by Chris Fabry
It wasn’t until I moved past the remains of the barn that I saw the orange glow of a cigarette in front of the persimmon tree. A man stood there watching the house. Was this Randy? Was there someone else in the house? The second cruiser was behind him in the driveway. I had to believe they hadn’t harmed my mother.
I moved as quietly as I could to the hill, skirting the ashes of the barn and heading toward the creek. I reached behind and felt for the gun, but it wasn’t there. I had lost it in one of my falls.
I whispered a curse, wondering if they had really found the shotgun inside our house.
A radio squawk nearly sent me to my knees.
The man at the tree keyed the mic. “Yeah?”
I knew I only had seconds. I sprinted toward him through the grass, avoiding the gravel of the road I had built.
“He lied to us,” Eddie said, out of breath. “Bring the old bat up here and we’ll give him one more chance to tell us.” I slowed and crouched in a catlike pose, the way I had seen the barn cats hunt birds on the hillside. I was nearly to the tree. I could smell the smoke from his Marlboro.
“Got it. Be there in a few.”
As he replaced the mic and headed for the house, I hit him with a crushing body block. Carson had been all-state in his senior year, and when I came along, the coach was expecting someone a little heavier. He would have smiled if he’d have seen the hit I put on this guy. The first one knocked the air out of him with an “oof,” and I followed him to the ground, smashing his lungs flat as I drove my weight into his chest. I thought I heard a crack, but it could have been the clattering on our concrete walkway. He reached for his gun, and I punched him hard in the face. It took two hits in the back of the head with the butt of his gun to put him out.
The radio squawked again, and I could tell that Eddie was not in a good mood. I’d learned to imitate voices as a kid watching Rich Little and Frank Gorshin. I hadn’t heard this guy talk much, but I figured I didn’t have to. “Yeah?” I said, keying the mic.
“He got away. He’s probably headed toward you.”
“I don’t believe this,” I said. “What do I do with the mother?”
“Just keep her there. Look, we gotta find this guy. Don’t waste time trying to grab him. Shoot to kill.”
I figured I had done okay, that in the confusion on the hill Eddie hadn’t recognized my voice, but I couldn’t be sure. I raced inside and found my mother in her room, the stereo softly playing—a trombone and strings. She had a night-light on the wall, the same one I remembered growing up with, the face of the clown on the front. The thing had scared me rather than comforted me. I could make out her lumpy form under the covers.
I touched her shoulder and squeezed it gently. “Mama?”
She sat up groggily, squinting and looking into my face. “Will? What in the world?”
“I need you to get up and come with me.”
“Are you drunk? You stink of Jack Daniels.”
I wondered how she knew the smell.
“What time is it, anyway?”
“Mama, this is important. We don’t have time to discuss it.”
“Well, I’ll need to get dressed.”
“No, you don’t. There are some men looking for me. They’ll be here any minute.”
“What have you done?”
“Nothing. Now come on.”
“Will, running won’t help—”
I threw back the covers and picked her up. She was heavier than I thought, and the way she slapped at my arm didn’t help, but as soon as I got in the kitchen, she could tell I meant business.
“All right, I’ll go. Just put me down.”
I grabbed the car keys from the mantel and we hurried downstairs. A .22 caliber rifle sat on the stairs, a remnant of my father, who always kept a loaded gun there just in case. I grabbed it and flew into the dust and musty smells and cracking concrete of the garage.
“Who is it?” she said behind me. “Who’s after you?”
“Quiet,” I said. “It’s Eddie and some guys—”
“Buret? The new chief?”
“He’s the one responsible for Elvis disappearing.”
“No.”
“It’s a long story. Let’s just get out of here.”
She flipped the garage light on, and I quickly clicked it off and helped her through the maze of old lawn mowers, bikes, electric saws, and boxes filled with nuts, bolts, and tools. I tossed the rifle in the backseat, and instead of using the garage opener, I opened the door by hand to keep the noise down. I thought I might find Eddie standing there, grinning, but there was no one. I glanced around the corner and saw an unmoving lump of humanity near the persimmon tree.
“I’m worried about you carrying that gun,” she said as I got in and started the car. “That’s a violation of your parole and if—”
“I’d rather violate my parole than wind up dead.”
“Is it really that bad?”
I backed the old car out of the garage, keeping the lights off, and drove through the yard and over the septic tank buried a few feet below. “They told me they had you handcuffed to a chair and were going to use a shotgun on you.”
“Well, see, that wasn’t true.”
I turned my head and showed her my neck using the dashboard light. “This was.”
She gasped at the wound.
We headed down the long driveway and crossed the creek. Behind us, a car roared down the road I had built, its headlights piercing the night. I didn’t touch the brake but rolled straight onto Benedict Road and floored the accelerator. My mother had rolled a 1968 Impala into the rosebushes here when I was in grade school, so I had to be careful not to get too distracted, but I couldn’t help looking back at the police cruiser barreling toward our front yard. We passed my abandoned truck and neared the corner. I let up on the accelerator and glanced behind us.
“They must have seen the guy on the ground and the open garage. They’re headed for the road. Hang on, Mama.”
Karin
I awoke after dark in a fog and Richard was there. My parents had gone home after he assured them I was okay. I just needed some rest. He sat with me and talked awhile, mostly about Will, my feelings for him, and what had happened long ago, though most of it was still blurry. I had known Richard as a kind and generous man, forgiving to a fault, but I could not understand why my revelation hadn’t brought up his own feelings. If he had been harboring an old flame, nurturing it and teasing it along, I would have been heartbroken. But he seemed unconcerned by the whole ordeal.
Maybe that’s what happened, I thought. Maybe he has his own feelings for someone. Maybe my revelation makes it okay for him to indulge in his own secret sin.
I tried to chase the thought away but it stayed. No matter what happened, our marriage and the church were in big trouble. I couldn’t imagine sitting in the atrium and talking with the ladies of the group again.
I called Ruthie but there was no answer. It had been my experience that once she drifted off to sleep, nothing would wake her till morning. So I was left alone with my thoughts and what little praying I could do in my closet.
I knew from different sermons, preachers on the radio, and my own study that God had a problem with a wayward bride. His chosen people had continually run from him, then pleaded for his help. One crisis after another brought them back, begging forgiveness. They would receive it and then make the same mistakes again. I was not trying to fall in love with another suitor. I was not trying to leave the love of my life. But the events of the past few months had brought Will back with a vengeance.
Was I falling in love with the idea of him? Except for seeing him at the prison, I’d had no contact other than on the radio and through my memory. What would life with an ex-con be like? How could I even be thinking like this?
No matter where my scattered brain went, I knew something was drastically changing in my life. Something big. And Ruthie’s absence only accelerated the pain. It felt like the tide had been pulled
out, and a tsunami of thoughts and emotions was about to crash down—or had already crashed and I was just rising with the tide, searching for a lifeboat, clawing for anything that would keep my head above water.
Ruthie had suggested my recurring dream could be about God and my soul. That he was interested in it fascinated me. How does he hear all those prayers at once without getting stacked up in a waiting queue?
“Your prayer will be answered in the order in which it was received,” I imagined. “Estimated wait time is . . . eternity.”
I couldn’t look at my quote books or poetry or even Scripture. I couldn’t pray. Didn’t have the heart. But I did manage to scribble a few lines in my notebook that night.
God, I wrote, I don’t know if you care about my heart or my life, but if you do, I desperately need you. Or maybe you’re already doing something and I’m oblivious. I don’t know how this works. I’m at the end. Break through. I don’t want to hurt my kids. I don’t want to hurt my husband. I don’t want to hurt the church. And I don’t want to hurt you. Please help me.
Will
During the early 1970s, my one foray into the outside world had been through the CB radio. I had a base station in my room and installed a radio in our car. My father, not wanting to waste anything, had transferred it to this vehicle. I flipped it on and cycled through the channels as my mother and I hit Route 60, choosing to drive west rather than east. I’d heard from a friend in Clarkston that people fleeing police have a better chance at escape by going straight rather than weaving through back streets and alleys. There aren’t that many in Dogwood anyway.
My old haunt was channel 4. I could only imagine what those people thought when they discovered the kid they had talked with all those years ago was in prison.
“. . . was supposed to be back last night, but he got his rig hung up in Missouri and he probably won’t make it until late tonight.”
I waited until the drawling lady stopped and keyed the mic. “Hey, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need some help. This is Will Hatfield, and I’m being chased by the Dogwood police chief and some of his thugs.” I let go and listened to the static, my mind swirling.
“Will, they’re behind us,” Mama said.
We hit a straight stretch that ran past the radio station and got the car up to eighty. The left front tire began to wobble, and I had to back off the accelerator. “I need somebody to call the sheriff. Or the state police.”
My mother unbuckled and tipped her seat, struggling to roll into the back.
“You ought to pull over, Will,” a man said. I recognized the voice of Coyote, one of the grizzled crew that made channel 4 so much fun to join. I didn’t know the identities of these people. They were just voices on the radio.
“Coyote, I need your help. Eddie Buret killed Elvis—Arron Spurlock. He knew something about some stolen money. Eddie and his crew kidnapped me but I got away. I need somebody to help me.”
“Hit the window lock,” Mama said from the backseat.
I released the microphone and hit the lock.
“Who is that?” Coyote said.
“My mother. I couldn’t leave her there. This guy is catching up with me in a cruiser. If you’re gonna help me, I need you to do it now.”
Another long pause. Then a woman’s voice. “I hope he does catch up with you, you murdering jerk.”
A bullet crashed through the back window, shattering the glass, and I ducked.
“You all right, Mama?”
“These people are playing for keeps,” she said.
Through the rearview mirror I watched her pound the rifle barrel against the window, making a small hole through the glass. She took aim and fired, missing badly.
“You’d better get down,” I yelled.
Mama fired twice, and the left headlight on the cruiser went dark. She whooped. “I got one!”
“Aim a little higher,” I said.
Another shot pinged off our roof, and the side mirror shattered. I swerved into the oncoming lane, then back to the right.
“Hold it still.” She fired five shots with the .22, one right after another. The fourth one hit the windshield. Immediately the cruiser slowed.
“You did it!” I shouted, approaching the corner and the flea market that lay below us. I slowed enough to make the corner and keyed the mic again. “Coyote, he’s shooting at us. He’s trying to get rid of the evidence, which is me.”
“You know who that is, don’t you?” Mama said. “Coyote is Judge Henderson.”
He came back on the radio. “I talked with dispatch. They’re saying you’re armed and dangerous. That shots are being fired from your automobile.”
“Sir, my mother and I are defending ourselves. Please. You have to help us.”
“Let him rot,” somebody else said. Then a flurry of voices echoed the same sentiment.
Finally, Coyote spoke. “You need to pull over now. There’s a sheriff’s deputy dispatched, but you have to surrender to the authorities.”
“If I surrender, we’re dead,” I said.
“Son, you’re in violation of your parole if you have a firearm. Don’t make it worse.”
I tossed the mic away and mashed the accelerator to the floor.
All my life my mother had been the one to play things safely. When my father had a chance to buy more land for next to nothing, she had said they had enough. When he wanted to quit his job and farm full-time, she had said they needed a steady income and health insurance. Now, faced with the most dire circumstances of our lives, she was rising to the occasion and becoming a lot less safe than I had ever imagined.
“Daddy would love to see you like this,” I shouted through the noise and wind.
We passed the Family Dollar and Pizza Hut doing seventy-five, and the funeral home came up on the right. There was only one stoplight in town, and just as we approached, it turned yellow, then red.
“Hang on,” I said. “We’re not stopping.”
I slowed to about forty, and when I saw no cars nearing the intersection, I sped up, heading straight for the site of our old school. The Sabre was all lit up, waiting like an old friend. “We make it past here and we might meet that deputy coming the other way,” I said.
I saw the Dogwood police cruiser too late to react. It was behind the plane, and when it flashed its lights, I was distracted and didn’t see the spike strip.
All four tires blew and we swerved left. Our momentum kept us going, but I smelled burning rubber and felt the clunk of the rims on pavement. Sparks flew, showering up beside us, and my mother threw her hands over her head. Swirling lights lit the darkened field ahead, and instead of braking, I pushed the accelerator to the floor.
It took both hands to control the wheel even though we had slowed now to about thirty-five. The grinding worsened, and over the grating and groaning of the wheels came the warbling siren. I drove in the middle of the narrow road so the cruiser couldn’t pull beside me and approached the Bridge Closed sign and the orange and yellow horses.
“That bridge will never hold this car,” Mama yelled from the back.
“You bring your swimsuit?” I said.
“No, just my gun.”
I would have laughed, but the situation was just too bleak.
The car crawled up the incline to the bridge and pushed the horses away. One of them stuck underneath the right wheel, and we clattered onto the bridge and over the ancient boards that had been meant for horse-drawn carriages. The car lunged left, then came to a violent halt as it plunged through the rotted wood. All I could hear was the hiss of the engine and the rushing water beneath us.
“You okay?” I said.
Mama mumbled something.
“Put your hands up and get out of the vehicle!” the officer shouted behind us.
Mama put something in her nightgown and struggled to sit up, looking out the back window and squinting. “Is that you, Bobby Ray?”
The officer held his gun in front of him, partially blocked by the open d
oor. I couldn’t see his face, but I did see the gun barrel rise slightly. “Mrs. Hatfield?”
“That’s right, and unless you’re mixed up with Eddie and his bunch, you better let us get out of here.”
He seemed confused, and I figured it was the perfect time to confuse him more. I opened the door and stepped out, letting the gun I had fall to the bridge. “Hand me the rifle, Mama,” I said, thinking that in a million years I would not have guessed I would utter such a phrase, but there it was.
She put the gun through the window and I let it fall, then helped her out of the car. “We’re unarmed now. We’re not a threat to you.”
“Lie facedown on the bridge,” he called.
“Bobby Ray, I’ve known you since you were this high,” my mother said. She turned to me. “Taught him in second-grade Sunday school.” Then, to Bobby Ray, “I don’t think you’re mixed up with these people, but if you are, you’d better ask God to forgive you right now because judgment is coming.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I want you two to just get down so we won’t have any more trouble.”
A car screeched around the corner, and one headlight sped toward us.
I grabbed my mother’s hand and pulled her to the middle of the bridge. “Stay down. I don’t think Bobby Ray’ll shoot his Sunday school teacher.”
There were holes in the wood, and a couple of times I thought we would both fall through, but we made it to the far end of the bridge as Eddie pulled up beside Bobby Ray. He said something and Bobby Ray pointed to us. Eddie ran toward our car and bent down beside it.
“What’s he doing?” Mama said.
Eddie picked up the handgun I had dropped and examined it. He took a few steps back and surveyed the area. The front of the bridge was illuminated by one fluorescent light.
When he retreated toward the police cruiser, I faced Mama. “Walk straight up this hill and get to somebody’s house. Hurry.”
“But what’s he doing?”