He smiled a little and said, “Well, if nothing else, you may have gotten your pa’s sense of humor.” I almost choked on my water.
“It’s strange how different a father and son can be,” he mused, studying me as though trying to find some similarity between Moses and me. I started setting the record straight before I’d swallowed the last of the water, and set off a coughing fit. When my coughs subsided, I handed back the cup and started talking.
“You’re damn right, there’s nothing the same about us! I’m a fucking choir boy compared to him! He’s the baddest son of a bitch I ever knew, and him being a sheriff doesn’t change that!” The deputy stared at me like I’d just grown horns before walking back toward his desk.
“Hey, when are you going to let me out of here?” I called out as I heard him sit back down at the desk.
“I don’t know. Sheriff Mattox said he’d stop by after church,” came the response.
Church! Moses was in church!
“Well, glory glory hallelujah!” I muttered, completely dumbfounded.
~~~
Shortly after noon, I heard Moses come into the station. He discussed some things with the deputy in modulated tones and I heard one of them leave.
Someone walked softly toward my cell. When the footsteps stopped, I turned and looked. It was Moses. I was surprised I’d even recognized him the night before. He was wearing a pair of navy slacks, a crisp, light blue dress shirt, and a pair of black shoes that would have passed old Lizard Gizzard’s inspection. He looked ten years younger than I remembered him, which was strange, because it’d been over ten years since I’d seen him last. But now, his hair was cropped short, his face was clean-shaven, his eyes were clear, and there was an aliveness about him he hadn’t had when I was a child.
“Good afternoon, Robert,” he said, almost tenderly.
“Good day, sir,” I responded, sitting up. He looked at me for a minute without saying anything. I saw pain, pity, and regret in his eyes.
“You’ve changed so much,” he finally said, trying to control the emotion that threatened to take over his face.
“I guess we both have, haven’t we?” I said, studying his face for any vestiges of the man I hated, and wanted to hate. There was no sign of the Moses I had known on the face of the man that stood in front of me. I’d never seen remorse trickle down the cheeks of the father I’d grown up with.
“Yes. Yes, we have,” he agreed, the emotion getting the better of his voice.
I suddenly felt awkward and uncomfortable, seeing him looking at me like that and crying. It reminded me of the time when I was just a youngster, when I’d opened the door to Ma’s bedroom while she was changing, and she’d been standing there, naked. I’d felt dirty after that. It had just felt wrong, like I’d seen something that was private, personal, and simply not for me to see. And similarly, to see Moses looking vulnerable and emotionally nude was just as discomposing, even embarrassing, for me. I didn’t know how to handle it, so I did what I’d done when I was a youngster—I pretended I didn’t see anything.
“So, uh, what am I being charged with?” I asked, after the silence became too uncomfortable.
“Well, we’ll talk ’bout that,” he replied, taking a ring of keys out of his pocket and opening my cell door.
“Come,” he said, leading the way into the office area.
He tossed the keys onto the desk, took a chair from against the wall, and set it down across from his desk for me to sit down on. I sat down, he sat down, and he pushed a bottle of Coca-Cola, a brown paper bag, a pack of cigarettes, and my lighter over toward me.
“Eat,” was all he said. I opened the bag and found a cheeseburger and fries. When the smell of food hit my nostrils, I realized how hungry I was. Moses watched in silence as I chomped my burger down in a half dozen bites, tossed the fries in behind the chunks of bread and meat, and washed it all down with the soda.
“Thanks,” I said as I wiped my face with a napkin. He nodded and sat in silence. He looked like he wanted to begin speaking, but wasn’t precisely certain how to start.
“So?” I asked, giving him a questioning look as I took a cigarette out of the pack and put it in my mouth. I waited for a tongue-lashing, like I was a child sitting in the principal’s office. He cleared his throat and looked a little nervous as he began speaking.
“I guess the first thing I wanna do is thank you, Robert,” he began. The look on my face must have reflected my thoughts. He laughed gently at my bewilderment.
“I need to thank you for kickin’ me out of the house eleven years ago. It was the best thing that coulda happened to me.” Well, that certainly didn’t diminish my confusion!
“What?” I asked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He smiled as he explained.
“Robert, when I left Coon Holler that night, I was more humiliated than I’d ever been in my life. You helped break a very hard, a very proud, a very bitter man. I hit rock bottom that night and almost bust into a million pieces.”
I nodded, beginning to somewhat get the gist of what he was talking about. There was a catch in his voice as he continued.
“I wandered around for a while, just aimless. Wasn’t sure where to go, what to do. I ran from myself. I ran from God. I was the most miserable cuss in the South.” My eyes were glued to his face as my neglected cigarette burned down slowly. I knew something about what he was talking about, firsthand.
“And then, in a little town called Sweetwater, Tennessee, God tracked me down, and hallelujah, I ain’t been the same man since!” He smiled, and excitement sparked in his eyes. I remembered my cigarette and took a quick puff.
“I quit drinkin’, and needed a new start. Someplace nobody knew me or my past. Someplace that’d give me a chance. So I moved to Buxley. I didn’t know a soul here, and had no job or place to stay, but I went to church at Buxley Gospel Temple, and the first service I went to, this farmer, Richard Sanders, chats me up afterward and offers me a job and room and board. I couldn’t believe it!” Moses shook his head as though he still doubted it’d happened.
“After a few months, Brother Richard found out I couldn’t read or write. It’d always bothered me—I suppose that’s why I was so hard on you for always havin’ your nose in a book,” he gave me an apologetic look before continuing.
“So he started helpin’ me learn to read pretty much every night. Within six months, I could read pretty much anythin’. After I’d worked for him for a few years, the sheriff’s department was lookin’ for a deputy. It didn’t even cross my mind to apply, but Brother Richard said I should see if they’d hire me. He said he’d stand behind me all the way. I think I was more flabbergasted than anyone when they hired me!” he chuckled.
“I was deputy about seven years or so, and took quite a likin’ to the work, so when Sheriff Morton retired last year, I ran for sheriff . . . and here I am,” he ended. The look on his face when he finished left no doubt he was very content with his new life. It irked me a little to see him so satisfied and at peace.
“Well,” I forced a wry smile, “sounds like your life has turned out pretty rosy.” His countenance fell as he detected the bitterness that tinged my tone.
“Yeah,” he said quietly, as though he felt guilty for how things were going for him, “yeah, it’s—it’s been lookin’ up.”
I rolled my cigarette back and forth between my fingers in silence. I could feel him looking at me. Finally, he spoke up.
“And you?” he asked. “How you been?”
I looked down at the floor and laughed hollowly as I thought about how I’d been. For several minutes, I just stared at the floor without speaking. I thought about the war, the killing, the dying, the destruction. But as gruesome and terrible as those things had been, they were overshadowed by thoughts of a marriage that had turned to rubble. The rest of the day wouldn’t suffice to tell him how I’d been. There was simply no way I could even begin telling him what had happened the last few years of my life. Finally, I told him
in the only way I could think of.
“Do you see these fuckin’ scars?” I asked him, turning my head and pointing to the scars that snaked down the side of my face and through my beard before slithering down my neck. He had a pained look on his face as he nodded.
“Do they look pretty bad to you?” I asked. He nodded again, slowly, as though afraid it was a trick question.
“They’re nothin’!” I spat through my teeth. I ground the butt of my cigarette forcefully into the side of the desk with my thumb.
“Nothin’!” I yelled, startling him as I stood up suddenly and leaned across the desk.
“They—are—fuck—all!” I enunciated loudly, emotion greasing the handle of my voice.
“FUCK! ALL!” I screamed, punctuating my last words by taking my fist and pounding the desk as hard as I could.
A pen bounced into the air and fell to the floor. I was hyperventilating now. My whole body shook as I sat down. I gasped for breath like I was trying to breathe in a hurricane and the oxygen was just blowing by me. Tremors took over my legs and hands as I helplessly attempted to control the movements of my own appendages.
Moses said nothing as I struggled to regain mastery of my body and its functions. Then, when the twitching had ceased and my breaths were deep and even, he looked at me and said, “Yeah, the ones inside. Those are the bad ones.”
I looked him straight in the eye, held his gaze, and was relieved to see that no further explanation was necessary. He knew exactly what I’d tried to tell him.
“Yeah,” I muttered, “they’re the worst.”
Table of Contents
THIRTEEN
STRUGGLING
Moses let me off easy. As long as I’d apologize to Vern and pay for any damage I’d done to the saloon, he wouldn’t lay any charges.
I didn’t have enough money in my pocket to make a jingle, and told him so. He said he’d already paid Vern out of his own pocket, so if I wanted, I could stay with him for a while, find some work, and pay it off as I had funds. It sounded to me like as reasonable a deal as any, so I shook on it.
It was pouring rain when he dropped me off in the alley where I’d left my car the day before. As I started the car and turned on the wipers, I noticed my suicide poem lying on the dashboard. I picked it up and tossed it back into the glove compartment. The thoughts of suicide were gone.
The taillights from Moses’ Ford moved ahead, and I followed them slowly down the alley and onto the street.
He led me out of town several miles and turned down a long driveway. A large farmhouse sat at the end of the driveway, but we turned before we reached it, down a secondary lane that led to a small house hidden away behind some trees. It was more of a cabin-sized place, old, but kept up nicely.
The rain had almost stopped, but drops still dripped off the trees as I walked toward the house with my satchel slung over my shoulder.
“Is the place yours?” I asked as Moses opened the door and I stepped inside.
“Rentin’ to own,” he replied. “Brother Sanders used to live here. He and his wife built that house yonder ten, fifteen years ago, so this one was sittin’ here empty. He told me I could have it for a song if I wanted it, so I took him up on it and fixed it up. Should have it paid off in a little over a year.” His personal satisfaction was once again evident as he showed me around his home.
“You can stay in here,” he said, flicking on the light in the spare room. The room was small, but tidy. The bed was made, and there were two neatly folded towels and a washcloth on the bed. I realized he’d prepared the room ahead of time just for me.
“The restroom’s down there,” he pointed to the end of the hall.
“Thanks,” I said. “I think maybe I’ll get cleaned up and take a nap.” I still felt hung over from the night before.
“Sounds good,” he said.
The smell of meat cooking woke me up several hours later. The sun was visible through the bedroom window as it tried wedge itself between two clouds. Hunger gnawed at my belly. My body reminded me it was overdue for a taste of alcohol. I got out of bed and walked to the kitchen.
“Smells good,” I commented. Moses dumped some diced vegetables into a pot of stew meat.
“Should be ready in 20 minutes,” he said, as he took a long look at my clean-shaven face.
“Didn’t know you could cook,” I ribbed him lightly.
“I didn’t know either, until I had to,” he smiled.
I sat down at the table and watched him working at the stove, marveling at how much he’d changed in the past decade. But what was more amazing was that not only did I no longer hate him, it didn’t bother me that I didn’t hate him anymore. I didn’t have the desire to hate him. I didn’t want to hate him, because I had been carrying around too much hate and anger inside me for too long. I felt like a drowning man with a bellyful of lead.
“Say, uh, you wouldn’t happen to have a little something to drink around, would you?” I asked hesitantly, as my craving for alcohol intensified.
“There’s water in the tap, and milk in the fridge,” Moses pointed to the fridge with a fork. “And apple juice,” he added. He gave no indication that he understood what I was really asking for.
“Oh, OK,” I said, and got up and began going through the cupboards under the pretense of finding a glass, but I was really looking to see if he might have a little bottle of something tucked away in a dark corner.
“Glasses are in there,” he pointed to the cupboard over the sink that I’d already opened and closed.
“Oh!” I tried to sound surprised. Taking a glass out, I walked over to the fridge and looked inside. Milk and apple juice.
“Say, uh, you wouldn’t happen to keep some bran—medicinal brandy or maybe a little wine—you know, for—for your stomach’s sake?” I inquired hopefully. The silence that followed almost frosted up the windows.
“I don’t allow any of that stuff in the house,” came the sharp reply. I could tell he almost said “shit” instead of “stuff,” because it came out sounding like “shtuff.” It was clear if I wanted to see him get worked up, talking about alcohol would be a sure bet, so I dropped the subject, poured myself some apple juice, and sat back down.
He set the pot of stew down on the table, sat down, and bowed his head. “Thank you Father, for this day,” he prayed. I sat with my eyes open, staring at him. His face showed he meant deeply each word he prayed.
“Thank you that your mercies are new each mornin’, and for the grace you provide abundantly to all who ask. I thank you for bringin’ Robert to my home in this most unusual and miraculous way. Bless this food to us I pray. Amen.”
“Help yourself,” he smiled warmly at me, and I did. We ate in silence, and I sat thinking about how unlikely and unforeseen it was that I was the dinner guest of none other than Moses. When we’d both sopped our bowls clean with bread, I took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to him.
“Haven’t touched tobacco in years,” he declined as he got up to make us coffee. I lit a cigarette and leaned back in my chair.
I wanted to avoid talking about my problems or getting my life straightened out, so I made small talk and steered the conversation toward safe, neutral topics. After a half hour or so, I allowed a lull that was just a little too long, and Moses started talking.
“You know, Robert, I went back to Coon Holler last summer,” he said as he topped up his cup of coffee. I looked at him like he’d just zapped me with lightning.
“Why?” I finally asked, not sure if I really wanted to know.
“More coffee?” he asked.
“No, thanks,” I said, so he got up and put the pot away.
“Well, there were a few reasons. I wanted to put some flowers on the grave of a woman I spent most of my life with, but never really knew. I treated her somethin’ awful, and never did get to say sorry,” he said regretfully.
“Then, there were people in town I needed to make some things right with. So I did that,” he c
ontinued soberly. He took a sip of his coffee and set it back down.
“But the main reason I went was to see my son. A long time ago, my son told me to leave. He told me I could only come back if I came back on my knees, and I got the feelin’ he was pretty serious about that.” I gulped guiltily. Moses stared up at the ceiling, I stared down at the floor, and he kept talking without requiring or expecting any response.
“Well, I had reached that point, and knew I would never, never have total peace if I didn’t go to the son I’d wronged and hurt and trampled on and make amends. So I went. And I knocked on the door of the house I’d last seen him in.” He blew a soft chuckle through his nose. “I knocked on the very door he’d kicked me out of.”
I bit my nails nervously, which was something I never did, as I anticipated what he’d say had happened when the door opened.
“The door opened, and there’s this pretty blonde girl standin’ there, holdin’ a baby.” I couldn’t have flinched harder if he’d stabbed me in the face, but he kept on talking as though he hadn’t noticed. He spoke slowly, evenly, in a deliberate, careful way I’d seen men pick their way through a minefield. Each word was like a step taken only after proper consideration of where it would land.
“She said she was his wife. I was a little surprised. Hadn’t thought to think he might be married.” I struggled to keep my breaths steady as I visualized his story in my mind.
“I asked her if I could speak to my son, and she said he wasn’t in, so I asked if she knew how long he’d be gone.” He paused and cleared his throat.
“She looked at me and said, ‘Sir, I don’t think he’s ever comin’ home! He left when he came home from the war, and I don’t even know where he is!’ Then she started wailin’ and carryin’ on somethin’ awful! I tried to comfort her the best I could, but she was a wreck. It really got my dander up, to see my son had left his wife and a wee little baby like that. I told her he must be as useless a son of a gun as his pa was, and I said a few more unchristian things about him. She just looked up at me and said, ‘Oh, no, sir, it’s not like that. You don’t understand!’” He let out a long sigh, as though speaking was taxing his strength.
Love is a Wounded Soldier Page 27