by Glenn Trust
Uncomfortable at her sudden openness and not sure what to say, Clay stared off across the yard to the dirt road and the trees, black in the night. “You’re not crazy. We never say that.”
“It’s okay.” She shrugged. “I just wanted you to know that I know you talk about me…whatever it is you say between yourselves.”
They were silent for a long while, sitting in the yellow glow of the light from a window. As the night came on, it wrapped its darkness around the house like a cocoon. They sat like that a lot…most of the time, actually…hushed and thoughtful. Clay didn’t mind. He liked being near the girl…woman now…who had taken him over completely all those years ago.
“Can I ask you a question?”
He turned to look at her. “Sure. You know you can.”
“Why are you here?”
“What?”
“Here…why do you come here…sit here…stay near?”
“Well…” It was the question his brother had often asked him, and Lyn’s mother, Ruby. Surprisingly, his own mother had never asked about his desire to be near Lyn. She just nodded her understanding. “I guess it’s because I like being near you.”
“Why?”
He turned fully on the step to look at her. Usually timid, unsure of herself, it was unlike her to pursue a line of questioning with him. The thought occurred to him that this could be a sign…a good sign…that she was making progress, putting the past behind. Or, maybe it was a bad sign. How the hell was he supposed to know?
“I think you know why.” He grinned. “You gonna make me say it?”
“No…not if you don’t want to. Sometimes…” She looked away from his eyes and down at the planks again. “Sometimes it just seems strange. You followed me from one end of Georgia to the other while I was…” She still found it difficult to reference the abduction by the serial killer. The counselors said she probably always would. “Then at the end, you showed up. I’d be dead if you didn't show up.” She raised her eyes. “I’m thankful for that. Don’t know that I ever said it, but I am.”
“Me too.”
“You almost were dead.”
“Almost, but I’m not.” He stood and leaned against the rail, arms folded. “So why all the questions tonight.?”
“I don’t know. I wonder sometimes. You come here…we talk sometimes…a lot of times we don’t. I wonder why is all.”
“I like being here…near you.” He grinned. “Imagine that. Someone likes to be around Lyn.”
She laughed a quiet, almost whispered laugh. “You might be the crazy one.”
He laughed then, and she laughed again, louder.
“Not crazy. Least it doesn’t feel crazy. It feels…” He stopped, uncertain about saying the words.
“What?”
“It feels good, that’s all I was saying.”
“That’s all?”
“Dammit girl. You making me say it?”
“Yes, I think so. For a long time, I didn’t, but now…I think I do want you to say it.”
He walked over and sat beside her on the porch swing. “I love you, Lyn. That’s why.”
She smiled, lowering her eyes as always, whenever a conversation became personal. But the smile remained on her face. “Thank you.” Then her eyes rose, concerned. “You know I can’t say that. I don’t know if I can ever say that. I know it’s not fair, but…”
He looked out into the night, aching to hear the words from her and knowing at the same time that she spoke the truth. She might never say them. “You don’t have to say anything.”
7. Entrepreneurs
The wrench hit the concrete floor with a clang that sounded like an alarm bell.
“Jesus Christ, Albert,” Carl Stinson hissed through clenched teeth. “You tryin’ to wake the whole goddamned county? You’ll have the sheriff on our asses sure as shit!”
“Calm down, Carl. Bain’s outside keepin’ watch. You can see a mile down that road in every direction. No one’s gonna sneak up on us.”
“Maybe, but it’s my ass on the line if someone finds out we’re in here taking parts off these clunkers. I’m the one works here…I’m the one with the key.”
“So what? Ain’t no one gonna prove nothin’. This place is just a shack with a sign that says ‘Garage’ outside. Any fool could break in…just kick a hole in the side.”
“Yeah, well no one kicked a hole in the side. We got in with the key that old man Perkins gave me.”
“We can fix that.” Albert grinned. “I’ll kick one in it…easy as pie.”
“Do and I’ll break this wrench over your head.”
“Like to see you try that, boy. I ain’t too old to whip your ass, just like always.” He held the socket wrench up and let it dangle from two fingers taunting his brother.
“Warnin’ you, Albert. Don’t do it.”
The wrench fell. The ringing metal reverberated off the walls and corrugated steel roof.
“Goddamnit!” Carl rushed his older brother. Albert dodged and threw out a right hook that caught Carl in the side of the head as he passed, sending him to the floor near the wrench. He picked it up and stood to face Albert. He took a step towards his smirking brother who outweighed him by forty pounds.
The shop door banged open. Bain rushed in, wide-eyed, head swerving from one to the other of his brothers.
“What the fuck is goin’ on? Jesus, you two could wake the dead.”
“Nothin’ just a little discussion about noise is all.”
“Well, how about quit your discussin’ and get to work.” Bain looked over his shoulder through the door to the empty road. “I’d just as soon get out of here.”
“You spooked?”
“Naw, I ain’t spooked. I’m thirsty.” Bain eyed his older brothers cautiously, choosing his words carefully. No reason to piss off either of them and take the pounding that would follow. “Let’s just get what we came for and get out.”
“You get back outside. We’ll be done here soon.” Albert turned back to the pickup in the center of the shop and put his head under the hood.
“Yeah, get back outside.” The fight forgotten as quickly as it had begun, Carl lowered himself to the floor and rolled up under the truck on a dolly.
Bain walked out into the night, muttering. Carl and Albert went back to work.
Work, in its common sense, was actually a misnomer for their activities. While Clyde Stinson had instilled in his sons a strong sense of family blood above all else and everyone else, his teaching had not extended to imparting a traditional work ethic.
The Stinsons lived hand to mouth. Carl was the only one of the brothers with any actual employment. Old Ralph Perkins hired him to help out around the shop and gave him a key. Carl wasn’t much of an employee really, only showing up when in need of cash. But Perkins had given him a key, anyway, glad to have someone to talk to on the days Carl did make it in to work. That was his first mistake.
The Stinson brothers, always on the lookout for an opportunity that did not require actual labor, had hit on a method to obtain cash through the benefit of Perkins’ employment of Carl. It didn’t provide a lot, but their needs were small, beer money mostly. As the possibility of any female bedding one of them without being paid to do so was remote in the extreme, money for whores was their second priority.
Fifty years’ worth of makes and models were scattered in rusted piles in the auto salvage yard behind Perkins’ old garage. Carl kept track of the inventory, watching for a chance to match a vehicle that had come in for repairs with one wrecked out in the yard.
It was a simple matter, to exchange the new parts on the pickups and SUVs that came in for service with the ones off salvage yard. The market for the lightly used parts was good. When they had a pickup load, they would make the drive to Atlanta, Jacksonville, Macon, Savannah or some other city away from Pickham County. It was always far enough so as not to draw suspicion from the local deputies. The money from selling off the stolen parts was always sufficient for a nigh
t on the town and kept them in beer for a while, or at least until the next parts run.
Old man Perkins had not caught onto the scheme, and, in fact, was unwittingly pleased with the business it generated. He would show a customer a part pulled off their vehicle, a burned out alternator, fuel pump, or carburetor and charge them for the repairs. A few customers might object, but none seriously suspected Perkins of any wrongdoing. Most had known the old man all of their lives.
Working as hard at taking off and replacing parts as they would have in just repairing the vehicles, it never occurred to the Stinsons that their energies might be better spent in legitimate, gainful employment. The Stinsons were entrepreneurs. Taking orders, working for someone else…someone not a Stinson…was not in their blood.
What was in their blood, rooted deeply by their father, was the need to ignore the rules that the lesser humans, the non-Stinsons, had to follow. Legality or illegality did not enter into their thinking. Putting one over on the rest of the world and coming out with enough to buy beer and live another month in Albert’s trailer was sufficient for their purposes. Ignoring society and its customs, was a principle of sorts, if you could say that the Stinsons had any principles at all.
Outside, Bain leaned back in the shadows against the wall of the old building. He lit a cigarette, cupping it in his hand so that the glow would not be visible in the dark. Silence surrounded him, the noises from his brothers inside having subsided. A moth fluttered and flopped in hopeless desperation against the small single light bulb hanging over the shop’s door.
Bain lifted the cigarette, inhaling deeply and lighting his face with a red glow in the process. Stupid goddamned bug, he thought. He took another long drag on his smoke and made himself visible for half a mile in all directions. Thinking was not Bain Stinson’s strong point.
Tired of watching the moth beat its wings to powder on the light bulb, he thought about going back in the shop to hurry things along, and then thought better of it. No need to get them pissed at him again. Still, he wished they would hurry. He was thirsty.
8. Regrets
Chirping and humming, the outside world of the night surrounded the small frame house. Its old boards and planks had weathered the passing of generations, local turmoil, world conflicts and, most recently, the oppressive occupation of Carl Stinson and the abuse of his family. Crickets, frogs, living things scurrying in the grass and brush went about their nocturnal activities, oblivious to the other world that existed inside the house.
Ruby Stinson sat in an old stuffed chair by the open front door hearing it all. Occasionally, an insect would bump blindly into the door’s screen, flutter in surprise for a second and then move off into the night.
In the dark, surrounded by the night, the life humming busily outside, she felt at peace. She’d never been on a tropical cruise, never been much out of Pickham County at all, really. She imagined, sitting alone, listening to the nocturnal life pulsing around the house, that it was like being on an island. The breeze rustled a live oak in the yard, and she closed her eyes thinking that it must sound like a sea wind blowing through palm fronds. She tried to picture it in her mind. Palm trees swaying and rustling, there on her island, secluded, the only human in existence.
The solitary sensation was an illusion, she knew. Her daughter slept fitfully in the next room. Every now and then, she would hear the bed springs squeak and the floorboards creak and know that Lyn had gotten up to stare out of the window into the dark, on her own island.
She had gone in once when Lyn had stirred in the night. She found her standing in front of the window, motionless. That had been soon after she brought her home…after the ordeal with the killer in the mountains of north Georgia. After several minutes, she had spoken to her, called her name. There had been no response. Her daughter, standing wide-eyed in the moonlight, staring out the window, had gone somewhere else, was untouchable and unreachable.
Ruby wondered where that was. It must be someplace safe…someplace where terrible things could not happen to a young girl, where there were no kidnappings, or rapes, or murders…some place where fathers were kind and mothers did not fail their children. She hoped it was a place like that. Her daughter deserved that.
She would have liked to share the vision of that place with her daughter, but she could not. Lyn never spoke of it, and Ruby never intruded by asking. She had tried to share it with her once, in the hospital where they had gone after Clay and the deputy had rescued her. Lyn had withdrawn even further. Wherever the place was, it was hers, alone, private, safe.
The counseling had started about that time. They said that it would take years for Lyn to recover fully. They were right about that. It had been years. She was still recovering from the trauma of her ordeal.
So, Ruby spent her nights listening for and watching over her daughter, trying to make up for all the times she had failed to protect her and her brother from their father…failed to be strong for them…failed to make sure that Carl Stinson could not ruin their lives as he had hers.
Barred from her daughter’s safe place, the refuge she sought in her dreams, Ruby knew there was no one to blame but herself. The regrets hung heavy, numbing in her heart.
She relished the nights when she could sit quietly, safe on her island in the dark, listening to the sea of life outside. Sometimes on nights like that, the regrets faded.
9. Things Not Explained
Gravel crunched under tires and the minivan rocked to a halt in front of the Purcell homestead. Clay and his mother, Martha came out on the porch smiling.
“Grandma! Uncle Clay!”
Climbing from their car seats, the two toddlers jumped from the van’s wide side door, careening across the yard, half-stumbling and half-running. Two-year-old Thomas fell to the ground half way to the porch. Lip poked out, he blinked his eyes wetly and looked up surprised, holding his scraped hands up to his father. Cy picked him up and carried him the rest of the way to the porch while three-year-old Trisha made it without mishap.
First on the steps, little Trisha’s reward was the first hug from Grandma, followed by a breathtaking swoop in Uncle Clay’s arms that made her squeal as he placed her on his shoulders.
“Do it again. Do it again, Uncle Clay!”
Clay deftly took her from his shoulders and swung her to the porch, following through with another swinging lift to his shoulders.
“Again! Again!”
Clay lowered her to the porch. “Not just yet, Trish. Let me say hello to Thomas.”
“No. Again! Do it again!”
“Patricia. You heard Uncle Clay. You’ll get your turn.” Cy placed his son on the porch in front of Clay, who lifted him up, hugging him and lifting him more gently to his shoulders than he had his older sister.
“Uncle Clay…” Trish had her hands up to her uncle waiting for the promised ride to his shoulders.
Martha Purcell interrupted her granddaughter. “I have an idea. Why don’t you come inside and see the surprise I have for you.”
“What is it, Grandma?” The ride in her uncle’s arms was immediately forgotten.
“Oh, you have to come inside to see.”
“Is it cookies?”
“I’m not saying. Have to come inside.”
“C’mon, Toms.” Motherly little Trish grabbed her brother’s arm and tugged him toward the door. “C’mon.” There was urgency in her voice. “Grandma’s got a surprise! C’mon.”
Pulled by his sister, Thomas stumbled again. Cy reached down. Set him back on his feet and dusted his bottom with a pat. “Go see Grandma’s surprise.”
Thomas toddled after Trisha letting the screen door slam loudly behind him.
Clay turned and sat on the porch’s top step. He held up a hand with a mug of coffee. “Want some? Mama’s got a fresh pot on.”
“No. I’m all coffee’d up.” Cy took a seat beside his brother.
The morning was soft and quiet, filled with the fragrances of living things. Grass, fresh mowed by C
lay the day before. Jasmine growing on a trellis in a flowerbed. The air humid, holding the scent of the trees and foliage.
The brothers sat silent, elbows on their knees looking across the yard of the house where they had both been born. A field on the other side of the road lay empty and fallow. It was part of the farm they had worked as boys with their father. That was before the day the tractor had turned over in the roadside ditch.
A logging truck came rumbling down the road, fifty-foot pine tree trunks stacked high on its trailer. Daddy was bringing the tractor from the barn and swerved just a little to give the big rig more room as it passed. The tractor’s front wheels sank in the soft shoulder, wet from and overnight rain. It rolled sideways into the ditch, pinning Daddy underneath. Twelve-year-old Cy and nine-year-old Clay had come running from the field. It was too late. Their father’s life had been crushed from him.
The brothers’ eyes rested on the spot where the tractor had gone into the ditch. It was visible from the house, the yard, and every time they came or went from the driveway, a constant reminder of their loss. The man who had been big, and quiet and steady, was gone.
They remembered things about him, talked about those things a lot, nights lying in bed. The way he smelled like earth and green things, sometimes like sweat and tobacco, or on Sunday morning before church like soap and Old Spice after-shave.
They remembered how he never shouted the way some other fathers did. He would explain how things were in his quiet way and then expect them to comply. The few times they had defied him, there had been consequences. The punishment was never administered in anger. It was the fair result of their actions. He knew it, and because he did, his sons knew it as well and did not resent it.
When he died, they cried with their mother. For days they hated to go out of the house, didn’t want to see the place beside the road that had caused the tractor to turn over and stolen their father from their lives.
Then their mother’s brother, Uncle Thomas had come along. He was not much of a farmer, couldn’t teach them anything about growing crops they had not already learned from their father. He was, however, a master carpenter, and he taught them everything he knew about working with wood. They learned the trade from him and when they were old enough, they opened their own business and began scrounging jobs. Eventually, people were coming to Purcell Brothers Carpentry, lining up and waiting to schedule them for their projects, large or small.