by Odie Lindsey
SOME GO
HOME
A NOVEL
ODIE LINDSEY
for Dana and May
CONTENTS
Colleen
Trial
Gabriel
(August 6, 1964)
Some Go Home
Then Back, Again
Verdict
Life Raft
COLLEEN
1
Colleen drove home from the Memphis VA hospital classified as pregnant. She headed southeast for an hour, interstate to state highway, county road onto packed dirt drive, and into her attached double carport. She went in the house, flopped on the bed, and turned on daytime television. Lit a Misty, and nibbled her bottom lip between drags.
She was in love with the idea of having conceived during a recent tornado, a symphony of violence marked by cracked pines and tail clouds, and the pop of the roadside transformer in concussive, blue-white light. Yet Colleen knew she’d been pregnant weeks before the storm, a near-miss, as it were, akin to the funnel cloud itself. She wanted to feel cherished and hip when showing off a debut baby bump, but her condition was seamed to a takeaway of deployment: the inability to protect anyone, let alone a baby.
For a breath, she was yanked under by a riptide of past trauma—but then rolled her eyes and crushed her cigarette out. “You got this,” she muttered. “Whatever it is.”
She scanned the basic cable lineup for an hour or more, then snapped to and stepped outside. For weeks, she had promised Derby that she’d knock some fallen pine branches off of the roof, and her lack of follow-through had pricked up an argument that morning. (Colleen had volunteered for the task in the first place.) Thus, so, gestation be damned, if she didn’t finish the chore today, Derby swore he’d finish it for her when he got home from work.
She would not allow that to happen. She grabbed the aluminum ladder from the carport utility shed, then extended it up to the roofline of the small house. The hollow clap of the rung locks clicked like the prize pins on the Wheel of Fortune. Climbing up and onto the low-sloped overhang, she sat down, and brushed the tile grit from her palms.
“Surprise?” the VA doctor had asked, glancing at her wedding ring. “He’ll be thrilled.” She looked out over the north Mississippi horizon, a rolling green canopy of forest into field, broken now and again by bulbous water towers. Marking tidbit towns she’d known all her life, the vessels were now topped by rings of spiky cell phone antennas, reminding Colleen of the Crown of Thorns. She shut her eyes and listened to the tamped thump of hip-hop in the distance, and knew that just across the county road a group of boys communed around an old car with a new stereo, in a ragweed yard, drinking beer and smoking. Black or White boys, or maybe both, cutting up and ditching school, doing the same thing their fathers had done, beneath the same scab of sun, a different soundtrack on the radio. So went the narrative in rural north Mississippi. For them, for her, for everyone, forever.
The debris pile on the roof—the final claim of that tornadic springtime storm—consisted of leg-thick branches, snapped twigs, and pinecones. Sticky shortleaf needles were scattered everywhere. The late March air was already tight with heat, so Colleen thought about climbing back down for some iced tea. And a hair tie, maybe sunscreen. And her cigarettes, shit. Yet she knew that if she did go back down she’d be done for the day, having failed to complete things, again.
She measured her steps against the slight pitch of the overhang, and began throwing small pine bits to the ground. The more she cleared, the more there seemed to be, so she picked them up faster, cone clumps and branches, slinging all into the yard, catching her balance now and then. She winced when the sweat trickled into her eyes, and her chest felt bruised up from smoking. Still, she cleared the pine trash faster, faster.
“You know what they call contraception in Miss’ippi?” the doc had asked.
Colleen had shaken her head no.
“Exactly.”
A searing pain needled the inside of her forearm. Colleen knew it was a yellow jacket before she swatted it dead. She flicked the wasp away, then slapped at the sting. As a distraction of sorts, she stopped chucking the small bits, and instead gave a go at the large branch undergirding the pile.
The limb was heavy and she dropped it on the first try—then hoisted it right back up. The bark chewed her palms and the wasp sting blossomed, but the bough budged just enough to encourage her. Shoving the pile toward the edge of the roof, Colleen sensed a tipping point. “You’re mine,” she grunted, her abdomen bricklike as she leveraged her body forward, throwing everything she had in opposition to the weight, until she slipped and slammed down on her ass.
One of her sneaker soles was lacquered with blood. Her eyes darted over to the matted nest of haystick and scrap, and the litter of gray squirrels she’d slid on. Wriggling in the debris was a single spared pup. The inch-long creature bore fuzz as delicate as frost, and its inky eyes were lidded. Colleen got to her knees, leaned in close, and blew. Its head bobbed.
She looked out over the treetops as if seeking counsel, and once more to those crowned-Christ water towers. For the first time in forever, she thought of this nameless grandfatherly type from her childhood, a honey-drawl patriarch who lived in nearby Pitchlynn. He’d been all but installed on a bench in town square, an attraction of sorts, feeding corn kernels to a gray squirrel that sat upright on his shoulder, and astounding any clump-up of passersby kids. Colleen’s memory of this time was sunlit. What’s more, it carried potential, given the man’s explanation of how anyone could raise an orphaned pup, nursing it with an eyedropper, then weaning it on to corn and carrots. Within weeks, he professed, you’d whistle the pet to your side.
She believed this opportunity. She had been that giddy kid.
Colleen closed her eyes and took in the full bore of sun, and she grinned with the feel of its dominance. She stood up, and apologized, and stomped on the nest, then got back to the problem at hand.
2
Then it was August. Sweltering, dead-grass August. She was on the couch, in a peach-colored bathrobe, third trimester. Derby had already called four times that morning; Colleen hadn’t picked up, but only listened to the answering machine. He wasn’t so much checking in on her as he was checking up, exercising his own anxiety. He’d been coiled extra-tight since seeing his father back in the news, as if the old man were anything more than a gust of scorched air (or as if a phone call to Colleen could protect her if he wasn’t).
Instead of talking things out, Derby had doubled down on domestic regimen: check-ins, check-ons, grocery lists, chores, and reporting for daily duty at a house-flip gig in Pitchlynn.
Derby Friar, Derby Friar, his jeans forever tucked into his stiff leather ropers. Once a year, he bought a pair of tan, pull-on Red Wing work boots. He spent twelve months scuffing them, wearing them in proper . . . then bought another new pair, and started scuffing again. Every two years he bought five pairs of Levi’s Shrink-to-Fit 501s. The denim so rigid, so horribly blue. He’d spend a weekend in and out of the tub, soaking and then drying the pants on his body. Derby squished as he walked about, dripping indigo all over everything. Yet twenty-four months later, precisely as the jeans got soft and worn, and damn well perfect to Colleen, he’d bag them up for the Salvation Army, and start in on five new pairs.
Good ole boy, the best ole boy. His rituals were endearing. Most times, anyway. At first glance, the only thing quirked about Derby was that he had legally switched to using his mother’s maiden name. Yet even this was predictable. If Colleen’s surname had been Hobbs, she would’ve buried that shit the instant she turned eighteen. She was particularly thankful for this decision now that Derb’s dad was back on radar, and likely headed back to trial.
She’d only met her father-
in-law a couple of times, when she and Derby were first married, and when a brief, symbolic effort was made to cross paths. To Colleen, Hare Hobbs seemed like any other old crank. She was lulled by his drawl and easy measure, by his keen questions about herself and her military service, and the way that, well, just the way Hare came across as sort of fragile and empathetic, versus the vile concept she’d been warned about.
Admittedly, it was the only time she’d ever met a murderer. Or, as Hare was so known to point out, an exonerated murderer.
Regardless, Derby Hobbs, son of Harold “Hare” Hobbs, was now fully and irrevocably Derby Friar: thirty-two and fit, his eyes fanned by hairline wrinkles. A man who insisted that he’d be made whole by a parcel and a small stocked pond, catfish and brim, on the outskirt of Pitchlynn, Mississippi. By a wife to adore and a thirty-year mortgage, a string of journeyman builder gigs, and most of all a brand-new family. Twins, in fact. Goodness gracious.
Colleen loved him, but she ignored his calls. She was bloated and alone in the hot little house, her muscles sore, sleep-deprived, and she didn’t have any comfort to give. Hell, even the fact that they needed a landline felt confining. Water towers or not, she’d had better cell service in Iraq.
She rubbed a gob of Palmer’s Cocoa Butter lotion on her stomach, an attempted arrest of the stretch marks. Knotted up her dull gold hair, then scraped at the freckles of pink polish left on her nails. On the television, a New York celebutante cooked cathead biscuits. Only, to Colleen they didn’t look like cathead biscuits, a name that everyone on set only joked about. The show hosts had used no bacon drippings nor buttermilk to prepare them, let alone a cast-iron skillet. She wondered how the celebrity had even landed on TV, doing things that Colleen was more suited to do. It seemed that one simply had to show up on set, be pretty, or rich, or both, and breathe. And feeling fairly certain she could produce three of these four prereqs—show up, be pretty, breathe—Colleen meditated on her ability to parlay such qualities into future success. She swore that after the babies were born, she was gonna . . .
She was gonna what? No matter how often she thought of the future, there was no clarity or specific as to how it would ripen. Rather, Colleen was driven by a shapeless, consuming lack. Made sick by a yearning for some new form of exceptionalism, a feeling that even her pregnancy had failed to quash.
She’d been exceptional, before. Her lungs had ventilated a rich mix of shamal dust storm and South Korean cigs, diesel exhaust and latrine, and toxic, burn pit shit. She’d seen a dead woman laid out on the hydraulic ramp of a Bradley vehicle in a city defined by wailing, foreign gibberish. Her own body had been weaponized, wrapped in MOPP gear and Kevlar and pixelated camo—and it had been combatively unwrapped, too. Exceptional was very, very possible.
Someone knocked on the kitchen door. She hoisted herself up, then waddled over to answer, mumbling, “Jesus Christ,” and “Cathead, my ass.” The diamond-shaped door window was filled with tendrils of brown hair.
“Hey,” Colleen said, beckoning her best friend inside, before turning away to the coffeepot.
“Must be nice to sleep all day,” Deana said.
“I wasn’t sleeping. I was layin’ around.”
Deana took a long look at Colleen’s belly. “A-round is right. Land sakes!”
“Don’t even start,” Colleen said. “It’s hot. My bod’s exploding. And I didn’t sleep a wink.”
“Cry me a Gulf, sister.” Deana winked. “Oh hell, did you hear ’bout that missing pilot? The small plane that’s gone down in the pines near Holly Springs? They can’t find it anywhere. Just heard the distress call for help, and then, boop!—nada.”
“Sounds about right,” Colleen said. “Person tries to flee this place, and even the trees lock ’em down.”
Deana grabbed a mug of coffee, then sat down in a wooden kitchen chair. She unbuttoned the top of her blouse to let the air sweep her chest. “My word, get a breeze goin’.”
Colleen glared, but then turned on the box fan. She pulled a pack of Mistys from her robe pocket, offering one to Deana.
Deana waved the cig away. “For the record, the pilot wasn’t trying to leave Mississippi. He was flyin’ in.”
Colleen huffed in disgust, then lit the smoke.
“Listen, girlfriend. I’m not gonna spend my lunch hour buckin’ you up. You invited me over. So you tell me something good.” Deana snatched the cig from Colleen’s fingers. “I know there’s a lump of sugar under all that salt.”
“What’d you bring me to read?” Colleen replied, taking the cigarette back.
Deana laughed, then pulled a bundle of magazines from her purse: Vogue, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly, and the like, dated castoffs from the beauty parlor where she worked.
Colleen started thumbing a copy of Us Weekly and pointed to a spread of starlets on a red carpet. “She’s hot.”
“Damn straight. Check those legs,” Deana said. “But lord, that’s an ugly dress.”
“Valentino, though,” Colleen countered.
“Valentin-No is more like it. That outfit’s a felony.”
They continued like this over corn salad and sun tea, with Colleen dog-earing any image that made her feel jealous, or inspired, or depressed. Half an hour or so later, an alarm chimed on Deana’s phone.
“That’s the bell, kid,” she said. “Gotta go.”
Colleen ignored her and flipped another page.
“I realize that moodiness comes with the hormones,” Deana said. “But if I wanted an hour full of mope, I’d go see my husband!”
Colleen glanced up. “You promised it’d get better.”
“I still do. You’re just feelin’ cagey.” Deana rapped on the table, then stood up. “As soon as those babies get here, it’ll be like your heart’s outside your body. Exposed. Alive. Devastated by love. You won’t have another want on the planet.”
“Right,” Colleen said.
Deana helped Colleen to her feet, then beckoned a goodbye hug. Breasts and bellies, their breathing syncopated, things got woozy and still, and safe. Deana ran her chin against Colleen’s neck, taking in the scent of that cocoa butter lotion. As their fingers flared on each other’s backs, the kitchen fell silent enough to broadcast Colleen’s swallow.
“You remember what I was like, Dean?” she asked. “Before Derby and all?”
What came to Deana’s mind was a movie scene. A western, or war story. A chick flick, only more. It had taken place four years earlier—or maybe now five—though the memory was crisp. She’d been at work, at the beauty parlor, staring through the plate-glass window, watching an unknown young woman stagger half drunk across the parking lot. The stranger was bloodied to a pulp; a coalition of combat boots, miniskirt, and split lip. Deana had watched her wobble through the glass doors, prop up against reception, and cast her one open eye around the room.
Everyone on hand had seen the battered car behind her, and knew that a collision, not some man, had delivered the blows. (This fact had kept things on the savory side of gawk.) A movie. A tragedy. A rock opera. A crime. Nobody in the beauty parlor had known how to react to this . . . this woman, clearly whipped, but who seemed brimful of fight. And lost love, somehow. Even at first sight. Lost love.
Deana smiled. “Unfortunately, yes. I remember.”
“I’m serious,” Colleen said. “I was going somewhere then, you know? I felt like I was still going.”
Deana wrangled loose from the embrace, and slung her purse over her shoulder. “You were, but in the wrong direction! Getting in your own way, ever’ which way.”
“Well, I guess you should’ve let me alone, huh?”
“Probably. And yet . . . here we are.”
“Do you realize that I’m ’bout to spend the rest of my life in the same zip code I grew up in?” Colleen asked.
Deana grasped her friend’s shoulder, smiled. “This’s just hormones. Birth jitters. Believe me, I’ve been there. Twice.”
“But—”
“You’ll clim
b out of this hole, like you always do. Always have.” Deana held out an open hand. “Now gimme those cigarettes. I don’t know who’s selling ’em to you, and I won’t tell you not to have one or two. But come on, Colleen. Oh, and the lighter, too. Give it up. Now.”
3
Colleen woke the next day to the bleat of the phone on the stuff-cluttered bedside table. She pawed at the pillows. “Answer that, babe? Derb?”
His side of the bed was empty, meaning that he’d probably left for work. When the phone quit ringing, Colleen sank back into sleep . . . until it rang again. She groaned, reached over, and clicked on the cordless.
“Hello?”
“Speak to Derby?” a woman asked. Her voice was young, yet nicked.
Colleen sat upright.
“Hel-lo?” the woman asked again. “You there?”
“Yeah,” Colleen answered. “Derb’s, uh. He’s already gone.”
“You know who this is, right?”
Colleen stood up, paced through the house, and looked out the front windows. Derby’s pickup was parked at the far edge of the property, where the long dirt drive met the two-lane county road. He was blocked in by a white news van, a TV truck emblazoned with the local affiliate logo. She watched her husband confront a reporter and his cameraman.
“You hear me?” the woman groused.
“Yeah,” Colleen said. “I know who you are.” She went outside, and began to jog down the dirt driveway, barefoot, her body heaving. She couldn’t yell for Derby, lest the caller find out he was still at home. Instead, she waved her free hand in the air to try and get his attention.
He was too busy telling the reporter off. Within seconds the news crew had loaded up and pulled away. Derby hopped in his pickup and peeled out behind them, onto the paved road.
“At least give me his cell number or somethin’!” the woman barked. “Shit.”
Colleen stopped in her tracks, all but out of breath. “Winnie?” she gasped. “You know better than to call this house. Derb doesn’t want anythin’ to do with you, or for sure your daddy.”