by Hank Early
“But eventually he found out, right?” I asked.
“Sure. When she tried to make me kill the neighbor’s dog.”
“What?”
“Every day it was something new. ‘Do this, or I’ll tell Dad.’ Sometimes it was just stealing something. Sometimes she asked me to take pictures of her. Inappropriate pictures. She would send them in the mail to random men she looked up in the phone book. But I couldn’t kill the neighbor’s dog. So she told Dad. After a few months of Dad not speaking to me, she offered a solution.”
Harriet drummed her fingers on the table and looked at me as if she couldn’t quite decide where I’d come from, what strange wind had blown me into her life.
“You already know the solution, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“Harden is my uncle. I’d known about his school for as long as I could remember. It was honestly the one place I thought I’d never end up. Turns out both he and my father thought me being gay was about the most troubling thing either one of them could imagine. That’s where I met Rufus, of course.”
“I hope he at least treated you right,” I said. I felt confident he had. Rufus was one of the most vocal supporters of equal rights I knew. He actually attended meetings at a local progressive church to discuss how to combat issues of hate and violence against members of the LGBTQ community. Despite this, I felt less confident about my assumption when I saw the look on Harriet’s face.
It was a sad look, not so different from the one she’d worn in the Polaroid from so many years ago. Except this look was less hopeful, more resigned. It seemed to suggest a kind of forbearance or miserable tolerance for a past that could never change.
“Go on,” I said.
“There’s not much more to tell. I would have killed myself if it wasn’t for Rufus. He was the only person who was decent to me, who treated me as if I didn’t have a disease.” She shook her head. “In the end, they got to him, of course, but maybe I shouldn’t be angry. They get to everybody. The nets are strong. It’s so easy to get tangled up in them, to fall without even realizing it.”
“But you didn’t fall,” I said. “You jumped over.”
“Are you familiar with the term hyperstition?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Is it anything like superstition?”
“Maybe a little. It’s the idea that something from art or from the imagination can become real, can manifest itself in the world in powerful ways.”
“Okay …” I had no idea where this was going.
“I found an old book, hidden in the little one-room library at the school. Well, maybe not hidden, but it was on the very bottom shelf. I think it was where the legend about the Indians started. Have you heard it?”
“Yeah. Two Indian Falls?”
“That’s it. It’s a novel, and it’s actually set somewhere in Illinois or something, but it hardly mattered. The two boys in the book, they wanted out. The only way out was across the gorge, just like our gorge. The boys waited on the wind and jumped. One made it, one didn’t. A tragedy that stayed with me a long time after reading it, but something else stayed with me too. One made it, but he wouldn’t have made it if he hadn’t tried. It all came together for me then. I’d been contemplating suicide, but the real suicide was not living as myself. That was my choice. I figured that out almost as soon as I arrived. Harden wasn’t going to let me go if I didn’t change, if I didn’t betray who I was. So I planned it out. I even told Rufus what I was planning. He helped me survey the gorge, looking for a way across. When we spotted the ledge, it felt like salvation.”
“So, he knows you’re alive?”
“I’m not sure if he does or not. It was dark when I left. He went to the waterfall with me, but after the first ledge, I purposefully didn’t answer any of his calls. I wanted him to think I’d died.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t trust him. As much as I wanted to, I’d learned not to trust anyone.” She glanced at Zachariah and reached over to pat his hand. “It took me a long time to learn to trust people again.”
Zachariah cleared his throat. “You done what you had to do, lived the way you had to live.” Zachariah’s eyes were tearing up, and he laughed as the tears began to fall. “And you done more. You made your life your own.”
A title of a Flannery O’Connor short story I’d read a long time ago came back to me. It was called “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” I’d read the story and liked it, but the title hadn’t held much resonance for me until this very moment. We were all obligated to save ourselves, I decided. If you didn’t, then who would?
55
“What now?” Harriet asked, wheeling her chair away from the table to open a window. Mercifully, the day was cooling off with the incoming dusk, and a breeze filtered through the window. I was suddenly aware I’d spent an afternoon sitting here, just listening to her talk. If nothing else worked out for the good, I was at least glad to have met Harriet Duncan. Her story helped me put my own story in perspective.
“Well, I was hoping you might be able to help me find Rufus.”
“Whoever took him must have done it because they were afraid he knew something, most likely about me,” she said.
“Do you think he really did know you were alive?”
She shrugged. “Not sure. As far as I know, he didn’t. Zachariah brought me the newspaper articles after it was over. I didn’t like Rufus saying I’d killed myself, but I understood that was the best thing for him to say.”
“Where do you think Savanna is now?”
“Not sure, but she’s back in the area.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“The Wolf Brothers.”
I remembered the thread we’d started to pull earlier, out in the yard. Suddenly I had a thought. Was it possible …?
“They’re her heavies. When they get active, it means she’s around.”
“Does she manipulate them in some way?”
“Yeah, something like that.” She glanced at Zachariah, who chuckled and said something under his breath.
“What?”
“He said she’s been manipulating them since birth,” Harriet said. She wasn’t laughing.
“I don’t understand.”
“They’re her boys. Her sons.”
“Oh …” I said, suddenly remembering the way they’d dealt with the overdressed kid at the little bar Eleanor Walsh and I had visited. The cold, almost nonchalant way they’d been moved to violence. It wasn’t like most people I knew. Most people, you could see the transition from calm to violent; there was an interval in between. Maybe it was God’s way of letting folks know somebody was about to go off. That didn’t seem to exist for the Wolf, er, Hill Brothers.
Or maybe I should just think of them as the Duncan Brothers now.
“I only know about them from Lyda. Yes, we’ve been in touch, but she’ll never talk to anyone about me. That’s one good thing about her fear of getting involved. Anyway, according to Lyda, after I made my grand disappearance, Savanna started to show. She never told anyone who the father was, and honestly, there are any number of candidates. By the time I started my ‘therapy’ at the Harden School, she was having sex with relatives, friends, and random strangers. Her pregnancy, according to Lyda, was an embarrassment to my parents, so they began to talk of sending her way. She beat them to the punch and left. She came back several months later with no child and a story about losing it in childbirth. Later she’d admit to Lyda that she’d had them, twins, that she kept them in an old shack in the mountains, visiting them once a day to feed them and not even that as they stopped needing breast milk. By the time they were four or five years old, they basically lived alone in the mountains, foraging for food wherever they could get it, looking forward to her rare visits when she’d drop off something to eat or the occasional toy.” Harriet closed her eyes again, and I couldn’t help but think it was a prayerful gesture.
“It’s odd to think I’m their aunt,” Harriet sai
d, “but it’s true. They’d just as soon kill me as acknowledge me, from what I can gather. I don’t blame them, though. They’re hers. I doubt they are as evil as she is, though. But can you imagine having a mother like that? They have a lot to process.”
“Any idea who the father is?”
She laughed. “Lots of possibilities there.”
“Why does Savanna want to find you so badly?”
“Because she’s decided I’m a loose end that needs to be tied up. Good thing she can’t find me.”
“But can you find her?” I asked.
She looked down at her useless legs, the spoked wheels that rose up from the floor surrounding her like shields. “No, but I can tell you where to start.”
* * *
“Savanna eats men alive,” she said. “But there’s one that always seemed special to her. I’ll bet he could lead you to her.”
“Okay,” I said. “Where can I find him?”
She jabbed her thumb toward the rear of the cabin. “Up that way. At the school.”
“The school?”
She just looked at me, waiting for me to catch on.
“Oh shit. Harden?”
“That’s right. I have no real evidence, but I think the man abusing her from a young age was good old Uncle Randy, the same uncle who told me if I didn’t figure out how to stop liking girls, he’d introduce me to something long and hard that would change my mind.” She laughed bitterly. “And I was the pervert.”
I didn’t know what to say. It was one of the first families I’d encountered that seemed worse than mine. Hell, they were worse than Ronnie’s family. I’d always thought such a thing might be possible, but now I had the hard evidence.
Zachariah sighed. “Maybe we should wrap this up.”
“It’s okay, Zac. I want to help Mr. Marcus.”
Zachariah bristled. “You don’t need this stress.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve caused either of you pain.”
I looked at Harriet. Her eyes were tired, the kind of dog-tiredness I used to see in my mother’s eyes after she’d come home from working two jobs and then cleaning my father’s office and the sanctuary at the church. The difference being I still saw light in Harriet’s eyes, while Mother’s had been dimmed long before, crushed beneath the force of my father’s cult of personality.
“One more thing. How can I get in touch with you again?”
“Zachariah can give you his number. You can call him.”
I glanced at the older man. He didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded. “Sure.”
“Thanks.” I turned back to Harriet. “Is there anything you want me to tell your sister if I find her?”
She thought about it for a long time, so long I wondered if she’d heard me. Then she nodded, her face as serious and sure as any face I’d ever seen, and said, “Tell her I made it. I’m free and she isn’t.”
Part Three
The Life You Save
56
It wasn’t until I’d made the long walk back to Virginia’s trailer that I remembered I’d called Ronnie earlier. His truck was parked outside and he was sitting on the steps smoking a cigarette while Roscoe played in the mud near his boots.
He saw me coming and waved but didn’t speak.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
“I was beginning to think that call was just a figment of my drug-addled imagination,” he said. “But then Wanda told me you’d stolen her phone. Too bad you didn’t think to look at the damned thing once.”
“What?” I pulled it out of my pocket and saw there were twelve missed calls from Ronnie.
“Damn, Ronnie. I’m really, really sorry.”
He waved me off, blew smoke up into the brilliant afternoon sky, where it mingled with the light breeze and was whisked away into the hidden corners of the trailer park. “I didn’t mind too much. Me and Roscoe was catching up.”
Upon hearing his name, Roscoe looked up and grinned at his uncle. “Ron Ron!” he shouted.
Ronnie stuck the cigarette in his lips and grabbed the boy, swinging him around. The moment felt near enough to perfect, what with the bright blue of the sky, the breeze like the very breath of God touching my neck, my heart full of second chances, new philosophies, fresh starts. But I couldn’t enjoy it. There was still Rufus to think about. Not to mention Joe and Weston.
“What’s the plan, boss?” Ronnie said as he put Roscoe—still giggling maniacally—back on the ground.
“Recon.”
“Please don’t tell me you want to go back to that school?”
“Okay, I won’t tell you that.”
“Shit. That means we’re going, doesn’t it?”
“Sort of. I think the only way to find where Rufus is being held is to watch the place, follow anyone and everyone who leaves.”
“I’m down for that.”
“I’m not asking you to come.”
He ignored me and said, “We can grab your truck too, boss.”
“Boss?”
“That’s you.”
“Well in that case, I want you to stay here. Visit with these kids. I’ll go by myself. That’s the boss’s orders.”
Ronnie laughed and looked a little hurt. “That’s a joke, right?”
“No.”
He shook his head. “Well, too bad. I’m coming anyway. Give me a minute to tell Wanda and Virginia bye. Last time I helped you out, I ended up in prison for eight months. Hell, I better say my goodbyes, let them know I love ’em and what not.”
“You don’t have to come.”
Ronnie put a hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. “Nobody has to do anything, Earl. We all do what we want and live with the consequences. Least that’s the way I’ve always seen it.”
I nodded at him. He let go of my shoulder and started toward the trailer. I scooped Roscoe up and followed him.
57
We managed to pull Ronnie’s truck into the trees beside mine. It was a tough squeeze, but after getting out and looking at it from the winding mountain road, I felt like it was hidden well enough. We got into mine, and I backed it out, repositioning it so that we could watch the road and see vehicles coming and going from the Harden School.
We waited with the windows down, watching the road.
Ronnie smoked and drummed his fingers nervously on the dash. “What are we doing, exactly?”
“Well, I’m hoping we can catch either Blevins or Harden leaving for the day. And then I’m hoping one of them might head over to visit the woman I believe abducted Rufus.”
“Lots of hoping.”
“Just requires patience,” I said. What I didn’t say was that I felt completely frustrated. Patience be damned. I was ready to move, to do something. Yet, I knew from experience, sometimes waiting was all there was.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s pass the time. Tell me the damned story.”
“Excuse me?”
“The story. You’ve been holding out on me since the first time we came here. All of it. From the beginning.”
“Okay,” I said. Hell, I owed him that much, didn’t I? What right did I have to keep asking for his help and not tell him what was going on?
Time slipped away as I spoke. By the time I’d finished, it was late afternoon, getting close to six thirty. Dusk.
“So, the dead man …” He snapped his fingers, trying to remember the name.
“Joe,” I said.
“Right. So, Joe’s boyfriend is going to write the article? The one you hope will take down Walsh?”
“Yeah. That’s the plan. Hopefully, he’s already contacted Mindy and Lyda. Maybe even Claire.”
“Okay, but to bring Walsh down, won’t you need some hard evidence?”
“Yeah, probably. But I can’t worry about that until I get Rufus back.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Look, I’m tired of waiting.”
“Me and you both.”
He flicked his cigarette out the window. “Let me see your pho
ne.”
“Why?”
“Do you have Blevins’s number?”
I started to say no, but then I remembered I’d called him several weeks back after finding his number in the letter he had written to Joe. “Yeah. I got it.”
“Pull it up.”
“Why?”
“Just trust me.”
“I don’t know …” Trusting Ronnie wasn’t always a wise decision. In fact, it could often be the opposite.
“Come on. I can do this.”
“Do what?”
“Make a call. Fool him into leading us to her place.”
“How?”
“Okay, he’s not afraid of the police, right?”
“Why should he be?”
“What about the Georgia Bureau of Investigation?”
I shrugged. “GBI? How would we get them involved?”
“We don’t have to actually get them involved. He just has to think they’re on to him. You told me about Sister. That’s got to be Savanna, right?”
I sighed. It didn’t have to be. I mean, I thought it was, but who could be sure of anything?
“Just go with me on this, okay, Earl?”
“Okay.”
“So, if that’s Savanna, then wouldn’t Blevins or Harden keep her abreast of what was happening with the authorities?”
“I suppose so, but there isn’t anything actually happening, is there?”
“Not yet, but there will be when I make the call.”
I was starting to understand what Ronnie had in mind, and as much as it surprised me, I thought it might work.
“You can pull this off?”
“Are you kidding me? I’ve been pretending to be people in authority since I can remember. Dial the number.”
I scrolled through the recent calls on my phone, hoping it hadn’t been too far back to be considered “recent.” Luckily, I didn’t use my phone very often, so it was still there. I pressed call and handed it to Ronnie.
“Put the speaker on,” I said. “I want to hear it.”
We waited for Blevins to pick up. It went to voice mail. Ronnie ended the call.
“What now?” I said.