by R.J. Ellory
After a soulful rendition of “Lord, I Done So Wrong,” Evan made Carson come up on stage and take a round of applause.
“Our one and only Sheriff Riggs!” he shouted, and the place erupted. “Just wanna say that all of this could not have been possible without my big brother here … finest brother a man could ever wish for.”
Grace Riggs shed a tear.
Rebecca Wyatt watched from the left side of the stage and didn’t know which brother she loved the most.
William stood between George Eakins and Roy Sperling, a glass of ten-year-old bourbon in his hand, and he felt his heart swell like a balloon.
Carson took his applause and the hollering with good humor. He made a joke about illegal drinking and live music and how he had a couple of his men taking notes of all the license plates. Someone threw a bread roll. Carson saw it coming and kicked it back high over the crowd. Everyone fell about laughing. Evan and Carson hugged each other, and then Evan strapped on his guitar and tore the place apart with a version of “Cigareets and Whusky and Wild, Wild Women” that The Sons of The Pioneers would never have recognized.
Evan came off the stage at ten. He had three encores, and then he asked them if they didn’t have homes to go to. He was done, drenched in sweat, face redder than a beet, hair like damp string. He went inside and washed up, was back out by half past to a crowd of folks waiting with handshakes and backslaps and a seemingly endless supply of liquor.
Carson was dealing with some drunken squabble between two girls who should have known better when Rebecca cornered Evan near the smaller of the sheds beside the barn.
The pickup band were playing slow dance numbers for those whose feet could still support their weight, and Evan was soaking it all up like it was Christmas, Thanksgiving, and some kind of anniversary tied together with a bow.
“You done so good,” she said, and Evan could see she was almost drunk. She looked more beautiful than he’d ever seen, and he knew that she would marry his brother.
“I have to say goodbye, Evan. You know that, right?”
“Not tonight you don’t,” he said.
“You know what I mean,” she said, and she raised her hand and touched the side of his face.
Evan tilted his head as her fingers touched him. He closed his eyes, and he inhaled the smell of her perfume, no perfume that ever came from a bottle, and he felt for a moment that this symbolic goodbye was, in fact, a farewell to everything that Calvary was, everything he had been before this night, as if playing his songs for these people was his way of bidding adieu to the world that had made him who he was.
In truth, she was the main part of it all. Rebecca Wyatt. Skinny girl who rocked up a thousand years before with bangs and pigtails and a sass all her own.
“Remember this?” he said, and from his vest pocket he took the pocket watch.
She smiled, reached out and touched it. “You recall the stories I told you?” she said.
“Corporal Vernon Harvey from Snowflake, Arizona, got his darn fool legs blown off in the Argonne Forest,” Evan said.
Rebecca raised her eyebrows. “You impress me, Evan Riggs.”
“He didn’t save no children from burning farmhouses, did he?”
She smiled. “I doubt it, no.”
“Nor did he track no German sniper for three days and then kill him stone dead with a bullet to the heart.”
She shook her head.
“Loved those stories,” Evan said. “Used to lie awake looking at that watch and wondering what the hell really happened.”
“I’m sure nothing quite so dramatic as what I told you.”
“I’m gonna go on believing every word of it,” Evan said.
Rebecca looked away for a moment, a wistful expression on her face. “That was always the difference between you and Carson, wasn’t it? He always asked Why? and you always asked Why Not? You wanted to believe everything was possible.”
“Still do.”
“Guess it comes down to which of us forget we were all children once upon a time.”
“Maybe,” Evan said. “I don’t know.” He put the watch back in his vest pocket.
Rebecca touched his shirtsleeve, her fingers just glancing off it tentatively, almost as if she didn’t want to risk any real physical contact. “I am staying, you know?”
“I know you are.”
“And I will marry Carson.”
“I know that, too.”
“Are you mad at me for that?”
Evan shook his head. “Nope.”
She laughed. “That’s a telltale Evan nope,” she said. “That’s a nope that means yes.”
Evan took her hand and walked away from the edge of the barn to a table someone had set over behind the hog roast.
He was quiet for a time, just looking at her, perhaps soaking up whatever he could of that moment because he knew he would never be able to look at her in such a way again, and then he said, “You want to know what I want? What I really want, Rebecca?”
“I don’t think I do,” she said. “Not if it’s gonna hurt.”
He smiled, closed his hands over hers. “I want to hear that your kids are doing good in school, that Carson is the best sheriff in the county, that your pa is gonna be a grandpa, that you still listen to my records, and that you don’t hate me for leaving you behind.”
“You’re not leaving me behind, Evan,” she said. “I could come if I wanted to.”
“But you don’t want to,” he said.
“Not that I don’t want to, but that I can’t. It’s a life, Evan. You know that. Some people can do that; some people can’t. I gotta have foundations somewhere or I start seeing things all wrong, you know? I gotta know where I’m gonna be tomorrow and which horizon I’m looking for; otherwise … well, you know what I mean. That’s the way it is, and I don’t see that you can shoehorn one into the skin of another and make it work.”
“You can’t,” Evan said. “I seen people, good musicians, great songwriters, and they get off at the first bus stop and head back home. It’s a shitty life, that’s the truth, but I gotta do it.”
“I know you have, and you will find someone who can do it with you.”
“I’ll find someone,” Evan said, “but she won’t be you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“I know, but you don’t need to say it. I can feel it. I can see it written all over your face. Just hurts me, you know? I don’t like it.”
“I’m sorry.”
Rebecca shook her head. “No more sorry, neither.”
Evan smiled. It was a smile of philosophical resignation.
“Walk me back?” she said.
“Be a pleasure, ma’am.”
Evan told his ma that he would be back in half an hour or so, that he was seeing Rebecca home.
“Well, you make sure you get on back here pronto,” she said. “This party’s for you, and you can’t be missing any of it, okay?”
Evan kissed his mother on the cheek. “Thanks for all of this, Ma,” he said.
“I didn’t do much o’ nothin’,” she said. “You got Carson to thank for this.”
“I know,” Evan said. “He done good.”
By the time they reached the Wyatt place, the sights and sounds of the party were distant ghosts. They stood on the veranda together, Rebecca’s hand on the railing, Evan’s hand over hers, and when she turned and looked up at him, he could not stop himself from kissing her. It was a goodbye kiss. That’s what he told himself. He had not kissed her since he’d left for the war. This time it was different. This time it was fueled by loss and sadness and a pent-up wave of feelings that were all some variation of missing you already.
She turned toward him then, pressed her body against his as he put his arms around her and tried to pull her even closer.
“Oh God … Evan … no …” she exhaled, but she didn’t mean a word of it, and he couldn’t stop himself, and didn’t want to, and then they wen
t through the screen door and down the hallway to the stairs and hesitated before climbing, and she led the way, her hand out behind her, and he took that hand and followed her to her room, and even as they passed through the doorway, it was as if he were watching himself from the downstairs hallway … as if he had let her go up alone … as if he had steeled himself resolutely against all temptation, as if the head had won over the heart and he had indeed let her go.
But he had not, and he did not, and the door closed behind them.
Evan Riggs and Rebecca Wyatt showed each other how things would have been if Moirai and the spinning of threads had not woven their lives apart.
Their lovemaking was furious, perhaps angry, each convinced to show the other what each was being denied, as if here was a way to release something that could never truly escape.
And when they were done, they said nothing. Evan merely rose from the mattress, got dressed, and left the Wyatt house.
A hundred yards away, he glanced back, but he did not see her watching him from any window.
Evan had been absent for close to an hour, but if anyone thought something was awry, they did not speak of it.
THIRTY-TWO
If nothing else, walking between the gravestones and markers in Calvary’s only cemetery served to strengthen Henry Quinn’s resolve. Many was the time he and a crew of other inmates had been dispatched to clear stones and weeds from the further reaches of Reeves’s own makeshift potter’s field, an ignominious final resting place for those society no longer cared for. Simple wooden markers gave a prisoner’s name and number, no birth date, no date of death. Perhaps, somewhere within Reeves’s administrative system, there was a record of who they were, the term they’d served, their cause of death, their next of kin. Perhaps not. And that same scrubbed and featureless acreage would be where Evan Riggs would finally wind up; his marker would crumble and degrade in time; the records he’d made would be scratched or lost or forgotten, and there would be nothing remaining to remind the world of his existence. Except his daughter. Perhaps his daughter. Granted, it may not be fair to tell her now of her origin, but there was always the possibility that she knew, deep down, that she did not really belong to the family that had taken her in. Could such a thing be known by instinct, by some deep-rooted knowledge that those surrounding you were not of the same blood?
Just inside the entranceway was a memorial plaque to those of Redbird County who had fallen in the First War. Just as was the case with so many of the stones, it was covered in moss, its letters almost unreadable. There appeared to be no such memorial for those who had fallen in the Second.
“Hey,” Evie called from the far corner of the cemetery. “I’ve found the father.”
Henry walked across to meet her, stepping carefully between the stones and crosses, one or two of them draped with faded and weatherworn Confederate flags. Dead flowers lay everywhere, their blooms devoid of color and life.
Evie stood looking down at a moss-covered stone, the ground around it unkempt and neglected. There was no doubt as to who was buried there. WILLIAM FORD RIGGS, the stone read. BELOVED HUSBAND TO GRACE: DEVOTED FATHER TO CARSON AND EVAN.
Dates of birth and death were respectively given as July 8, 1896 and August 8, 1949.
“Short life,” Evie said. “Fifty-three years old. Fucking sad.”
“Accident, right?” Henry said. “That’s what your dad said … some kind of shooting accident.”
Evie didn’t reply. She was down on her knees, tugging clumps of weed from around the gravestone.
“What are you doing?”
Evie looked back at Henry. “Doesn’t seem right to just leave it such a mess,” she said. “Looks like no one’s been here for years.”
“Only person who could come is Carson,” Henry said.
“Another reason not to like him,” Evie said. “As if we needed one.”
“Come on. Let’s see if we can’t find anything about Sarah.”
Evie got up. She took a step forward and touched the uppermost edge of William Riggs’s gravestone. Henry didn’t ask, but he was sure she mouthed a couple of words. It was a touching moment, and it said something very clear about Evie’s sensitivity and compassion.
“So this girl,” Evie asked as she walked away. “She was born when?”
“November of forty-nine,” Henry said.
“She never met her grandfather, then,” Evie commented.
“Seems not.”
Had the girl died, and had she, in fact, been buried here, then hers would be one of the more recent interments. It seemed futile, so unlikely as to be beyond the bounds of reasonability, but it wasn’t long before Henry found something.
“Here,” he said. He knelt down, rubbed moss and lichen away from the letters.
“Wyatt,” he said. “Ralph Wyatt, loving father to Rebecca.”
He looked up at Evie.
“Look at the date of death,” Evie said. “August 8, 1949 … Same day as Evan’s father.”
Henry rubbed further, his hands now filthy, and there was no mistaking it. Ralph Wyatt, whoever the hell he might have been, had been born on the eleventh of November, 1892, and had died on the same day as William Riggs.
“Rebecca’s father?” Evie asked.
Henry shook his head. “Lord knows, but if so, then both of Sarah’s grandfathers died on the same day. That seems altogether too coincidental.”
“The shooting accident,” Evie said.
“Seems there’s a good deal Evan could have told me that he didn’t.”
“Seems there’s a good deal a number of people could have told us that they haven’t,” Evie said.
They kept on looking, wending their way back toward the crumbling stone arch that marked the entranceway of the cemetery, every once in a while pausing at some lichen-clad marker, kneeling to look closer, to ascertain whether or not their search for Evan’s daughter would end there. In some strange way, Henry half hoped that they would find something, if only to resolve the question of her whereabouts, but it was a wish without real substance. He did not want to disappoint Evan. He wanted to do what he said he’d do.
By the time they reached the last handful of stones, they were certain that there was nothing further to be discovered there.
“Time to head back to Ector,” Henry said. “We need to know for sure if the Rebecca that Grace spoke of is this Wyatt girl. If she is, then it looks like we’ve found Sarah’s mother.”
“Who is also dead, right?”
“Died at Ector.”
“We only have Grace’s word to go on.”
“Most certain thing she said, though, wasn’t it? That she went up to Ector to visit Rebecca, that Carson got mad at her for visiting, and that Rebecca died.”
“I don’t know,” Evie said. “I don’t know what to make of any of it. I just know that the more we look, the more questions we find.”
“You gonna come with me?” Henry asked.
“What the hell you gonna do? Break into their records office?”
“I am gonna ask, that’s all,” Henry said.
“And if they won’t tell you?”
He shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know, Evie. Break into their records office, I guess.”
Evie hesitated for no more than a second. “Let’s go,” she said.
They followed the same route they’d taken only that morning. En route they stopped at a gas station and convenience store, bought flowers and a box of pastries. The receptionist was surprised to see them back, asked why they had returned so soon.
Evie smiled so sincerely that the woman couldn’t help but smile with her. “We just felt awful,” Evie said. “I mean, with no visitors for such a long time and Grace up there all by herself. It just seems so dreadfully sad, you know?”
The woman concurred. It was dreadfully sad, yes.
“I can let you up for a while,” she said, “but doctor’s rounds will start in half an hour, so you don’t have long. Then they’ll have lunch. Might
be better if you came back in an hour or two, and then you could visit for longer.”
“What’s your name?” Evie asked.
“I’m Anne,” she said. “Anne Regis.”
“Well, Anne, we just wanted to bring some flowers,” Evie said. “And some pastries.”
Henry held up the box as evidence.
“Brighten the place up a little,” Evie went on.
“You are very sweet,” Anne said.
“I did have a question,” Henry said. “When we were here earlier, Grace mentioned someone called Rebecca. Said that she was here, and that she died. My wife and I were talking after we left, and her grandmother used to speak of another cousin called Rebecca.” Henry turned to Evie. “You never did meet her, did you?”
Evie shook her head, leaned closer to Anne. “Said she wasn’t well, you know? Hence, we wondered whether or not she might have ended up here at Ector.”
“I wouldn’t have the faintest idea,” Anne said. “Of course, all of that kind of information would be in records, but that’s confidential. I don’t go in there. That’s just for the doctors and the consultants and the directors and whoever.”
“Is there someone we could speak to about it?” Henry asked.
“Today?” Anne asked. “It’s Sunday. There’s just the medical and psychiatric staff here today, my dear. None of the senior people come in on a Sunday.”
“And how much trouble would we cause if we just went and looked?” Evie asked.
“Oh my,” Anne said. “You can’t do that. Those are peoples’ confidential medical records. I couldn’t possibly let you do that.”
“From what Grace told us, Cousin Rebecca died here,” Henry said. “Is there a record of deaths in the facility?”
“Well, yes, there would be,” Anne replied. “Again, somewhere in the same department, I guess.”