by Jason Mott
“But it did happen,” Harold said. “It happened to the Wilsons, to Mary. And then, from looking at how we are right now, I guess it happened to us. The world found us, Fred. Found Arcadia. Seeing Jim and Connie dead a second time won’t change that.”
There was a silence then, a silence of potential and possibility. Fred Green shook his head, as if declining some argument in his mind.
“We got to put an end to this,” Harold said after a moment. “They didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “Jim was born and bred here. Connie, too. Her folks were from over in Bladen County, not far from where Lucille’s family lived. It’s not like she’s a damned Yankee or anything. Lord knows if she was a New Yorker I would have shot her myself!”
The two men laughed, somehow.
Fred looked over his shoulder at Jim’s body. “I might burn for it,” he continued. “I know that. But it had to be done. I tried to do the right thing the first time, tried to play by the rules. I told the soldiers they were staying here, and they came and took them away peacefully. It was over. I was willing to let that be the end of it. But, well…”
“All he was ever trying to do was live. Live and protect his family like anybody else in this world.”
Fred nodded.
“Now, Lucille, Jacob and I are protecting them.”
“Don’t make this happen, Harold,” Fred said. “I’m begging you.”
“I don’t suppose I really have a say in any of it,” Harold replied. Then he, too, looked over at Jim’s body. “Can you imagine the explaining I’d have to do if he suddenly sat up right now and asked me how the hell I just handed them over to you? I imagine if it was Lucille lying there…” He looked at his wife. “No,” he said, shaking his head. He used the gun to motion for Fred to leave the porch. “Whatever this is about with you, Fred,” Harold said, “I’d rather we just get on with it.”
Fred raised his hands and slowly worked his way down from the porch. “You got an extinguisher?” he asked.
“I do,” he said.
“I won’t shoot on you so long as you don’t shoot on me or my men here,” Fred said. “You can just send them out and put a stop to this whenever you want. It’s all up to you. I swear, we’ll do everything we can to save the house. You just send them out and we’ll call it all off.”
Then he was gone from the porch. Harold called upstairs for the children. At the same time Fred Green could be heard outside yelling something. Then there was a muffled sound of combustion at the back of the house, followed by a low crackle.
* * *
“How did it come to this,” Harold said, not sure exactly whom he was asking.
It felt as though the room was spinning. Nothing made sense. He looked over at Connie. “Connie?” Harold called.
“Yes?” she answered, holding her children in her arms.
Harold paused. His head was full of questions.
“Harold…” Lucille interrupted. Two people couldn’t live together for all their lives and not know each other’s mind. She knew what he was about to ask. She felt it was wrong of him to ask, yet she couldn’t bring herself to stop him. She wanted to know as much as anyone.
“What happened?” Harold asked.
“What?” Connie replied, her face wrapped in confusion.
“All those years ago.” Harold looked at the floor as he spoke. “This town… It was never the same after that. And just look at where we are now. All these years of not knowing, all these years of wondering, being afraid that it was somebody from our own town—one of our own neighbors—that might have done it.” He shook his head. “I just can’t help but feel that if folks could have gone to bed knowing what really happened that night, maybe things would never have gotten this bad.” Finally, he looked Connie in the eyes. “Who was it?”
For a long time Connie did not reply. She looked at her children, who were afraid and uncertain. She held them to her breasts and covered their ears. “I…” she began. “I don’t know who it was.” She swallowed hard, as if something were suddenly stuck in her throat.
Harold, Lucille and Jacob said nothing.
“I can’t really remember,” Connie continued, her voice sounding far away. “It was late. I woke up all of a sudden, thinking I’d heard something. You know how it is sometimes when you’re not sure if what you heard was a part of a dream you were having or something from the real world.”
Lucille nodded in affirmation, but did not dare speak.
“I was just about to try and go back to sleep when I heard footsteps in the kitchen.” She looked at Harold and Lucille. She smiled. “A parent knows the sound of their children’s footsteps.” Her smile faded. “I knew it wasn’t them. That’s when I got scared. I woke up Jim. He was groggy at first, but then he heard it, too.
“He looked for something to use, but all he found was my old guitar by the bed. He thought about taking it, but I think he was afraid it would get broken. My father had given it to me just before Jim and I got married.
“It was a foolish thing for Jim to think about something like that, but that’s the kind of man he was.”
Connie wiped a tear from the corner of her eyes. Then she continued.
“I ran into the children’s room and Jim ran into the kitchen. He yelled for whoever it was to get out of the house. They scuffled. It sounded like they were tearing the whole kitchen down. Then came the gunshot. Then came the silence. That was the longest silence of my life. I kept waiting for Jim to say something. To scream or yell out, anything. But he never did. I could hear whoever it was going through the house, like he was searching for something. Taking whatever was worth anything, most likely. Then I heard footsteps coming toward the children’s bedroom.
“I got the kids and hid under the bed. I could only see to the doorway. All I saw of whoever it was were a pair of old work boots. They were stained with paint.” Connie paused and thought, sniffling as she spoke. “I remember there had been these painters in town around that time. They were working over at the Johnson Farm. Never saw much of them, but Jim had helped out with the painting—we always needed a few extra dollars. I took Jim to lunch one day and I think I remember seeing a man with boots like the ones I saw from the children’s room that night.
“I can’t remember much about the man who wore them. Red hair, pale. That’s about it. He was just a stranger. Someone I never thought I’d see again.” She thought for a moment. Then, “He had a bad look about him,” she said. She shook her head. “Or maybe I’m imagining he did because I want to believe it.
“But the truth is I don’t know who did it. We didn’t do anything to deserve what happened. But, then again, I can’t imagine any family deserving to have something like that happen to them.” Finally, she uncovered her children’s ears. Her voice was not shaking anymore. “The world is cruel sometimes,” she said. “All you need to do is look at the news any day of the week to know that. But my family loved one another up until the last moment. That’s all that really matters.”
Lucille was crying. She reached over and took Jacob in her arms and kissed him and whispered that she loved him.
Harold put his arm around them both. Then, to Connie, he said, “I’ll take care of you. I promise.”
“What are we going to do?” Jacob asked.
“We’re gonna do what we have to do, son.”
“Are you going to send them out, Daddy?”
“No,” Lucille said.
“We’re going to do what we have to do,” Harold said.
* * *
The fire worked faster than Harold had expected.
Perhaps because it was an old house and had always been in his life, he imagined it could not be destroyed or, at the very least, would be a difficult thing to take from this world. But the fire proved it to be simply a house, nothing more than an assemblage of wood and memories—both very destructible things.
So when the fire climbed the back wall, the smoke rolled forward in great, sudden streaks, pushing the Hargrav
es and the Wilsons through the living room toward the front door of the house, toward Fred Green and his waiting gun.
“I should have stalled more,” Harold said, coughing, praying that this was not one of those coughs that ended in unconsciousness. “I should have stalled more and got more bullets,” he said.
“Lord, Lord, Lord,” Lucille said. She wrung her hands and counted in her mind all the ways in which this was all her fault. She saw Jim Wilson. He stood tall and handsome and alive, with a wife and a daughter and a son wrapped around him, hugging him, clinging to him. Then she saw him shot in the streets of Arcadia, shot and falling stiff and dead.
“Daddy?” Jacob said.
“It’s going to be okay,” Harold said.
“This is wrong,” Lucille said.
Connie held her children to her chest, her right hand still gripping that butcher’s knife. “What did we ever do?” she asked.
“This is just wrong,” Lucille said.
The children were crying.
Harold ejected the magazine from the pistol again, checked it to be sure that the four bullets were still there, then he placed it back into the gun. “Come here, Jacob,” he called.
Jacob came over—coughing through the smoke—and Harold took the boy by the arm and began pushing the couch from in front of the door. Lucille watched for a moment then, without questioning, helped and trusted that there was a plan in this, trusted in the way she trusted in all of God’s plans.
“What are we going to do?” Jacob asked his father.
“We’re getting out of here,” Harold said.
“But what about them?”
“Just do what you’re told, son. I’m not going to let you die.”
“But what about them?” the boy asked.
“I got enough bullets,” Harold said.
* * *
The gunshots rang out evenly and clearly over the dim, moonless countryside. Three shots.
Then the front door was opened and out came the pistol, tumbling through the air. It fell into the bed of the truck next to Jim’s body. “All right!” Harold yelled, walking out the front door with both hands held high. Lucille followed with Jacob tucked safely behind her. “You won, goddammit,” Harold yelled. His face was dark and somber. “At least I know you won’t get the satisfaction. I put them out of the misery you would have made for them, you bastard.”
He coughed.
“Lord, Lord, Lord,” Lucille repeated under her breath.
“I’ll reckon I need to see that,” Fred Green said. “The boys are still at the back of the house, just to be sure this ain’t some game you’re playing, Harold.”
Harold worked his way down the porch steps, leaning on the truck for support. “What about my house?”
“We’ll get to it. I just need to check to be sure you did what you say you did.”
Harold was coughing again. A long, hard, continuous cough that buckled him in half and dropped him to the ground next to his truck. Lucille held his hand, squatting next to him. “What have you done, Fred Green?” she asked, her face glowing in the rising firelight.
“I’m sorry, Lucille,” he said.
“It’s burning down,” Harold wheezed.
“And I aim to take care of it,” Fred said. He walked from his truck to Harold’s side, his rifle held low on his hip, aimed at the doorway just in case the dead were not dead.
Harold coughed until he saw small points of light flashing before his eyes. Lucille wiped his face. “Damn you, Fred Green! Do something!” she yelled.
“At least get my damned truck away from the house,” Harold managed. “If anything happens to Jim’s body I’ll kill every last one of you!” Jacob kneeled down and took his father’s hand—partly to help him through his coughing, and partly to be sure that his parents stayed between himself and Fred Green’s rifle.
Fred Green walked past Harold and Lucille and even Jacob. He went up the stairs toward the open door. Smoke rolled out in great, white plumes. From where he stood he could see the light of the flames burning their way forward from the rear of the house. He hesitated on going into the house when he did not see the bodies of the Wilsons. “Where are they?”
“Heaven, I hope,” Harold said. He laughed, but only a little. His coughing had passed, though he was still light-headed and the small points of light were dogged about staying before his eyes, no matter how much he swatted at them. He squeezed Lucille’s hand. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “Just keep to Jacob.”
“Don’t play games with me, Harold,” Fred yelled, still up on the porch. “I’ll let it all burn if I have to.” He peered into the house, listening for the sound of coughing or moaning or crying, but heard only the crackle of the fire. “If you sent them out the back, I suppose the boys’ll get them. And if they come through the front, I’ll get them. And, well, there’s the fire.” He stepped back away from the growing heat. “You’ve got insurance, Harold. You’ll get a great big check out of all this. I’m sorry.”
“You and me both,” Harold said, rising to his feet.
With a swiftness that surprised even himself, Harold was on his feet and up the porch steps while Fred Green still stood there staring into the burning house. Fred could hardly hear Harold bounding up the steps over the sound of the fire, and by the time he heard him, the butcher’s knife was already running through his right kidney.
* * *
Harold’s face was waist-high when the knife went in and Fred Green spun in pain and his finger squeezed around the trigger. The butt of the rifle leaped back and the nasal bone of Harold’s nose split in two.
At the very least, he was no longer in any condition to kill the Wilsons.
“Get out here!” Harold coughed. “Hurry up!” The gun lay on the porch beside him, neither man thinking clearly enough just now to scramble for it. “Lucille?” Harold called out. “Help ’em!” He gasped for air. “Help ’em…”
She did not answer him back.
Connie and the kids, barely able to hear Harold over the sound of the fire, came from the house beneath the blanket they’d hastily managed to wet and hide beneath when the house started burning. As soon as they made it out into the fresh air the children went to coughing, but Connie led them past where Fred Green lay writhing with the knife sticking out of him.
“Get in the truck!” Harold yelled. “Those other assholes will be around here any second now.”
The family scrambled down the porch steps past Harold and Fred and went to the driver’s side of the truck. Connie checked to be sure the keys were still in the ignition. They were.
It was luck mostly that she was standing where she happened to be standing when the first shotgun blast came. The old truck proved a damned good barrier against buckshot. It was a ’72 Ford, after all, made in that bygone era before fiberglass was deemed worthy of transporting a man and his family from one point in the universe to another. And that was why Harold had clung to the old truck for all these years, because they didn’t make trucks that stood their ground against double-ought buckshot anymore.
But, unlike Connie and her children, the Hargraves were on the killing side of the truck. Lucille was on the ground, her body huddled over Jacob in the trembling glower of the burning house. Jacob had his hands over his ears.
“Stop shooting, dammit!” Harold yelled. His back was to the men with the guns, so he knew there was a very good chance they would not hear him. And, even if they did, there was a very good chance they would not listen. He covered his wife and son and hoped.
“God help us,” he said, for the first time in fifty years.
Harold found Fred’s rifle. He still hadn’t managed to get himself onto his feet just yet, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t draw some attention. He sat on his behind with his legs spread out in front of him and his head throbbing and his nose bleeding, but he managed to draw back the rifle’s bolt and chambered the 30-06 and fired one shot into the air, bringing everything to a sudden pause.
In th
e glow of his burning house, with Fred Green right there on the porch beside him wrapping his shirt around his knife wound, Harold tried to get a handle on things.
“That’s enough, I reckon,” Harold said when the report of the rifle was gone.
“Fred? Fred, you all right?” one of the gunmen yelled. It sounded like Clarence Brown.
“No, I’m not all right!” Fred yelled. “I been stabbed!”
“He brought it on himself,” Harold rebutted. The blood from his nose covered his mouth, but he couldn’t wipe it on account of needing his hands as dry as they could be to handle the rifle, and he already had Fred Green’s blood on his hands. “Now why don’t ya’ll just go on home?”
“Fred?” Clarence yelled. It was hard to hear over the sound of the house burning down. The smoke billowed from every crack and crevice of the house and rose up in a great, dark plume in the direction of the moon. “Tell us what to do, Fred!”
“Connie?” Harold called.
“Yeah?” came the reply from the cab of the truck. Her voice was low, as if speaking through the old truck’s seat cushions.
“Take the truck and get on out of here,” Harold said. He did not take his eyes away from the men with the guns as he spoke.
After a moment, the truck started with a roar. “What about you?” Connie called back.
“We’ll be okay.”
Connie Wilson took her children and her dead husband and rumbled off into the night, saying nothing else, not even looking back that Harold could tell.
“Good,” Harold said softly. “Good.” Harold wanted to say something to them about taking care of Jim, but it seemed implied. Plus, his broken nose was hurting like hell and the heat from his house burning down was getting unbearable. So he simply huffed and wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
Clarence and the other men with guns watched the truck leave but kept their guns trained on Harold. If Fred had told them to do otherwise, then they would have, but their leader was silent as he shakily rose to his feet.
Harold turned the rifle on him as he stood.
“Damn you, Harold,” Fred said. He made a move toward Harold and the rifle.