The small house got to be suffocating, all of us under each other’s armpit. I heard Lightning up some nights walking the floor or going out the back door. He’d asked me on two or three more occasions about the money, and I told him it was safe, that we needed to let more time pass, not be in a hurry. I assured him he would have his money after the first of the year. Roy and Clemmy being able to come visit some nights made being housebound a little easier on him and me.
The week before Christmas, I drove to Apex to talk to Lawyer Stern.
“What’s on your mind, Raeford?”
“Well, sir, I got to thinking. I’m the only one that’s left of my family, and wondered what would happen to the farm should something happen to me?”
“Certainly hope nothing happens, but if it did and you didn’t have a will, the state would step in and take control, probably sell everything off in an auction.”
“Then I guess I’m needing to make a will.”
“You got in mind who you want to leave it to? You have other family?”
“No more family, but I have somebody in mind.”
“Who would that be?”
I leaned forward. “First, I want to be sure whatever you and me talk about is only between us.”
He lifted his palms up and shook them. “Absolutely. It’s called lawyer-client relationship, Raeford, and I can never repeat anything we discuss in private. It’s a rule I take very seriously.”
I studied his face, knowing I needed to trust him, but also knowing what could happen if I was wrong. “I want to leave everything to Fancy Stroud if I die.”
“Stroud?” He scratched his head. “The only Strouds I know of are the coloreds who sharecrop with Clyde Wilson.”
“That would be her.”
He had a coughing spell, then pushed back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “If you don’t mind me asking, why?” He searched me with those Superman eyes that seemed to pick your brain.
“Fancy and me have been friends since we were little, and I consider her almost family. Don’t intend to sell the place, but if something happened to me, I can’t think of nobody better to have it.”
He fidgeted with misgivings. “If that’s what you want, I’m obligated to carry out your wishes. But keep in mind it can always be changed later. Say you get married and want to leave it to your wife and kids, you can do that.”
“And I expect that’s what I would do. But for right now, I’d rather leave it to who I want and know it would do them some good.”
“Do you think your grandma would approve of this?”
“She ain’t here.”
He began making notes, holding the pen between his middle and ring finger. “Raeford, I wouldn’t be letting your neighbors know anything about this.”
We shook hands when he finished. “I appreciate your help.”
Storefronts and lampposts on Main Street were decorated for the season, looked like the same stars and angels from last Christmas. Could it only have been a year ago I shopped for Grandma? Be nice to turn the clock back, just be a farm kid again. At the drugstore, I scanned the magazine rack and picked one that had a lot of what they called fashions. Inside I found a card to fill out so it would come every month to the house, giving Fancy something to read all year. I added a bottle of perfume for her, and aftershave for Lightning. I didn’t buy any comics. At Salem’s General Store I bought a grocery bag of fruit and different kinds of nuts, then checked the meat case and paid for a big beef roast.
Roy and Clemmy decided enough time had passed, and that it was safe to let Fancy come home for Christmas. Fancy cooked the roast the day before, and we had a little early celebration.
After supper, I walked her to the wood’s edge. “Going to miss you,” she said. “I’ll be back the day after Christmas.” I leaned against a pine tree at the wood’s edge and watched Fancy cross the clearing. I dreaded spending the next couple of days alone with Lightning. We had settled into tolerance, avoiding each other as much as possible.
When I turned to head back, the hair at the nape of my neck stood up. I froze in place, then slowly rotated my head in both directions. Was somebody watching? The air became still, and ice cold. The presence of Grandma was overpowering, and it felt threatening. I talked out loud. “What’s wrong, Grandma?” I sensed violent pain. Did she want to hurt me? I stuck out my hand to push her back. Then, suddenly as she came, she was gone. I stood shivering in the dark blackness of the woods. Was she angry with me, or warning me?
I dreamed about Grandma that night. Every time I called out for her, Twin’s face appeared, begging for help just before I killed him.
* * *
In the gray early morning light of Christmas Day, I went to the black iron pot behind the house, filled it with water, heaped wood around it, and lit a fire. At the chicken house I grabbed a hen by the legs, carried her to the block, brought down the hatchet, and watched her run with blood squirting from her neck. I still couldn’t shake the image of Grandma.
“When you figuring on leaving?” Lightning and me were eating the chicken at dinner.
“Don’t know, but it’s going to be soon. It’s time, Junebug.”
I watched his expression. “Where you heading?”
Instead of looking at me, he acted interested in something out the back door. “Thought I might catch a bus and head west. I should have enough money to keep me going until I can land a job somewhere.”
“Fancy will be mighty sad when you leave.”
“I’ll write when I get settled.”
I poured the salty pot liquor from the collard greens into a cup and sipped. “I’ll take you to the bus station when you’re ready.”
“Appreciate that.”
Lightning seemed unusually nervous all day, but I put it off to not being able to see Roy and Clemmy for Christmas.
After tossing and turning and sleeping in fits and starts all night, I got up before dawn to pee. I got dressed and went outside to have a smoke since it was too early to do the chores. A ceiling of bright stars flickered like fireflies in the clear, cold night sky. Dark spots made a smile on the white moon’s full face. I leaned against the pear tree and thought back to a time Granddaddy and me stood here taking a pee before we went to bed. I was about twelve years old. “How many folks you figure have peed around this old tree?” Granddaddy had looked down with a grin. “I don’t know, but you ain’t ever seen me eat a pear, have you?” I smiled thinking about when that happened. He always had a good sense of humor when you could get him to talk.
I followed the horizon around toward the faint glow to the west that was Durham, then glanced down toward the chicken house and pack house. My gaze moved to the woods beyond, then jerked back to the pack house. A light showed through the open door of the cellar. All the money I had was in there. I bent over and crept down the path, stopping every few steps to listen. At the edge of the building I squatted and put my head close to the bottom of the open door. Pots of flowers were pushed over on the floor. The dark figure holding the lantern turned toward me. I stood up. “Lightning, what the hell are you doing?”
He stumbled backward. “God damn, Junebug, you scared the shit out of me.”
The bloodstained paper sacks I’d hidden in the barrel were in his hand. “You taking the money, Lightning?”
His voice dropped low, like the growl of a dog that’s fixing to bite you. “It’s to make sure I get far enough away so nobody would find me. I’m only taking what I figure is mine.” He set the lantern on the floor.
“Why didn’t you just ask?” I blocked the door. “And how do you figure all of it’s yours?”
Orange light from the lantern reflected off his red shirt and made a cruel glow in his eyes. “I’m tired of asking white folks for stuff. If it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t be any money.”
Anger shot up quick. “And if it wasn’t for me, you’d have been laying dead like the rest of them. You ain’t taking what’s mine and Fancy’s.”
“So now you going to cut me?” I always carried the buck knife Grandma gave me for Christmas. I stuck my hand in my pocket and closed my fingers around it.
“I told you, Junebug, I know I owe you some for letting me stay here. But I figure my sister for the money makes us even. Just back the hell off and let me leave in peace.”
“She’s not yours to give. You can go, Lightning, but you ain’t taking our part of that money.”
He stepped toward me. My buck knife made a sharp pop when it opened.
Lightning stopped.
My head started to throb. “You can take your part and leave.”
There was a hateful sneer on his face. “You think you can hurt me, white boy? I done killed one man with this thing, and for a lot less money. I’ll cut you up like a pork chop.”
The cramped cellar space felt like a coffin. The damp dirt and old wood smell was what I figured it would be like buried in one. “So you did kill the old man on purpose.”
He stepped toward me and took a swinging cut. “You bet your ass I did. And if I’d had time, I would have give his ugly-ass wife something to remember too.” When I didn’t move, he crouched, gripping the knife in his fist, the blade toward me.
I wanted this to stop. I held up my hand. “What the hell happened to you? We don’t have to do this. We’ve been friends all our lives, no sense in ruining that over money.”
“Friends?” He laughed loud. “We ain’t never been friends, Junebug, or should I say Massa Hurley. You ain’t no different than the rest of these white bastards around here, always acting like you’re better than us. To make it worse, you take what little self-respect Momma and Daddy had left by screwing my sister. Why didn’t you just spit in my face while you were at it?”
It felt like we were eight again, and his bottle bag was empty. “I never meant it like that, Lightning. If you feel that way, take my part and leave what belongs to Fancy.”
“Oh, I’m going to take your part, Junebug, because you won’t be needing it.” Lightning charged. His blade came from low to high and ripped the bib part of my overalls, narrowly missing my chin. I slashed down and caught him across the forearm.
He grabbed at the pain. “Aaaah! You son of a bitch!” He lunged, snarling like a wild animal, slicing across, going for my neck.
I dodged left. The flash of the steel went by my face, the pointed tip nicking me below the eye. The force of his charge turned him sideways. I jabbed upward toward his chest, pulled back, and stabbed him again before he could recover.
Lightning fell against me and made a coughing sound. Blood spurted from his mouth, gushing onto my neck. The knife dropped from his hand and he latched on to my shoulder. The weight of his body pulled me over.
“Lightning?” I laid him down. My knife was stuck to the hilt just below his breastbone. I pushed on his chest like I’d seen the doctor do with Grandma, but blood mixed with air bubbled from his mouth. He wouldn’t breathe any more. The last moment of shock was frozen on his face. “Lightning, what did you do?” I sat with his head in my lap until early light began to push away the darkness.
I had to figure out what to do. I considered going to get Fancy, Roy, and Clemmy, explain what happened, and let them decide. But I couldn’t. They would never forgive me. No matter how disappointed or angry they were with him, he was their son and brother. I thought about digging a hole and burying him in the woods, but that would risk somebody finding him sometime. I couldn’t chance that someone being Fancy.
I backed the truck up to the door, dragged Lightning’s body from the cellar, shoved it into the bed, and drove to the front of the house. I scraped the grass off the boards and opened the top. He went into the well headfirst. The only sound was a dull heavy thump when he hit bottom. At the barn I got a fifty-pound bag of lime we kept for the garden and dumped it in behind him. After covering everything back, I stomped and pushed down until the outline of the boards disappeared. I squatted on one knee. “You always were a stupid bastard.” I didn’t know if I was talking to him or me.
I moved the truck back around to the pack house and found a rake to smooth the dirt in the cellar and cover the blood. Grandma’s money was still buried, and I decided to leave it like that. I carried the drug money to the house, and hid it deep in Grandma’s closet under some clothes. There was five thousand dollars buried in the cellar and another twenty thousand hidden in the house. By the time I finished, the sun was coming up. Bloodred strands of clouds, like stretched fingers of a wounded hand, extended across the eastern horizon.
I sat on the porch and tried to get myself under control, hoping to find somebody other than me to blame. I pounded my leg, pinched the skin on my arms, anything to bring me pain. Why didn’t I let Lightning go, just let him take the money and the evil attached to it, and get the hell out of my life? He was certainly more valuable than money to Fancy and Roy and Clemmy. Why wasn’t he more valuable to me? I remembered as little kids how he taught me to curve a rock and took me as his friend. He was a value to me then. Maybe the Coke bottle incident should have been my first clue.
I know he changed while he was gone, but was I any better? After killing three men, including my childhood best friend, I was pretty sure I wasn’t. Pain began to shoot up my arms, and I looked down to realize my fists were gripped together so tight my palms were turning blue. I shook them out, and struggled to calm down so I could think like a God-fearing man. I never set out to hurt anybody; all I did was protect my life. That was bound to hold reason; didn’t David kill Goliath, and doesn’t good always win over evil? Wasn’t I a good person?
Morning birds began to sing to give thanks for making it through the darkness. I remembered one summer when times were really bad, no rain for over a month, crops burning up in the fields and the garden beginning to die, all pointing toward a lean, tough winter. I heard Granddaddy get up in the early dark one morning and found him in the yard. “Why you sitting out here in the grass?”
He put his arm around me and pulled me to sit close. “Waiting to catch first light, son. A new day brings new hope. If the good Lord can lift that sun up this morning, surely we can do better today than we did yesterday.”
The sun did come up that morning, and that afternoon I’ll be damned if it didn’t start to rain, and it rained two days straight. So, on this morning I determined I’d try to make it through this darkness.
When Fancy hadn’t shown up by eleven that night, I was relieved not to have to face her. Eventually I slept, and dreamed. Lightning laughed at me from a pool of hellfire. Blood spurted from his chest, and it choked in my mouth and throat.
Whatever hopes I’d had about living a normal life were gone. My suitcase had been stuffed with all manner of things I would never be able to unpack again: the innocence of being a kid, the security of believing I knew what was going to happen next in my life, and the notion that everything would always work out for the best.
CHAPTER 39
At sundown I went to do the evening chores. I got back to the house and Fancy was in the kitchen. “When did you get here?” Pots were sitting on the stove.
She poked her head from behind the icebox door, a smile on her face. “A few minutes ago. Saw you down by the barn, so figured to start a little supper. Where’s Lightning?” She came over to kiss me on the cheek.
I had to get this right. “He’s gone.”
Her smile disappeared. “Where did he go?”
“Said yesterday he was ready to leave, wanted to head west, get as far away from here as possible.”
Her face clouded like a thunderstorm. She turned her back to me, and started chopping turnips, punishing them with the blade. She stopped and twisted around, the knife in her hand. “How did he go?” The muscles in her face twitched.
I forced myself not to look away. “I drove him to the bus station.”
; She jabbed the air with the knife. “Did something happen, Junebug? Did y’all have another fight?” Her bottom lip quivered. “He couldn’t wait and say good-bye to me and Momma and Daddy?”
“Nothing happened, Fancy. He waited last night, but when you didn’t come, he decided it was time. I took him early this morning. He said to tell all of you he loved you and would write soon as he could.”
“Did he take his money?” She spit out questions like darts. “Is our part safe? Or did we do all this for nothing?” She slammed the knife on the counter.
I flung my hat against the wall. “Quit acting like it’s my fault. You know how anxious and nervous he’d gotten to be. I tried to convince him not to do it, but he didn’t want to hear what I had to say.” At least that part was true.
Fancy put her hand to her forehead and rubbed. “I knew I should have come yesterday, but my shoulder hurt something awful after all that hugging and carrying on Christmas Day. Momma gave me some medicine before supper last night, and the next thing I knew it was this afternoon.”
“Lightning figured there was a reason.” This was the path I’d chosen and would have to stick to. “Just so you understand, I’m glad he’s gone, because one of us wasn’t going to last much longer living like this.”
She started slamming pots around. “Momma and Daddy will be so hurt.” She was close to crying.
I got up and took her in my arms. “He was sorry not to be able to tell you ’bye.”
Fancy squeezed tight to me. She looked up. “What happened to your cheek?”
I put a finger to the cut. “Caught an old nail at the barn.”
“You need to put some Mercurochrome on it so it doesn’t get infected.” She got the bottle and dabbed it.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m real sorry about Lightning leaving the way he did. I didn’t make him or cause it to happen. I want you to understand that.” I touched my tongue to my finger to see if it was forked.
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