There was a huge whoop of wind, later, after, as he rested his head on my chest, heartbeat and breath slower now. There was a crack and a crash. I remember him giving a start at the sound, and feeling a brief burn from his day’s end beard.
“That sounded close,” he said. He lifted himself up a little. “Quite a storm.”
It hadn’t rattled me at all. I felt a deep calm.
Everything went quiet and darker in an instant. The yellow light beneath the door snapped off, and the air conditioner down the hall stopped humming.
“Electricity’s out,” I said. Everything seemed cottony and quiet. I felt like I could lie there forever. Even the tiles didn’t feel cold anymore.
But a few moments later came a scream. Not a yell or a holler, but a scream that hit me in the spine, and knocked my head hard against the bathtub.
Someone was screaming, “No!”
“Fuck!” Joshua yelled, and he jumped off of me.
“That sounded like Momma,” I said, and we bumped into each other as we both tried to stand and dress and turn on the light that didn’t work and open the door at the same time. I felt under the sink for a flashlight I knew was there, and we found our clothes in the haunted beam of it. I handed Joshua his shirt, and he pulled it on as he followed me down the stairs.
“What, what, what is it?” I was yelling out as I ran. Through a window, I could see the dance of flashlight beams on the front lawn. I almost hit Judge Weintraub, who was rushing in the door when I got to the bottom of the steps.
“An accident. A tree came down on the power lines. They hit one of the vans. You brother was in it. And another man,” the judge said. He sounded panicked in a way I’d never seen. It scared me to my core. “I’ve got to call.” He rushed off into the kitchen.
“Momma?” I yelled, running out the front door. The gravel in the driveway dug into my bare feet. One of the vans was idling, its headlights illuminating our driveway. A dog barked, somewhere across the street.
“Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh God,” Momma was saying. “Hold on, angel. Just hold on.”
Beau Ray was lying in our driveway, unconscious. His eyes were clamped shut, and a thin line of blood trickled out the side of his mouth. There was a singed smell, like an iron had been left on. Two television people stood over the other man, who was curled in a fetal position, like Beau Ray, not moving. One of the television guys talked into a cell phone, nodding, saying yes and no and “I don’t know, I didn’t see,” in a hurried, high-pitched voice.
“What happened?” Joshua asked.
“That tree over there,” said the man who wasn’t on the phone. He pointed toward the stand of moth-eaten oaks. “Maybe the wind. It just came down. And the wires hit the van. We could see sparks. There was this popping sound. Beau Ray and Hank were…Hank was showing Beau Ray…we pulled them out, but the line might still be live. Don’t get too near.”
I couldn’t have gone near the van if I’d wanted to. I felt frozen into place, Momma at my feet praying, even as the wind whipped circles around us.
“What can we do?” It was Joshua, right behind me. I could feel him there and straightened my shirt. I saw it then, one of the oaks from the craggy, hollow stand of them, now diagonal, held aloft by an electricity pole that pitched at a strange angle, like a broken bone.
The judge came back outside. “An ambulance is on the way. Joshua, I forgot, can you call the fire department?”
Joshua nodded and immediately headed inside.
“Any change?” the judge asked.
I remember thinking, yes, everything. From one moment past to the one I was suddenly stuck in, everything had shifted. I recognized it. I knew the feeling, like you’re falling and wish you could rewind time, for a few seconds only, just enough for a chance to catch yourself. It seems like such a simple request, but it’s never granted. Time is only forgiving in the long-term.
I don’t remember getting to the hospital, although I know that Judge Weintraub must have driven me there. Momma rode in one of the ambulances with Beau Ray, and Joshua couldn’t leave the house, of course, so he handed me his cell phone.
“Maybe it’ll work at the hospital. Call me when you know anything, okay? Whatever time.”
I remember being in the hospital waiting room. I remember calling Susan and waking her up, but not what I said after that. I remember leaving a message on Tommy’s pager and wondering where he was at that hour.
I remember thinking that I should call Max, but I hadn’t brought his California number with me. Then I saw Sandy run into the waiting room, tears in her eyes, and we hugged for minutes. Sandy, looking pale through her tan, just crying. Not what you’d expect from a nurse in emergency.
Sometimes, I think how strange pregnancy is. One person goes into the hospital and two people come out. But with pregnancy, you know beforehand. You have time to get ready. There’s a sense of life in your belly, the kicking and fussing of it. You have time to get it in your head that there’s going to be more of you now.
It’s not the same at the other end. You go into the hospital beside someone, maybe even holding their hand, and they leave without you. They leave whether you’re ready to say goodbye or not. There’s the minute that they’re with you, and the minute after, when the doctor says it’s over now, he’s gone. You think, this is a dream. I didn’t mean to be here.
It seemed hard to believe but there was nothing to do. In a car accident, at least, you have a broken car. You have to get it fixed or get a new one or stock up on bus schedules. But when someone dies, they’re just gone. People tell you to go home, get some sleep, like that can fix anything. You try but you dream of him, alive and doing something so everyday that it must be real. Then you wake and remember, and you would pay anything to crawl outside of your life for even an hour.
Sandy drove me home and offered to come in and make breakfast or wash dishes or do anything, anything at all, even though she must have known better than most people that there was nothing. I told her it was okay, even though it wasn’t. I told her I was going to try to sleep even though I didn’t think I could. She said that she would come by in the morning. She didn’t ask, she just said it, which was a relief.
I think it was around two in the morning when I got back home. The electricity was still off, but the vans were gone, and the newsmen were gone. Joshua had lit all sorts of emergency candles, so the inside of our house cast a romantic glow. I wandered into the kitchen, then into the living room, then took a flashlight and headed toward the back hall. I stood in the doorway of Beau Ray’s room. In the flashlight’s arc, I could see all of his things, his bed, his lamp, the clothes in his closet, the football he believed that his younger brother had sent.
“Hey,” Joshua said, coming up behind me.
I turned around.
“Well?” He opened his hands, waiting for me to speak. He looked so hopeful, standing there. As if he’d only known happy endings. I closed my eyes and felt my lids burn. I must have managed to shake my head, because he pulled me to his chest and let me sob there for I don’t know how long.
He brought me back into the living room, and sat me on the couch. I cried so hard I thought I would throw up, and then it subsided, and I lay my head on his lap. He kept stroking my hair, and I must have dozed off because I remember waking and it was barely beginning to get light out and the candles were burnt way down. Joshua was blowing his nose and when I realized I’d been asleep, I sat up and looked over at him.
“I’m so, so sorry,” he said. His eyes were red.
“I know,” I told him. “I know you are.”
“If I hadn’t been—” he said.
I put my arms around his shoulders.
“It’s because I was here. That stupid interview.”
“Don’t,” I said.
“I keep thinking, I did this.” He choked up as though no more words could fit through.
There was a small sound, then, like a soft knock. A tapping. And then again.
; “Do you hear that?” I said.
Joshua sat up and listened. The tapping came again.
“Please don’t let it be Marcy Thompson,” I said.
I pushed myself up off the couch and went to open the front door. Outside, stood a man who’d been knocking, softly, seeing the candles but knowing the time. He stood very straight, very serious. His clean-shaven face was shaded with the beginnings of stubble, the stubble of a grown man, not a sixteen-year-old. His face held all the time that had passed. I stared at him a moment, then stepped aside.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Of course, come in.”
Vince walked back inside our house.
“Do you know?” I asked him. “You must know.”
He nodded. “Still the same rug, I see,” he said, and I knew it was really him. It was the same voice I had found impossible to describe. I recognized it in an instant.
I reached out a hand and touched his shoulder.
“Little Leanne,” he said. “I swear I thought of you all the time.”
“You couldn’t call to tell me that?” I asked. That may not be the best way to say hello to a brother who’s been gone for so long. My voice was something between a snap and a whine. But it’s only those you appoint to a higher plane who can disappoint. “Even once on a birthday or something?”
“I wasn’t sure you’d want to talk to me,” Vince said.
“There’s not a day gone by I haven’t wanted to talk to you.”
I introduced him to Joshua.
“Yeah, we met earlier,” Joshua said. “You’d already left for the hospital. I didn’t think it was my place to tell you, Leanne. I’m sorry.”
“You were there?” I asked Vince. “Did you see Momma?”
He nodded. “Bad timing, I guess,” Vince said. “Story of my life.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
He looked into the kitchen and the dining room, but stayed at the doorways, like he was nervous about exploring any farther. “It doesn’t feel real, being back here. I’m sorry I didn’t come in the other night, Leanne. I just wanted to see what everything looked like, you know, to have it in mind before I actually came in.”
“You shaved,” Joshua said, nodding.
“Sorry if I gave you a start,” Vince said. “Thought they’d have you in Susan’s old room.”
“You knew he was here?” I asked.
“I saw that piece on Hollywood Express. You and the apples. I thought, look at my little sister all grown. Time to get back. But first I had to tie up some loose ends. And once I got here, it was harder than I expected to get to the door.”
“You lost your class ring,” I said.
“I had to pawn it.”
“Momma thought you were shot in the head in Kansas.”
“I didn’t mean for anyone to think that. I needed some space. I would have called. Tommy knew I was okay.”
“You think Tommy talks to anyone? That’s like saying Dad knew.”
Vince blanched, and I remembered why he’d left in the first place.
“Beau Ray knew,” he said quietly.
I apologized and he shrugged.
“I must have just missed you at the hospital,” he said. “Momma asked me to come back here, to see that you were okay. She’s still sitting with him.”
It was too much just then. I needed to lie down for a while. “I want to talk to you and hear everything,” I told Vince. “But I can’t right now. And it would kill me if I went to sleep and you were gone when I woke up.”
“I’ll be here,” Vince said.
“You’ve got to promise her,” Joshua told him.
“Yeah,” Vince said. “I’ll be here. I shouldn’t have run the other night. I just—I wasn’t ready. I didn’t expect to see you. It wasn’t you.”
Joshua walked me upstairs and in the hallway put his arms around me. “Listen,” he said. “Earlier. In the bathroom.”
“It’s fine,” I told him. I was so drained I thought I might fall over if he took his arms away. “Whatever.” I wasn’t sure what he was going to tell me, and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know.
“All this, right now—this is a horrible time. And I think it’s going to be horrible, and I swear if I thought there was any way I could protect you from it, I would. You’ve got to believe me, I would.” He looked hard at me.
“I believe you,” I said.
“But in the bathroom, earlier, that was a great time, our great time. I don’t want you to feel weird about it. You really do mean something to me. I…” I guess he ran out of words then because he just looked at me, smiling and awful sad both together.
“We’ll be okay,” I said. “It’ll all work out.”
“I’m going to be right here, right across the hall. If you need anything, call or come over. Anything.”
I nodded.
“Anything,” he said again. “I’ll leave the door open.”
He smiled and gave me a hug and I breathed in his smell and wished he were wrong about not being able to protect me.
I didn’t know what time it was, because the electricity was still off, but I heard weeping the moment I woke up. That’s likely what woke me, so I couldn’t pretend, for even a minute, that it hadn’t happened. I put my hand against the top of my head and winced at the bump from the wall of the bathtub, from Momma screaming out. That wasn’t a dream either.
I think it was Momma crying, but it could have been Susan, or Sandy, who’d come back by, like she’d promised. Susan had started driving toward Pinecob near three in the morning and had reached our house around seven. My eldest brother Tommy showed up an hour later, so by the time I came downstairs around eight-thirty, there was a crowd of family the likes of which I hadn’t seen in years. Momma, Susan, Tommy and Vince, grim and tired, but all around the same table.
Tommy had taken the call when Marcy Thompson rang earlier that morning—seems that Hank had died, too. That’s what they were discussing when I showed up downstairs. To Marcy’s credit, she hadn’t asked Tommy to reschedule her interview with Joshua.
Around ten, the phone started ringing and didn’t stop for the rest of the day. It seemed like the whole of Pinecob had heard what happened. Judge Weintraub did most of the answering, only filtering through those he knew we’d want to speak to. One of the calls was for me in particular.
“Leanne,” a man’s voice said. It was Max.
“Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t call you,” I said. “I wanted to, I was going to from the hospital, but I left the house so quick and I didn’t have your new phone number.”
“Don’t apologize. Please. God, I only wish I could be there with you.”
“So how, who told, did Judy tell you?” I asked him.
“Sandy tracked me through my parents,” he said.
“Oh, right. Good. That makes sense.”
“How are you doing? No, I’m sorry—that’s a stupid question.”
“What else do you say, you know? There’s nothing to say,” I said. I bit my lip to keep it together. “Everyone’s being really nice.” I told Max that his parents had called and already brought over an apple pie.
“I just. God, you must know—” Max said, but I cut him off.
“I do,” I said. “I do know. I’m glad Sandy told you. It would have been really hard for me. But of all people, you should know.”
“I feel so helpless, being all the way out here,” Max said.
“It’s no different here. At least you’re doing…well, I don’t know what you’re doing. But it’s different, right? No more Winn-Dixie, right?” I blotted my eyes, then my nose. I was not keeping anything together.
“I’m coming back, of course. For the funeral,” Max said.
“You’re going to be a pro on planes before long.”
“Leanne, don’t—”
“Vince came back, did you hear?”
“Vince, your brother?”
“Yeah.” I looked over to where he sat, next to Tommy on the couch. A b
aseball game was on and they were watching it without commentary or cheering.
“Wow. That’s great. Isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it means he’s not dead. Apparently, Tommy knew almost the whole time, but he just assumed the rest of us did, too. We’re all kind of meeting him again. Vince, I mean. I guess he went through a bad time for a few years, then joined the army and ended up in Alaska. He seems level enough now. He’s got a teaching degree, if you can believe that. Says he’s going to try to find something around here.”
I didn’t know what else to say. Asking about Los Angeles seemed so inappropriate, but it was the only thing I could think of, so I just stayed quiet. Max said he’d see me in a few days.
Joshua stayed up in his room most of that first morning after.
“He’s got some balls to still be staying here,” Tommy had said at breakfast. He’d sounded spitting mad.
“He can’t leave,” I reminded him. “He’ll get arrested.”
“Leanne’s right,” Judge Weintraub had said.
“Well, he shouldn’t be here,” Tommy said. “This all happened on account of him being here. And let me tell you I plan to give that sonofabitch some whatfor—”
“Thomas Robert, you’ll say nothing like that!” It was Momma, and she was serious. “Your brother Beau Ray adored that boy. And those TV vans. If you’d been here once this summer, you’d have seen how happy he was. Leanne, tell Tommy how happy Beau Ray was.”
I nodded. “The guys were teaching him broadcasting.”
“Lord knows, I’ll feel my anger over this,” Momma went on. “But we are not blaming Joshua. This was an accident. If I know one thing, I know that.”
“God knew what He was doing,” Susan said. “He must have had a reason.”
“That’s bullshit!” Tommy said. “You’re telling me there was a reason when he took our father and fucked up Vince?”
“Hey!” Vince said.
“More of a reason than you not telling us Vince was alive!” I yelled at Tommy.
Mean Season Page 25