The Color of My Native Sky

by L D Bloodworth

“Was it Billy Charlie?”

  He cleared his throat, his round belly heaving. “Yes, hon, it’s him.”

  There was a moment when her legs felt nonexistent and everything around seemed to be shrouded in some weird haze. Sound was far off in the distance as a heavy pressure enveloped her.

  What would she tell Charlotte? Maybe she already knew. The cops would notify her first, wouldn’t they?

  She had to get back into Billy’s room. She had to see what other secrets his computer kept hidden and what, if anything, Randall knew.

  Before she got any further with her own investigation, grief began to weave its icy tethers around her heart and pull it down into that black place of sorrow.

  Someone, somewhere knew what happened to Billy Charlie.

  The day before they put Billy in the ground, Edie went to visit Charlotte again. She had no qualms about Edie going into his room this time, but said that his computer was gone.

  “Who took it?”

  “Your father said the police wanted it for their investigation.”

  Had they not lived in such a small town, the sheriff would have already retrieved all of Billy’s things. He had presumed that no one would disturb them. He was wrong.

  She knew Sheriff Landry didn’t send Randall to get that computer. Why would he? Charlotte would’ve brought it straight to him if he couldn’t come himself. Was he protecting someone? She wondered if the man Billy was seeing was part of the congregation, maybe that was why her father acted like he was trying to hide something.

  Then a vile thought edged in from the farthest reaches of her mind. She couldn’t even consider it at first, but it would not leave. It couldn’t be true, but it had to be. What else would drive her father to his current state? What else could make him risk everything to interfere in a police investigation?

  She forced the obvious conclusion to the forefront of her mind and faced it head on, ugly as it was.

  The woman Billy was planning to confront was her mother.

  22

  Nothing was the same. The kitchen where she sat and talked about school and hurt feelings and field trips felt foreign and fake. Everything she thought she knew was upside down.

  “There’s coffee and donuts in the kitchen, Edie.”

  Today, she would watch them put her friend in the ground. Coffee and donuts seemed inadequate.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Honey,” her mother put her arm around her and began rubbing her shoulders. She gathered Edie’s hair into her hand and swept it away from her face. “You have to keep up your strength. I don’t think I’ve seen you eat a thing for two days. Now, do you think Billy would want you to do yourself in because of this?”

  Before she could bury her friend, she was going to have to try and forgive him. Not for keeping his secret, but for making her believe that she was such an important part of his life when she wasn’t.

  She felt used.

  She tried hard not to be angry, knowing what madness Skylar cast over her. She understood what it was to want.

  Guilt washed over her in alternating waves of pain, anger, and shame.

  Randall was…

  Billy’s lover.

  What was she supposed to do with that? How do you compartmentalize the fact that everything you thought you knew about life and love and the world is wrong?

  And then she hated.

  She hated her father for all the times he made Billy suffer, for all the times he made him feel like he wasn’t lovable. She thought back to the times when there were fresh slashes across the undersides of his arms where he’d taken his pain out on himself.

  And who had caused his death? Someone had tracked her friend down, shot him, and left him to die in Skylar’s back yard.

  Who could have been so afraid of him, his secrets, that they would kill?

  “Mother?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “What do you know about Billy?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Edie. Now, eat something. We’ll have to leave shortly.”

  “You and I both know something happened between them. How can you stay with him?”

  She froze, donut in one hand.

  “It’s what I’m supposed to do, isn’t it? Stay no matter what? Through all the pain, the neglect, the lies.”

  “No, mom, it isn’t.”

  Shelly reached across the table for her purse, bringing it in front of her and hugging it to her as if she were weighing its contents. She pulled Billy’s cell phone from the side pocket and turned it over in her hands.

  “I found Billy’s phone in the garage one night after they had been working on the motorcycle. I stuck it in my purse, thinking I would give it to Charlotte when I saw her for lunch the next day. The thing kept buzzing inside my bag, so I picked it up to try and turn it off when I noticed that the texts were coming from your father’s number.” Her mother pushed the phone toward Edie, then held herself, crossing her arms over her heart and shaking. “They were, salacious, Edie.”

  “I know.”

  “You mean you knew?”

  “And you had to know, too, mother.”

  She rose, crossed to the window above the sink and looked out over the backyard as if expecting to find something there. A grim smile came when she said, “Oh, I knew your father had been confused about these things when he was younger. I thought, after all these years, I hoped, that he had conquered those sins.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “I’m sorry, Edie. I tried to make everything perfect for you girls. I prayed for him, for us, constantly. He is wrestling with demons that I do not understand.”

  “But why? Why did you marry him if you knew this?”

  “Why do we do anything? I loved him. I still do, Edie.”

  “Do you think he had something to do with Billy’s death?”

  “Your father would never hurt Billy.”

  “He hurt Billy every time he went to that podium and told him that God did not love him. That he was filth, trash to be sent to the heap. Don’t tell me he loved him. He used him.”

  Randall stood in the doorway, lost eyes and hollow flesh, hardly recognizable.

  “Randall. She knows.” Her mother moved toward him, rubbing his shoulder. “No more secrets. I told her that you would never hurt Billy.”

  He turned and made for his study. Edie followed after.

  She was met with the study door as he slammed it behind him. Managing to twist the handle before he was able to lock himself in, Edie rushed inside to find him slumped over his desk, at the work of self-mutilation. He had taken to using the white-gore pen for this dark and tortuous procedure, stabbing it into the back of his hand as the blood bloomed from the old scar.

  “Stop!” she cried, grasping for the pen to no avail. “Just stop it! It’s too late for you to feel guilty. It’s too late!”

  He sniffed, trying to stem the flow of tears. All at once, he rushed her, grabbing her by her shirt with both hands and shoving her backward.

  “I know,” he said, “I know what you think. I know what it looks like.”

  “You killed him. You tortured him and you used him up and then you killed him!”

  “I didn’t!” He cowed toward her, sobbing. “I loved him, Edie. I know you can’t believe that, but in my own way, I did.”

  “Liar! Everything that has ever come out of your mouth is a lie! Every time you went to the podium, especially the last time. Was it because you argued? Were you arguing over whether to tell mom?”

  “I did not hurt him. I swear.”

  **

  No one had expected anything less of him, since he was Billy’s pastor and friend. Edie almost expected him to delegate it to the associate pastor due to the mysterious illness he was suffering from, but she heard her mother tell him that Charlotte had specifically requested that he be the one to deliver the eulogy.

  They were seated on cold wooden pews, crammed together in the auditorium of the church where the smell of artificially pres
erved flowers and embalming fluid mingled together in a bittersweet cloud. They watched the line of people pass through the church and up to the coffin where, ordinarily, they would view the body. Since the back of Billy Charlie’s head was missing, they decided against it.

  The portly Mrs. Wheeler came in front of them, shuffling sideways between the pews, adjusting her pillbox hat.

  “Good of your father to deliver the eulogy in his condition, don’t you think, girls?” she said, her tongue dripping syrup.

  They nodded and bowed their heads, praying she would move along. Instead, she heaved her considerable weight onto the pew in front of them, bathing them in the cloying scent of cheap jasmine perfume and Juicy Fruit gum.

  Her mother rubbed Charlotte’s back and passed her a tissue, answering for her whenever someone came up to shake her hand or hug her. She would nod her head, look to Charlotte, rub her shoulder, and send the visitors on their way as she welcomed the next person in line. It was just like a shepherd would herd sheep through the loading chute. Inoculate them, move them along, send them off to slaughter.

  She didn’t wanna think about Billy in that metal box and she was glad that she hadn’t had to see him lying there, made up in clown paint, his eyes and mouth sewn shut like some kind of ragdoll. She was glad she hadn’t had to go up there and stand over him and smell his death mingled with perfume and flowers and Juicy Fruit.

  She felt so ashamed for every time she ever complained. Sorry for all the terrible thoughts she’d had about any of those people, whether she liked them or not, and she hung her head, unable to look at them. She wished to be back at that age where the veil was still in place and she was shielded from the faults and flaws of every human being including herself, to be protected from the clear and brutal truth: we are all hideous and dying.

  When her father took the podium, everything fell silent. He tapped a white pen on one side of the podium with his right hand, the left hand resting beside his open bible. She couldn’t help but think of the white-gore pen and if he had spent the morning making the wounds beneath the bandages on his hands deeper.

  His pallor was that of sour milk, mostly white with touches of the greenish-gray color that you turn just before you faint. When he opened his mouth to speak, his voice broke as he read the chosen verse.

  “The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.”

  After a long pause, he added, “I think most of us knew Billy to be a good young man troubled by a besetting sin. Perhaps it was the Lord’s will to take him on to Paradise so that it would not lead to the damnation of his eternal soul. We should all be so lucky.”

  He glared out at the crowd, lost for words, searching the faces for some hint, some clue as to what he was supposed to say, the truth of it eating away at him like a worm eats its way out of a rotten apple.

  The days of the stain were upon us.

  “May God have mercy on us all.”

  He stepped away from the podium, reaching inside his jacket for his handkerchief which he dabbed his forehead with.

  It took a few minutes for what he said to sink into her grief-stricken mind and when it did, she was sickened. Billy was a human being, a friend and a son, not some kind of leper to be shunned and outcast and cursed.

  The people dispersed to the small graveyard across the street. Following the crowd, she watched her mother rubbing Charlotte’s shoulder, comforting her in the only way that she could. Charlotte collapsed in on herself when the pall bearers came to carry Billy out to the graveyard.

  Edie’s heart broke for her. She knew the pain she felt at having lost a friend was unbearable, she could not imagine the pain at having lost a child.

  The procession passed through town, a line of headlights that signified that they were burying their dead. The cars pulled into the graveyard silently, creeping up behind the hearse as it positioned itself closest to the grave.

  Randall didn’t say anything else at the grave. The associate pastor led everyone in prayer, and they lowered the casket into the ground. That’s when it began to feel real. All the cobwebs and the fogginess of the shock of the past couple of days vanished, leaving her mind and heart clear. And the crushing pain of grief descended.

  She fought against it, fought to hold herself together. She wanted Skylar. If she could have just sat with him, been near him, just for a little while, she felt like it might be okay. She might eventually be okay.

  Everyone eased away, two or three at a time, until only a handful were left. With nothing left to say or do, Edie withdrew from the grave and walked along the narrow drive toward the main road.

  She saw someone standing beside one of the massive oak trees that dotted the cemetery and had to look twice because she thought it was Skylar. She thought she saw, wanted to see, the thicket of brown hair, his clear sky-blue eyes, shocking against dark lashes.

  When she looked again, the apparition was gone and she felt closer to the ground than before.

  “Need a ride?”

  She turned back to the tree and this time, he was real. Tears poured down her face and neck and she ran to him, burying herself in his embrace.

  “You shouldn’t be here. They’re looking for you.”

  “I know. Rix called me and told me what was going on.”

  “Oh, my God, Skylar. I can’t believe you’re here. Thank you for coming.”

  “I just came because, well, to tell you,” he hesitated, “to let you know that somebody loves you.”

  “You don’t just run out on that.”

  23

  After inspecting Billy’s phone log, the cops found that a text had come from Skylar’s number and said that proved they had a connection. They said it looked suspicious that he had skipped town and they did, after all, find the body in his backyard.

  Was the whole world falling to pieces? Everything was upside down.

  “You don’t think he did it, do you?” Sara Beth asked, wringing her hands and trying not to look at Edie.

  “Of course he didn’t. Why would you even think that?”

  “I overheard mom telling Charlotte that Skylar was probably selling Billy Charlie drugs or something. That maybe it went bad.”

  “What? Skylar didn’t do this, Sara.”

  “How would you know? You said yourself he was unstable. What if it’s worse than you thought?”

  “I just know. I texted Billy from Skylar’s phone because Randall broke mine.”

  “Did you tell them that it was you?”

  “I tried to, but they don’t believe me. They think I’m covering for him.”

  The phone was ringing beneath the strained voices of their parents, who were locked in a room at the opposite end of the house. Looming over the entirety of it, was the fact that the sheriff was probably going to arrest Skylar.

  “Hello?”

  “Edie? This is Sheriff Landry. Your daddy around?”

  “Can he call you back? I don’t think he’s feeling well.”

  “Oh, uh, I suppose that’d be all right. Just give him a message, would ya? Let him know that we’re going to tell Charlotte that we got our man and that she might need someone to lean on.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “Skylar Wolfe.”

  It suddenly seemed too much of a burden to remain standing and she found herself slipping into the floor, a puddle of heartbreak and disgust and anger.

  **

  Edie watched her mother and father cross the parking lot to the sheriff’s office and knew they had been called to come retrieve their hysterical daughter.

  “Tell them you smashed my phone! Tell them!” she pounded on Randall’s chest until her fists hurt.

  Expressionless, he murmured, “No.”

  He turned from Edie and left the sheriff’s office. Her mother was there, her hand gliding across Edie’s shoulders, comforting.

  “Honey,” she whispered, “they don’t
really have any reason to charge him. They’re just holding him so he doesn’t leave town. In case.”

  “In case? I thought you had to have a warrant to hold someone. This is illegal.”

  “Actually, it’s not. I can hold him on the unpaid fines on the property taxes,” Sheriff Landry informed her.

  “But I thought,” Edie trailed off realizing that Skylar had lied about taking care of it. Or else he forgot. Sometimes she wondered where he went when he wandered off toward his own horizon.

  Edie saw Mrs. Wheeler toddling across the parking lot, her massive frame shifting from foot to foot as her skirt whipped around her legs. She struggled to keep the fabric pushed down below her knees with one hand and clutched a yellow folder and her purse in the other.

  The sky waxed a dingy purple hue behind her. Clouds, like pillars of steam that roiled and rose high up where the air was still clear, darkened with their fury. One stout gust flipped the skirt up above her knees and sent her into a bounding sprint.

  She stood in the doorway, taming her wiry gray hair and attempting to pull herself together, as she said, “Radio says it’s special alert day, Travis.”

  “Yes ma’am. We’ve already been advised, Mrs. Wheeler.”

  “And what about you, Edie? How’s your father?” She whispered the question as if he couldn’t hear her and was unloading her purse onto the reception desk before she could answer. It might have been the first time she didn’t make a bee line for Randall as soon as she saw him. The woman was under the delusion that it was her responsibility to keep him informed of the latest hearsay, regardless of whether it was true or not. Just as well to keep an eye on certain poor souls.

  “Now, Travis, tell me where you’re keeping Mr. Wolfe.”

  “What business do you have with the boy, now, Myrna?”

  “I have some information that might change your mind about holding him, Travis. I’ve already spoken to Judge Cline. He says I’m to talk to you since the boy is only being held for an unpaid tax lien. Which, by the way, has been paid.”

  She whirled a sheet of paper from her folder and slid it across to Travis.

  “Now, Myrna, this is none of your concern. And with Mr. Wheeler in the health he’s in, you’d do well to hang on to your money and not go wasting it on this punk.”