Close to the Broken Hearted

by Michael Hiebert

  “Everythin’ ’bout Pa strikes you odd.”

  “Now what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I dunno.”

  She searched my face, as though trying to decide if I had insulted her and deserved a good talking to. “I reckon you think too much.”

  I had no idea what she meant by that. “What did Chief Montgomery say ’bout Miss Sylvie?” I asked, figuring she’d answer my question by telling me to mind my business.

  She surprised me. “Oh, apparently she called the station again with another problem and asked Chris to put her through to Ethan. When Ethan took the call, she immediately threatened him by sayin’ if he didn’t take her seriously, she would just call me at home. So now I got Ethan thinkin’ I’m in cahoots with Miss Sylvie, givin’ her ammunition to blackmail the department into attendin’ to her.”

  “Why would they think that?”

  She took another deep breath. “Because apparently you’re not the only one who reckons givin’ out my home number to Miss Sylvie was a bad idea. And they all know how I feel about the way her calls are treated at the station. I don’t keep it a big secret. I think the girl is treated unfairly. I hate injustice, Abe. You, of all people, should know that.”

  I thought about it. I reckoned I did know it and it was something I admired about my mother very much. “I hate injustice, too,” I said.

  She held out her arms and I moved in close. Pulling me into her chest with a warm hug, she said, “Now you’re just tryin’ to suck up.”

  “Mom?” I asked, while her arms were still wrapped tightly around me. “Did I really do something wrong today by talking to that woman?”

  “You did what you thought was right,” she said. “I just wish you hadn’t talked to a stranger. At least you did it in a public place. This time it turned out okay. You got home safe. But next time you might not be so lucky. I just don’t want anythin’ bad to ever happen to you.”

  “I don’t want anythin’ bad to ever happen to you, either,” I said.

  She let go of me. I could see a tear standing in her eye. “All right. I reckon it’s time for you to go start cleanin’ up your bedroom.”

  “Okay,” I said reluctantly, and slunk down the hall, wondering what all might show up in that background check Chief Montgomery was doing on my pa. There were sure a lot of things about him that I didn’t know. I would love to find out more.

  That night, Leah Teal went to bed with a lot on her mind. She left the drapes of her bedroom window open, and outside heavy clouds had started moving in. Somehow, the moonlight still managed to find gaps between them to shine through and, once Leah turned off the lamp on her nightstand, a pale gray light fell into the room. It was enough to cast small shadows on her sprayed white ceiling. She stared up at that ceiling, unable to stop thinking about poor Sylvie Carson all holed up in that little house with that newborn. The times Leah managed to release those thoughts, her brain just switched over to ciphering about this woman who had suddenly appeared into her little Abe’s life claiming to be his aunt.

  Could Billy have had a sister? Was it possible he kept that sort of information private all those years? Do you keep that sort of thing hidden from your wife? Then she started second-guessing herself—wondering if it’s really a lie if you just don’t mention it. Because deep down, Leah didn’t want to believe Billy was capable of ever lying to her.

  But could it all be true? And parents. New grandparents for Abe. That idea both excited and scared Leah. The last thing she wanted to do was see her boy get attached to someone only to lose them. The first time that had happened was almost too tragic to survive. She doubted she could manage it a second time around.

  But Billy certainly did have a ma and a pa; he just rarely mentioned them. Not that he was one for being too outspoken. She used to tell him he could keep the devil’s secrets in a poker game with Jesus if he’d wanted to.

  Did he lie to her?

  She couldn’t figure it out.

  One thing was for sure. She wasn’t getting any sleep tonight. It didn’t help that she went to bed so early. The room grew darker. The cherrywood of the dresser across the room became lost in the shadows of the waning light, but she could still make out the bright white face of the clock set on its top. It was barely ten. She’d only tucked Abe in a half hour ago. From the living room, she heard the sound of canned laughter coming from the television. Caroline was still up, no doubt cuddled in a blanket on the sofa. That girl was a night owl during the summer, and she always had that damn television set so loud it was a wonder Leah ever managed any sleep.

  That’s when the phone rang and Leah nearly jumped out of her pajama bottoms. Her head and pillow had been right beside the nightstand where the phone sat between the bed and the lamp.

  Figuring it was likely Sylvie, she quickly answered it. The last thing she needed was a reason for Abe to give her any more back talk about handing out her home phone number than he already had.

  She was surprised, though, when the voice on the other end didn’t belong to Sylvie Carson at all, but to Police Chief Ethan Montgomery whom she’d just spoken to barely four hours earlier.

  “Ethan, what is it?” She hoped it wasn’t Sylvie blackmailing him at the station again. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to the girl about it yet. She figured that was a conversation best done in person when it came to someone like Sylvie Carson.

  “Leah, we got ourselves a problem.”

  “I figured that. Otherwise, why else would you be callin’ me at all hours of the night?”

  “Since when is ten all hours of the night?”

  “Since I got a boy comin’ home tellin’ me he met his auntie in the street today. Can we just move past this part of the conversation?”

  “You know what tomorrow is, don’t you?” Ethan asked.

  “Sunday.”

  “I know it’s goddamn Sunday. You know what else it is?”

  “Why don’t you just assume I don’t and tell me and save a whole bunch of time?”

  “Tomorrow is the day our old preacher man gets released.”

  Oh dear Lord Jesus, how did Leah forget that? She’d marked it on her calendar at work barely two weeks ago. Eli Brown finished his sentence tomorrow after spending over seventeen years in jail. Twelve of them in the Federal Correctional Institution in Talladega, the rest up in Birmingham at the Work Release Center. He was being let out just under three years of the full twenty he got handed down for manslaughter after killing little three-year-old Caleb Carson.

  After a period of silenced panic while Leah’s mind raced over ideas about how to handle damage control on this event, she finally came to a realization. “Sylvie doesn’t know,” she said. “Does she?”

  “Well, she’s not supposed to,” Ethan said.

  That was an odd thing to say, Leah thought. “I don’t see this as bein’ a huge problem, to be right honest, Ethan,” she said. “Sylvie doesn’t know, and the man’s done his time. In the eyes of the law, he’s no longer a criminal. Besides, she might never find out. He probably won’t ever return to Alvin. After all that happened it’s the last place I’d think of headin’ back to if I were him.”

  There was a slight chuckle in Ethan Montgomery’s voice when he responded that Leah didn’t like one bit. “Go turn your television set on,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Turn on your TV, Leah. Channel six. The ten o’clock news.”

  “Caroline’s watching the goddamn TV,” she said. “Just tell me.”

  “Go turn the channel,” he said and hung up.

  “Oh dear Christ.” She set down the receiver. Pulling back the covers of her bed, she swung her legs over her mattress and slid her feet into her slippers. Even though it was July, the hardwood floors of the bedrooms still managed to somehow get cold at night.

  She padded down the hallway, through the kitchen and dining room, and into the living room where Caroline sat curled up on the sofa just as Leah had expected, wrapped in the yellow blanke
t she’d had since she was about ten years old. The thing was ridiculously worn, with tattered corners and even holes in some places, but Caroline refused to give it up, even when Leah offered to replace it with a new one.

  She was watching some situational comedy Leah hadn’t ever seen. Before Caroline even had a chance to complain, Leah walked over to the television and started turning the dial.

  “Hey!” Caroline yelled. “What are you doin’? I was watchin’ that!”

  “Police business,” Leah said. “Now shush.”

  Leah got to channel six and stopped turning the dial. On the screen, a reporter was at the Birmingham Penitentiary interviewing a very old-looking Eli Brown. His face was even more creased than it had been the last time Leah had seen the man, when he was transferred up to Birmingham. He had less hair and what little he had was pure white.

  “Mother,” Caroline whined from the sofa. “Please turn it back to my show?”

  Leah shushed her again and turned up the volume. “So,” the reporter asked the old preacher man, “after seventeen years, how do you go about stepping back into your life?” The reporter was a young dark-haired kid in a gray blazer.

  Eli Brown was wearing an orange prison outfit. Leah couldn’t help but think it kind of suited him. “Just the way I left it, I s’pose,” Eli said, his voice more hollow and broken than ever. “I’ll find my way back to God and back home to Alvin. For me it’s really about picking up the thread right where it started to unwind.”

  The phone immediately rang again. And this time, Leah had no doubt when she picked it up whose voice she was going to hear at the other end. It certainly wouldn’t be Police Chief Montgomery. Not this time.

  Staring at the screen, she let the phone ring once more as two words came out of her mouth. One was “Oh.” The other was “Shit.”

  CHAPTER 5

  As Leah had imagined, the telephone call was a disaster. It was Sylvie, of course, and she’d been watching the same channel six news program. Until now, nobody had told her that Eli Brown’s parole was coming up two and a half years early. Far as Leah knew, the girl didn’t even know the man had been moved from Talladega into the work release program in Birmingham. Apparently, old Preacher Eli was as good as gold behind bars. Nobody wanted to see him spend any more time there than he had to.

  Obviously, Sylvie Carson didn’t feel the same way about the man.

  “What are you gonna do ’bout this?” she asked Leah, although it was more like she screamed it into her phone than so much as asked a question. Leah could barely understand a word the girl was saying she was talking so loud and fast.

  “What do you mean, what am I gonna do?” Leah asked back. She tried to keep her own voice as quiet and slow as possible, hoping to calm Sylvie down, but she knew in her mind there was no calming this girl down. She’d been jumping at boogeymen hiding in corners too many years. Now, suddenly, she felt she had a real boogeyman to jump at and seeing him on the television screen made the danger more real than ever.

  “I mean you can’t just let him walk out free! You know what he did to little Caleb!” Leah heard Sylvie begin to wail. “He don’t deserve to ever be free. He don’t deserve to be alive. He shoulda been sentenced to die!”

  Leah stayed quiet. It was the only thing she could think of to do. Nothing she could say would placate Sylvie when she was this upset. Preacher Eli Brown had been convicted of manslaughter in the first degree, a class B felony in the state of Alabama. “He got the maximum prison time the judge could sentence him to, Sylvie,” Leah said. “The minimum was ten years. Eli got twenty. You should be happy ’bout that. Justice was served.”

  Sylvie’s voice suddenly grew eerily quiet as the sobbing stopped. It almost sounded scary from Leah’s end of the phone. “Justice was served?” Sylvie asked, now speaking slowly. “Justice was served?” Her voice slowly rose in volume. “You didn’t see your little brother get blown apart four feet in front of you at the supper table when you was five. Don’t you tell me that justice was served when the murderin’ son of a bitch who done it is about to walk out of prison a free man tomorrow.”

  “You’re right,” Leah said, remaining calm. “I can’t possibly know how it feels to be you. It must be horrible. But Eli Brown has done his time. By the laws of this state, he’s no longer a criminal.”

  “Yeah? Well, by the laws of me, he’s still a murderin’ son of a bitch who better not show his face anywhere near round here on account of I got a loaded shotgun with his name on it just waitin’ for a chance to have its trigger pulled.”

  Leah sighed. “Now don’t you go doin’ nothin’ stupid. You just go on pretendin’ things are the same as al—”

  “I will not pretend things are the same as anythin’,” Sylvie said. “If I have to, I will hunt that man down, but he will get what he has comin’. Because the law might not think he deserves to serve his full sentence, but I’m gonna make certain he is fully punished for the crime he committed. I don’t think the law completely understands real life. Things might look good to all them fancy lawyers, but all them fancy lawyers ain’t livin’ with pictures in their heads of their baby brother bein’ blown to bits. They’re just sittin’ round big tables makin’ chitchat and decidin’ on things they have no right decidin’ on.” She kept talking and Leah wondered if she was even going to stop to take a breath. “But I’m gonna make the decisions regardin’ what’s adequate punishment for Preacher Eli from now on because I’m someone who does live with those pictures in my mind. I’m someone affected by all this. I can make the right decision.”

  Leah heard something in Sylvie’s voice she didn’t like. Maybe it was on account of the fact that the panic seemed to have gone. It was replaced with something more like determination. Sylvie meant what she was saying, and that scared Leah. The last thing she wanted was Sylvie becoming a vigilante and going on a manhunt, trying to kill someone who had just finished serving his time.

  Leah decided this was something too important to just shrug off or even to leave until tomorrow to deal with. By tomorrow, Sylvie could have disappeared and be fully engaged in some or other creative plan.

  Leah had to change Sylvie’s mind. And she had to do it tonight.

  “I’m comin’ to your house,” she said.

  “Why’s that?” Sylvie asked. She sounded genuinely surprised.

  “To talk.”

  “We’s talkin’ now.”

  “I want to talk face-to-face.”

  “Ain’t gonna make no difference,” Sylvie said. In the background, Leah heard the baby crying. “Oh, damn it, The Baby just woke up.”

  “Well, you go put her back down and listen to me, Sylvie. I want you to be there when I arrive, you understand? And you’ll let me in. And you’re gonna talk to me.”

  There was a long pause and Leah thought Sylvie might have gone to get the baby, but then she heard her breathing on the other end. Finally, Sylvie said, “Okay, but I might not listen too close.”

  “That’s okay,” Leah said. “I can’t control how much you listen. Just do me a favor and put the kettle on? It’s been a long day already. You do have coffee, right? If not, I can bring some.”

  “I got coffee,” Sylvie said. “But I ain’t got no milk. Well,” she laughed, “ ’cept for my breast milk. You better bring some of your own milk.”

  “I’ll take it black,” Leah said. “Just make sure it’s strong.” Leah dug her forefinger and thumb into her temples. The day had given her a headache. Now, instead of letting her go to bed early, it was continuing on into the night, giving Leah a second act.

  “How long will you be?” Sylvie asked. “I wanna know it’s you when you come to the door. I don’t like people comin’ to the door after dark.”

  Leah already knew that. “I’ll leave in ten minutes. Probably be there in twenty-five. Don’t worry, I’ll call out from the other side of the door and let you know it’s me. Don’t ever open the door for anyone you don’t know. Understand?”

  “What y
ou think I am? Stupid?”

  “No, Sylvie. Just young.”

  “I ain’t so young.”

  Leah’s fingers dug harder into the side of her head. “Maybe not. But you’re a lot younger than me.”

  Sylvie Carson lived up on Old Mill Road in the northeast part of town. The road should have been called Old Mill River Road, as it almost exactly followed the Old Mill River, although the river ran all the way down to the Anikawa and the road started where the old railroad tracks crossed Main Street at Finley’s Crossing.

  It was one of the oldest roads in town, and most of the houses along it were spaced far apart, giving it a very desolate feeling as you drove along, especially at night. In a way, it was much like the area on the exact other side of town called Cloverdale where a lot of the black people lived. Both Cloverdale and Old Mill Road were probably built around the same time.

  Alvin had the distinct look and feel of a town that was originally built from the outside in. Leah hadn’t noticed this in other small Alabama towns. When you came into Alvin from the west side by Highway Seventeen or from the east side through Finley’s Crossing, you came through the oldest farms and ranches first. Once you got off the main highways, the roads on the outskirts were all gravel. It wasn’t until you started getting past the perimeter that things became paved and houses started looking newer.

  This was opposite to how she thought it should be. In her mind she thought a town would start with a single building, maybe a Town Hall, and then grow around that building. Start with a central street, such as Main Street, and grow around that street. Alvin had a Town Hall and a Main Street, but it all seemed in much better repair than the buildings and streets on the outskirts.

  This was a question she would one day ask her uncle Hank about. Hank knew lots about everything, and even if he didn’t have the right answer, he’d give her an answer that she would be satisfied with. That was the way Hank worked.