by Chris Fabry
“There’s a cloud a mile wide and darker than this prison that will hang over your head, son.”
“Maybe. But clouds can move, can’t they? The sun eventually comes out no matter how dark it gets.”
There was something about this old woman I knew I could trust. If she had walked into the belly of the dragon and faced the beast head-on, she deserved answers.
“Waters recede after a flood, but that doesn’t mean the earth isn’t changed. There’s a Grand Canyon of hurt back there. And it’s not leaving easily.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’re in a forgiving mood,” I said.
“Doesn’t sound like there’s any remorse.”
I stared through her, catching Karin in my peripheral vision. “I have lived every day of my life with one regret, confirmed by this visit. I should have taken Karin away and married her. I should have told her how I felt. It would have changed everything.”
“How?”
“I’ve lost her. She’s gone now. Forever.”
Ruthie shook her head. “You don’t know the whole truth. There are some things I came here to tell you. Things you should know before you come back, if that’s your plan.”
“My roots are there. Everything I love is there. I won’t let those people have my soul.”
“Everything you hate is there too.”
The guard walked into the room on Ruthie’s side, tipping back his hat.
“I just need a few more minutes, young man,” she said.
He looked at his watch. “I’ll give you ten.”
“Thank you kindly,” Ruthie said, turning back to me. She scratched her ear, as old people do, finding one spot on their head or the back of their hand to focus their energies. My mother had a spot on the back of her neck, a stigma of nerves and scaly skin. She was at it constantly while she visited, like a dog that can’t stop licking a paw.
“What is it I should know?” I said.
“I’ll tell you on one condition. That you tell me everything. No holding back. In a strange way, that girl over there needs you. I know it in my heart.”
“Needs me? She has a husband, a family. The only thing I can bring her is confusion. If I even try to make contact, I know that her family—her mother especially . . . well, it’ll be ugly. And that’s not counting her dad.”
“You wrote her, didn’t you? I heard you tell her that.”
“From over there? You must have a good hearing aid.”
She chuckled. “If I turn it up and hold my head just right, I can get three radio stations simultaneously.”
We both laughed; then I folded my hands and looked at her. “I wrote her every day for a year. Never received a reply. I figured she didn’t want anything to do with me. That the memories were too painful.”
“What memories?” Ruthie said.
I held her gaze and let the question sink deep. Could I really trust this old buzzard with the secret I had bottled up and thrown into an ocean of memory? If I miscalculated, if she was not who she said she was, I was opening myself up for more anguish and hurt. But there was something otherworldly—some would say angelic—about her face. She labored under the lie I had lived, the one I had allowed so many years ago.
“I can tell how much you care, Ruthie. But what if I told you that what I have to say would affect your friendship with Karin?”
“I could never love her any less than I do. She’s like a daughter to me.”
I nodded. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
So I quickly told her. I told her everything.
Karin
“What’s wrong?” I said as we made our way to the car.
Ruthie seemed distant. She walked through the prison like a zombie, her cane striking the tile floor with abandon.
I guided her past a cement post outside—she was going to run right into it.
She eased herself inside the car and placed her cane and purse in the backseat. “Just tired,” she said, buckling her seat belt and staring straight ahead.
A half mile past the front gate, I couldn’t hold my excitement any longer. “This was such a great idea! I can’t remember having such a good day. It’s as if I can start over again. You don’t know how long I’ve dreaded seeing Will, thinking he would get out and I’d pass him on the street someday and be paralyzed. Maybe this is what’s been keeping me up at night.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“What about you? What did you two talk about?”
The wrinkled skin under her neck worked like a snake downing a rabbit as she swallowed spittle. “There are some things girls have to keep to themselves.”
“Oh, come on, Ruthie. I didn’t go all this way to have you clam up on me. What did he say?”
“He said if you weren’t available, he was going to ask me out when he came back.”
“Oh, please . . .”
“It’s true. He said he was so hungry for a real woman that it was all he could do not to break the glass between us and kiss me right there.”
I plugged my ears and rocked back and forth. “La la la la.”
“Settle down,” Ruthie snapped when I brushed her shoulder. “You want to get us killed?”
Her sharp tone startled me, and I felt like a scolded child. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Ruthie stared at the road, refusing to make eye contact. “I just don’t want you to get hurt. Those children . . .”
My mind ran to my children. It was early afternoon, and Tarin would be sleeping if Richard had done his job. If not, she would be cranky until we put her to bed later. My love for them overflowed—and meeting Will had touched something, had almost given me a new lease on loving them, a freedom to abandon myself to my family.
Still, I couldn’t break through to Ruthie. When both our stomachs growled, about an hour from home, I looked for a place to stop. She had mentioned the Golden Corral, but the one she remembered had closed. Instead, we found a Shoney’s strategically placed between a Sam’s Club and a Wal-Mart, and she parked as close to the front as she could.
“I don’t think I have the energy to go inside, honey,” Ruthie said, a hand on her cane.
“It’ll be relaxing,” I said. “We’ll get a booth, and you can complain to the waitress about the food.”
Inside, Ruthie excused herself and limped past the salad bar to the bathroom.
I watched a family with two young children. The kids were more interested in their crayons than the food. At another table was a young woman with a baby in a car carrier. She had put the child in the seat opposite her in the booth and propped the carrier against the wall so she could watch the sleeping child. Ruthie’s words came back—the child in my dream was my soul. My father cared for it even more than I did. He was waiting for me to return.
Tears came. The events of the day were almost too much to take in, and I wondered about Will. Was it difficult for him to see me? to discover the truth about my marriage? Did he still harbor some hope of love between us?
The waitress came and I realized Ruthie had been in the bathroom too long. I hurried to the restroom, thinking she might have fallen. The bathroom appeared empty except for one closed stall. I tiptoed in and spotted Ruthie’s orthopedic shoes. A low moan echoed through the room and I moved closer, peering through the crack in the door to see her sitting fully clothed, her head in her hands, rocking and shaking, emitting a mournful cry so heartrending that I thought she was going to die.
“Ruthie? Are you okay?”
“I’m just finishing,” Ruthie said, blowing her nose. “Be out in a minute.”
“You want me to wait?” I said.
“No, I’ll be all right. You go ahead and order.”
“What can I get for you?”
The tears came again, and it was a few seconds before she choked out, “I can’t eat anything. Just some coffee.”
I paused at the door. “What is it? I want to help you.”
My heart nearly burst when Ruthie wep
t again. “Oh, Karin,” she wailed, half whisper, half cry. “Karin.”
Everything Ruthie had said to me echoed in that cry. She had every reason to give up on me, to leave me in my closet and my darkness. She hadn’t given up. But something about her cries now changed that. What had she discovered? What had Will told her?
When she finally emerged, still dabbing at her eyes, the waitress met her at the table, turning a white mug over and pouring Ruthie some coffee, about half a cup. It’s the same thing I do for Darin, not filling it too full of lemonade or milk, knowing I might be pouring what I’ll have to clean up.
“Thank you,” Ruthie said.
“You sure I can’t get you anything?” the waitress drawled. She sounded like a transplant from farther south. Maybe Georgia. South Carolina. “A muffin? Some toast?”
“I’m all right.” Ruthie smiled.
“Well, if your tummy gets to feelin’ hungry and you change your mind, let me know.”
Ruthie sipped her black coffee while I ate a salad with a few bits of chicken and croutons thrown on top. The muted conversations and clinking silverware were drowned out by an instrumental version of “Y.M.C.A.” I didn’t want to close my eyes for fear I’d see the Village People dancing.
Glancing out the window, I noticed a car slowly pass. It looked like the same one I’d seen in the side mirror earlier this morning. Tinted windows didn’t allow me to see the people inside. I didn’t want to mention it to Ruthie and alarm her, but I was sure someone was following us.
“You seemed to enjoy meeting him again,” Ruthie said.
My fork shook and I had to put it down. “I dreaded it at first, but you were right. It was so good to see him. Now tell me, what did he say to you?”
“Nothing you’d want to announce at the spring banquet,” she said wryly. “You realize when he’s getting out, don’t you?”
I craned my neck to see the car. Brake lights flashed and my heart fluttered. “What was that?”
“July 2.”
“Right,” I said, my face flushing. The room spun. I’d eaten bad chicken years before and this was the same feeling.
“Does that date ring a bell? July 2?”
“Should it?” I said, feeling my gorge rising. Ruthie leaned closer as I blinked, trying to focus.
“Is she all right?” someone said.
I was down. On the floor. The tile felt cold. A baby wailing. A child’s red shoe lying on the floor in the corner. The parents didn’t see it.
Two eyes looking back at me. Leaning down. Swirling lights outside.
“I thought it would be different,” I managed, my breath faltering. “That seeing him would change things. Make me fall out of love with my husband. Make me want to leave. But it didn’t.”
“It’s okay.” Ruthie touched my shoulder. “Help is on the way.”
I closed my eyes because my demons were back. Swarming, accusing, mocking—their knees drawn to their odd, bloated stomachs. They had introduced themselves without a welcome long ago and had sent me to my closet. I had chased them away, but like bees to an abandoned hive, they returned.
“Oh, Karin,” they seethed. “Poor Karin. So delicate.”
All I could think of was sleep.
I thrashed, trees and rosebushes a blur outside the window. My mother and father. Will being led away.
And then there was silence, as if someone had spoken peace to my soul. A pinch of the arm and my muscles relaxed. I drifted away, free from the stares, free from the mocking, but not free from the pain.
Danny Boyd
My mama still sits in the living room and stares at the pictures on the mantel over the fireplace. Mornings are the worst, so she lies in bed as the sunlight streams in the window. My daddy is up before the sun, so his side of the bed is cold. He reads the paper and lets the dog out and checks the tomato plants and leaves footprints in the dew on the grass before she even knows what time it is.
Mama turns the Westclox alarm around so she doesn’t have to look at it because she remembers what time it was that she heard the sirens. She had a sick feeling as soon as the fire whistle blew, and she ran outside to see the smoke. I’ve heard her talk to her friends about it on the phone. In fact, I overheard her telling one of her friends that she prayed somebody’s house was on fire that morning.
Isn’t that awful? she said. That I would pray such a thing.
I don’t think it’s awful. People can get out of a burning house.
That first winter the sadness covered my mama like a blanket of snow, and she gazed at the closet full of coats and scarves and empty gloves. In the spring, the Goodwill truck came and took a bunch of sleds and coats and other clothes away. The neighbors helped gather it all because she couldn’t bear to do it by herself.
She stares at those pictures on the mantel and thinks about her two little girls who will never sleep in their beds or hop out the door going to school or cry when the soap gets in their eyes or snuggle up to her late at night because some boy broke her heart. A mother’s grief is the worst because it’s always there in front of her. She carried the children, saw them come directly out of her body, nursed them from her own breasts, and then cared for them, kept them safe.
A father’s grief stays hidden. You have to look a lot harder to catch it. I’ve seen my daddy pause while looking at a school bus, and I wondered what was going on inside him. When he’s alone on the porch, his pipe lit, rocking back and forth, I think he’s thinking about Tanny and Karla and how they used to crawl up in his lap and go to sleep to the sound of the crickets and the whip-poor-wills and the soft light of the fireflies coming up from the wet ground like the prayers of parents for their kids. I don’t know if he ever prayed for them, but if he did, it didn’t do him a lot of good.
It was late one night when I saw him sitting in the corner of the living room, looking out at the darkness. Before he went to bed, he’d been drinking some of the stuff he keeps in his special cabinet over the refrigerator. When he got up, Mama didn’t stir and I stayed as quiet as I could and just watched as he poured another glass and downed it. Something was bothering him. He got into his gun cabinet and fumbled for some shells.
Then he headed for the car. I made it there before he did and hid in the backseat. It was an old Chevy Malibu that he said I could have when I got old enough, and there was a lot of stuff in the backseat, so I pulled a cover over me and stayed there. He turned left at the end of the driveway, but after that I kind of got lost as to where we were. I peeked out the window a couple of times to see a gas station and then some streetlights in a parking lot, but it was as dark as pitch. I don’t know what pitch is, but I’ve heard him say that.
He pulled over to the side of the road, and I heard the rosebushes scrape against the car. It was then that I knew where we were, and I wondered if there was a way to stop him.
Then I wondered if I should even try.
Bobby Ray
Eddie Buret tried hard to show everybody he was a strong-armed, no-nonsense chief, even though that seemed to come naturally. He’d nitpick, stand over my shoulder as I wrote up my traffic tickets and daily reports, and basically let me know I was on probation. So much for the peaceful little town police force he was trying to assemble.
On my first day, when they returned from the retirement party for Chief Buret, Eddie was already tipsy from a few beers and Wes could hardly stand. It was a good thing Maggie had gone with them because she was the only one who didn’t need a Breathalyzer. I mentioned that Mrs. Spurlock and her daughter had been by, asking about the missing person’s report, and Eddie lit into me. He said I shouldn’t give preferential treatment to “skanks” like that. It seemed extreme, but I learned that any mix of alcohol and police work caused Eddie to get mean.
“Don’t worry about him,” Maggie whispered when his door was closed and he and Wes were inside. “He don’t mean nothing by it. Tomorrow he won’t remember a thing he said.”
But Maggie’s prediction turned out to be wron
g. The next day he threw the missing person’s report on my desk. “Here’s your report. I told you I filed it.”
I tried to talk sense into him, but he seemed put off by the whole thing. “If you’re not going to respect my authority, we’re not going to be able to work together.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You gonna let this happen again?”
“No, sir.”
“Good.”
But it did happen again when I brought up the possibility of adding Kevlar vests to our inventory of equipment. He hit the roof, asking if I wanted to pay the cost. I’d seen them work while in Iraq and had several friends live after being shot.
Eddie wouldn’t listen. “Plus, they’re heavy and hot in the summer. You know how many shootings there have been in this town since I’ve worked here? That’s right, a big, fat goose egg. And I aim to keep it that way.”
My routine became regimented. I’d work early mornings, relieving Wes and patrolling neighborhoods and school zones. After work, I’d stop at The Home Depot, eat dinner with Lynda, then head to the old Benedict place and work on the roof or drywall. We spent a ton of money for a plumber to rework the pipes that had rusted out, but the rest of it was pretty straightforward.
One Saturday evening I told Lynda I had a surprise for her. She thought I was taking her out for dinner, but instead, we drove to the house and I put a blindfold on her, which made her laugh. She was scared that she might fall, with her belly poked out and off-balance, but I held on to her and led her up the rickety steps. At the top of the stairs we turned right, and I brought her into the little bedroom and closed the door.
I took the blindfold off and watched. Her face lit up like sparklers on the Fourth of July. Then the tears came as she surveyed the room. Her parents had given us a crib, and I’d set it up in the corner. Beside that was a nice rocking chair. I’d painted the room the color she’d picked out at Sherwin-Williams and glued the Noah’s ark border with all the animals on it just below the ceiling.