My family and the doctors all think I’ve lost my mind. I haven’t. The one child who still believed in me, still thought I was something like a good mother, is lost to me now. And it is too much. I would rather be alone with the cancer and surrounded by crazy old people than face my children.
It took a few weeks, but now all of my daughters come visit me at the Preserve Nursing Home and Care Facility in Mabry. What kind of name is the “Preserve”? Makes me think of those game preserves down in Florida that I’ve read about, where the rich guys go to pretend-hunt the pretend-wild animals. All of the workers here wear faded yellow smocks with “The Preserve—Your Loved Ones’ Home Away From Home!” embroidered in blue thread across the front.
My girls think I don’t know them but I do. Inside. I know them. Daisy comes every Monday and Wednesday morning. Rosie comes on Saturdays. And even Violet comes by on the weekends. She always says, “Hi, Momma, you’re looking well.” Vi was my firstborn. Looks more like my mother than any of the kids. She tells me about Owen, her second child, born almost fifteen years to the day after his sister. On my dresser sits a school picture in a frame with baseballs and bats around it. I look at the photo and wonder about the boy now almost in college. Is he happy? What does he know about his big sister? Does his mother love him enough? Does she love him too much?
Nobody should have to go through what Violet did. It didn’t just stop Vi’s heart, but mine and her daddy’s and Leroy’s, too. He and I had been seeing each other, off and on, for a few months when it happened. I kept ending it and then he’d show up at my back door clutching a handful of daisies when the kids were in school and Carter Sr. was away working. And I’d open the door.
God bless my Carter for never having more than one beer a night and for not touching the hard stuff. But Leroy couldn’t stay away from it. Their mother drank herself to death, so it’s in their blood, and Carter knew enough to keep his distance. But not Leroy. No, sir. He never came to me drunk, except the day it happened. I told him I’d never be with him when he was drinking. I hated the smell of it on a man’s breath. Now, that didn’t mean I couldn’t have a little vodka in my iced tea. That was different.
After Vi and Louis got married, they moved into the old Smith place around the corner from our house. It was so small it was more like a shack, but it was all they could afford, and Vi thought it was her own little palace. She thought they were going to live happily ever after and everything would be perfect from then on. Never mind that she was only sixteen and Louis nineteen. Cassie was born on July 6. Like half of my labors, Vi went too quick for us to get her to the hospital, so Pearlene and I delivered the baby at home. When I held Cassie in my arms for the first time, she looked up at me with blue eyes wider than the Gulf of Mexico, all seriouslike, until at last she blinked, as if she were saying, All right, you’re my grandma, you’ll do.
Took Cassie a long time to walk. Vi worried something might be wrong with her legs. I said the baby was so content in our arms, she didn’t see any need to walk around. Cassie didn’t spend more than two hours of her waking life not being held by her momma, her daddy, or me. The thing that finally got our girl to walk was the cows across the road. Pete McAllister kept four cows in his pasture, which faced Five Hills Road. Cassie could see those cows from her own front yard. I’d sit with her out on the porch and she’d point and make moo noises at them. About five months after her first birthday, she wiggled out of my lap, scooted off the porch, and stood up on wobbly legs, mooing as loud as she could. She took one step, then two. I yelled for Vi to come out.
We both watched as she took one more step before falling back on her bottom. She cried and cried, pointing at those cows. So we each took a hand and walked her across the street. You’d have thought those cows were Santa Claus and his flying reindeer the way Cassie carried on. She wanted to touch their soft brown ears and velvet chins. Vi and I just laughed and shook our heads. We’d been waiting for her to walk for so long and all it took was a sorry bunch of cows.
After that, Miss Cassie Louise took herself wherever she wanted. She about drove Vi crazy. Vi would be washing the dishes in the kitchen, hear the back door slam shut, and see Cassie taking off after a squirrel in the yard. Even though she hadn’t figured out how to walk down the stairs, she’d just scoot that little behind down each step and then throw her chubby legs over the side of the last one. I kept telling Vi to put a hook-and-eye latch up high on the doors. Cassie looked to be tall, like her daddy, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before she’d be able to reach all kinds of trouble. Vi paid me no mind.
“Momma, she’s just a baby,” she’d say. “You worry too much.”
Now, why is it that a woman who raised five children of her own is all of a sudden a worrier? I wasn’t a worrier. I knew. There are some children who don’t care to pull the books off every shelf or run into the street or pour turpentine down their throats. But then there are children who do, children who would be safer if they were tied down from the ages of one to five, until they developed some sense. Walking showed Cassie what she’d been missing curled up on her momma’s lap.
On a morning three weeks before Cassie’s second birthday, Vi was out in her backyard hanging the clothes on the line. The sun shone the way it does on a perfect September day, the heat of summer past us. Cassie busied herself taking all of the wet clothes out of the basket before her momma could hang them up. Vi kept telling her to stop it and she’d give her some old clothes to play with, but just as soon as Vi would turn around to hang a pair of pants up, Cassie would be right back in that basket, giggling the whole time. I don’t blame Vi for getting mad at her. Small children can drive you to drink more than a man can.
Carter Sr. was over in Tuscumbia again, working on the big bridge project. I knew Leroy would stop by. When Carter was away, Leroy would have lunch with me at the house while the children were in school. He’d park his car about a quarter of a mile up the road and then walk down. Small as Clayton was, we had to be careful.
Of course, lunch usually didn’t get eaten. We fell into bed as soon as he set foot in the door. Our loving was always hurried, breathless, needy. There was something about the way we came together—rougher and faster than with Carter.
After Vi yelled at Cassie to stop pulling out the clothes, the baby started to cry and Vi had had enough. She took her back in the house and put her in the crib. Then Vi went back outside. What happened after that we’ve only guessed at. I imagine our Cassie cried for a bit before she calmed down enough to look out the bedroom window, the one facing the street. And there were the brown cows, probably all lined up in a row as if they were waiting for her. So she took it upon herself to climb out of the crib, something she’d never done before, and get to the front door. Nobody in Clayton locked the doors back then. They probably don’t now, either. With Vi out back by the clothesline, there was no way she could have heard Cassie go out the door, no way at all.
I’ve thought about that day over and over again. If I’d gone to visit Cassie instead of waiting, less than a block away, for my husband’s brother to come over and screw me silly, things would have been different. It only took me two minutes to walk to Vi’s place. Two minutes from my front door to hers. Two minutes.
Leroy had planned to come see me. Told me he even picked fresh daisies from the field next to the mill that morning. Except when he got into work, Buddy Wright called him into the office. Said lumber prices were dropping and they needed to scale back on the day shift and let Leroy go. Just like that. Leroy had been working there for two years. Longest he’d ever held a job. And he knew that another job that paid as well as the saw mill would be hard to come by. This happened a little after nine in the morning. By ten o’clock, Leroy had finished off the fifth of Jack Daniels he kept stashed in the truck’s glove box. He knew he wanted to see me. Said he felt like I would make things better. Going home to Annie and telling her he’d lost the best job he�
�d ever had could wait. So he drove down Five Hills Road to my house.
I can just see Cassie looking proud as she pushed the front door open. I’m sure she scooted her way down the front steps as the cows lowed to her the whole time. From Vi’s front steps to the road was fifteen yards. Cassie probably started to run that crazy, shoulders-hunched, side-to-side run she’d just started doing. I bet she wrinkled her nose as the wind carried the scent of the cow poops her way.
Leroy knew how to drive drunk. He knew you went real slow and kept your eyes fixed on the road ahead. If he’d been in his right mind, he would have parked up the road away from my house and Vi’s, like he usually did.
We’ve none of us figured out what happened next. Maybe Cassie ran out into the middle of the road just as Leroy came over the hill, which would have hid her from sight until it was too late. Maybe he took his eyes off the road reaching for a Lucky Strike. We’ll never know.
As Violet hung up the last pair of Louis’s work pants, she heard a car with a cranky muffler coming over the hill but thought nothing of it. It wasn’t until the loud, shrill cry of squealing brakes broke the afternoon’s quiet that Vi felt the first inkling of fear. I came out to see what the racket was about, thinking somebody hit a deer again. They were always dashing out of the woods and into the road, though usually in the early morning or at twilight. I stepped into the middle of the road and saw Leroy’s truck, black marks slashing the road beneath it where he’d skidded to a stop.
He was out of the truck, looking around like he’d lost something. I walked toward him. Even from a distance I could see that he was drunk from the way he kept scratching his head and squinting like the sun hurt his eyes.
I called out to him. His head came up. “You all right?”
No answer.
I met Violet in the road and we walked together to Leroy. “Everything okay?” she asked.
“Something in the road. Tried to stop. Big bump. Can’t find it. Where is it?”
I don’t know why but I turned to Violet and asked her where Cassie was.
“In her crib. She’s fine.” Vi caught the scent of my fear. “I’ll check but I just put her there a minute ago.”
Leroy and I began walking around the car, looking for what neither of us knew. At the fence, McAllister’s cows stood all bunched together near the back of Leroy’s truck, lowing and restless. The slap of Violet’s screen door made me look over to her house. She was running and right then I figured it out. I knew.
My mind tumbled over itself trying to figure out who should find her first. Should it be me? Should it be Vi? I gave up and closed the distance between me and the truck’s tailgate. Leroy followed behind me, almost stumbling into the ditch.
Violet’s voice carried across the road. “Mother, did you hear me? Where are you going? Listen to me. Cassie’s not in the—”
I saw her first. She lay in the road, directly behind the rear wheels of the truck. The pink of her shirt was muddied from the ground and her face was turned away from me. I said her name.
“Cassie?”
No movement.
Her left leg was at a strange, right angle to her body, and the pavement beneath her head gleamed with a dark wetness in the sunlight. I placed my hand on her back and felt the sharp curve of her ribs through the thin shirt, her favorite one with the three kittens on the front. It had been a first birthday present from my sister, Charlotte, who had done the embroidery herself. I left my hand there, waiting to feel her ribs rise with a breath. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.
Leroy came up behind me. When he saw Cassie he stopped.
“Get in the truck.” I snapped the words, my mind spinning crazy.
He stood there.
“Now.”
I gathered my grandbaby up in my arms, holding her against my chest. My hand cradled the back of her head and longed for its usual feel of downy silk, not the roughness of hair matted with blood and dirt.
Violet’s steps drew closer. I closed my eyes and prayed, just for a second, that I would find the words to tell my daughter. When only a few feet remained between us, I stood up.
“I found her.”
Violet stared at the silent, unmoving child. She took two steps forward and wrenched Cassie from me.
“What are you standing there for?” She began running toward the house. “We’ve got to get her to the hospital.”
I followed behind, listening to her croon to Cassie, telling her baby it would be all right, the doctors would fix her, she would be safe soon. When Violet stopped in the driveway, confused because Louis had their only vehicle at work, I finally spoke.
“Violet, honey, our baby doesn’t need the hospital.”
She shook her head at me, insistent, and clutched Cassie tighter to her body. “She does, Mama. She does.”
I went to her carefully, placing my arms around them both. Violet looked down at Cassie until the awful recognition dawned on my daughter’s face. She sank to the ground, rocking our baby back and forth, back and forth. I knelt behind Violet and my body found the same motion. Back and forth. Back and forth. The gravel beneath us bit into our knees, tiny pieces embedding themselves beneath the skin.
Twenty-Three
Nothing much was the same after that. Not for any of us. It sounds strange but I believe Leroy suffered the most. Violet and Louis—they were devastated but would go on to have another child. I knew they would. What I hadn’t known then was it would take fifteen years, long past the point when they had given up hope.
Leroy’s grief bottomed out deeper and deeper every day. Louis wanted to prosecute but Violet knew it wouldn’t bring back their little girl. Carter Sr. talked to Louis and asked him what he thought putting Leroy away would do for him and his family. Louis said it would keep him from killing somebody else’s kid. Hardeman County district attorney Harlow Simms saw an opportunity to get his name in the paper and planned to go for the death penalty.
In the dark hours of the night, while my children slept in their beds, I stayed awake wondering why I hadn’t stopped seeing Leroy. If I had, he wouldn’t have been coming down that road to see me. Mistakes can be forgiven but not that kind of sin. It does not deserve forgiveness. Instead, it sits in the bottom of your soul, twisting and turning over the years, so you never forget it’s there.
Two days before Christmas Eve, Leroy left me a note on the back door asking me to meet him behind First Baptist at nine o’clock that night. I told my husband I had to get out of the house and take a walk. I walked down Five Hills Road and turned right at Main. The temperature was due to drop below freezing and I wrapped my coat around me tighter. The possibility of snow by Christmas had the children beside themselves at home, and I welcomed escaping outside, though my stomach felt all turned around about seeing Leroy.
A small triangle of light from inside the church’s front window glimmered out into the darkness. I picked my way around to the back. The orange glow of Leroy’s cigarette led me to him. He sat on the ground next to the creek, flicking the ashes from the cigarette into the grass, whose tops shined a frosty white. We hadn’t spoken alone since the day of the accident. I didn’t know what he needed to say to me. I just knew I needed to hear it.
“Too cold to be sitting on the ground, Leroy.”
He didn’t turn to look at me. “Doesn’t really matter, now does it, Lillian?”
His voice turned me colder than the wind. It was all hollowed out, like there was nothing left inside of him. When we were seeing each other, Leroy’s voice could make me melt as fast as his hands could. The sound of it would make its way down through my ears and through my chest before landing right in that secret spot between my legs, making the sap run sweet and sure.
The wind swayed the oaks above us. Leroy kept smoking. The nine-thirty train rattled by. I crouched down next to him, my bottom resting against the b
acks of my calves.
He stubbed out the cigarette, heat hissing against the cold grass. “I needed to see you is all.”
I took my hand out of its glove and reached for his. His fingers were freezing. I blew on them gently, trying to warm them. I could feel the cracked skin of his knuckles.
“I won’t cry on your shoulder, Lil. Don’t deserve to do it. I took your grandbaby away from you. I killed that little girl. I swear I never saw her on the road, I swear it. I told my Cathy what happened, and you know what she told me? She threw her arms around my neck and said, ‘God forgives you, Daddy. He knows you didn’t mean to hurt Cassie.’”
He grabbed his hand away from mine and stood up. “Louis Rydell will never have his baby girl speak to him, never know the feel of her in his arms again. I can’t take it, Lillian. I can’t live with it.”
“You don’t have a choice, Leroy. You’ve got to live with it. I know you didn’t see her. I know it was an accident.”
He turned his face to mine. I hoped he could see the forgiveness, because I really did forgive him, but I know the hurt shone more brightly. It was hard to look at him and see the face of my Cassie’s killer. I just saw Leroy, my Leroy. He kissed me then. The pressure of his lips came down hard on my own. I could feel the air from his lungs mingle with mine, warming us, until he pulled away.
“I’m sorry, Lilly.” And he was gone.
Leroy took it upon himself to spare us going through a trial. On Christmas Eve, he put a shotgun to his head in the barn behind his house.
Twenty-Four
Ezekiel tells me I never admit when I’m wrong. Says he never heard me once, his whole growing up, apologize for being wrong about anything. And, according to him, I was wrong about a lot of things. But see, my boy doesn’t understand. As soon as I admitted one wrong, the rest of them would all come tumbling down, and then where would I be? Collapsed in the middle of the living room floor with five kids and a husband to take care of?
The Lost Saints of Tennessee Page 13