The Last Road Home

by Danny Johnson

  Mr. and Mrs. Wilson assured Clemmy she could stay on in the house as long as she helped Mrs. Wilson. Mr. Wilson said he’d plant her a garden so she could make do. It turned out to be a blessing. Mrs. Wilson had a major stroke the first of January 1970, and was bedridden. Clemmy looked after her because Mr. Wilson was too frail to do it. He fixed up a room so Clemmy could stay in the big house at night. I wondered what the neighbors thought.

  * * *

  In late spring, May I think, an old dog wandered up in the yard. He was bowlegged and ratty-looking. I chased him off. “You need to get your behind somewhere else, mutt, ain’t nothing for you here.”

  For the next couple of days, I would see the dog hiding behind the barn or lying at the edge of the trees. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t just move on. One morning he was under the woodshed.

  “Dog, I thought I told you to stay away from here.” He lay looking at me, wagging his tail. “Dogs don’t make out too good around this place.”

  He didn’t make any effort to get up, and I wondered if he was hurt. I squatted and looked him over. He stumbled to his feet and licked me in the face. It didn’t look like he had any injuries. “Are you just hungry? I’ve been hungry.” I went in the house and got a bowl for water and some leftover chicken. “When you finish this, move on down the road. Go find somebody else to mooch off.” That night when I looked, the dog was gone.

  The next morning, I went out the porch door and almost shit in my pants when the dog ran out from under the steps. “You son of a bitch, git your ass away from here!” He took off across the road and into the woods.

  That night I found him in the woodshed again. I sat down on a peach basket. “Persistent cuss, ain’t you.” He got up and shyly walked over to me, head down, looking up with sad brown eyes. “Think you’ve found a home, do you? Two old lost souls wandering around in this world.” By the time I fed him for a month, he turned out to be right good-sized, and younger than he looked when he first come around.

  The dog got so he followed me everywhere. Pretty soon, he was sleeping in the house, and rode in the truck like a person. We got in the habit of riding over to a little country store a few miles away every day after supper to get us a five-cent ice cream cup. I’d eat mine with a wooden spoon and he’d lick his clean.

  I named him Grady. We had many long conversations, him being almost as good a listener as Sally Mule. “What makes a man take pleasure in killing other men, Grady? I didn’t start out like that, just seemed to happen.” He would sit and watch as though he was interested, then give me a sloppy cheek kiss when I was through. Grady showed up just when I needed him.

  Thanksgiving Day that year came in cold. The sky was a deep cobalt blue, but the bright sun didn’t offer much warmth. Since there was only Grady and me, I didn’t want any big meal, just some chicken and dumplings from a can. After dinner, I went for a walk in the sunshine. At the edge of the yard, I remembered Momma and Daddy driving off the last time I ever saw them, her blowing kisses and laughing. Grady followed me behind the house to the old iron pot, and I thought about the time Grandma and me sat plucking a chicken, seeing her patient smile when I asked questions, and the way her nose wrinkled when her glasses slipped down. In the woodshed, I sat on the kindling stump and relistened to Granddaddy’s stories of the old days, and what he intended to be life lessons for my future days. And I remembered the funerals for all of them.

  I thought about Fancy when she was a little girl, scared of anything that went bump in the night, and how she’d become my partner, willing to stand with me and face the world. I missed her a lot.

  Thanksgiving night the temperature dropped low, and Grady decided he wanted to snuggle under the quilt. I slept deep and dreamed I was walking in fields of clover. The day turned to night and I lay down in the sweet-smelling grass. Huy was lying next to me, the watch I gave him stuffed in his mouth. The air filled with fireflies; they began to attack me like a swarm of angry bees. Lightning was speaking some Vietnamese gibberish to the fireflies while he struggled to pull bullets from his chest. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  Grady woke me licking my face. In the darkness I got up, put on clothes, grabbed the gun on the way out the door, and headed to the woods. Grady wanted to follow, but I chased him back to the house. At the edge of the field, I slid to the ground beside an oak tree. The butt of the Remington went between my knees, and the barrel under my chin. I closed my eyes. “God forgive me for what I’ve done. I ask for mercy.” I thought about Mo and hoped he had prayed for me.

  I lifted my eyes to a sky lit bright with stars and a winter white moon, and located the Big Dipper. I wanted to keep that vision as I passed from this world. I wondered if it would hurt. My finger tightened on the trigger.

  Something touched my leg. I opened my eyes. It was Grady. “Git, dog! Get your ass out of here!” I needed to get this over with. I shifted the rifle and slapped at him. He ran a few feet and stopped.

  I moved the barrel back beneath my chin. Grady came again, whining and pawing. I moved the gun. It was my intention to hit and run him off, but things got mixed up. Instead, I pulled him to my lap and buried my face in his fur. Grady lay in my arms, his nose against my neck. After a while, we went back to the house and the bed. Grady slipped under the covers, and I slept without dreaming for the first time in months.

  CHAPTER 57

  We got back home after getting ice cream on a warm, cloudy night in the middle of December. Grady sat with me on the couch while I watched television and dozed. His head was in my lap when I felt him stiffen. He jumped to the floor. “What’s the matter?” Grady stared out the front window and growled, the first time I’d ever heard him make an angry sound. I thought back to another night when men in white sheets were perfectly willing to kill me, and picked up the rifle that leaned against the wall in the corner. I eased around the doorway, sliding against the wall, staying in the dark. The hair on Grady’s back bristled and he stayed between the door and me. I could make out a shadow just beyond the porch steps. “You best be making some noise.” I clicked off the safety.

  “So, I come to visit and you want to shoot me, Junebug?”

  I froze. It couldn’t be. I switched on the outside light. “Fancy? Is that you, Fancy?” I pushed Grady aside, jerked open the screen door, leaped over the steps, grabbed her in my arms, and swung her around, laughing. Grady followed me, barking and running in circles. I set Fancy down and put my hands on both sides of her face. “Please, God, don’t let this be a dream.”

  She laughed. “I’ve missed you too, Junebug.” She pulled my hands down. “I promise I’m real.”

  “When did you get home? I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

  “Got here this morning, needed to make sure Momma was all right since Daddy died. She about pushed me out the door after supper.”

  “You don’t know how happy I am to see you, Fancy.” I stuttered like some country bumpkin, trying to think of the right things to say. “How long are you staying?”

  “A couple of weeks maybe.”

  I took her hand. “Come in here. I’ve got to get a good look at you.” I noticed her palm and fingers had lost their calluses.

  Fancy slipped her arm into the crook of my elbow. “Since it’s not too cool, why don’t we sit on the porch awhile.” She leaned her head against my shoulder and pointed at the sky. “You have any idea how many times I’ve looked up there and wondered where you were and if you were all right?”

  She held herself different, the way she sat, even the way she crossed her legs. This was a new, self-assured, refined, and worldly-looking Fancy. Her hair was cut straight and softened with light red streaks. The bell-bottom jeans and paisley shirt were a big change from the flour-sack dresses her momma used to make. I couldn’t help wondering how much she might have changed on the inside. “So, tell me what you’re doing to get by in France.” We held hands like two teenagers. I couldn’t stop smiling.

  “Before Mrs. France
tti left for Italy, she introduced me to a friend who ran a café concert, it’s like a restaurant with music, and the lady gave me a job as a hostess. I’ve been doing it ever since. The French don’t like Americans very much, but seem to like black Americans. They have this idea we’re all jazz singers.” She giggled. “Makes me feel bad that I can’t sing.” As soon as she rolled those playful blackberry eyes, the years started to peel away.

  “You’ve done good for yourself. I can see it in you, Fancy.” What I saw was that butterfly that had broken from her cocoon, stretched her wings, and was no longer afraid of the world.

  “You look some older, Junebug, them blue eyes are harder than I remember.” She ran her fingers along the side of my temple.

  “War can change a person, Fancy.” The weight of the last four years hit me all of a sudden. I realized this was the moment that had kept me going. I would tell her all of it if she asked.

  She reached under my chin and pulled my head around to meet her eyes. “That’s over now.” Just like always, Fancy knew how to make the world seem not so desperate. We talked into the night about her adventures getting to where she was now. “If you hadn’t helped me with the money, Junebug, I’d still be saying ‘yes’um’ to all the white ladies in this community.”

  I passed on the truth. “It was only a little push for you, Fancy. You did the rest on your own. I’m really proud of you.”

  We went inside and sat next to each other on the couch. “Want to thumb-wrestle?” Fancy grinned.

  Both of us laughed, remembering the beauty of innocence that belonged to another lifetime. I reached my arm around her and pulled close, searching for some way to find the time we’d lost. The laughing was what I’d missed the most. The more we talked, the more the strangeness and awkwardness began to fall away like snow off a warm roof. I pulled her up and she followed me to the bedroom.

  We lay facing each other on the bed. I kissed her. Fancy laid her hand against my chest. “Tonight can you hold me and we just talk, Junebug? Four years is a long time. I want us to know each other again. Do you understand?”

  There was that seemingly constant question in my life. “Is there somebody else?”

  “It’s not that at all. I’ve just spent so many years keeping my heart covered against the pain of being alone and scared, it’s not easy to let go. I need to know you’re Junebug, the Junebug I remember.”

  I let out a deep breath. We lay across the bed, and I moved my arm beneath Fancy’s neck and pulled her head to my chest. It was a relief. I’d been scared to death too. “Where do you want to start?”

  She curled into me, her arm across my stomach. “Tell me about the war. What did you do?”

  “Are you sure you want to hear about that?”

  “Yes.”

  There in the darkness, I told Fancy everything: about being a sniper, what it was like to hunt and kill other men, about Snake, about Moses, and the hardest part—about Huy. By the end, the tears flowed. It wasn’t sorry-crying, more like emptying a bucket I’d been toting for a long time. It felt like freedom, like I’d crossed the last road home.

  I thought I would be embarrassed, but Fancy wouldn’t let me. She simply held on, not asking questions. “Thank you for trusting me, Junebug. Your heart was always good. I know God will give you the peace you need.”

  We spent an amazing night discovering each other again, replaying childhood things, laughing, sitting in the kitchen at three in the morning while she fixed what she called crepes and I called craps. “Make me some biscuits, woman.” And she did. In the morning, I drove her home. Mr. Wilson was standing in his yard, but wouldn’t look at me.

  * * *

  When she came the next night, we sat on the couch. Grady snuggled between us, and we talked over how concerned she was about her momma being alone now. “Will you check on her for me, Junebug?”

  “You know I will, and I promise won’t no harm come to her.”

  Fancy told me stories about the odd habits of French people, laughing about her trying to get used to the food. “I haven’t had any pig tails or turnip greens in a long time, but I did eat some snails.” After a while, she got to her feet and took my hand. “Come on.”

  “Where we going?”

  “To find some memories.” I followed her outside and past the tobacco barn. We turned up the path toward the stumps. The night woods were cold, quiet except for the crunch of brittle oak leaves under our shoes. Winter limbs stretched like bony fingers, and there was a frown on the face of the full moon. I heard the hoot owl call.

  Fancy ran her hand over the letters I carved in the oak tree that first Christmas. “This was when we didn’t think the world would hurt us on purpose, wasn’t it, Junebug?”

  “I remember your momma saying we’d find out what an ugly face the devil had, and I guess we did.” I looked up through the treetops. “You remember when we stood right here one night and tried to figure out how folks got to heaven?”

  “I thought then we’d ride on the backs of angels.”

  “What do you think now?”

  “I don’t know. I’d like to believe my daddy’s up there, and your grandma. Maybe she was able to help him.” She put her arms around my neck and drew me to her. “I love you, Junebug, and always have. You were strong when I needed it, and you showed me a real man is gentle and kind. Even when it got bad, I knew you’d stand by me and protect me. I’ll always be grateful for that.”

  Just like in the jungle, I felt what I couldn’t see. I was afraid to move.

  “I need to ask you something.” Fancy leaned her head back, watching my eyes. “Lightning’s not coming back, is he?”

  The words I’d intended to say changed from the time they left my head to when they reached my mouth. I pushed her to arm’s length. “Why would you think I have any idea about that?”

  She held my face, not letting me look away. “After all these years not hearing from him, I considered something might have happened you never told me.”

  You lying bastard, tell her the truth. “Do you really think if I knew anything, I wouldn’t have told you?”

  Fancy’s shoulders sank. She started to cry, sobs choking in her voice. “I just thought maybe . . .” Her words trailed off.

  All these years I’d tortured myself when the only thing I’d done was keep myself from getting killed. I wanted to scream at her, “Would you have felt better if he had killed me? I did everything but beg him to let it go, just leave, but he wouldn’t. So, you want to hate me, go ahead. Your brother was a murderer and I’m sick of feeling bad about saving my own life.” But I didn’t. “The only thing I know about Lightning is what I told you. I took him to the bus station and that’s the last time I saw him.”

  Fancy didn’t come back the next day. She knew. At least I was pretty sure she knew.

  Two nights later, Grady started wiggling and barking. Fancy was standing on the steps. I opened the door. “Thought maybe something was wrong.”

  “Just needed some time with Momma.”

  We went to the living room. “Fancy, I need you to believe I don’t have any idea where Lightning is.” As far as I could remember, it was the only lie I had ever told her.

  She held up her hand. “It’s okay, Junebug. He’s probably right not to get in touch with us. At least he won’t give these white sons of bitches the pleasure of hanging him.”

  * * *

  The rest of the two weeks, Fancy and I were together as much as possible. Lightning was always there, like an invisible witness, but he didn’t interfere, maybe understanding his truth was gone forever. I believe Fancy understood that whatever happened to Lightning was for the best.

  On our last night together, she asked if I would take her to the airport. “Why don’t you stay, Fancy?”

  We lay facing each other. She kissed my forehead, running her hand down the side of my face. “I can’t, Junebug. To me this place represents nothing but hate. I’ve worked hard to find where it feels I belong, and don’t want
to give that up. Every step along the way I was scared, but I’m not scared anymore.” Fancy kissed me. “You could sell the farm and come with me. It’s peaceful there, you’d like it.”

  I knew I’d never be able to sleep beside Fancy night after night knowing I’d betrayed her. “It is a temptation, but, like you said, it’s a place you found where it feels you belong. The only way to be completely free of this life is to be away from everything that reminds you of it, and that includes me.”

  That night our lovemaking was gentle, giving, and forgiving.

  We sat holding hands until her flight to New York was called. Fancy started crying, and I wanted to. We stood and hugged. I looked into her beautiful eyes. “We’ve had quite a time, haven’t we, Fancy?”

  She stepped back, and, despite the tears, gave me that amazing smile. “You’re the best man I’ve ever known, Junebug Hurley.” She turned and walked toward the entrance to the airplane, stopped, looked back, and pointed toward the sky.

  EPILOGUE

  Lawyer Stern’s predictions came true. Folks were all over looking for land to build new houses. A real estate man visited me one morning and offered ten thousand dollars an acre for the farm. I could sell forty of the fifty acres; that much money should do me nicely for the future, so I decided to take it. Mr. Stern separated the deed and put the house and ten acres of land in Clemmy Stroud’s name. She cried when I carried her the title. “Clemmy, you don’t ever have to be beholden to anybody again.” It would never repay what I had done to her child, but it was something. A week later, Clemmy told Mr. Wilson to look after his own wife, and I helped her move in. We shared the house, some of the best days I ever spent; I could almost feel Grandma smiling. It felt good knowing Clemmy would be living so close to Lightning. Maybe his spirit would know she was there.

  Fancy and I continued to exchange letters on and off over the next few years until the spring of 1974, when I received a large envelope from her. Inside were a big picture and a short note. The picture showed Fancy dressed in a long white gown, flowers in her hair, her face as beautiful as I could ever have imagined, and on the back she wrote: “To Junebug: On clear nights I still watch the sky.” The note said she had met someone and was getting married. I was happy for her, but have to admit it hurt a fair amount. The hardest thing to miss is love, and I missed it mighty bad.