The Returned

by Jason Mott

  “I wish you would,” Harold said, leveling the gun barrel at his throat. “Lucille?” he called. “Jacob?” They both lay motionless, a round, smooth hump atop the earth. Lucille still covering the boy.

  Harold had something else to say, something maybe to bring sense to all this, even if it was too late for sense, but his lungs would not participate. They were too full of the razor-bladed cough that had been trying to take hold of him ever since his scuffle. It was a great, dark bubble rising up inside him.

  “This house is gonna burn down around you,” Fred said.

  The heat from the flames was unbearable. Harold knew that he would have to move soon if he planned on living, but there was that damned cough inside him, waiting to come roaring out and fold him into an unconscious ball on the ground.

  And what would become of Jacob then?

  “Lucille?” Harold called yet again. And again she did not answer him. If he could just hear her voice, he thought, he could believe that all of this was going to be okay. “Just leave,” Harold said, and he poked the end of the gun barrel at Fred.

  Fred took his cue and backed away, slowly.

  Everything hurt when Harold went to stand. “Jesus,” he groaned.

  “I’ve got you,” Jacob said, suddenly there, suddenly returned to him. He helped his father to his feet.

  “Where’s your mama?” Harold whispered. “Is she okay?”

  “No,” Jacob said.

  To be safe, Harold kept the gun trained on Fred and he kept Jacob behind him, just in case Clarence and the rest of the boys out by their trucks should decide to get excited with those shotguns of theirs.

  “Lucille?” Harold called.

  Jacob and Harold and Fred Green and Fred Green’s rifle all limped down from the porch together and out into the yard. Fred walked with his hands around his abdomen. Harold just stepped sideways, like a crab, with Jacob in his shadow.

  “Okay,” Harold said when they were far enough away from the house. Then he lowered the gun. “I suppose we’re done here.” The gun fell then, but not because Harold had given it up, but because the cough—that damned rock slide of pain inside him—finally broke free. The razor blades in his lungs were as bad as he knew they would be. The pinpricks of light reappeared before his eyes. The earth came up and slapped him across the face. There was lightning everywhere, lightning and the thunder of the cough that seemed to tear Harold’s body apart with every tremor. He didn’t even have the energy to curse. And of all things he could do, cursing was the one that probably would have made him feel better.

  Fred gathered the gun from the ground. He cycled the bolt to be sure there was a round in the chamber.

  “I suppose what happens next is your fault,” Fred said.

  “Let the boy stay a miracle,” Harold managed.

  Death was there. And Harold Hargrave was ready for it.

  “I don’t know why she didn’t come back,” Jacob said, and both Harold and Fred Green blinked, as if he had only just appeared before them. “Your wife,” Jacob said to Fred, “I remember her. She was pretty and she could sing.” The eight-year-old boy’s face blushed beneath his brown mop of hair. “I liked her,” he said. “I liked you, too, Mr. Green. Y’all gave me a BB gun and she promised to sing for me before you went home on my birthday.” The light from the burning house washed over his face. His eyes seemed to sparkle. “I don’t know why she didn’t return like me,” Jacob said. “People go away and don’t come back sometimes.”

  Fred took a breath; he held it in his lungs and his entire body tightened, as if that one breath would burst him, as if it was his last and it held everything. Then he made a wet, choking sound as he lowered the rifle with a sigh and he wept, right there in front of the boy who, by some miracle, had returned from the dead and not brought his wife with him.

  He sank to his knees in an awkward, twisted heap. “Get out of here. Just…just go,” he said. “Just let me be, Jacob.”

  Then there was only the sound of the house burning down. Only the sound of Fred crying. Only the sound of Harold gently wheezing below the dark plume of ashes and smoke, which had grown so grand it was like a long, dark arm, reaching, the way a parent reaches for a child, a husband for a wife.

  * * *

  She gazed up at the sky. The moon was off in the corner of her eye, as if leaving her, or leading her perhaps. It was impossible to tell which.

  Harold came and knelt beside her. He was thankful that the ground was soft and that here the blood did not seem to show as red as he knew it actually was. In the twisted light of the burning house, the blood was only a dark stain that he could imagine was anything other than what it was.

  She breathed, but only barely.

  “Lucille?” Harold whispered, his mouth almost at her ear.

  “Jacob,” she called.

  “He’s here,” Harold said.

  She nodded her head. Her eyes closed.

  “None of that,” Harold said. He wiped the blood from his face, suddenly realizing how he must look, covered in blood and soot and grime.

  “Mama?” Jacob called.

  Her eyes opened.

  “Yes, baby?” Lucille whispered. There was a light rattle in her lungs.

  “It’s okay,” Jacob said. He leaned in and kissed her cheek. Then he lay beside her and nuzzled his head against her shoulder, as if she were not dying, only nodding off beneath the stars.

  She smiled. “It is okay,” she said.

  Harold wiped his eyes. “Damn you, woman,” he said. “I told you people weren’t worth anything.”

  She was still smiling.

  The words came so low that Harold had to strain to hear them. “You’re a pessimist,” she said.

  “I’m a realist.”

  “You’re a misanthrope.”

  “You’re a Baptist.”

  She laughed. And the moment lingered for as long as it could with the three of them connected, held together, just as they had been all those years ago. Harold squeezed her hand.

  “I love you, Mama,” Jacob said.

  Lucille heard her son. Then she was gone.

  Jacob Hargrave

  In the moments after his mother’s death, he wasn’t sure if he had said the right thing. He hoped he had. Or at least, he hoped that he had said enough. His mother always knew what to say. Words were her method of magic—words and dreams.

  In the glow of the burning house, kneeling at his mother’s side, Jacob thought back to the way things had once been, back before the day he went down to the river. He remembered the times he had spent with his mother, when his father would travel for work for a few days at a time, leaving them alone together. She was always sadder when he was away, Jacob knew, but a part of him could not help but enjoy the moments they shared when it was only the two of them. Each morning they would sit across from each other at the breakfast table talking of dreams and omens and their expectations for the day. While Jacob was the type who awoke in the mornings unable to remember what he had dreamed during the night, his mother could recall everything in vivid detail. There was always magic in her dreams: impossibly tall mountains, speaking animals, oddly colored moonrises.

  Each dream had a meaning for her. Dreams of mountains were omens of adversity. Talking animals were old friends soon to reenter her life. The color of each moonrise a portent of the mood of the day to come.

  Jacob loved hearing her explanations of these wondrous things. He recalled one morning in particular, during one of those weeks his father was away. The wind rustled the oak in the front yard and the sun peeked up from the treetops. The two of them made breakfast together. He kept watch over the bacon and the sausage sizzling on the stove top while she tended to the eggs and silver-dollar pancakes. All the while, she told him of a dream.

  She had gone down to the river, alone, not knowing why. When she reached the banks, the water was as calm as glass. “Dappled in that impossible blue you can find only in oil paintings left too long in a damp attic,” she
said. She paused and looked at him. They were sitting at the table now, starting in on breakfast. “Do you know what I mean, Jacob?”

  He nodded, even though he did not know exactly what she meant.

  “A blue that was less of a color and more of a feeling,” she continued. “And as I stood there, I could hear music playing far off downriver.”

  “What kind of music?” Jacob interrupted. He had been so focused on his mother’s story that he had eaten very little of his food.

  Lucille thought for a moment. “It’s hard to describe,” she said. “It was operatic. Like a voice singing far off across a wide-open field.” She closed her eyes and held her breath and seemed to be resurrecting the wonderful sound in her mind. After a moment she opened her eyes. She looked dazed and happy. “It was just music,” she said. “Pure music.”

  Jacob nodded. He shifted in his seat and scratched his ear. “Then what happened?”

  “I followed the river for what seemed like miles,” Lucille said. “The banks were filled with orchids. Beautiful, delicate orchids—nothing like anything that could ever grow around here. Flowers more beautiful than I’ve ever seen in any book.”

  Jacob put down his fork and pushed his plate forward. He folded his arms on the kitchen table and rested his chin on his arms. His hair fell down over his eyes. Lucille reached over, grinning, and moved the strands away from his face. “I need to give you a haircut,” she said.

  “What did you find, Mama?” Jacob asked.

  Lucille continued. “Eventually the sun was setting and, even though I had gone miles, the music was still no nearer. It was when the sun was beginning to set that I realized that the sound wasn’t coming from downriver, but from the middle of it. It was like the music of the sirens, calling me out into the water. But I wasn’t afraid,” Lucille said. “And do you know why?”

  “Why?” Jacob replied, hanging on her every word.

  “Because back in the direction of the forest and all those orchids blooming along the riverbank, I could hear you and your daddy, playing and laughing.”

  Jacob’s eyes grew wide at his mother’s mention of him and his father.

  “Then the music got louder. Or maybe not louder exactly, but stronger somehow. I could feel it more, like a nice hot bath after I’ve been working all day in the yard. A soft, warm bed. All I wanted was to go toward the music.”

  “And Daddy and I were still playing?”

  “Yes,” Lucille said with a sigh. “And the two of you were getting louder, too. Like you were competing with the river, trying to hold my attention, trying to call me back.” She shrugged. “I’ll admit—there was a moment when I didn’t know where to go.”

  “So what did you decide? How did you figure it out?”

  Lucille reached over and rubbed Jacob’s hand. “I just followed my heart,” she said. “I turned my back and started off toward you and your daddy. And then, just like that, the music from the river did not sound as sweet. Nothing is as sweet as the sound of my husband and son laughing.”

  Jacob blushed. “Wow,” he said. His voice was far away, the spell of his mother’s story finally broken. “You have the best dreams,” he said.

  They ate the rest of breakfast in silence, with Jacob now and again staring across the table, marveling at the mysterious and magical woman who was his mother.

  * * *

  As he knelt over her in those final moments of her life, he wondered what she thought of all that had happened in the world. All that had led them both to that moment when she lay dying in the glow of their burning house, on the very same earth where she had raised her son and loved her husband. He wanted to explain to her how things had gotten this way, how he had returned to her after being gone for so long. He wanted to do for her what she had done for him on those gentle mornings when they were alone: explain all the wondrous things.

  But their time was short together, as life always is, and he did not know how any of this had happened. He knew that the whole world was frightened, that the whole world was wondering how the dead had returned, how confusing it was for everyone. He remembered Agent Bellamy asking him what he remembered from before he woke up in China—what he remembered about the in-between time.

  But the truth of it was that all he remembered was a soft, faraway sound, like music. And that was all. A memory so delicate that he wasn’t sure it was real. He had heard the music for every second of his life since his return. A whisper, seeming to call him. And hadn’t it been growing slightly louder recently? As if summoning him. He wondered if it was the same music from his mother’s dream. He wondered if she heard that music now, as she passed away, that thin, fragile music that sounded at times like that of a family laughing together.

  All Jacob knew for certain was that in this very moment he was alive, and that he was with his mother and, more than anything, he did not want her to be afraid when her eyes closed, their time together finally ended.

  “I’m alive for now,” he almost said as she lay dying, but he could see that she was already unafraid. In the end, “I love you, Mama” was all that he told her. And it was all that mattered.

  Then he wept with his father.

  Epilogue

  THE OLD TRUCK bucked back and forth over the highway. The engine coughed. The brakes squealed. Every turn sent the whole thing to shuddering. But, still, it was alive.

  “A few more miles yet,” Harold said, wrestling the steering wheel as he entered a curve.

  Jacob stared silently out of the window.

  “Glad to be out of that church,” Harold said. “Too much more time in there and I swear I’ll convert…convert or start shooting.” He chuckled to himself. “Or maybe one will lead to the other.”

  Still the boy said nothing.

  They were almost at the house now. The truck chugged along the dirt road, sputtering blue smoke from time to time. Harold wanted to blame the bad condition of the truck on being shot, but that didn’t hold water. The truck was just old and tired and about ready to give it all up. Just too many miles. He wondered how Lucille managed to drive it all those months, how Connie had made do with it that night. He would apologize to her if he could. But Connie and her children were gone now. None of them seen since the night Lucille died. Harold’s truck had been found along the interstate the next day, pitched at an awkward angle, as if it had come to a rest unguided, as if there had been no one at the wheel.

  It was like the Wilson family had up and disappeared, which wasn’t unheard of these days.

  “It’ll get better,” Harold said when they finally pulled into the yard. Where the house had been, there was only a skeletal wooden frame. The foundation had proved itself strong enough. When the insurance money came in and Harold had hired the men to rebuild, they’d managed to keep almost all of the foundation. “It’ll be the way it was,” Harold said. He parked the truck at the end of the driveway and switched off the ignition. The old Ford sighed.

  Jacob said nothing as he and his father walked up the dusty driveway. It was October now. The heat and humidity had moved on. His father seemed very old and very tired since Lucille’s death, Jacob thought, even though he tried very hard to not seem old and tired.

  Beneath the oak tree in front of where the porch had been was where Lucille was buried. Harold had wanted to bury her at the church graveyard, but he needed to be near her. He hoped she would forgive him for that.

  The boy and his father stopped at the grave. Harold squatted and raked his fingers over the earth. Then he mumbled something under his breath and walked on.

  Jacob lingered.

  The house was coming along better than Harold wanted to admit. In spite of being little more than a skeleton just now, he could already see the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom at the top of the stairs. The wood would be new, but the foundation was still as old as it always had been.

  Things would not be the way they were, as he had told Jacob, but they would be however they were meant to be.

  He le
ft the boy standing at Lucille’s grave and continued on to the debris pile in back of the house. Debris and the stone foundation was all the fire had left. The men building the new house had offered to haul off the rubbish, but Harold had stopped them. Almost every day he came here and sifted through the ash and rubble. He did not know what he was looking for, only that he would know it when he found it.

  Almost two months now and still he had not found it. But at least he had stopped smoking.

  * * *

  An hour later, nothing new had been found. Jacob was still at Lucille’s grave, sitting in the grass with his legs pulled to his chest and his chin tucked between his knees. He did not move when Agent Bellamy came driving up. Nor did he respond when Bellamy walked past him, saying, “Hello,” and moving on without stopping—he knew the boy would not reply. This was how it had been every time he came to see Harold.

  “Find what you’re looking for?” Bellamy said.

  Harold stood from kneeling. He shook his head.

  “Want some help?”

  “I’d like to know what I’m looking for,” Harold grumbled.

  “I know the feeling,” Bellamy said. “For me it’s photographs. Pictures from my childhood.”

  Harold grunted.

  “They’re still not sure exactly what it means or why it’s happening.”

  “Of course not,” Harold said. He looked up at the sky. Blue. Open. Cool.

  He brushed his sooty hands against his pants legs.

  “I hear it was pneumonia,” Harold said.

  “It was,” Bellamy replied. “Just like the first time. She went peacefully enough in the end. Just like she did the first time.”

  “Is it the same all around?”

  “No,” Bellamy said. He adjusted his tie. Harold was glad to see Bellamy back to wearing his suits properly. He still hadn’t quite figured out how the man had made it all through the summer wearing those damned things and looking no worse for the wear, but toward the end Bellamy had started looking disheveled. Now his tie was tight about his neck again. His suit sharply pressed and immaculately clean. Things were getting back to the way they should be, he felt.