They clutched each other, the heat of Evelyn’s breath warming Miriam’s neck. Miriam wanted them to lie on the bed and not ever get up again. But then Evelyn let go, and Miriam did, too.
Evelyn grabbed her suitcase and left the room. Miriam stayed on the bed, listening, as Evelyn clipped downstairs. Soon the kitchen cupboards squeaked, cans clanked in the pantry, and then, at last, the front door opened and closed.
Only then did Miriam rise. She lagged downstairs to the parlor window and looked out over the drive. Evelyn loaded her suitcase in the backseat of her car, loaded another sack into the passenger seat. Then her daughter was but a shadow behind the wheel, the headlights brightening the old Ford and a swath of trampled yard.
The little car paused at the end of the drive, its brake lights holding, and Miriam imagined Evelyn having second thoughts before the car finally turned onto Old Saints Highway. Then the car was gone and no lights shone anywhere Miriam could see.
With the first glint of dawn, Miriam rose from her chair in the parlor. She’d not slept, her tiredness an atrophy to her body. She shuffled into the kitchen, struggled to lift the coffee down from the cupboard. She made an oven’s worth of biscuits and scrambled two dozen eggs, fried an entire slab of bacon. She changed from her slippers into her sneakers, pulled her hair into a ponytail.
Then they were there, a truck horn honking, voices calling outside. From a window in Evelyn’s room, Miriam watched them unload tools from a truck, the morning hazed and damp. Men clapped each other on the back, some smiling, laughing. They sipped from thermos cups, the hoods of their sweatshirts drawn over their heads. If she hadn’t known what they were preparing for, she might think they were building a barn or digging an irrigation trench, just any workday between weekends.
The food sat in the kitchen, on trays covered in foil. She’d planned to set up a table on the porch. But now, facing them seemed unimaginable, like a ghost greeting the living. Miriam would’ve sent Evelyn out in her place, if her daughter was here.
Miriam turned to Evelyn’s bed, smoothed out wrinkles in the comforter. She told herself she couldn’t lie down, that she had to go out among those in the yard. But then she was clearing away stuffed animals and stretching herself out on the bed.
By the bedside clock, Miriam saw it was noon. All morning she’d been numbed by the drone of machinery, the buzz of saws, and now forced herself to sit up, to lift her feet and drop them to the floor.
She peeked out the window, careful to not be seen from below. Nearly a third of the field had been cleared, a harvester parked out there, men toting corn knives and chain saws, others gathering felled stalks and heaping them in great mounds. A fire burned midfield. A black gout of smoke split the sky, the clouds sagging tedious like things soon to fall.
Miriam was a husk, nothing but flesh and thought. She grabbed a pillow from the bed and lay on the floor, on a little shag rug. Beneath Evelyn’s bed, there in the cramped darkness and clumped in dust, the unblinking eyes of a toy elephant peered out at her.
She heard knocks on the front door, heard him enter the foyer, calling her name, heard him taking the stairs. Then Pastor Hamby was in the room and helping Miriam off the floor to sit on the bed. She said she was sorry, trying to explain she hadn’t been sleeping much at night.
The pastor just sat holding her. “I get you something?” he finally asked.
“I’ll be all right,” Miriam said. “I’ll get up and get moving now.”
“Evelyn around?”
Miriam shook her head. “She went to the city, back to school.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Should’ve gone back a month ago.” Then Miriam stood and brushed at her clothes.
He stood, too, more than a head taller than she. “Birdie?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not alone.”
She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, stepped past him and toward the doorway. “Sometimes you are.”
“That’s not true. Not ever.”
Miriam wanted to be alone, wanted him gone. She wanted to lie back down on the rug and go back to sleep. But she knew he wouldn’t allow it. She walked out of Evelyn’s room and forged downstairs as if she’d found new purpose, though once in the parlor she didn’t know what to do with herself.
She saw them in the yard, all the searchers, the news van parked out on the shoulder of the road. She turned away from the window, passed the pastor once more, and ducked into the foyer, figuring this as the only place there weren’t any windows. She plopped onto the stairs. Pastor Hamby leaned against the banister, staring off at the door.
“They find him?” Miriam asked.
He shook his head.
Miriam rubbed her knees. “Don’t know what to do. How to act with all this.”
The pastor stood upright, his hands in his pockets.
They regarded each other in silence, Miriam staring up into his big solemn face. Then she glanced off into the parlor and became aware of the fading light, of how late it must be.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she declared.
“Should I stay?”
“I can wash my own back.”
The pastor didn’t laugh, or even grin, but simply moved toward the door. His hand on the doorknob, he turned. “Promise we’ll have that breakfast soon.”
Miriam nodded, crossed a finger over her heart.
Miriam showered until the hot water turned cold. She slid into her robe, wiped steam from the mirror. She’d never liked her face, not even when her skin was young. Something in its angles made her harsh. She believed people avoided her because of her face, even Evelyn’s father, whom maybe she’d once loved but hardly thought of anymore.
Then Miriam considered her own father, who was killed in a war, somewhere in Cambodia, when she was a toddler. She clearly recalled her mother weeping in the parlor, church ladies in gloves and hats stroking her arms, another lady bracing Miriam on her lap and whispering there, there, darling.
Miriam sat back on the hamper, trying to recall her father’s face. She closed her eyes, searching her mind, but couldn’t see him at all, not a single image that wasn’t from a photo, and this seemed terribly sad to her, though she didn’t feel sad.
Studying her legs, the blue veins webbing her shins, Miriam felt eyes set upon her. She glanced up quickly, as if a face would hover there, but saw only a light fixture damp with steam, the silhouettes of bugs gathered in the bowl of its globe.
The field was shorn, the yard empty. The search had gone elsewhere. Miriam considered calling Helen, or Pastor Hamby, for an update. In an impulse of bravery, she decided to drive into town. But she balked on the porch, staring out at her mother’s old truck, then found herself tromping down the hill.
The field was bowed like the back of beast. She stepped over nubs, trudged through the mud. Soon the ground rose and became firm. Like in a dream, she glimpsed objects on the land, found herself in what had been the rotunda. The table was tilted but standing, the chairs pushed in. A white candle stood perfectly erect in the mud, as if atop a child’s cake.
Miriam glanced back at her house perched atop the hill. How remarkably close it seemed without the corn. An engine downshifted out on the road. From a distance Miriam noticed a white truck trolling by, slowing. Someone in the passenger side rolled down the window to get a better view. Miriam didn’t recognize who it was, but raised her hand, and the truck sped off.
It took her most of the day, but she found it. On the slope of a swale, half buried, she lifted a length of pipe, grooved at one end, a welded joint at the other. She inspected it closely, tried to wipe it clean, the mud smearing over its cold dull metal.
Back in the kitchen, she ran hot water in the sink. She used dish detergent, the water steaming, almost too hot for her skin to bear. She scoured the pipe with a pad of steel wool.
Then she took the pipe into the pantry, studied the pantry’s full shelves. Miriam decided upon a spot, slid the pipe behind large tins marked
SUGAR and FLOUR. She rearranged the tins, shifting them one way, then back over again, eyeing it from every angle until the pipe was thoroughly hidden.
5
From the kitchen table, Miriam heard a rapping on the front door. It would not stop. She hurried into the foyer, opened the door to a child she barely recognized as the elder McGahee, his eye swollen shut, nose crooked, mouth and chin and throat coated with blood, the neck of his yellow shirt stained brown with it. His feet shifted as might a drunk’s, one arm hung as if it had no bones. His seeing eye pleading, Miriam peered beyond him, scanned the empty drive and yard and field, then helped him inside.
She sat him on the couch, dabbed at the blood with a warm washcloth. The boy did not flinch, didn’t seem to feel at all.
“Who did this?” Miriam asked, in a whisper.
The boy’s lips, shredded and swollen, parted, though no words came out.
“Was it your daddy?”
The boy struggled to swallow, then, ever so slightly, nodded.
Sheriff Farraley arrived within the hour. She examined the boy, her face twisted in disdain. “Gracious,” she growled, inspecting the bruises down his arm. Gently, she lifted the boy’s shirt, cringed at the sight. Angry welts, raised and infected, cut the child’s back. Miriam saw the welts, too, and suddenly she felt nauseous, found herself backing away.
“Where’s Evelyn?” the sheriff asked Miriam.
“Evelyn?”
“She’s a nurse, ain’t she?”
Miriam tried to still herself, tried to not let it show on her face. “She’s gone to the city. For school.”
Helen eased down the boy’s shirt. “Your daddy done all this?”
A whimper escaped from the child. Tears welled in his open eye. He seemed to be staring at Miriam, muttered something she couldn’t comprehend. Then he tried again, clearly saying from one side of his mouth, “Yes, ma’am.”
Veins popped at the sheriff’s temples. “It’s all right now,” she soothed. “Ain’t nobody going to harm you no more.”
They wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in the back of the squad car. The sheriff told Miriam she’d take him to town, would have the pastor and his wife take the boy to the hospital, look after him for the night. Then she’d go see about Seamus McGahee.
Miriam watched them leave, then returned to the kitchen. It reeked of spoil, and there to her dismay sat the trays of breakfast she’d made two days prior. She grabbed a trash bag and dumped the food, trays and all. All around, the house lay in shambles. What they must’ve thought, Miriam considered, the place stinking, mud across the floors.
She filled a bucket with steaming water, added pine cleaner, and began to mop the kitchen tiles, then the hall to the foyer. By the pantry she paused. She leaned her mop against the wall, stared at the pantry’s closed door.
Miriam whirled back into the kitchen, treading over what she’d just mopped. She found her purse on the counter, her phone inside. She dialed Evelyn’s cell number. She listened to the ticking of its ring, and then Evelyn’s voice saying she couldn’t come to the phone. Miriam hung up. She dialed again with the same result. Then again.
Miriam returned to the hall and took up the mop and continued to clean, the loop ends trailing muddied water, her eyes set fast to the boot tracks smeared across the floor.
Miriam stared at the truck’s door. She’d barely slept, was starving. Like a child gathering her nerve to leap into a quarry pond, she shut enough of herself down to grab the handle. Quickly, she opened the door, climbed inside. For months the truck had sat dormant. The engine coughed, then sparked with a roaring shudder.
The sky hung overcast, the roads damp. She passed the McGahee house, dark and still like something abandoned, then veered onto the road to town. She found the pastor in his office, and soon they sat across from each other in a booth in Freely’s Diner.
They gabbed about the change in the weather, about deer season approaching and the price of grain. The pastor ordered chicken-fried steak, said nothing about the McGahee boys, not the missing one, not the one at his house.
Others came in, Tom Duffy and Merle Hamden stopping at the end of their table. The pastor teased them about their weight, and Merle stood sideways and asked Miriam if he’d win a prize at the fair. Then Samuel Franklin was there, too. He sat beside Miriam, telling about a man from Mountford who was teaching his son to drive stick, and accidentally lurched his John Deere into a cow pond. When he left, Samuel squeezed the ball of Miriam’s knee, gave her a wink.
They finished their breakfasts. Tin signs hung above Pastor Hamby’s head, rusted signs for ginger ale and cigarettes.
He tore the corner of his napkin. “How’s Evelyn?”
“She’s tough,” Miriam said.
He sighed, his face slackening. “I worry about her. This town’s full of old people. No place for a young person with half a brain.” He sipped his coffee, eyeing her over the rim. “Got something tricky to ask you, Miriam.”
A chill spread through her.
He set down his coffee. “Mavis Delforth’s running a clothing drive for that church in Hollins Bay, asked if we could rustle up some donations.” With heavy eyes, Pastor Hamby explained he thought Miriam might gather up her mother’s clothes, how it might help her put some things to rest, help her get on with living.
Miriam was troubled by the relief she felt, but nodded.
The pastor set a huge hand over hers. With a solemn tone, he added, “Your mama always dressed so nice for a country woman.”
Miriam went straight to her mother’s closets. She cried as she worked, carefully folding dresses, stacking pants and blouses, loading them neatly into boxes, then sealing them with packing tape.
Things vanished. People vanished. Clouds gave way to sun gave way to night. Only feelings, like spirits, endured, branded to the back of our eyes, laced into our marrow. Miriam lifted a sweater to her face, blue and soft and threadbare at the elbows, still holding a hint of her mother’s scent. Try as she might, she couldn’t imagine her mother on streets of gold, washed in ethereal light, couldn’t even imagine her mother wearing this sweater, which had been her favorite.
Miriam could only recall her mother as she’d seen her that day at the morgue, a sheet to her chin, her eyes sewn closed, another sheet to cover the hole in her skull. She considered this life and the next, decided Heaven and Hell were just where the living chose to put you once you passed, then eased her arms into her mother’s sweater and lifted a box to carry downstairs.
The next morning, Miriam drove into town, her truck packed with boxes to be delivered to Pastor Hamby. But then she passed the church and cemetery, turned onto Gunderson Road. A mile later, she drifted onto the on-ramp for the interstate.
Traffic was light as she sped through vast flats of farmland. After twenty minutes, the auto plant and its stacks emerged. She passed an enormous cathedral with its acres of parking, and then came the homes, countless homes of similar design, and more cars, driving fast but tight, and Miriam took the ramp marked for the city center.
A billboard for the college loomed from an overpass, a young woman gleefully hurling a graduation cap into the air. Miriam saw signs, arrows, for the college, and passed them all. Stoplight after stoplight, she considered turning back. But then she was there, the courthouse an enormous brick building taking up much of the block.
Miriam passed through the metal detector. A portly woman with bright orange hair waved a wand down her front, glanced at her license. She followed the throng to a signboard listing cases and courtrooms in red lights. She found the case: STATE V. FARNER, 3A.
Miriam rode a crowded elevator to the third floor. It let off onto a landing, camera crews setting up, a blond-haired woman holding a microphone, a black man taping cables to the floor. Miriam wove through them all, found room 3A.
She entered with all the others, entered like anybody. The back half of the courtroom consisted of long benches. It felt like church, and Miriam took a seat on the aisle a
nd near the door. People politely shuffled in past her, and soon the benches were packed and folks crowded the back and along the sides.
Miriam wondered who they were, all these people in their private lives who woke and dressed and drove here, and passed through the security to see a trial. She didn’t recognize a single face. For a moment, she felt this must be the wrong room. But then, at one of two tables facing the judge’s bench, Miriam noted an attorney she’d met once, months ago, a frumpy woman hunched and shuffling papers.
The air hung stagnant. Miriam’s eyes ached. She hadn’t eaten breakfast. Her stomach panged, and she pushed up her sleeves and fanned herself with her wallet.
A door at the side of the room opened, and the crowd turned at once. Miriam craned her neck. In shuffled a young man in pressed jeans and a plain gray sweater, the sweater loose over his frame, his hands gathered at his crotch, wrists cuffed. One officer walked ahead of him, one behind, and they led him to the far table, where he sat beside a balding man in a wrinkled suit.
Miriam didn’t know much about him. She heard his sister and mother lived out in Haney, heard they had to move after what happened. Clean-shaven, his hair parted at the side, he looked a bit like the young man who played organ at the church. Looked like the boy who’d load your hay or change your oil. Looked like anybody you might think you know.
She’d imagined this moment so many times, how she’d feel seeing him, the pain, the hatred. Watching him now, she felt only a hollow sadness. The bald lawyer whispering in his ear, Miriam realized she’d learn how he became what he was that day, and judgment would be passed. Then she became horrified, as if she, too, were on trial, and like a mirror thrust before her Miriam recognized her own face was unwashed, her hair barely combed. She reeked of pine cleaner and wore the jeans and old sweatshirt she’d worn for days.
Savage heat flushed her face. Her ears buzzed. Miriam rose and spun into the aisle. An officer by the door, a silver-haired man with a misshapen lip, held up a palm.
Volt: Stories Page 14