Billy Goat Hill

by Mark Stanleigh Morris

  Luke and I make our way across an expansive lawn as green and well-groomed as the grass of Dodger Stadium. As we approach the two women, Miss Cherry notices us and waves. I note it is not her usual happy wave. The tiny black woman stiffly turns her head to see.

  I smile and give Miss Cherry my mainstay greeting. “How’s my best girl today?” I kiss her cheek and give her a soft hug.

  “I’m fine, sweetie.” She dabs at the side of her mouth with an embroidered handkerchief, her Satchmo, as she has come to call it in honor of Louis Armstrong’s trademark hankie.

  “Hi, Miss Cherry.” Luke bends down and hugs and kisses her.

  “Hello, honey. I’m so glad you came today.”

  I doubt Luke notices—he’s spent one tenth the amount of time with her that I have—but a trace of trepidation in Miss Cherry’s voice gives me some concern.

  “Boys, this is Emma. She just moved in last week, and we’re already good friends.”

  The old woman smiles and offers her hand to me. I take it, carefully, afraid I might break something. “It’s very nice to meet you, ma’am. Any friend of Miss Cherry’s is a friend of ours.”

  “Praise God—well, isn’t that special. I feel like I already know you boys.” Emma’s high-pitched voice is not much more than a parched whisper. “Miss Cherry done told me all ’bout her two best heroes. I’m real proud to mee’cha both. Ya’ll go ’head now and have yo’selves a nice visit. Maybe I’ll see ya’ll at supper.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She winks at me. “I hear we’re havin’ raspberry cobbler for deezert.” With that she pushes a lever on her wheelchair, and an electric hum carries her off across the lawn.

  Luke chuckles. “Emma’s got your number, bro.”

  Miss Cherry rides her wheelchair over to a nearby bench where Luke and I can sit. She looks drained and her eyes are a bit puffy, as though she may have been crying recently. I glance at Luke and see a concurring expression of gravity on his face. Luke and I sit next to each other on the bench while she maneuvers the wheelchair around to face us. I feel strange, as though we’re about to be scolded for some wrong we have done, or told that we have to move and change our last name. I don’t say anything. It’s clear this is to be her show.

  It may be my imagination, but I could swear Luke is trying to squeeze himself behind me, like he did that night on Billy Goat Hill when we were awakened by the gang of policemen-bikers.

  With effort, Miss Cherry clears her throat and dabs her mouth. Her friend Emma now gone, she makes no effort to mask the pain in her eyes. She takes a deep breath and looks skyward for a moment. “I love you boys more than anything in this world. I hope you know I would never want to do anything to hurt you.”

  This can’t be good.

  “We love you, too, Miss Cherry,” Luke says.

  I nod in agreement, feeling concerned, uncertain.

  “I just hope—” she presses her handkerchief at the corner of one eye, but a tear runs down her other cheek—“after what I have to tell you, you’ll still love me enough to forgive me.”

  I look deep into her troubled eyes. I’ve never seen so much pain. “Why, don’t be silly; we’ll always love you. What is it? What’s wrong?”

  She holds my gaze for a long moment and then looks away across to the far side of the lawn toward the spot Emma has just reached. Her forlorn countenance seems to implore the old woman to come back and rescue her. I get up from the bench and kneel beside her wheelchair.

  “I am so sorry, boys.”

  “Whatever it is, there isn’t anything that would cause me to stop loving you. I know Luke feels the same. I owe you my life. If you hadn’t come and bailed me out of jail that time, I hate to think where I might be now. I doubt I’d be sober. Why, I’d probably be dead. You deserve most of the credit for the happiness in my life.”

  Her handkerchief falls to the ground as she reaches up and touches my face. “You were such sweet little boys. I didn’t mean for any of it to happen. I should have had the courage to stop it. But I couldn’t. I didn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

  “Sorry for what? You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She is weeping now. I put my arms around her and look to Luke for any sign of comprehension, but he just shrugs. He’s as baffled as I am. The three of us do nothing until the emotional impasse is finally broken by Miss Cherry.

  She exhales a heavy sigh and struggles with her thoughts before finally caving in to her painful purpose. “Lyle Cavendish is dying of cancer, and he wants you both to come and see him in the hospital.”

  With forced calm, I slowly raise myself upright until, without realizing it, I am looming over her. Suddenly she looks as old as Emma and as vulnerable as young boys prowling the darkness of Billy Goat Hill. “You mean—the Sergeant?”

  She tilts her head and looks up at me, shame distorting her face beyond its normal contortion. “Yes, Wade. I’ve remained in contact with him all these years. I’m sorry I lied to you.”

  My stomach teetering with restiveness, I place my arms across my midsection. “Why? Why would you keep such a secret?”

  She knows how I have longed for years to see him again, how the rawness in my heart has never been able to heal. How could she have lied to me about something as important as all that? Luke gets up from the bench and puts his hand on my shoulder.

  She is crying hard now, trembling. She gasps as she speaks. “Mostly I lied to you because I promised Lyle I wouldn’t tell. There’s much more to it, though. God forgive me!”

  I touch her arm. “Calm down now, please don’t make yourself sick over this. Just tell us what’s going on.”

  “Parts of the story, the reasons, I don’t even know the whole of it.”

  She tries to reach down to pick up the handkerchief but can’t quite reach it. Luke quickly picks it up for her. She dabs her eyes and nose trying to regain some composure.

  “I don’t understand,” Luke says.

  Somehow she manages a little smile, half of a smile. “I know you don’t, honey.”

  “Just tell us—what’s wrong?” I say.

  “We all were part, are part, of something bad—something very, very sad. You boys were, of course, completely innocent. You did nothing wrong. I wish I could say the same for myself, but I guess God found a way to punish me for what I did.”

  Starting to break down, dizzy, clammy, I hold back against a giant rush of confused emotion. I strain hard and forcibly calm myself. “What do you mean…God found a way to punish you?”

  “Look at me, Wade.”

  “I don’t believe God works that way. Your stroke was caused by high blood pressure and a weak artery in your brain, weak from birth, according to your doctor. You know that. I don’t think God planned to punish you for something before you were even born.”

  She looks up at me, her eyes red and weary, pleading for something, what I can’t discern. “I deserve what happened to me.”

  “What’s this all about, Miss Cherry?”

  “You have to go see Lyle. Please promise me you’ll go see him.”

  “Okay.”

  “He has to tell you. He needs to tell you, before he dies. Then, if you still want to, come back and we’ll talk more.”

  It is all I can do to keep from screaming out. Luke knows I’m near the brink, and he is patting my back now, desperate in his own way, fearing the situation could easily disintegrate to the level of regret. I am nauseous, my shirt has soaked through, and far back within the forbidden recesses of my mind subliminal suspicions undulate like voracious maggots awakening from a long forced hibernation.

  All those years of hard-earned progress, checked fears, subjugated cravings, and buried nightmares come crashing back, demanding reprisal. It is not rational, but primal, the urge that washes over me. For the first time in years I feel a desperate need for a drink. Luke’s reassuring hand suddenly feels more like the rabid mon
key of addiction sinking its fangs deep into my shoulder.

  “Is this about—Three Ponds?” I can’t believe I said the words. Luke is shocked but stands firm, his arm now solidly bracing me up.

  Her eyes fill with soul-crushing guilt, foreboding of repressed horror clambering to break free of long held silence. “Yes,” she confesses in a whisper, “and much, much more.”

  Outwardly I appear at worst numb. But deep inside me a creepy mouse rides the back of the hawk, its razor sharp talons clawing, its jagged teeth gnawing, floating on a thermal of quivering viscera and quaking bone, my stalled heart laid bare for the feast.

  From my pocketed keyring the ball bearing cries out mordantly, mocking me, taunting me, and drilling its message into a thousand holes in my perforated threadbare mind. Know ye all men by these presents! Victims, perpetrators, accusers all are summoned forth to the judgment ball!

  Luke holds my arm tight as I slump to the ground. The assault on my stomach comes up in one violent contraction, raspberry red with the blood of a decades-old ulcer.

  Miss Cherry screams and cries out, “Wade! I’m so sorry, Wade!”

  God in heaven, please do not forsake me. I need You, Father! Help me!

  y Bible never leaves my side, yet I suffer immensely over the next couple of days. God is teaching me. He wants me to be still and listen for His voice. He wants me to trust Him.

  We left Miss Cherry whimpering at the gate of her selfimposed drowsy purgatory, her doctor having been called to authorize a strong sedative. Marge McZilkie found me a bottle of Maalox, which I downed in four gulps. She also found the letter in Miss Cherry’s closet, neatly folded, tucked in a box filled with keepsakes, mostly pictures of Luke and me.

  Prominent in the stack of snapshots was the photo the Sergeant had taken of Luke and me standing in front of Queenie all those years ago. A magenta lipstick kiss mark adorned the picture, a sadly conflicted woman’s seal of authenticity. The picture made me smile for a moment.

  Marge had been right about the letter. It was very upsetting…

  Dear Cherry,

  I’m sorry it’s been so long, and that I have only bad news to give you. It’s been a hard trip through this life, lots of regrets, but none about you. You were my best gal, the only woman I ever loved. I only wish I had listened to you more.

  I was a good cop. So were you. I know now that I wasn’t good enough. I know now how wrong I was. I know now…

  The boys have a right to know, too. I’m at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Long Beach…CANCER. Please ask them to come right away. I’ve had the doctors cut way back on the morphine so I can make some sense when the boys come. I can’t hold out for long, though.

  Except for seeing them, I’ve taken care of all my affairs. I’ve tried to set things right.

  After I’m gone, my lawyer, Mr. Ronald Corsetti, will contact you.

  I never stopped loving you,

  Lyle

  As always, Luke is philosophical, stronger than me. On the way to Long Beach, he does his best to mollify my fears, but he too is apprehensive. At one point he looks at me and we exchange nervous grins.

  “We’re a long way from Billy Goat Hill, aren’t we, Wade?”

  “Either light years or a week or two, I’m not sure. I’m glad we’re doing this together.”

  “Trish wanted to come. I think she wanted to satisfy her curiosity about the Sergeant.”

  “So did Melissa. They’ve probably earned the right to come, the way they’ve both put up with our stories all these years. But I thought it should be just the two of us.”

  “I agree. Besides, this outing is too much of a walk into the unknown. Who knows where this is going to take us. We might be sailing right back into a black hole, never to be seen again.”

  I look at Luke and wonder just how prophetic he might turn out to be.

  While riding along on the freeway, listening to harp music, it occurs to me how fortunate Luke and I are to be married to women we trust, that we can talk to. After getting Miss Cherry settled, we had both called our wives. It was what we needed when we were kids, a close trusting relationship with someone who loved us, someone we could talk to no matter what difficulties we encountered. Deprived of that essential thing, when confronted with a very serious problem, we floundered.

  We are born into an imperfect world, that’s for sure, but kids shouldn’t have to deal with stuff like that by themselves. Calling our wives and telling them about the earthshaking news and hearing their compassionate voices—that is about as perfect as the world can get.

  Such a wonderful calming thought. I feel You near me. Thank You, God.

  Luke interrupts my reverie. “Do you think we should talk about it before we see the Sergeant?”

  “Talk about what, that he’s dying of cancer?”

  “No, about what happened all those years ago. That’s what he wants to talk about, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Wade—it was an accident.”

  A lump in my throat begins to swell. “Yes, but…”

  “There is no but about it. It was as much my fault as it was yours. If I hadn’t been such a wimp about the mockingbirds, things would have been a lot different, maybe worse, who knows?”

  “That’s not it. We should have told somebody. I should have told somebody.”

  “Who could you have told?”

  “Lucinda, Pastor Bonner, Jake the barber, maybe?”

  Luke pretends to spend a moment in deep thought. “Hmm…you know something. If you really get serious about it, there was only one person who would have truly understood, and might even have known what to do.”

  “Who?”

  “He, he, he…Carl the baker, of course.”

  We laugh for the next ten miles. My little brother has done his duty.

  But when we finally leave the freeway and the hospital comes in sight, my stomach begins to twitch. I can’t do this without You, God.

  I don’t like hospitals. They make me uncomfortable—the peculiar smells, the maze of unfriendly hallways, not knowing quite how to behave when face-to-face with someone injured or ill. Only once did I enter a hospital for a positive reason, when my daughter, Kate, was born.

  How unusual it is that I have never been hospitalized—no diseases, no surgeries, no broken bones. What are the odds? A broken heart and a guilty conscience, my pestilence, never brought me under the purview of modern medicine, or I would have spent most of my childhood in the hospital.

  Now, summoned by a ghost from the infinite past, I am about to enter Saint Mary’s Hospital in Long Beach. The irony is like a poorly told bad joke. I know, I know. I am trying, God.

  Luke stands by me in the parking lot as I look up at the sterile hospital structure rising high above us. A man I once knew, the most important earthly man I ever knew, is dying inside this building, and for reasons I do not want to contemplate, he has petitioned me to appear at his deathbed. Nothing and everything fills me with apprehension as I try to brace against the emotional riptide swelling within me like a tsunami approaching landfall.

  Entering the building, I am grateful to have Luke pacing alongside me, though his company only carries so much weight. Fear, my old companion, is trying to run me aground, and I feel about as far from my element as a sailor a thousand miles away from the sea. A bizarre, convoluted stream of antiquated images whirls like a dust devil in my head.

  We are a solemn pair when a few minutes later we find ourselves standing outside the Sergeant’s sixth floor room.

  “Look at that.” Luke points to the numbers above the door. The Sergeant is in room 6-060. We had lived at 6060 Ruby Place.

  “Good sign or bad sign?”

  “I don’t know. It’s kind of weird though, isn’t it?”

  “Before we go in, I think we should take a moment to pray.”

  “Good idea.”

  In the hall outside the Sergeant’s hospital room, we bow our heads. “Father in heaven, You are the great Creato
r of the universe, and we believe all things are possible with You. We ask for Your guidance and protection as we come face-to-face with our old friend, the Sergeant. We ask for Your forgiveness for all of our wrongs, past and present. We ask that You bless the Sergeant in his time of illness. And most of all, Father, we pray that he be comforted in the knowledge that You are his Creator and Your Son Jesus came to the earth and lived among us, died for all of our sins, and rose from the grave to bring us the glorious gift of salvation. We ask that the Sergeant might know You and receive Your gift of salvation by accepting our Lord Jesus as his Savior. Please give us strength and wisdom as we visit our dear old friend. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.”

  “Amen.”

  I open my eyes, and a nurse down the hall smiles and nods at me.

  I project far more confidence than I feel as together with Luke, I push the heavy hospital door open and step forward into the past.

  I am not prepared for what I see—a mere ghost of a fading memory. To be here in his presence, under these circumstances, combines in a single moment the sum total of a lifetime of hope and fear. The mix of emotion is overwhelming.

  A voice thick with cobwebs comes weakly from across the room. “I’m glad you came, boys.”

  The voice leaves no doubt that it’s him, or, more accurately, what is left of him. Amplified by my memory, a trace of the sound of Scar still comes through. Staring at a skeleton, I realize his battle with cancer has wound down to the last salvo. A gaunt, yellow, translucent shell of the person I had once revered motions with a twitch of his sunken eyes for us to join him at his bedside. Two chairs have been purposefully positioned for the occasion. My heart pounds as we sit, Luke taking the chair closest to him.

  Straight in front of me, a catheter bag hangs from a metal bed rung. It is half-full of urine tinged rust-brown with blood. Scabs that don’t look like normal scabs dot his skin like the spots of a leprous leopard. His once thick jet-black hair is gone, except for two strange gray clumps above one ear. The ear looks dry and shriveled, as though it could fall off at any time. I doubt that he weighs a hundred pounds. I wonder if he’ll even make it through the night.