by Lee Martin
Captain closed the blade and started to stuff the knife back into his jeans pocket, but Shooter wasn’t about to let him off easy. He grabbed his arm and narrowed his eyes at Captain. “I’m not playing,” he said. “I want that knife.”
Finally, Captain let him have it.
Shooter snapped it closed and slipped the knife into his own pocket.
“That goat was sick,” he said. “We didn’t have any choice but to put him down. Right?”
After a time, Captain nodded. Shooter put his hand on his back, rubbing a slow circle.
“That’s right,” Shooter said. “That’s one thing we know for sure.”
Ronnie, at that very moment, was on the river. He’d parked his Firebird at the fishing camp, three miles out of Phillipsport, where one of his foster fathers had kept an old Airstream trailer. Ronnie had gotten out of the Firebird and walked a hundred yards or so down to the water.
The river was iced over, frozen thick enough for him to walk out onto it, all the way to the center—the deepest part—where for a moment, he tipped back his head and looked up at the sky. The stars were out and a crescent moon, just enough light to let him see the snow-dusted ice. Wind moved through the bare limbs of the sycamores and red oaks and hackberry trees that lined each bank. The smaller branches clicked together.
He liked being out there in the cold night, gazing up at the sky, imagining a heaven where Della knew the truth of what he’d done. Maybe in that heaven she’d even forgive him.
At any rate, she’d be the only one—at least it was so in Ronnie’s mind—who’d bear witness to what he was about to do, and she’d be the only one he’d feel inclined to tell why he had to do it.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the sky. He got down on his knees. “I’m so sorry.”
Then he took his pocketknife, the one Angel had found in the snow behind the trailer, and he opened the blade.
26
All through Sarah’s class play, Brandi couldn’t stop thinking about that moment in the kitchen when Laverne said it was time to talk to Sheriff Biggs. It was then that Brandi felt the two storylines begin to merge—her story with Ronnie and the girls, and the story of what had happened the night of the fire.
The youngest Billy Goat Gruff, a boy wearing a white sweat suit on which his mother had dyed brown spots, was trying to cross the wooden footbridge set up on the stage. The boy wore whiskers that were supposed to look like a billy goat’s beard and a set of droopy ears. A brown tail hung down from the seat of his sweatpants.
Sarah’s voice rang out, “Trip, trap, trip, trap.”
Hearing Sarah, her voice so full of confidence, made Brandi remember all the evenings at the house when she’d helped her practice her part. She thought of how the girls had been shy around her at first and how Emma had finally asked her to read her a story and then Sarah had stood by her one evening when she was on the computer, nestling in close, inviting a hug. Hannah had made her the friendship bracelet she still wore, and there had been times when even Angel had asked if she could put her hand on her stomach and see if the baby would kick.
Laverne was standing along the wall. Brandi could see her profile in the shadows cast by the stage lights. She’d left her house less than two hours ago with a promise to talk to Sheriff Biggs.
Missy and Pat were sitting a few rows in front of Brandi, to her right, and Brandi could see the way Missy was positively beaming as she watched the play unfold.
“Who is that walking on my bridge?” the troll in the play said. He was a scrawny boy who stood all hunched over. Someone had put wrinkles on his face and warts on his nose.
“It’s only me, Little Billy Goat Gruff.”
Brandi knew the story, remembered it from when she was a girl and her mother read it to her from a Little Golden Book. It was a fable of greed and trickery, the troll persuaded to let the two smallest goats pass over the bridge in favor of making a meal of the largest goat who would soon come his way. But the largest of the three goats knocked the troll off the bridge, and there you had it. “Snip, snap, snout,” it said in the book. “This tale’s told out.”
In Sarah’s play, the narrator merely said this: “Big Billy Goat Gruff ran across the bridge. He ate the green, green grass and apples. That mean, ugly old troll never came back to the bridge. He learned that being mean never pays.”
Brandi leaned forward and glanced down the row at Hannah, who was sitting with her hands folded neatly in her lap, and little Emma, who was bouncing up and down on the edge of her seat, and then Angel, who was clapping. Brandi wanted to find a way to keep them. That is, if they wanted to stay. She had no idea, though, what would happen to her and Ronnie. She had no idea where he was or what might happen when Sheriff Biggs found him.
After the play, Brandi sat through the curtain call, the actors executing their curtsys and bows. Then she and the girls went to gather up Sarah.
“Was I good?” Sarah grabbed on to Brandi’s hand. “Did I do everything right?”
Brandi gave her a hug. She bent over and whispered in her ear. “You were the best.”
Then it was out to the lobby for cookies and punch, and parents cooing over their children, and the kids hopping about and laughing their squealing laughs. And it was all the most wonderful music to Brandi.
Then Laverne found her. She said, “I talked to Sheriff Biggs. He’s out looking for Ronnie right now.”
For a moment, Brandi wondered if she’d done the right thing by showing Laverne that T-shirt. As much as she still didn’t know what she felt about Ronnie, she could imagine him out there somewhere thinking the world was against him, and that tore at her as much as the disgust she felt, imagining that it might be true that he’d started that fire.
But what if it wasn’t? Everything was mixed up in Brandi’s heart. She wasn’t sure what was right anymore, but something about the thought of the sheriff looking for Ronnie unsettled her. When she’d set out to win him, she’d never imagined anything like this.
“It cuts me,” she said to Laverne. “All this about Ronnie and what might be true.”
Laverne slipped her arm across Brandi’s shoulders. “I know this isn’t easy. Let’s hope Sheriff Biggs can find him soon, before—” She hesitated, letting her voice trail off, and Brandi knew that what she’d been about to say until she realized it wasn’t a thing for Sarah to hear was, before he hurts someone.
That was enough to make up her mind to do the right thing, to make sure the girls were safe.
“Laverne,” she said, “can the girls go to Pat and Missy’s tonight?”
“I think it would be best, don’t you?”
Brandi nodded. She couldn’t find any voice left to say, yes, yes she did.
So it went from there. Laverne gathered the girls and put them in her car. It killed Brandi that she wouldn’t let them ride with her to the house, as if she might try to run away with them. Their welfare, Laverne said, was a concern of the State now, and she needed to make sure that this transfer to Missy’s care went smoothly.
Missy and Pat followed in their van. They at least had the decency to sit out in the van with the engine running while Brandi packed a few things for the girls and Laverne supervised.
“Brandi,” she said at one point, “I know this is hard for you, but for now it’s the best thing. You’ll see. You should know that if Sheriff Biggs arrests Ronnie, there’ll most certainly be a sheltered care hearing, and that’ll sort things out for good as far as who gets the girls.”
Emma was tired and cranky. Sarah was still excited about the success of the play and kept tromping around the house saying, “Trip, trap. Trip, trap. Trip, trap.”
Hannah was uncharacteristically sullen, moving about mechanically as she gathered her things.
Angel got packed quickly. She had her earbuds in, listening to the iPod Missy had given her.
Laverne asked Brandi if she had someplace to stay. They’d found themselves alone for a few moments in Angel and Hannah’s bedroom.
At least for the night, Laverne said. At least until the sheriff found Ronnie.
Brandi said she didn’t think Ronnie would hurt her, and if she weren’t home, how would he have a place to stay.
“He stayed somewhere last night,” Laverne said as gently as she could. “Brandi, you need to look after yourself. You can stay with me if you don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Brandi shook her head. “I’ll be all right. Thank you.”
“He has that knife.” Laverne raised her eyebrows, inviting Brandi to give that some thought. “You remember how he threatened you with it last night?”
“Did you see how he helped Sarah with her hair at the school this afternoon?” Brandi was recalling it all in her mind—how gentle he’d been, how lost he’d seemed. “He looked like he was all alone in the world.”
“What about that T-shirt you showed me? What about him being at the trailer the night it burned?” Laverne took Brandi’s hand and squeezed it. “What about the knife Angel found? All of that will speak volumes in a courtroom.”
In the van, the heater spread hot air across Missy’s feet and legs. She watched out the window, keeping an eye on the comings and goings inside Brandi’s house, feeling her heart spark and leap each time she saw one of the girls pass by the windows. Soon she’d have them all tucked in at her house and things would be the way they were in those days after the fire when she’d kept them. Only this time their sorrow would have diminished some. That’s what happened as the days passed. The grief lessened, got covered over with the business of lives moving forward. Missy knew as much from the babies she’d lost. Time kept moving, and though the grief never really disappeared, it could be covered over with what the world still had to offer, and that’s what she hoped would happen with her and the girls.
Pat tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. The van smelled of his aftershave, which he’d applied too liberally while getting ready for the school play. It was the Black Suede from Avon that Missy had given him for Christmas. She loved the scents of leather and deep woods. Sitting there in the van with the heater running, she felt cocooned and protected. She looked over at Pat, and she lifted a hand and rubbed the back of it tenderly over his cheek. He took her hand and kissed it.
Finally, the girls came out of the house—first Angel and then Sarah and then Hannah helping little Emma along. They were bundled up in coats and hats and boots, and they carried their duffle bags. Laverne Ott followed them.
Missy got out of the van and opened the sliding side door so they could all pile in. Sarah was still saying, “Trip, trap,” and Missy could hear the buzz of music leaking out of the earbuds of Angel’s iPod. Emma was sleepy, and Hannah was quiet, a stunned look on her face.
“It’s going to be okay,” Missy said to her, and gave her a hug.
In the midst of getting the girls into the van and settled, Pat checked to make sure everyone was in, and as he turned he barely registered the fact that a few yards up Locust to the east a pair of headlights went out. Someone coming in for the night.
“Everyone buckled in?” Missy called out with great cheer. “All right then. Let’s go home.”
Brandi stood at the window and watched the van pull away. She watched until it was gone. Then she drew her curtains closed. She turned to face the rooms of her house. Already they felt so empty. The silence settled around her.
Laverne got into her car and breathed a sigh of relief. She started the engine and was glad to be finally heading toward her own house at the end of a very long day.
Neither she nor anyone else took note of the fact that the headlights that Pat had seen go out belonged to Ronnie’s Firebird. Not even Mr. Wheeler, who kept tabs on everything that happened in the neighborhood, would be able to say later that he saw the Firebird parked maybe fifty yards up Locust in the shadows between two streetlights.
No one was there to bear witness to the fact that shortly after Pat and Missy left with the girls and Brandi closed her curtains and Laverne made her way to her own home, the Firebird’s headlights came back on and the car eased away from the curb. It crept along, as if the driver already knew exactly where he was going, and, therefore, found no need to hurry.
27
Pat was a few miles up the blacktop, still nearly five miles from home, when he saw a set of headlights on high beams coming closer behind him. Soon they filled the van with their glare.
“Jeez, someone’s trying to blind me,” he said, and then he slowed down so the car would have to pass.
But it didn’t. It stayed right on his bumper, the lights so bright Missy had to shade her eyes with her hand.
“Some idiot,” she said. “A real bozo. Doesn’t he know how dangerous this is?”
Pat couldn’t pull off onto the shoulder because the little strip of pavement and grass before the road slanted off into a deep ditch was covered with a bank of snow from where the plow on the salt truck had pushed it. He put his window down and stuck his arm out to wave the car around him.
The cold air rushed into the van, and Missy shivered. Still the car stayed where it was.
Finally, Hannah’s quiet voice came from the back. “It’s Dad,” she said, merely stating that fact.
Pat put up the window and tightened his hands on the steering wheel. “Hang on,” he said. He tapped his brakes, and Ronnie’s Firebird braked hard and fell back a tad. Pat looked into the rearview mirror. “Maybe that’ll do the trick.”
But soon the headlights were close again and this time Missy could hear the roar of the Firebird’s engine.
“Here he comes,” Pat said, and he eased off the accelerator, letting the van coast along at forty miles per hour, hoping Ronnie would press on and soon he’d be around them and his taillights would be growing dimmer in the distance.
The Firebird, though, swung out into the left lane, and after all that brightness the van seemed so dark to Missy. She could look across Pat and see the Firebird pull even with the van.
Then Ronnie started to edge the Firebird across the center line. Pat steered as far to his right as he could, but the Firebird edged closer until its front fender scraped up against the van, and Missy felt it rock a little.
“Dear God,” she said.
And it was as if Ronnie had somehow heard her prayer. He slowed the Firebird. He steered it back to the left of center.
Pat saw his chance, and he pressed down on the van’s accelerator. He shot ahead, his headlight beams stretching out down the blacktop.
The Firebird fell back, and soon its headlights disappeared. It was dark again inside the van, and though Missy was trembling, she steeled herself and she told the girls everything was all right. That they were almost home, and everything was fine.
Ronnie watched the van pull away from him. He slowed to forty and then thirty-five, and finally he was creeping along at twenty miles per hour, watching the taillights of Pat’s van crest a hill. Ronnie kept his eyes on those taillights until the van went down the slope of the hill, and then he couldn’t see them anymore. His girls were in that van, and he understood now the danger he’d put them in when he’d bumped it.
He hadn’t meant to do it. At least he didn’t think he had. He’d only wanted the van to stop. He’d wanted to gather his girls into the Firebird and take them someplace where no one would ever be able to find them, and little by little all the bad things swirling around them would stop, and they’d be a family, happy forever. He feared he’d ruined any chance at that, but still he had to try.
At the next crossroads, he slowed and turned the Firebird around. He started back up the blacktop toward Goldengate. It was time to start facing facts, time to tell his own story, time to say exactly what was what.
28
Ronnie didn’t bother to knock. He just opened the door and walked in. Brandi was sitting on the couch, facing the front door, every light in the house turned on as if she were waiting for him.
She didn’t even move when she saw him. “Where have you been?”
&nbs
p; Her voice was all flattened out, not soft and sweet the way it was the night she came into the bedroom and told him Pat Wade was there and he’d better come out to hear what he had to say. Ronnie remembered the way her fingers trembled when she buttoned his shirt for him and how later, once Pat had told him about the fire—once Ronnie understood that Della and Emily and Gracie and the baby were gone and he knew he needed to get to the ones who were left—Brandi said she’d be there waiting for him. She’d made it plain she wasn’t going anywhere. Her heart was tied up with his. Then, now, forever.
“I’ve been driving,” he said
He couldn’t bring himself to tell her that he’d gone to the river, walked out on the ice, got down on his knees, and looked up at the stars and the crescent moon. He couldn’t tell her about opening the blade of his knife and thinking long and hard about what he might do with it before giving up on that idea. Most of all, he couldn’t tell her what he’d just done out there on the blacktop. He couldn’t say that he’d been so angry about Missy and Pat taking his girls, he’d been a crazy man. He’d tried to chase them down. He’d bumped their van, and if they’d been driving any faster, or if Pat hadn’t been on the lookout—well, Ronnie didn’t like to think about what might have happened. He couldn’t get the picture out of his head, the one he’d manufactured, of that van leaving the blacktop and going airborne, turning over and over, his daughters—the people who mattered most to him in this world—at the mercy of another one of his hotheaded decisions.
His life was out of control, but all he could offer Brandi was this: “That night,” he said. “The night the trailer burned.” He got down on his knees in front of her, and he gathered her up, his arms easing in between her back and the couch. He lay his head on her swollen stomach. He listened for the baby moving about. Then he said the rest. “I didn’t go out for a drive because I was antsy. I knew I was going out there to the trailer.”