by Scott Pratt
“Dig in, child. Don’t be shy.”
Katie began to eat, slowly at first, but then with more purpose. She didn’t remember the last time she’d had a decent meal, let alone enjoyed it.
“Good?” Lottie said as she dropped a fried egg and a couple of sausage patties into a blender.
“Yes, ma’am,” Katie said, nodding her head. “This is the best sausage I’ve ever had.”
“Most everything is fresh,” Lottie said. “We buy fresh sausage from Mr. Torbett. He’s our closest neighbor; lives up the road a ways. The eggs come straight from the henhouse out back. Potatoes and tomatoes come from the garden. And your aunt Mary makes the best biscuits this side of the Mississippi.”
“Where’s Aunt Mary?” Katie said.
“She’s at work. She’s a nurse down at the hospital, you know. They let her work a special shift so she can spend more time with Luke. She leaves here at three in the morning and gets back home a little after noon.”
Luke let out a loud wail from the den.
“I’m coming, baby,” Lottie called as she pushed the button on the blender. “Just one second.”
“How old is he?” Katie said.
“Luke? He’s seven.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He has cerebral palsy,” Lottie said. “It’s a sickness that keeps him from being able to do things other folks do. But we don’t look at it as something that’s wrong with him. He’s just another one of God’s beautiful creatures. And don’t you go letting him fool you. He may not be able to walk and talk like other folks, but he’s a smart young gentleman. And sweet? That boy’s sweeter than those grapes you’re eating.”
“Will he get better?” Katie asked.
“No, honey. Your aunt and her husband, God rest his soul, took Luke to doctors all over the country. They took him over to Duke University and up to the Mayo Clinic and a couple of places in between. There’s nothing anyone can do.”
As Lottie talked, she poured the sausage and egg paste from the blender onto a plate. She looked up to see Katie staring at her.
“He likes the taste of meat,” Lottie said, “but he can’t chew it himself and he doesn’t swallow real good. I’m just getting it to where he can handle it. We do the same thing with vegetables and fruit, pretty much anything he eats.”
“So he’s like a baby?” Katie said.
“I suppose he is. He’s as helpless as a baby. He wears diapers, and we give him a sponge bath every day. He don’t ever get outta that bed. But we don’t talk to him like a baby. We talk to him like any other seven-year-old boy. And those sounds he makes, he’s trying to talk, but the muscles in his mouth and lips don’t work good enough to form the words. But me and your aunt Mary can understand him. You will, too, soon enough.”
Katie took one last bite of the fruit and set her fork on the plate.
“Finished?” Lottie said.
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
“C’mon in here with me. I’ll show you how to feed Luke.”
Katie spent the rest of her first morning on the farm exploring her new surroundings. To her delight, she found that the barn out back was home to a black-and-white border collie named Maggie, three calico cats named Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod, and a billy goat named Henry. There were five Black Angus cattle in a fenced-in pasture with a stream running through it and six chickens in the henhouse-five hens and a rooster named Ernie. Every animal on the property was named except for the cattle.
Aunt Mary arrived home shortly after noon and, after feeding Luke, gave Katie a tour of the outer edges of the property. Every time Katie looked at her, she saw Mother. She was there in Aunt Mary’s mannerisms, in her way of speaking, in the way she moved. The thought crossed Katie’s mind that had Aunt Mary not been such a kind and gentle person, her similarities to Mother would have been painful.
The property was beautiful-twenty-five acres of rolling pasture and five more of wooded land that bordered the national forest. The stream dissected the property from the northeast to the southwest, and the mountains rose like great sentinels all around.
“They’re spectacular, aren’t they?” Aunt Mary said when she noticed Katie staring up at the peak of Mount LeConte. They were rattling along through the pasture in an old green pickup truck that Aunt Mary had backed out of the barn.
“Yes, ma’am,” Katie said.
“But they can be dangerous, too. You have to respect the mountains, Katie.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As they topped a small ridge heading back toward the house, Katie noticed movement to her left. She looked toward a logging road that led back into the heavy woods and the mountains and saw a line of trucks heading down toward Roaring Fork Road. She counted ten of them, large trucks like those that carried soldiers in the movies, with huge tires and covered in canvas. At the front of the line was a Jeep with a star on the door and a bar of lights across the top.
“What’s that?” Katie asked, pointing in the direction of the convoy.
Aunt Mary’s face turned cold.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “If you ever see them again, you just act like they’re not even there.”
10
The immediate aftermath of Ray Miller’s public suicide was confusion, followed by the horror of realization. Numbed and silent, I moved slowly across the courtroom floor to where his body lay, and I knelt beside him. Ray had dropped straight to the ground between the prosecution and defense tables, partially on his side, his open eyes staring blankly ahead, his face frozen in a look of eternal defiance. The gun lay at his side, and a dark pool of blood spread slowly on the gray carpet beneath his head.
Judge Green emerged from his hiding place a few moments later. The first bullet had struck his high-backed chair an inch from his right ear; the second had actually caught the sleeve of his robe. But the judge was unscathed, and he soon began muttering to himself as he leaned against the wall and walked stiffly toward his chambers. I noticed that nobody went to Green’s aid, at least not until the emergency medical people showed up. One of the paramedics found him later, sitting on the toilet in his private bathroom, fully clothed, babbling about miracles and the mysteries of life.
The sheriff’s department quickly learned that Ray had managed to get the gun into the courtroom by avoiding the security station. He simply walked in a back door of the courthouse-a door frequently used by attorneys and county government employees-and came up the stairwell past the property assessor’s office. That door is now locked, so that anyone entering the courthouse has to pass through the metal detectors. Too little. Too late.
The medical examiner found a note in Ray’s pocket. It was a long and rambling good-bye to Toni and Tommy, but it established a reason, at least in Ray’s mind, for his suicide. He believed the two million dollars in insurance money his wife would collect would take care of his family far better than he could. Toni told Caroline that Ray had owned the policy for ten years, so the two-year suicide clause standard in life insurance contracts had long expired. Toni has become an instant millionaire, but I know she would gladly trade every dime for an opportunity to turn back the clock and save her husband.
I’m standing now at the back of a hearse in the immaculate burial ground at the Veterans Administration at Mountain Home. It’s two o’clock on Sunday afternoon, and dozens of people are milling around beneath an overcast sky. A brown canopy has been erected over Ray’s grave. I’m one of eight pallbearers. Jack has driven up from Nashville and is standing next to me, and across from him stands Tommy Miller. Tommy, tall and lean and dark haired, has adopted the affect of a zombie. I haven’t heard him utter a single word since we arrived. His cheeks are without color, his dark eyes empty and trained on the ground.
The group of pallbearers stands silently as the funeral home director slides Ray’s casket out of the hearse. We carry the flag-draped casket solemnly through the crowd toward the tent. As we place the casket on the stand above Ray’s grave, I hear Ton
i sobbing behind the black veil she’s wearing. Jack and I step out of the tent and stand next to Caroline and Lilly. Caroline is sniffling into a pink handkerchief.
“This is terrible,” she whispers. “So senseless.”
A debate has been raging in the legal community over the past few days. Who’s to blame for Ray Miller’s killing himself has been the central question. Many blame Ray, reasoning that his aggressive style in the courtroom and his bravado with judges made him an inevitable target for someone like Judge Green. Had he kept his head down, played nice, and got along like nearly everyone else, he wouldn’t have found himself in such a desperate situation. It’s as though they believe he got what he deserved.
Others, of course, blame the judge. There’s little doubt that his vicious campaign against Ray was personally motivated and largely unfounded. Nearly everyone believes that had any other lawyer made the same mistake Ray made, nobody outside of the judge’s office would have heard about it. But Ray had been suspended, jailed, and bankrupted. The local media sharks had gone on a feeding frenzy, and Ray was the bait fish of the month. His reputation had been shattered.
Then there are those who call Ray a coward. He didn’t have to kill himself, they say. He could have taken his medicine, apologized to the judge, gone through a bar hearing, and he would have been back practicing law within a year. I find myself empathizing with Ray on that point. I’m a proud man, just as he was. If a judge had taken away my ability to earn a living and care for my family and the media had ruined my reputation without giving me a chance to defend myself, I might have considered doing the same thing Ray did. The only difference, I think, is that I wouldn’t have missed when I fired the shots at the judge.
A minister is talking, saying something nonsensical about a basket representing Ray’s life and that he had filled his basket to overflowing with love for his family and friends, service for his clients, and genuine feeling for his fellow man. He’s speaking in banal generalities. It’s obvious the minister didn’t know Ray.
“Follow his example,” the preacher says. “Fill your basket.”
He drones on about how we shouldn’t judge Ray for taking his own life, that God never gives us more than we can handle, and that the bullet that ended Ray’s life was somehow an instrument of God’s love. It’s sophistry of the worst kind, worthy of an appellate court, and I find myself wanting to tell the preacher to shut up and let us bury Ray with some dignity.
But I stand there quietly, grieving for my friend but grateful I’m still alive, still with the people I love, and once again I think about how fleeting life is, how fragile, how dangerously unstable. One minute Ray Miller was a fine specimen of a man, a strong and brave spirit standing defiantly in front of those who sought to persecute him, and the next he was a mass of dead matter, lying in a heap on the ground, his spirit gone to some mysterious place.
I lean over and kiss Caroline gently on the cheek. She’s been battling breast cancer, along with the sickness and mutilation that comes with the treatment, for a year and a half. I love her so much it almost hurts, and I can’t imagine how I’d go on if she were the one being lowered into the ground.
“Oh death, where is thy sting?” the preacher says. “Oh grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
I look around at the men and women who work in my profession, men and women who make judgments each day about the lives of others, who decide what is right and what is wrong and what punishment is to be doled out for violations of our laws, and I’m reminded of how futile the endeavor is. A man like Ray commits a minor transgression, at worst, and ultimately pays with his life, while so many others who do so much more harm walk away unscathed. How do I reconcile that? Why do I want to continue on this path?
At last, the preacher delivers his final prayer and dismisses the crowd. I hook my arm in Caroline’s as Jack drapes his arm around Lilly, and we walk up the hill away from the grave, leaving Toni and Tommy to grieve in private.
11
That evening, I walk up the stairs toward the kitchen after spending a couple of hours in my study. Rio, my German shepherd, tries to slip past me and nearly sends me sprawling. It’s close to ten o’clock, and the emotion of the last few days has drained me. I hear voices talking as I approach, but as I round the corner and enter the room, they fall silent. Jack, Lilly, and Caroline are sitting at the table.
“Okay, I’m paranoid,” I say. “What were you talking about?”
“We were talking about Ray,” Caroline says.
She’d lost her beautiful auburn hair during chemotherapy but it has grown back now and is shimmering beneath the light above the table. The glow is back, too, that aura that surrounds her like a halo. She still has a long way to go with her treatment, but she no longer looks like a dead woman walking.
“Mom said you were in the courtroom when he killed himself,” Jack says.
I nod my head, not wanting to relive those awful moments.
“So you saw it? You were looking at him when he pulled the trigger?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
I sit down at the table and look at the three of them. “He was talking to Judge Green about Green’s ruining his life, and then Green said he was in contempt, and the next thing I knew, he pulled the pistol out and took a couple of shots at the judge.”
“Too bad he missed,” Lilly says.
“Lilly!” It’s Caroline, but the tone is more of surprise and amusement than anger.
“I mean it,” Lilly says. “What Judge Green did was cruel. He had no right.”
I’m grateful for the interruption. I didn’t want to tell them I was the last person on this earth Ray spoke to. I didn’t want to tell them about his good-bye.
“Ray would be in jail if he hadn’t shot himself,” I say. “As much as I hate to say it, he’s probably better off.” I look at Jack. “Have you talked to Tommy?”
“I’ve called him five or six times, sent a few text messages, but I haven’t heard anything back. I thought about going over there, but if he doesn’t want to talk to me on the phone, he probably doesn’t want to talk to me in person.”
“When are you going back to school?”
“Day after tomorrow. I have to leave early.”
“Try to get him on the phone tomorrow and if he doesn’t answer, go over there. I’m sure he could use a friend right now.”
We talk for a while and I lose myself in the conversation, happy to be able to speak to my children face-to-face. They were such an intimate part of my life for so long, and now I’m lucky to see them thirty days a year. I marvel at their intelligence, their outlook, their honesty and maturity, and I’m humbled to think I played a part in creating them.
Around eleven, Lilly stretches her slender arms toward the ceiling and lets out a yawn.
“I’m tired,” she says. “I hear my bed calling.” She gets up, kisses me on the cheek, and wanders out of the room. Jack follows her lead, and a couple of minutes later Caroline and I find ourselves alone.
“Something’s bothering you,” Caroline says.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I know you.”
So much for the mystery in our relationship. When I was younger, there were things I didn’t tell her. I’d rationalize by telling myself she didn’t need to know, probably didn’t want to know; that she was somehow better off staying clear of the deepest recesses of my mind. But she’d broken through a few years earlier, and now, at only forty-three years old, I feel almost naked in her presence, as though she can see everything. I believe she only makes inquiries to test my honesty.
“It keeps running through my mind,” I say.
“What? Ray?”
“It was surreal. It happened so fast. I keep thinking I should have gotte
n to him quicker, but after he fired the first shot, I froze for a split second.”
“There you go again,” Caroline says, “blaming yourself for something you couldn’t have changed.”
“I keep seeing the back of his head explode.”
The image of Ray’s suicide has now been added to the long list of digital clips in my subconscious mind. I’ve rerun the scene a hundred times in the past few days.
Caroline stands and walks around the table. She puts her arms around me and pulls me close.
“I thought about you today at the funeral,” I whisper. “About the cancer, about what it would have been like if you hadn’t-”
“Shhh,” Caroline says, putting a finger to my lips. “I told you when I was diagnosed that I wasn’t going to leave you. I meant it.”
The touch of her finger is soothing, and I close my eyes and kiss her hand.
“We need to clean it,” she says.
“Okay.”
A few minutes later, I’m sitting on the edge of our bed. Caroline is on her back. She’s removed her shirt to reveal the mangled mess that was once a breast. The surgeon who attempted to reconstruct the breast originally transplanted a flap of skin and fat from Caroline’s abdomen. She was in surgery for twelve hours. It seemed to work, but as soon as she began her radiation treatments, the flap began to develop large, open wounds. They leaked constantly and gradually enlarged. Then the flap began to shrink.
The surgeon explained that the radiation was destroying the tissue in the flap. Fat necrosis, he called it. Three months later, he took her back into surgery, this time removing a large portion of muscle from her back and moving it to the breast site. The result of that surgery was a staph infection that nearly killed her. When she finally recovered from the staph, a large blister began to rise on the edge of the new flap. It, too, developed into a large, open wound.
The responsibility for cleaning the wound has fallen to me. Caroline lies back and closes her eyes while I pull on a pair of latex gloves. I remove the bandage and reach into the wound carefully-it’s about the circumference of a quarter on the surface-and begin to pull out a long, thin strip of medicated gauze tape that I’d packed into the wound earlier in the day. The tape is slimy, covered with a mixture of blood and dead fat that smells like rotten eggs. I place it in a small trash bag that I’ll carry outside when we’re finished.