Heaven's Crooked Finger

by Hank Early

  I admired her ability to stay calm while not cowering in front of Shaw. As much as I admired it, I could tell it pissed him off.

  “You got five minutes to explain it to him,” he said. “But before you do, I got something I want to say to him.”

  For the first time, Shaw’s eyes met mine. How old was he? In his early seventies, at least. His eyes were the same, and for an instant, I was eighteen again and powerless against Shaw, who, like my father, did not suffer doubts or constraint, much less temperance. His truth remained so unquestioned, it became a force unto itself; it was the kind of truth that could crush a man with more intelligence and therefore more doubt. It was evolution’s cruel trick, but I refused to let it knock me for a loop again.

  I returned his look.

  “I don’t have no idea why you’re back here or why you’re messing around with one of my deputies or interfering in the affairs of my county, but I’m going to give you the best advice I can. I think you’ll remember me as a man who does not mince words.”

  “I remember you as a poor excuse of a man,” I said.

  He looked like he wanted to hit me. Instead, he just nodded, as if checking off some mental notification, some reminder for a later place and time that would alert him to what he owed me.

  “You’d be wise just to leave town, but if you insist on staying, I’m going to insist you keep your distance from me and my deputies and any cases we are working on. Otherwise, I’ll throw you in jail.” He jabbed a finger into my chest. “And that’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a good many years.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” I said as nonchalantly as I could manage. “But I’m not going anywhere. Not until I get what I came for.”

  That was when Shaw began to laugh. At first, it just seemed like another intimidation tactic, but at some point, the laughter grew and became real, as if he genuinely found me nothing more than a foolish kid. “Okay,” he said. “But you might not like what you find.”

  With that, he nodded at Mary and patted the other deputy on the back, guiding him away from the two of us so we could talk.

  “What in the hell are you doing here?” Mary said.

  “I was just driving by and saw the—”

  “And you thought it would be a good idea to stop? Jesus, Earl. I told you Shaw wanted to meet with me. Well, we met, and he basically read me the riot act for messing with you. I tried to tell him you were a logical collaborator, but the more I tried to speak sense to him, the angrier he got. I’m only here because Shaw owed my old chief a favor, but I think Shaw’s mad enough about this to fire me, or at least send me back. If that happens, I won’t be able to be with Granny.”

  “I understand. We need to split up.”

  “You don’t have to sound so happy about it.”

  “I just mean—”

  She leaned a little closer. “Forget it. You’re right. Splitting up is the best way to go. I can’t risk this shit.” She looked at the road. “Look, isn’t this what you wanted anyway? I mean, last night you made it clear you worked alone. That you wanted to be alone.” She said the last bit with enough feeling that I couldn’t miss what she was getting at.

  And maybe she was right. Besides, I couldn’t allow myself to drag a good woman like Mary into the cesspool of my life. So we’d go it alone. That was okay. Right?

  Sure it was. I did work alone. And besides, being alone would keep me safe—if not physically, at least emotionally.

  It all sounded reasonable. It all sounded great. But why did I feel so miserable?

  “I’ve got to go,” Mary said. “I hope you get some closure on your father.”

  “Wait,” I said. “At least tell me what’s happening here.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not going to do it. It’s not personal, but I need to keep this job. At least for a few more months.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I understand.”

  I stood there for a moment more, taking in the scene. Several of the deputies had ventured into the kudzu now and appeared to be searching for something. Shaw was on his phone. He was holding something in a ziplock bag in his right hand. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it seemed to be the color of flesh.

  I started back to my truck, but just before getting in, I looked up at the shack again. One of the vines of kudzu moved, and I thought I saw a face in an open window. I stepped around my truck for a better look, but the vines fell back into place, covering the window and the face.

  32

  Rufus and I sat around and debated what it could mean the rest of the afternoon. His take—clearly more level-headed than mine—was it likely had nothing to do with McCauley or anything else I was trying to figure out. I appreciated him trying to calm me down, but it didn’t work. I argued that the Fingers was a community too small to have disconnected crimes.

  “Anything big enough to bring out the entire sheriff’s department is something major. And anything major in this area is likely connected to McCauley.”

  “Lots of assumptions there,” Rufus said. “Still, I reckon I’ve known you long enough to know you ain’t going to change your mind.”

  I patted Goose’s head, and he licked the bottom of my hand. “You’ve known me five days.”

  “Like I said, long enough to know.” He spat out into the yard from his perch on the old steps. I was sitting on a log—one of several lying around the front of the church steps.

  “What’s up with all the logs?” I said.

  “You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Of course I’d believe you. I’ve known you long enough to be sure you’re only partially full of shit.”

  He nodded. “That’s not too far from accurate. Okay. Here it is. In a couple of hours—right about sunset—there’ll be about a half dozen to a dozen college kids pulling up. They’ll gather around these steps to listen to my old ass hold court.”

  “Say that again?”

  “I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “I believe you. I’m just trying to understand. Why do they come?”

  “That, my friend, is a good question. I think they find me hip or cool or whatever the damned word is these days.” He shook his head. “It started with some professor at Georgia who was doing a course on nontraditional living. Hell if I know how he heard about me, but he came up and asked permission to bring his class up on a field trip. I told him I didn’t mind, as long as they didn’t mind that I might be in the middle of something and that something could include getting drunk. I think that gave him a little pause, but he brought the class anyway. They asked me some questions about my life. They seemed to get a kick out of me. The way I gave up on religion yet I still live in a church and tend the dead. Next thing I knew, some of the kids from that class were knocking on the door the following weekend. I told them it wasn’t safe up here because of them fellows across the creek, but finally I figured out if they’d just come on Friday nights, it would be all right. Ronnie Thrash and his buddies almost always go down to Riley and raise hell on Friday and Saturday nights. It’s the weeknights when they like to stay home and raise hell.” He reached out for Goose, and the dog scampered over to meet his hand. He grinned as he rubbed Goose behind his alert ears.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “they’ve started bringing me beer. They call it ‘craft’ beer, and it’s really good. You should stick around if you ain’t got plans. Should be a fun evening.”

  I told him I was going to be going to Burt’s for dinner.

  “Oh, I remember him. He was decent for a Holy Flamer. Was glad to hear about his daughter turning up.”

  “Wait, what did you say?”

  “Oh, Holy Flamer. That’s what I call them. It’s just a—”

  “No, what did you say about his daughter?”

  “Oh, this was a month or two back. Spring, I think. She ran off for a few days. Made the news, but she came back. All’s well that ends well.”

  “Did they say where she went?”

>   He shrugged. “Maybe. Sometimes I find it hard to keep up. No TV, no radio, no eyes.” He grinned ghoulishly. “But people always talk to a blind man. I reckon they think I’m safer or something. Same thing with these college kids. They tell me anything and everything. Sex lives, drugs, you name it.”

  “You ever hear about anybody that lives in that shack up above the kudzu field out on 52?”

  “It’s been abandoned, grown over, since before I went blind. Why, you see somebody there?”

  I told him about the face in the window.

  “Sounds spooky. One of the advantages to being blind. Don’t have to see that kind of shit.”

  I dug a boot heel into the dirt. “I probably imagined it.”

  “Like them snakes?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded. “So you’re working the McCauley and DeWalt cases now?”

  I shrugged. “I’m working the whole Fingers. Working my past. Working it all. But not getting anywhere.”

  “Yeah, I can hear it in your voice, my friend. Let me see if I can offer you a little advice, considering how much you helped me all those years ago, even if you didn’t know it.”

  “Sure.”

  “Focus on one thing at a time. It’s always helped me. Too many things can be overwhelming. Follow one thread to the end.”

  “Sound advice,” I said.

  He grinned. “It’s why the kids love me.”

  * * *

  Rufus’s advice to focus on one thread and follow it to the end had been sound. But too often sound advice was the hardest to follow. As I changed clothes and headed over to Granny’s to see how she was, I couldn’t stop my mind from tangling itself in all the different threads I’d encountered since coming back to North Georgia.

  The newest one perplexed me the most. What had been in the kudzu? And more to the point, what had been in the ziplock bag Shaw had been holding?

  I knew I risked being late to Burt’s, but when I reached the bottom of Pointer Mountain and saw there were no signs of any police vehicles, I decided to pull over to the side of the road for a closer look.

  I didn’t waste any time before sliding down the embankment into the kudzu. It was deeper than I anticipated, and soon I found myself falling through the vines and becoming completely submersed. Even though there was still plenty of daylight, it was nearly dark under the thick vines. With great effort, I managed to pull my way back to the surface and steady myself on a steep incline. From there, I saw the worn path I’d noticed earlier. It ran through the kudzu almost like a ditch. I moved toward it, half stumbling, half crawling. Once I reached the path, I was able to stand upright. I looked around. On both sides, the kudzu rolled away from me. Straight ahead, though, I had a clear view of the groove in the kudzu. It went on for a long time until it was too far for me to trace. But from the general direction, it appeared that it would eventually lead me to Ring Mountain, the same mountain Crawford and I were supposed to scale in the morning, looking for the place where he’d seen my father.

  I studied the mountain closely, and I swore I could just make out a tiny crease—barely visible to the naked eye—running up the side. It was little more than a hairline, but I couldn’t help but wonder if following this trail would take me there.

  And if this was indeed a secret trail that led into the mountains, why had it suddenly attracted the attention of the Coulee County Sheriff’s Office?

  Was it possible the flesh-colored thing I’d seen in the ziplock bag had been a piece of Bryant McCauley’s body? I thought back to all the esoteric bits of info I’d received from him over the last week.

  The photo and the quickly scribbled note. What had it said?

  Look at the time stamp. Compare with date of death. Proof he’s alive. Need help finding him again. Please come.

  So if my father had been at the top of Ring Mountain and this had been the path McCauley had been taking to get there, why did he need my help to find him?

  The penciled notes on the wall of the fishing shack made things even more complicated. Like the note, I had committed the writing on the wall to memory.

  —the girl

  —find map (Miss Laney)

  —Earl again

  Again, if I was working under the assumption that someone had followed McCauley on his way to visit my father and decided to off him here in the kudzu—because why wouldn’t you do it here where the body would be nearly impossible to find—then the idea of needing a map seemed sort of futile. Needing me was just as pointless.

  Unless . . . unless McCauley only knew the general vicinity of where Daddy was located and needed me or the map or both to help him find the exact location.

  Or Daddy had once been up on Ring Mountain, but then he’d moved somewhere else, somewhere McCauley didn’t know about.

  I shook my head, angry with myself. Of course, the most logical explanation of all was that McCauley was insane and I wasn’t too far from it myself.

  Daddy was dead.

  Lester had seen his body.

  I slapped a mosquito on my neck and then another on my forearm. It was time to get out. I looked up at the shack on the rise a couple of hundred feet away. It was abandoned. It had to be. The door was completely grown over with kudzu. I was a fool.

  I climbed the rise, using the kudzu vines like ropes, before heading back to my truck, my eyes still locked on just the faintest hint of a trail on Ring Mountain.

  33

  Burt embraced me warmly and invited me in with a huge smile. I thanked him and stepped inside the old house, the same one he’d grown up in. The last time I’d been in this house was when I was sixteen, when we’d gathered to mourn the passing of his mother. Despite the reason for the gathering, I remembered the day fondly. Daddy had always thought a lot of his sister-in-law and spent the afternoon subdued, almost somber. When he was asked to talk, he didn’t speak of hell or sin or any of his other tired themes. Instead, he remembered Aunt Julie with a stirring recollection of her many kindnesses. She’d been a special woman—not only because she’d had to endure all the bullshit that came with living in these male-dominated mountains, but also because she’d had to put up with my uncle Otis.

  “It’s a mess,” Burt said and shrugged. “I’m still working on getting the girls to do the housework.”

  I looked around. Honestly, it looked anything but a mess. In fact, it looked meticulously cleaned. But that shouldn’t have surprised me. Burt was like his father and mine, men who believed the state of a man’s appearance or his house directly mirrored the state of his soul.

  The house had been built in the 1940s by my grandfather, whom I knew very little about. Daddy would only say he was a carpenter, a good builder. If pressed further, Daddy would always get angry and tell me God didn’t want us worrying about the past. When he’d died, neither my father nor Uncle Otis wanted the house, but Daddy, despite being younger, was the more powerful personality and tended to get his way. The house was no exception. It is, perhaps, some indication of the level of pathos that existed between the two brothers that neither wanted the house, yet neither would sell it either. Because Otis was forced to leave the mountains and go to the valley, he’d always been seen as slightly less of a man than my father. Why he would not sell the place and just move back to the Ghost Creek Mountain, I’ll never know.

  Burt led me through the expansive foyer and into a dining room. There were four places set at the table.

  “Let’s sit in here,” he said, pointing to a sitting room on the other side of the table.

  I followed him in. There was a fireplace, a couch, and two recliners. No television. Everything was centered around the fireplace and the mantle lined with framed photographs.

  “Make yourself at home. Can I get you a Coke or something?”

  “Just some ice water.”

  “Coming up. I’ll send the girls in to say hey.”

  “Sounds great. I can’t wait to see them.”

  Burt stopped short of the kitchen. “Earl?
”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just a heads-up. I told you about me and Jeannie.”

  “Yeah. I was sorry to—”

  “It’s been hard on the girls. Especially Baylee. She resents me. Blames me for her mother leaving.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Burt.”

  “I just wanted you to know because, lately, she’s been sort of . . . distant.” He smiled suddenly. “But we’re going to get her through it. Prayer and staying in the word, you know?”

  I just looked at him.

  “That’s right. I forgot. You still ain’t come around.”

  I decided to change the subject. “How’s Amy?”

  He nodded. “Sis is doing fine. She got married a few weeks ago. Good man. Active in the church. Fellow named Brent Wallace.”

  I remembered the name, but I assumed he was much younger than me, as Amy was about fifteen years my junior.

  “And how’s the carpet mill?”

  He shook his head. “Backbreaking. I’m on the late shift now. Includes Sunday through Thursday nights. You’d think they’d shut it down every once and a while, but people want their carpet. What can you do?”

  The girls came in a few minutes later. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. Over the years, Burt had sent me photos, but apparently not recently. The older one, Baylee, had turned into an absolutely stunning creature. She was tall—a Marcus trait—but she had her mother’s shapely figure and thick, almost oil-black hair that hung in long silken curls. Her skin was pale and clear, which seemed to come out of nowhere, as both her mother and father had dark complexions. She wore a simple pair of blue jeans, an oversized sweat shirt, and as far as I could tell, no makeup at all.

  It didn’t matter. Her beauty was completely natural and utterly disarming.

  The other girl was still just a kid and looked like a Marcus. Dark skin, sandy hair, long and lanky. She definitely favored Burt.

  “I’m Earl,” I said and held out my hand.

  “Uncle Earl, right?” the younger one said.