“You don’t reckon Alvin’s pretty?” I asked.
“Oh, I didn’t say that. And besides, it’s not my opinion that counts when it comes to something like that. It’s your own.”
“Good,” I said. “Then it’s settled. We live in the prettiest place in the world.”
We pulled up to the curb in front of the Alvin Police Station, and my mother and I got out of the car and went inside.
Officer Jackson was at his desk, talking on the phone when we came in. He waved hello to my mother and gave me a wink. Mr. Montgomery’s office door was closed with the television on inside. It sounded like he was watching hockey or something. When my mother knocked, he lowered the volume considerably. Then, after a loud chair squeak, he opened the door. He wore brown pants and a brown checkered short-sleeved shirt. The top button was undone and his brown tie had been loosened.
“Hey, Ethan,” my mother said. I could tell she was hesitant and worried he might still be upset with her.
“Hey, you,” he replied.
“Mind if we come in?” my mother asked.
“We, Leah? You and your son? Haven’t we played this scene already? I reckon that may have been one time too many.”
My mother looked back at me, proudly. “No, Ethan, I reckon you’re wrong. Abe deserves to be part of this discussion. If it starts to go beyond any boundaries I’m comfortable with, I’ll send him out.”
“And what I’m comfortable with doesn’t matter?” Chief Montgomery asked.
“Not today, Ethan,” she replied. Which not only startled me, but judging from the look on his face, it surprised Chief Montgomery, too. “Ethan, listen,” she continued. “I’ve had some really hard months, so excuse me if I’m out of line, but I told Abe he could sit in today, and when it comes to my kids, I keep my promises. Of course, you could always fire me, which at this point, I’d welcome near on as much as winning the lottery.”
Frustrated resignation fell over Chief Montgomery’s face and he held the door open while she came inside and I followed. He shut it behind us.
My mother squeezed herself into one of the two chairs in front of Chief Montgomery’s desk. He sat in his big leather chair on the other side as I flopped into the only remaining one. Above our heads, the wooden fan slowly turned. Behind us, on the television mounted from the ceiling, the Chicago Blackhawks quietly led the Vancouver Canucks five to two in the second period.
Awkward silence passed for a second.
“Funny thing, hey, Ethan?” my mother asked, breaking it. “All them forensics experts from Mobile? The ones sayin’ Mr. Garner did it for sure? The ones with their unbiased opinions and all? Looks like they . . . well . . . looks like they was actually wrong.”
Chief Montgomery nodded. “I know. I knew it when you told me the first time.”
This caught my mother off guard. Confusion took over her face as she opened her mouth to ask him something, but he spoke before she could.
“I had to do what I did, Leah. You were startin’ to rely too much on the people around you,” he said. “You’re a good cop. Good cops go with their guts.” Keeping his eyes on my mother, he gestured to me. “And if that means listenin’ to your eleven-year-old boy because what he says strikes you a certain way, then so be it, but don’t bring shit like that to me. You go out and make it work. By yourself.”
“So you never lost faith in me after all?”
“Oh, don’t give yourself so much credit,” Chief Montgomery said. “I lose faith in everyone, constantly. You, Chris, the world. But I never thought you wasn’t good at your job.” With a squeak, his chair leaned forward as his heavy arms came down on his desk. His hands nearly touched the pictures standing along the outside edge of the desktop. Most of them were of his family, but there was one of my grandpa and my mother when she was younger.
I looked up over my shoulder, just in time to see Vancouver put one in Chicago’s net with only thirty seconds left in the period. I quickly realized I was being rude and turned back to Chief Montgomery, who hadn’t noticed my behavior on account of he was watching the game, too. “Yes!” he yelled, partially standing from his chair and bringing his fist down on his desk.
My mother looked at him like he’d lost his mind.
“My brother in Vancouver’s had seasons tickets goin’ far back as I can recall,” Chief Montgomery explained. “Every time I go up there, we hit every game we can. Besides, I hate Chicago. I got stuck at that airport once for ten hours.”
My mother shook her head. “Are you even interested in what I came here to talk ’bout? Maybe I should come back later, after the game’s over?” She almost sounded angry.
“No, that’d make no difference. Pittsburgh plays Colorado after this one’s done.” He smiled and threw me a wink.
My mother sighed.
“Geez, Leah,” he said. “Lighten up. You solved your case. It’s just . . . how can I put this? You and me? We work different. My work never comes home with me. And it never gets personal. Ever. Yours does. I reckon maybe it makes you better at your job than I am, but just remember: It also makes you a potential casualty.”
“I’m not sure I understand that,” my mother said.
“Working the way you do, you run so many risks. The risk of burning yourself out. The risk of dragging your family through hell with you every time a case turns bad. The risk of potential self-destruction every single goddamn time you put your uniform on. Are those risks worth taking to be a better cop? I don’t know. For me, they certainly aren’t.”
After a pause, my mother said, “For me, I reckon they are.” Chief Montgomery nodded. “And I’m fairly certain your father would’ve agreed with you one hundred percent. But try to remember this. You’ve finally managed to find some closure on the Ruby Mae case. But it took twelve years to do it. For twelve years, you let it cast a shadow over your life and the lives of those around you. You can’t let that happen again. Ever. Your next twelve years cannot be dictated by some case you don’t happen to solve. Sometimes the bad guys win. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. And when it does, let it go. Don’t keep it inside, eating away at you for a dozen years until it finally chews its way out. It’s not fair to you, and it certainly ain’t fair to these know-it-all kids of yours. And I know your father’d even agree with me on this one.”
On the television, the buzzer went, ending the second period. Through the open blinds, I saw a bluebird land on the branch of a fig tree planted outside.
My mother responded to Chief Montgomery. “Thanks, Ethan,” she said, her voice very quiet.
“What are you thanking me for?” he asked. “Treating you like crap?”
“For doing what needed to be done. I know it wasn’t easy. I know it hurt you at least as much as it hurt me.”
Chief Montgomery batted the idea out of the air with his palm. “Oh, just get the hell out of my office before I put you on parkin’ ticket duty or something. Surely, you’ve got somethin’ to do now that your big case is solved. You’ve finally closed the circle.”
“Actually,” she said. “it’s more as though it’s come full circle. And you’re right, I do have somethin’ in need of doin’.” Her fingers rose to the Virgin Mother hanging around her neck.
“Well, I hope it involves takin’ a few days off,” Chief Montgomery said, standing from his seat and stepping to the door. “Your job’ll be waitin’ for you whenever you come back. I don’t reckon we’re gonna have a huge need for a crack detective in the immediate future.”
I said good-bye and left his office. My mother followed, stopping at the last minute to look Chief Montgomery in the eyes. “Now I understand why Dad liked you so much,” she said.
“Your father hated me.”
“He called you an ornery bastard, but as a term of endearment. Trust me. I heard how he spoke about people he didn’t like.”
“Will you just go? I’ve reached my emotional quota for this week.”
“Bye, Ethan.”
“Bye
, Leah.”
I was about to say good-bye to Officer Jackson and walk out to the street when Chief Montgomery called out. “Oh, and, Abe?”
I turned, nervously. “Yes, sir?”
He was leaning in his doorway, smiling. “Forgot to say thanks. You’ll make a fine officer one day.”
I blushed. “You know, sir,” I said. “I reckon maybe I might.”
Everyone laughed.
After we left the station, my mind went into autopilot as cypress trees and strangler figs passed by my window. It wasn’t until a good ten minutes or so later that I realized we were headed the wrong direction for home.
We were driving north, and soon came to Blackberry Trail, which wound its way through a dense wooded area full of all sorts of different trees. Spindly maples, tall oaks, and scrawny pines went by my window, along with a whole lot of blackberry bushes, too. Of course, I expected to see blackberries—be a silly name for a trail otherwise. It was too late in the season for berries, though. Autumn was nearly done. The bushes were just tangled thorns and the tree branches were just thin fingers. The maples looked particularly naked. Although from here I couldn’t see it, the forest floor must’ve been a bed of color, soft and moist.
A massive cypress sped past. Its gnarled boughs, draped with Spanish moss, reached boldly toward the midday sun, as though trying to pluck it from the clear sky like a sparkling yellow diamond.
Neither of us said a word as we drove. I didn’t bother asking where we were going. I figured I would find out soon enough, and if my mother wanted me to know, she would’ve already told me.
Blackberry Trail ended just outside of Cornflower Lake, possibly the prettiest lake in all of Alvin. We slowed along the edge of the small copse of trees that bounded the lake, until pulling to a stop when my mother found a suitable place to park. The air outside the car was sweet and wet. It was the smell of trees, the smell of the lake, the smell of black dirt. As we followed the narrow path through the nest of oaks, I smelled everything. All of nature combined in my nose. The smell of life.
The path led to the lake, where everything was quiet and still. It was encircled by trees and there were no other people anywhere along the shore. The placid water shimmered, looking almost emerald as it reflected the sun shining down from the bright blue sky along with the boughs of the cypress wrapped around the other side. They were the largest cypress I’d ever seen. Their huge, muscular branches hung heavy with Spanish moss yet still seemed to reach higher than any skyscraper I could imagine.
I picked one of the stones up out of the gray sand near the water’s edge. Smooth and black, it had a pattern of white salt lines running through it. Like everything else here, it was beautiful. I put it in my pocket.
Never before could I remember being in a place so beautiful, or one that felt so alive. I realized my mother and I still hadn’t spoken since leaving the police station.
“Why are we here?” I asked. Three sparrows darted from the trees behind us, the lake reflecting them like black darts as they flew across the sky.
“I need to get rid of something,” she said. Carefully, she lifted the Virgin Mother off her neck, pulling the chain over her head. I had never seen her take it off before.
“What’re you gonna do with that?” I asked.
“I don’t need it anymore.”
“How come?”
She squatted beside me with the Virgin Mother and her chain gripped in her right hand. A light wind broke the reflected sunlight into bright sparkles across the top of the lake, making me squint. “I don’t know if you’ll understand this, Abe,” she said. “But I wore this because it kept my father—your grandpa—close to me. Now I realize he is close to me. He’s part of me. He’s here.” She touched her chest above where her heart was. “I no longer need to wear this to know his strength and courage will always be alongside me.”
“So you’re just gonna throw it away?” I asked.
“Not away,” she said, standing. “Into the lake. It’s a beautiful lake, isn’t it?”
I agreed it most certainly was.
“Then I can’t think of any better place. It’s a beautiful necklace and deserves to be in a place like this.”
I wasn’t exactly sure why she was throwing away something Grandpa gave her, but it seemed like she knew she had to do it, so I didn’t bother asking any more questions.
She brought the hand holding the necklace behind her back as far as she could and, with all her strength, flung the Virgin Mother like a discus, as high and as far as she could over Cornflower Lake. Briefly, I saw the sunlight glint off the silver chain. It looked like a string of pearls, sparkling and tumbling against the robin’s egg sky. Then I lost sight of it until a second later, when I heard a far away kerplop! For a few seconds, the sunlight played in the ripples my mother’s necklace broke in the lake’s mirrorlike surface until, slowly, the water went back to being still.
When I looked back up at her, tears stood in my mother’s eyes. She left them there and smiled at me. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go home and make supper.”
CHAPTER 30
The Friday before Thanksgiving came two weeks later. That was the traditional day of the Alvin Harvest Fair. Despite all the threats of being canceled, the fair went off as usual.
Near on all of Main Street was taken up by the fair, and we walked to it from our home. Me and my mother and (of course) Dewey but, most surprisingly, even Carry came along. For once, she decided to pretend to actually be part of our family again. I couldn’t believe it. I decided not to press my luck, so I kept my thoughts to myself.
The Alvin Harvest Fair was one of the biggest fairs in the area, bigger by far than the one they threw right before Christmas in Satsuma. In fact, many people from Satsuma came down to Alvin specifically for our fair.
We had barely made it onto Main Street when somebody dressed as a clown rode right by us on a unicycle.
“I’m gonna get me one of those,” Dewey said.
“A clown?” I asked.
“No, a bike with only one wheel.”
The sun glinted off the chrome bar holding up the unicycle’s seat as the clown rode past us. Today was yet another nice autumn day in Alvin. Although a few white clouds stretched high across the sky, the sun was out and the weather was perfect fair weather; not too hot, not too cold.
“I’m pretty sure I saw a bike with only one wheel at Luther Willard King’s house,” I said. “ ’Course, it was supposed to have two.” I thought I was being pretty funny, but my mother shushed me.
“Don’t talk like that, Abe.”
“Am I bein’ racist again?”
“No, you’re just bein’ annoyin’,” she said.
Dewey laughed at this.
Mr. Kensington from the Alvin bank walked by on stilts with at least thirty balloons floating above his head in all kinds of colors. He asked us if we wanted a balloon. I said no. Dewey said yes, he sure did.
Mr. Kensington gave Dewey a green balloon. “How come you don’t want one?” Dewey asked me.
“I’m too old for balloons,” I said.
“You ain’t no older than me.”
“Well, maybe you’re too old for balloons too, then,” I said.
“I don’t feel too old for balloons.”
“Well,” I said, “lately I’ve been feeling older than usual, I guess.”
Just before the library, a midway was set up featuring all kinds of games with prizes like stuffed animals and goldfish. We slowed down at each booth as we went past. The first one was a basketball game. “Sink three balls and win one of the big bears!” said Mrs. Grace. She was a teacher from our school. For some reason, today she was dressed as a pirate, with an eye patch and a black scarf wrapped around her head with a skull on the front. She even had a stuffed parrot on her shoulder. “Only one dollar to try!”
“You can’t win that game,” Dewey said. “They tilt the baskets so it’s near on impossible to get the ball in.”
“What the
heck does a pirate have to do with basketball?” I asked.
“No clue,” Dewey said.
We kept on going.
Three booths later we came to the shooting gallery. You had to knock down four wooden people with an air rifle to win a goldfish bowl with a fish. “Hey, it’s only a dollar for eight shots,” I said. “Mom, you should try it.”
She scrunched up her nose. “I ain’t so good with an air rifle, Abe.”
“You’re a pretty good shot with a normal gun, though,” I said. “What’s the difference?”
“I dunno.” She shrugged. “Besides, I just don’t feel it’s right for me to play a game like this on account of what I do.”
I was thinking those white wooden guys on the back wall reminded me a bit of Jesse James Allen running into that cornfield.
“Can I try?” Dewey asked.
“Did your mama give you any money?” I asked back.
My mother shushed me. “Of course you can, Dewey,” she said. The man behind the counter had a handlebar moustache and bushy eyebrows. His head was the closest I’d ever seen to being perfectly square. He took my mother’s dollar bill and handed Dewey a rifle. “You be careful with this, boy,” he said.
“Don’t you worry about me,” Dewey said.
Dewey took the rifle, carefully lining up his shot before squeezing the trigger. He looked so serious I nearly laughed, but when he took the shot, it was followed by a loud thunk as the rightmost wooden man fell backward. I near on couldn’t believe it.
“Good shot!” my mother said.
“Lucky shot,” I said.
Still keeping very serious, Dewey lined up his second try and, as amazing as it sounds, he managed to take out the second wooden guy in line.
“Did you start some kinda new hobby and not tell anyone?” I asked.
“I told you already,” Dewey said. “I used to have an air rifle when I was a kid.”
I shook my head. “You’re still a kid. You’ve got a balloon tied to your wrist, for cryin’ out loud.”
“I think you should maybe consider working in the police force when you’re older,” my mother said.
Dream With Little Angels Page 26