Fourmile

by Watt Key

  “I don’t think there’s much they can do for that barn, ma’am.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “But you don’t want those sparks fallin’ on your roof or settin’ your pasture on fire.”

  Mother shook her head.

  “You seem like a nice lady,” he said. “If you don’t mind me askin’, how’d you get mixed up with Dax and them?”

  “I don’t know the Hadley brothers,” she said. “I mean, I just met them once when they bought a tractor from us.”

  “If you know Dax well enough, then you ought to know Colby and Cox Hadley.”

  “I didn’t know him well enough,” Mother said.

  “They’ve been runnin’ together since they were teenagers. Into trouble most of the time.”

  Mother didn’t answer.

  Officer Green glanced at me, then faced Mother again. “This doesn’t surprise me,” he said.

  The door opened and Officer Tate stepped inside. The sirens were louder now and seemed near to turning onto our driveway.

  “They found two shotguns thrown into the pasture,” Officer Tate said.

  “The Hadleys’?”

  “We think so. And Marcy got back to me on our mystery man. The guy’s a deserter.”

  “Deserter?” Mother repeated.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  None of them looked at me.

  “That’s right,” Officer Tate continued. “Left Virginia three months ago. Went home on leave, never reported back for duty.”

  “That’s all?” Mother said.

  “As far as we know.”

  Mother looked down and took a deep breath. The sirens ceased and I heard the groan of the big diesel engine as it downshifted in the driveway.

  “What’s a deserter?” I asked again.

  “He left the military without permission,” Officer Tate said.

  Suddenly I knew what Mother was thinking. “But that’s not bad,” I said.

  “He’ll go to prison for it,” the older policeman said.

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know,” Officer Green said. “We’re just supposed to arrest him and turn him over to the military. That kind of thing’s handled by the Feds. And I don’t know what they’ll think about all this.”

  “I told you he was protecting us,” Mother said.

  “Whatever’s goin’ on out there now ain’t self-defense,” Officer Tate said. “But they’ve got a canine unit on the way. He won’t get far.”

  I leaped from the sofa and rushed for the back door.

  “Foster!” Mother yelled.

  “Where’s he goin’!” I heard Officer Green shout.

  43

  They might have yelled for me again, but all I heard was the roar of the fire engine as it charged along the side of the house like it would run me down. I circled wide around the heat and glow of the burning barn, covering my mouth against the ash swirling in my face. I kept on through the back gate where the air was clean and wet field grass slapped against my ankles and soaked my shoes. I heard men yelling and generators rumbling, but I had mostly wind in my ears. I kept my eyes focused on the wall of dark trees rising across the pasture. I tripped and rolled, got up, kept on.

  The chaos of Fourmile fell behind me, but remained clear like something over a lake. Soon I heard a dog barking from down in the creek bottom. I kept on into the tree shadow and finally came up against the woods, before the old logging road. I stopped and caught my breath and stared at the darkness before me. Kabo sounded out of it like something through a culvert pipe. Gary had gone in there. It seemed everything I loved was sucked into that black hole.

  “Gary,” I said.

  I stepped into the trees and a heavier darkness fell over me like a cloak. Kabo’s barking wasn’t far. Just beyond it I heard someone curse, then something crashing in the underbrush.

  “Gary!” I called out.

  Kabo grew silent, then I heard him running toward me through the broad gum leaves. A dark shadow rushed up and rubbed against my thigh. I reached down for him and he backed away and turned and barked in the direction of the creek. I grabbed his collar and he jerked me forward.

  Kabo pulled me down the logging road, deeper into the bottom. I tripped along beside him until I sensed we were close to the ravine. Suddenly he stopped and whined at something ahead.

  “Gary?” I said.

  “Foster,” he said through the darkness. His voice was strained like someone in a struggle. “You need to go back.”

  He was on the ground, not ten yards away, but it was too dark to make out anything.

  “Gary, I—”

  Dax suddenly screamed with desperation in a way that I’d never heard come from a man. Fear raced up my neck and I pulled Kabo back a step. I heard sticks breaking and more struggling in the leaves. Kabo barked furiously and strained at his collar like he would drag us both into the fight.

  “Gary!” I yelled.

  I heard the dull sound of meat getting punched, a groan, and all was still again. In the distance was the faint barking of police dogs.

  “Get out of here, Foster,” he said.

  I didn’t move.

  “Take Kabo back into the field.”

  Dax mumbled something and there was another brief struggle. I heard the click of the hammer on the Beretta. All was still again. The canine unit was coming fast across the field.

  “Get out of here, Foster,” he said again.

  “It doesn’t help me, Gary.”

  Gary didn’t respond right away. I heard Dax’s raspy breathing like his throat was being squeezed.

  “I’m in a fix, Foster,” Gary finally said.

  The dogs were close. I saw lights waving through the trees and heard voices.

  “I wanted to see this through for you and your mother. Can you tell her that?”

  “I want to come over there, Gary.”

  “Stay where you are.”

  “I can’t see you, Gary. I’m scared of the dogs. I want to come over there.”

  “No! Don’t move. Hold Kabo.”

  “Gary?”

  A bright light passed overhead then jerked down and I saw Gary backed against a tree. He clamped Dax’s head viselike in the crook of his knee, the other leg locked around the ankle in a triangle hold. He held his bad arm up to shield his eyes while the other fixed the Beretta to Dax’s temple. Dax’s eyes were wide and blinking like a goat caught by a python.

  “Drop the gun!” a police officer yelled.

  Gary slowly moved the Beretta away and dropped it into the leaves. I pulled Kabo to me and hugged him close around the neck. The German shepherds came past me, leaping against their body harnesses and digging their back legs into the damp soil. There was more shouting now from all the men behind them, but it was all too confusing to understand. Someone grabbed me and pulled me up.

  “Come on, Foster,” came Officer Tate’s voice.

  “Hands in the air!” someone yelled.

  Gary held up both his hands and unclasped his legs so that Dax rolled away. Officer Tate pulled on me again. I turned just as Gary disappeared beneath the swarm of men.

  44

  Officer Tate grabbed my wrist with one hand and Kabo’s collar with the other. Clamping his flashlight in his mouth, he hurried us out of the creek bottom. Once we stepped into the field again he stopped. The dogs behind us weren’t barking as much and the men weren’t shouting. Kabo was calmer and Officer Tate passed him back to me and took the flashlight from his mouth.

  “You got him?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  It looked like a spaceship had landed on Fourmile with fire truck, ambulance, and police car lights blinking and flashing. The fire truck also had a floodlight that lit up the ground past even the back fence. The barn fire was out but the charred smell of it drifted over us.

  As we drew closer I saw the black skeleton of the barn hissing and popping and smoldering. One am
bulance had pulled away, but the firemen were still wetting the embers and the yard was alive with radios squawking and men shouting across the lawn at one another.

  Mother was waiting for us at the back door.

  “He’s okay,” Officer Tate said to her. “Go inside, Foster.”

  I expected her to wrap her arms around me, but she didn’t. She acted distant and tired. She stared over the pasture and touched the top of my head as I passed. I walked Kabo through the kitchen and into the living room. Before I had time to sit, Office Green came through the front door. He saw me and took a deep breath. Then he looked over my shoulder at Mother.

  “All right,” he said. “Both of you sit down and don’t move until we get everybody where they need to be.”

  I sat on the sofa and Kabo lay down at my feet and I released my hold on his collar. Another ambulance rushed past the window and continued toward the back field.

  “You think they’ll let us talk to Gary?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  A few minutes later the posse came in from the pasture. The dogs were silent and all I heard was the jingling of their harnesses and footfalls. Kabo whined and started to stand, but I pressed him down. The men said a few words in the front yard and then I heard car doors shutting. I got up so I could see out the window.

  “Foster,” Mother said.

  I stepped closer and tried to see Gary through the men and lights, but I couldn’t.

  Officer Green came through the front door again and saw me. “Sit down, kid.”

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “He almost killed him,” Officer Green said. “He’s on the way to the hospital with the Hadley brothers.”

  “I meant Gary.”

  “He’s okay. They’ve got him in the car out there.”

  “Can I talk to him?” I asked.

  “He’ll be at the Robertsdale jail. You can go talk to him there if you want.”

  * * *

  It was close to eleven o’clock before Mother was through dealing with the policemen and firemen. We drove to the Robertsdale jail and the night clerk signed us in and escorted us down the hall to a steel door. He unlocked it and ushered us inside. “He’s the only one in there,” he said. “Go on in.”

  We entered a short hall with two cells. A big clock like the one in my classroom ticked loudly overhead. At the end of the room was a television that wasn’t on. Gary sat on a cot in the far cell, slowly wiping his face with a washcloth. His arms were streaked with briar cuts. When he looked up at us, I saw his face was just as bad. Mother stopped and put her arm around my chest and pulled me to her.

  “How are you?” she said to him.

  He draped the washcloth over the end of the bed. “A little tired,” he said.

  “How’s your arm?”

  He glanced down at the dirt-smeared bandage. “Feels like it held under there,” he said. “You did a good job.”

  They studied each other. Neither of them seemed to know what to say.

  “You want me to get anything for you?” she finally asked.

  He shook his head. After a moment Gary stood and came to the bars and held them like I’d seen in so many prison scenes. He was still looking at her when he said, “I’m fine, Linda. There’s nothing left to do.”

  Her arm dropped from my chest and she slid past me and touched his hand and pulled away again. “I’m going to leave you with Foster,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said.

  He watched her go. Afterward I stood there looking at my shoes, listening to the clock ticking.

  “Why’d you leave the army?” I asked.

  “I got scared,” he said.

  I shook my head. “No you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  I swallowed back the tears.

  “I was going to tell you about it,” he said. “I was going to tell you why I had to go. I wanted you to know it wasn’t anything you did. It wasn’t anything you or your mother could have changed. I’d give anything for things to be different.”

  “Tell me everything’s going to be okay, Gary.”

  “You just have to keep moving ahead. You’ll make good decisions and you’ll be a great boy and a great man. But you have to move on. You can’t be afraid.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “You go to Montgomery with your mother and you make your life there. The rest will be fine.”

  “How do you know, Gary?”

  “Because I’m older than you. That’s how I know.”

  “But we never got to go camping and I still haven’t caught the fish—”

  “Stop that, Foster.”

  I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “You’re not my daddy,” I said.

  “I know I’m not.”

  I reached my arms through the bars of the cell and pressed my face against his chest and cried into his shirt. There was nothing left to say.

  45

  Gary was sentenced to six years in Leavenworth for desertion. All assault charges against him were dropped. After their conviction, Dax and the Hadley brothers were taken away to Holman State Prison, each of them carrying a life sentence for attempted murder.

  The first few months Gary and I wrote each other every week. He didn’t tell me much about what it was like in prison, mostly what he wanted to do when he got out. His plans never mentioned coming to see us. They were always about the Spanish gold and his ideas of how he might go about finding it. They were strange letters, more like he was talking to himself than to me. They didn’t sound like the Gary I remembered.

  Mother never spoke of him. She saw the letters come to me, but she never opened them and never asked me about them. I wrote back about Kabo, our house, my new school, friends, and the baseball team. There was a lot to tell, but, like Gary, I also had things I didn’t want him to know. My letters grew less frequent and his shorter. As winter gave way to spring and baseball they had all but stopped.

  Our new house was only a few blocks from Carlisle Middle School and the public park where we had our games. I impressed the coach enough to start most of the time and usually played next to Cory in the outfield. I also pitched relief if Blake, our first-string pitcher, wasn’t there.

  Grandmother passed away that winter and Granddaddy moved in with us. He came to all of my games and sat in the stands and studied our plays. He knew a lot more about baseball than he did about farming. As we walked home he’d give me a recap of the game and his encouragement and advice as to how we could improve.

  In May we made the city playoffs and lost by just one run. We were all disappointed, but for the first time in years I felt a part of something bigger than me. The health of that feeling was stronger than any disappointment.

  School let out for summer and I joined Cory and Blake and the other kids for daily baseball at the park. The first day I stood in the outfield, backed up close to the edge of the woods. The smell of cut grass sat heavy in the mid-morning heat and the sound of cicadas rose and fell behind me. The combination of these things took me back to Fourmile, painting the fence next to the blacktop, watching Gary walking toward me through the vapory air.

  That night I wrote what would be my last letter to him. It was longer than usual. I told him about the playoff game and how close we’d come. I told him about the campout I’d had with the church youth group. Finally, I told him that he’d been right. Mother and I were happy in Montgomery. I sealed the letter and got up from the kitchen table and placed it on the counter. Kabo stood and got next to me and I reached down and scratched him behind the ears.

  “Come on, boy,” I said.

  * * *

  I never heard from Gary again and I was thankful for it. As much as he meant to me at Fourmile, he was the tail end of something terrible and beautiful that was too hurtful to parse out.

  One day I’ll drive past Fourmile to see if it looks as I remember it. To see the giant pecan tree standing alone at the edge of the orchard. To run my
eyes over the pasture and search for that same thing Granddaddy was searching for in the old beach house. It doesn’t scare me now. I know I’ll see what he saw. I’ll see nothing. I figured that out on my own. It had never really been about Fourmile at all. It was never about the place, it was about the memories. And I owned those memories and they never got left anywhere.

  GOFISH

  questions for the author

  WATT KEY

  When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?

  I wrote my first story when I was ten. It was about a collie surviving a tornado. I was into Jim Kjelgaard, a writer of dog books, then, and I wanted to try and make stories like his. I kept writing short stories for fun throughout the rest of my prep school days. My high school creative writing teacher convinced me that I had talent as an author and this gave me the idea that maybe I was meant to be a writer. It wasn’t until my sophomore year in college that I knew this for certain. I was running the outdoor skills department at a boys’ camp in Texas. I was alone and far away from home, with lots of free time in a little cabin by the Guadalupe River. I wrote my first novel there. Although it was a terrible book that will never be published, it was the most satisfying thing I’d ever done. After that summer, I continued to write a novel a year without regard to whether it would be published or not. I’d written ten novels by the time Alabama Moon sold.

  What was your worst subject in school?

  I remember making an 88 out of 100 on just about every test I took in high school, regardless of the subject. So I wasn’t an outstanding student, but neither was I a poor one. At my school, 88 was about average. Before I went to college, my parents took me to see a psychologist in New Orleans. I went through a series of aptitude tests that were supposed to help us decide what profession I was best suited for. Basically, I scored an 88 on everything. The conclusion was that I would always have a hard time deciding what I wanted to be because none of my abilities seemed to stand out above the rest. This didn’t help me directly, but ever since then, I’ve been conscious of the fact that I need to specialize in one thing to be outstanding at anything. For example, as much as I would like to play a musical instrument, I don’t. I shun it like a bad vice. I know I would enjoy it too much and it would take away from my focus on being the best writer I can be.