. A woman gets worked up over her daddy. God knows, they do. I’d just as soon tell my woman I was fooling around with the neighbor lady as to tell her I think her daddy’s crazy—which he is, by the way. Crazy as a damn loon. But I ain’t about to say it to her. A woman gets worked up when it comes to her daddy.”
“I just hope he’s all right,” Holman said softly. “I like that old man.”
“Yeah,” said Noah.
“It’s going to be too dark to look much longer,” Clete said.
He had not been frightened in years. Now he was.
He had driven frantically along dirt roads, trying to find a highway, using the sun for direction. But the sun had slipped below the lip of the horizon and he was tired from his day of driving and from the confusion of being lost. “Guess we better stop for the night,” he said to the dog now nestled close to him, her face against his leg. “Guess we better find a place to stop.”
He saw a deserted tenant farmhouse off the road, and he guided his truck over the eroded road and stopped beneath the canopy of an oak tree in the cluttered front yard. He opened the door of his truck and pulled himself out, taking his walker from the truck body. White Dog jumped from the truck and circled the yard, her head lowered suspiciously. She trotted back to him.
“See anything, girl?” he asked.
The dog lifted her front feet to the top brace of the walker. He scratched her head playfully.
“Be dark in a few minutes,” he said. “Guess you must be hungry.”
He took biscuits from his food sack and fed White Dog, then poured water from one of his plastic milk jars into the palm of his hand and let the dog lap the water. He was not hungry, but he ate one of the biscuits and then took his pills for the pain that smoldered in his hip. He had been too long in the truck, too long sitting, and he knew he would suffer. “Won’t sleep much tonight,” he said to the dog.
And maybe he should not sleep, he thought. He knew of deserted tenant houses where men gathered to gamble and to drink and sometimes there were fights and killings. An old man in an old truck would be easy takings for men who came out after dark for no-good reasons.
He was glad he had put the quilt for White Dog into the truck. The night quickly became cold, and he stretched across the cab seat with the quilt pulled over him. He had thought of going inside the house and making a fire in the fireplace, but he di
d not trust the rotted flooring that he saw through the opened door. He could break a leg falling through the floor, and even if he did not fall through, even if he got a fire started, the house could catch fire and if it did, it would burn in a flash and he, being slow-moving on his walker, would burn with it.
He would not sleep well. He would shiver beneath the quilt and ache from pain, and he would be afraid.
19
Neelie was seated at the kitchen table, among the sons and daughters of Sam Peek, and she was saying again (in her way of saying it) that old men in old trucks should be watched over.
“Lord, Jesus, you babies got to take that old rattletrap away from him—if he be found alive. That old rattletrap liable to blow up on him out on the road. Maybe that’s what it done. Blowed up. Blowed up when he was driving down the road. Blowed up and him in it. Old folks ought not be out driving. Neelie don’t drive none. Never had no car. Never wanted none.”
No one replied to Neelie. Replies encouraged outbursts.
“I been telling him, ‘Mr. Sam, you keep out of that old truck.’ What’s he gon’ do when it stop on him? He gon’ walk? Babies, he can’t hardly get about like it is. Breaks Neelie’s heart watching him try to get about. Looks like he ain’t gon’ take another step, dragging that old leg along.”
Carrie’s eyes dampened at the image of her father, dragging his leg as he moved painfully along on his walker.
“Lord, Jesus,” Neelie said again in a pronouncement.
It was past ten. Since she had arrived earlier—brought to the house by Holman after she had commanded a ride—Neelie had talked incessantly and the sons and daughters of Sam Peek were numb from the shrill, badgering voice, but for a reason they did not clearly understand, there was comfort in Neelie’s presence and in Neelie’s mournful soliloquies. For most of them, Neelie was their surrogate parent and it was a parent they needed.
Neelie had entered the house dramatically, struggling to walk under the burden of the sad news of Sam Peek’s disappearance, wailing her despair. She had been assisted to the kitchen table by Carrie and Kate and immediately began her contention that Sam Peek was a changed man and that change was caused by the ghost dog.
“I seen ghost dogs,” she asserted. “Them dogs don’t bark. Don’t never know where they be hiding. You be looking at a ghost dog and you blink your eyes and they gone. Ghost dogs always coming around when somebody passes on. Babies, your daddy’s done changed on account of that ghost dog. Where that dog now? That dog ain’t nowhere around. That dog with your daddy. That dog done took Mr. Sam off somewheres.”
Kate, too, had wondered about the dog. Before the sheriff arrived, she had sent Noah to look for the dog, and Noah had returned to say the dog was missing.
“Maybe he took the dog with him,” Noah had suggested. “Or maybe she ran off and he went looking for her.”
Kate repeated what Noah had said.
“Could be,” Sam, Jr. said. He had arrived thirty minutes earlier from Tennessee. The strain of the hurried drive was in his eyes.
“Ain’t so,” argued Neelie. “I seen ghost dogs. I seen one when I was a little girl. Black like the night, child. Big as a goat. Had them kind of eyes that was always shining like they was coals of fire out of a stove. Carried off a baby, that ghost dog did. Took it up in its mouth and dragged it off down in the woods and don’t nobody never find that baby. My mama say it was a ghost dog mad at that baby’s daddy for being mean. That dog with Mr. Sam, it a ghost dog.”
“Neelie, don’t say that,” begged Carrie. “You’re scaring me.”
Neelie clucked her tongue and wagged her head seriously. “Ain’t nothing to do but wait and see where Mr. Sam got off to,” she said.
“But why’d he tell us he was going to see Neal Lewis, and Neal Lewis didn’t know anything about it?” Kate asked.
“You ever see a ghost dog, babies, you better turn the other way and don’t never look back on it,” Neelie asserted. “Honey”—she was addressing Carrie—“why don’t you pour Neelie a little bit more of that coffee, and while you up, call over to the sheriff and see what they doing.”
“They’re in bed, Neelie,” Alma said wearily. “They said they’d start looking again in the morning.”
“Lord, Jesus, poor old Mr. Sam. Hope them Morris boys ain’t got him,” Neelie muttered.
James lifted his head alertly. He said, “What do you mean, Neelie?”
Neelie waved a hand toward James. “Honey, your daddy saw one of them sorry boys with some cows they done stole from Mr. John Ed. He told the sheriff, and they put that sorry boy in the jail.”
“When?” James asked. He was standing. The muscles in his face twitched.
“Oh, baby, that was back more’n a month now, maybe longer.”
“They had his trial last week,” Kate said. “He got four or five years, I think.”
“Did the sheriff go over there to look?” James asked irritably.
No one knew. Paul said, “You’d think he would under the circumstances.”
“Damn it,” James muttered. He whirled and walked out of the kitchen. His brothers and sisters watched in bewilderment.
“What’s he going to do?” whispered Carrie.
“I think we’d better go with him, Paul,” Sam, Jr. said.
“I think you’d better try to stop him and call the sheriff,” advised Alma. “You know how James is about Daddy. If he thinks that anybody’s hurt him …” She did not finish the sentence.
“Oh, God,” Kate moaned.
“James is the law, Alma,” Lois said.
“Not here,” Alma replied. She added, “Maybe I better call Hoyt. He’s out with Noah and Holman. I think Hoyt knows that Morris man.”
“Tell all of them to go,” Kate begged.
“Wait a minute. Just wait,” Sam, Jr. said firmly. “Let us handle this. If that’s where James is going, we’ll go with him. No need to send over a crowd.”
His sisters were silent. It was a family of patriarchal order, and his sisters understood the right of their brother. He was the oldest living son. Such matters were his responsibility.
“Lord, Jesus,” Neelie moaned desperately. “Them Morris boys is mean.”
“It’ll be all right,” Sam, Jr. said. He looked at Carrie. “Maybe Holman can take Neelie home, since it’s so late.”
Carrie glanced quickly at Neelie. Neelie would leave when she wanted to leave. “I’ll see,” she replied meekly.
James was in his car, driving away, when Sam, Jr. and Paul stopped him and got into the car with him.
“What’re you going to do?” asked Paul.
“Find out if they know anything about Daddy,” James said.
“Shouldn’t you call the sheriff? Let him go with you,” Sam, Jr. suggested.
James looked coolly at his brother. He said, “I’ll take care of it.” Sam, Jr. had never seen James so angry. But it was not temper. It was anger triggered by fear. There was a scent of danger in the car.
“Just remember, you can’t go accusing them without some proof,” Paul advised from the back seat.
“Paul, I know what I’m doing,” James replied. “This is my pulpit, not yours. You let me handle it.”
The Morris house was isolated on a dirt road leading from the Goldmine ridge. The house was small and in disrepair. The yards were cluttered with trash and rusting parts of cars and farm equipment. A light was on in one of the rooms. James stopped the car in the front yard, with the light beams on the front door.
“You stay right here,” James said to his brothers. It was not a request; it was an order.
“Keep your temper,” Sam, Jr. said. He saw the pistol holstered to James’s belt. He remembered being with James and Arlie one day at a small pond below their father’s home when James had the pistol with him. Arlie had asked, “You hit anything with that little gun?” And James had slipped the pistol from its holster and aimed it at a can floating in the pond. “A little,” James had replied. And then he had fi
red into the can in six rapid shots, with the can dancing over the surface of the water. Sam, Jr. remembered being in awe of his brother’s skill.
“You going to take your gun with you?” Sam, Jr. asked.
James did not answer. He pushed on the horn of his car and opened the door and got out and walked in front of the light beams. The light in the house snapped off.
“Herman Morris,” James called in a loud voice, “I want to see you.”
There was a moment of silence, and then, from the house, “Who’s out there?”
“James Peek,” James snapped.
“Well, boy, you better back off. You got a gun pointed right at you,” the voice from the house growled.
“Sam,” Paul whispered in the car.
“We’ll make it worse if we get out,” Sam, Jr. replied.
James took a step forward. He snapped his pistol free of its holster and held it in the air.
“You’d better be a damned good shot,” he said calmly. “Because I am. Now come out here.”
Again a pause. Then: “Who’d you say you was?”
“James Peek. Sam Peek’s son. I’m a federal agent.”
“What the hell you want with me?”
“I want to know if you’ve seen my father.”
The light came on in the house, and the front door opened slowly. A thin man dressed in overalls and a faded work shirt stepped cautiously onto the porch. He held a rifle with a scope. He squinted his eyes at the light from the car beams.
“Well, boy, ain’t no call to come up scaring a man’s family,” Herman Morris said bitterly. “No, I ain’t seen your daddy. Why’re you asking me?”
“He’s missing. Maybe you got a reason to know about it.”
Herman Morris stared at the pistol in James’s hand. “Boy, I don’t know what in hell’s name you talking about. I ain’t seen your daddy in a year or more. I heard tell he was laid up.”
“Where’re your boys?” James demanded.