Echoes of the Fall

by Hank Early

  His head touched the soft mud at the bottom. His nose and mouth were clear of the waterline, but his ears were inside, so he could hear the pulsing of the creek as it flowed across rocks and carved its way down the mountain. He felt his eyes open, not the ones burned by acid so many years ago; those were closed forever. Instead, he felt the eyes of memory opening. His breathing slowed. A fish slipped over his belly, and it tickled as its wiggling body grazed the flesh just above his navel. The water was silk, the stars were pinpricks of heat, there were rocks beneath his hands, cool against his rough palms.

  He saw the girl, Harriet. She wasn’t really a girl, Rufus realized, but that was how she’d seemed. In reality, she’d been closer to a woman, too old for the school, and also the wrong gender. It didn’t matter, though. Harden wanted her there, so she was there. He saw now she’d been like him, unsure of herself, trying to feel her way through a cruel world, looking for a way out that was hidden inside the deepest traditions and fears of the South.

  Nobody called her Harriet except Rufus. To everyone else she was Harry or just “the dyke” because, unlike her twin sister, Harriet couldn’t hide who she was. In fact, she’d confided in Rufus once that other people had known she was a lesbian before she did.

  “I just knew I was different,” she said. “I’m still different, I guess.”

  Harden had made it clear her being “different” was unacceptable. He was a man who valued brutality and grudges, and the young staff looked up to him because he never had issues with the boys. They all responded to his gruff and commanding presence. All except Harriet. She was an outlier in more ways than one. Not only was she female and gay, she was also a good kid, not a criminal or troublemaker like the boys who’d been sent there for various crimes and transgressions at their regular schools. Harden never had a problem exposing the boys for the sniveling weasels they were. Of course, exposing people was what Harden did. His personality was like a light; when he turned it on you, you had to either shy away, shield your eyes, or stare into it straight and risk being blinded.

  Rufus’s body shook with laughter, disturbing the intricate path the water had formed around him. It was funny because of the irony. He’d lost his vision because he’d turned away from Harden, because he’d been too afraid to stand up for what was in him, because he’d still been looking for a savior, someone or something outside himself to validate him, to force the world to make sense.

  Maybe he was still looking for one now, too. Maybe it was time to stop.

  * * *

  Years ago, on the day Rufus had finally mustered the courage to leave the Holy Flame, he’d been looking for a savior too, except then he’d finally been forced to look inward. And what he’d found inside himself had been enough. If only he’d been able to hang on to it. But like so many of the important things in life, it had proved fleeting.

  He’d waited until Easter Sunday, until the very moment he was supposed to fetch the new spring snakes. Every Easter, the church “renewed” its commitment to faith by bringing new, wild snakes into the church. They were called “spring snakes,” and it had long been Rufus’s job to bring them one at a time from their cages in the back of the sanctuary. He’d hand them each to the preacher, who would hold them up and proclaim Satan had no power in this church before slipping them into the snake pit near the altar.

  When the time came for him to bring the first snake, the preacher, Brother RJ, as they called him, motioned to Rufus. Rufus stood and skirted past his mother, who patted his back, her way of showing her pride for what he was doing. He used to crave that touch, that sense of accomplishment, but for the last few years her touch had come to represent something else entirely.

  He slipped out into the aisle. RJ stared at him, a smile playing on his lips. It was almost as if he knew Rufus was planning something. It was almost as if he was enjoying it, as if he had a preternatural sense of what was coming and did not believe Rufus would have the courage to go through with it. But Brother RJ was wrong, and the knowledge of this spurred Rufus on, the courage welling up inside him as he stood eye to eye with the preacher, not withdrawing from the older man’s hardened countenance. Rufus turned to get the snake from the back. All eyes watched him as he made his way down the aisle. Even then people thought him weird, different in ways great and small. He wore the same black suit that had been his father’s before he made his own exit nearly fifteen years earlier, and as a young man he liked to spend his time out in the churchyard, staring at the headstones, wondering at the bodies beneath the ground and where their souls were, how they’d slipped their skin and flown upward to a heaven the preacher said was in the clouds and filled with delights unimaginable to the mortal mind. He was a quiet young man, diffident and prone to always being on the edge of the other young men, skulking along the periphery of their tight-knit circle, always feeling alien and—yes, he would admit it—slightly superior to them. Likewise, though he found many of the young women utterly fascinating, he suspected he’d barely registered on their radar. He was persona non grata, the young man who sat up front with his mother and gave the good girls creeping skin when and if they ever happened upon his face in a dream or a random thought. Or maybe that was wrong. Would he even have realized it if a young lady had found him interesting, attractive? Maybe just mysterious. No, he felt sure he wouldn’t have.

  What a fool he’d been in so many ways.

  But not then, not at that very moment, in the sanctuary aisle, every eye on him, every mind fixed on what he held in his hand, a writhing cottonmouth, the same type that had struck Earl years before, nearly its twin, and Rufus found that appropriate. He held it tighter, higher, thrusting it forward as the faces on either side of him drew back in surprise and admiration.

  No, he hadn’t been a fool then. He’d been redeemed then. He’d found the door to heaven and blown it open wide, except it didn’t take him where he expected to go. It didn’t take him to any shining city with gold walkways and silk flags blowing in the perfect breeze. There were no colors unimaginable to the human mind as the preacher had promised. If there was a God there at all, it was a God who was hard to know, a God who kept his eyes closed to avoid seeing the carnage the world had wrought in his name. But Rufus felt something as he walked forward, and instead of handing the cottonmouth to Brother RJ, he threw it into the air, aiming it at the stained glass that filtered the sunlight into the church like religion had filtered God into the world, discoloring and weakening it, trapping it, using it until it became a thin veneer, ready to break at the least impact.

  The snake hit the stained glass above the alter, cracking it, just a sliver, just enough for real light to stream into the church. It fell on Rufus’s face, lifting him, cleansing him, redeeming him, and he felt the great eyelids of God begin to open.

  “This is all lies,” he said. He had no more spoken the words than he realized they were the first ones he’d ever spoken in front of this church that were his own—not the preacher’s or his mother’s or some scripture memorized by rote. These were his words, goddamn it.

  “He’s a liar, and we’re all too weak to call him on it. Not anymore. I’m done.”

  And that was all. He didn’t need to say anything else, because to do so would be to whittle a wooden key past the point where it fit perfectly into the lock.

  He’d been redeemed. He felt God’s eyes open upon him for the first time. As he walked out of the church, he prayed it would not be the last.

  17

  The next day, I looked up Eleanor Walsh online and found her number. I wrote it down on a sheet of yellow lined paper and laid it out on the table while I was eating breakfast. Calling her shouldn’t have been a difficult proposition. Based on the records I’d seen on Blevins’s computer, she was the logical next step. I needed to find out why she’d been referred to Argent and what he’d told her.

  Yet …

  I shook my head and touched the paper with my right hand, sliding it away from me slowly. Part of me wanted to just l
et this all go. So far, I’d heard nothing about the young man I’d found in my yard. No one had come looking for him. No one seemed to even miss him. I’d checked headlines on my phone each night before going to bed, and I had yet to see anything. Wasn’t the hard part over now? His body was gone, his car hidden. Wouldn’t it be easier to just let it ride? Keep my nose out of whatever nonsense was brewing over there at that school?

  The reality of the situation was clear to me. The more I pushed into the school and tried to connect it to the dead man in my yard, the greater chance I’d have of being implicated in the murder, or at least the cover-up of a murder. I’d been burned by Jeb Walsh before, and as much as I’d have liked to finally take him down, and as much as I’d have liked to help those boys (there was obviously something not right at the school), I felt compelled to consider the wisdom of just letting it go.

  I picked up the notebook paper and balled it up, tossing it aside. I didn’t need this. Hell, I’d already put up my best fight against Walsh and Argent when I’d run for sheriff. I’d lost. Maybe it was time to admit that.

  I pushed my bowl of cereal away and made some coffee. When it was finished, I poured a few fingers of whiskey into it and walked outside to the ridge.

  The morning was still relatively cool, which for this time of year just meant you could walk outside without starting to sweat immediately. I sat down in one of the chairs, ready to stop thinking about the school, about Walsh, about anything except slowly getting drunk.

  But I couldn’t. My mind—of its own accord—turned back to what Ronnie had shared with me in the truck. Something about Indians and a boy’s sister? I also thought about the weird kid who’d caught me on Blevins’s computer. Something had been off about him. Come to think of it, something was off about all the boys I’d encountered there. The ones in the grass out back, in the classroom, all of them. They didn’t seem like the kinds of boys you’d expect to be in a place like that.

  I knew from experience that stereotyping criminals was a mistake. They came in all shapes and sizes, colors, and genders. But nearly all the ones I’d known carried the same angry chip on their shoulder that was hard to miss. Sometimes it manifested itself in the way they walked. Other times it was in the way they kept their heads down and would not meet your gaze. Most of the time, you could see it in their eyes. Eyes could never lie. The rest of the body was always capable of deceit, but the eyes were different. They always told the truth.

  Finishing my coffee and whiskey, I pulled out my phone and called Mary. She didn’t answer. Probably too early out there for her. I stood up and walked to the ridge, peering down at the trailer that I noticed was looking a little better now. The woman had cleared away a lot of the kudzu that had been growing on it and gotten rid of some of the junk from the front yard. Her car was there, and I wondered what she was doing right now. Eating breakfast? Still asleep?

  At just that moment, the door to her trailer swung open. She came out, dressed in a pair of cutoff blue jeans and a blue, tight-fitting T-shirt, cut low enough to reveal the tops of her freckled breasts. She was carrying a round red water cooler.

  I watched as she walked to the road and started up it toward my place. Not wanting her to know I’d been watching her, I returned to my chair and sat down, picking up my empty coffee cup. I tried to look contemplative.

  “Hey,” she said.

  I feigned surprise. “Morning.”

  “You said if I ever needed something to come on up. I don’t have a well yet. They’re supposed to come next week to dig it, so I was hoping I could fill this up?”

  “Sure,” I said, standing up quickly. I smiled at her, trying not to look at her breasts, but damn, it wasn’t easy.

  She grinned at me knowingly. “I’m Daphne, by the way.”

  “Earl,” I said.

  “I know. You told me the other night. You like to spend a lot of time on this ridge, don’t you?”

  I shrugged. “When it’s nice out.”

  “Well, I guess I better remember to keep my blinds closed when I’m prancing around naked, huh?”

  I froze, not sure how to respond to that. She gave me an intense look, so hard to read but not hard to feel. There was something deeply sexual in her gaze.

  “I haven’t ever …”

  “I’m kidding, Earl. Lighten up. Besides, I’m not one of those feminist types or nothing. I like to be appreciated by a man.”

  I’ll bet you do. I almost said it. But I managed to stop myself. That would have been the wrong thing to say. All of this felt wrong suddenly. In fact, I felt a little dirty just being in her presence, but I had to remind myself it wasn’t her fault I felt like that but my own.

  “Well, let me get you the water,” I said, and reached for the cooler.

  She pulled it away from me.

  “Do you have a girlfriend, Earl Marcus?”

  I swallowed hard, hesitating. Why was I hesitating?

  “Yeah. Her name is Mary.”

  “Where is she? I don’t see her?”

  “She’s …” Shit. Did I really want to tell her Mary was across the country? But why lie? Why was I afraid to tell her the truth? Was I that fucking weak?

  “She’s in Nevada for a while.”

  Daphne nodded. She had green eyes that knew how to look at a man, how to gaze and pout and flash. Shit. She was trouble. No, I reminded myself. I was responsible for my own actions. I was the one who was trouble. Always had been. With Mary I’d managed to keep myself on the straight and narrow. But now she was gone. I was down. Way down.

  “I think I’d better get that water for you,” I said.

  “Sure thing, Earl,” she said, grinning the kind of grin that makes a man feel things he probably would be better off not feeling.

  * * *

  After Daphne left, I went to the trash and found Eleanor Walsh’s number. Sure, it would have been easy to let it go, but I was pretty sure I needed something to keep me moving, to keep my mind occupied. As much as I dreaded dealing with Jeb Walsh’s ex-wife, I’d never been too good at life without danger. The danger had a way of blotting out all the pain and doubt inside me, the stuff that broke me over and over and made me feel like a failure. I’d take my chances doing what I’d always done: trying to make a difference, even if it meant beating my fists against the door of an empty room.

  18

  Eleanor Walsh was a surprise. Knowing Jeb Walsh like I did, I’d expected a former beauty queen with a mean streak, but instead I found a pleasant, middle-aged woman, who frankly seemed a little frightened by me and the clandestine nature of our meeting.

  We met at an old gas station not too far from Backslide Gap and its shaky suspension bridge.

  “I appreciate this,” I said, climbing into the passenger’s seat of her Volvo. “I hope we can work together to help your boy.”

  She nodded, taking me in with a cautious yet hopeful gaze. “I’d like to know what this is all about,” she said.

  “Let’s drive, and I’ll tell you.”

  She nodded and eased the Volvo forward. It was a nice vehicle, all leather, the latest technology, good air conditioning. I appreciated that last one, especially on a day like this.

  I pointed at the lake on our right. “When I was a boy, my daddy took me fishing over there. We camped out up on the top of that rise. I hadn’t thought about it much until I came out here to meet you today, but I’m pretty sure it’s one of the best memories of my life.”

  “What does this have to do with Edward, Mr. Marcus?”

  “Maybe more than you think. See, I have a soft spot for boys who disappoint their fathers, especially boys whose fathers are demagogues.”

  I tried to read her face, to see how she felt about me referring to her ex-husband as a demagogue. Ex-spouses could hate their former partner one minute and the next feel beholden to defend them. After all, nobody wanted to admit they’d been foolish enough to marry an asshole, much less a demagogue. Her expression remained neutral, so I decided to press on
.

  “In the course of another investigation, I came across some records indicating you’d made some complaints against the Harden School, and eventually they referred you to Sheriff Argent. I wanted to follow up with you about that. I think your situation might not be unique at the Harden School.”

  She slowed the car, making a right onto an overgrown side road. “Jeb was right about you,” she said.

  “How’s that?”

  “He said you were the kind of man who couldn’t hear a sound in the middle of the night without getting up to see what caused it. He said you were broken, that you weren’t the kind of man to let other men live their lives.”

  I thought that through for a moment. It sounded like an indictment, but I wasn’t so sure I saw it that way. Hell, I wasn’t so sure she saw it that way. What kind of man would I be if I let Jeb Walsh and men like him do what they pleased? Sometimes, I thought, if it wasn’t for men like him, I’d have no purpose at all, no reason to exist save for getting drunk and the pleasure I felt being near Mary Hawkins.

  And maybe there was a kind of brokenness in that. Maybe. But I thought we were all broken in one way or another. It was one of the truths of existence, like gravity or aging. Death or taxes. Both.

  “Guilty,” I said.

  She watched the road. It seemed to narrow as we went deeper into a part of the Fingers I hadn’t been to in years. It was a shady part, covered with layers of trees and dense foliage that seemed thorny and alive. I knew this road would eventually lead us to Backslide Gap, where I’d played as a young boy, where my father claimed all backsliders went to die.