“Which raises another question. Why would he mail you something? Why not just hand it to you the next time he saw you?”
“How should I know?” Bobby’s voice went high. “How should I know why the man did what he did? Why’d he mail that book to Martin?”
Bertie reached over to lay a warning hand on Bobby’s knee. He moved away from her, but he stopped talking.
Sheriff Metcalf leaned back in his chair. “See, Bobby, I just don’t buy it.” He looked over at her. “And Bertie, I know you and James had nothing to do with this nonsense.”
Bertie couldn’t show that she agreed with him, but she was glad he understood.
“Here’s the thing, Bobby,” the sheriff said. “Even if that deed was the real thing, signed by Leon and notarized by the pope himself, it wouldn’t help you out, because Leon didn’t own that piece of property. I know your mama and daddy told you that after our meeting the other night.”
“Well, he could still deed his share over to me, couldn’t he?” Bobby said.
“Here’s what I got to say about that, and Bertie, forgive me for giving this boy a talking-to.” The sheriff pointed a finger at Bobby. “That deed is a lie. You know it and I know it. If I thought your lying about the deed meant you were lying to me about anything else connected to Leon, I’d haul you to jail so quick you wouldn’t have time to blink. But I don’t think that. The reason I don’t think it is I don’t think you’re smart enough to have planned killing Leon in order to get that land.”
“Now, hold on,” Bobby said.
“You hold on, son. There’s a reason I didn’t ask you to bring the deed in here with you. The reason is, if you gave the deed to me, acting like it was real, I’d have to do something about it. As it is, you haven’t shown it to me, and you haven’t tried to record it. Let’s keep it that way. Keep it at home in your bureau drawer. Consider it a souvenir of a big mistake you almost made. Don’t ever try to tell anybody else it’s for real. I’m giving you this chance because you got a new baby and nobody’s been hurt yet by your lie. It’s the only chance I’m giving you. Do you understand?”
Bobby was almost doing a dance in his chair, stamping his feet to show how offended he was, swinging his head to look anywhere but at the sheriff.
“I want to hear you say you understand me.”
“Fine!” Bobby looked down at his feet. “I understand.”
“Good.”
That was the end of it. The sheriff stood up. He walked around and held the door open for them to leave. “Thanks again for coming in.”
Bobby jammed his hands in his jeans pockets and stalked out of the office. Bobby might not be too happy, but Bertie felt better than she had in a while. If Wally Metcalf didn’t think Bobby had anything to do with Leon disappearing, then he must not have. She felt an easing of the anxiousness that had come from not being sure about her son.
Cherise was waiting for them in the lobby. She and Bobby exchanged a look, and Bertie knew they would compare notes later, when she wasn’t around.
They pushed through the double glass doors of the Sheriff’s Department, out into bright sunlight. Cherise knew enough to pull a corner of Haylee’s blanket over her head for protection.
“Y’all come back to the house for some lunch,” Bertie said. “Leave Cherise’s car here, and we’ll all ride together. I’ll watch the baby for you this afternoon so you can get out.” She made the offer carefully, afraid Cherise would say no just for spite, but Cherise was ready for a break. “All right,” she said. They walked to Bobby’s truck.
Bertie rode in the middle, with Cherise on her right holding the sleeping baby. Bobby and Cherise wouldn’t use a car seat, even though James got them a perfectly good one at a yard sale. Cherise said a baby belonged in its mother’s lap. Haylee’s little lips moved in a dream, like a dog’s legs do when it imagines chasing rabbits. Bertie felt like all the cars on the road were aiming at them, ready to hit them and make that sweet child go flying through the windshield. Bobby got right up on the tail of other drivers and gave the finger to two people he said cut him off. Bertie was relieved when he finally pulled into her driveway and stopped.
Cherise climbed out first and carried the baby toward the trailer. Bertie slid across the seat. She’d been forced to leave her house too many times of late and was looking forward to holing up inside. Bobby got out and slammed his door. When he did, his glove compartment opened and a man’s wallet fell out in Bertie’s lap. She picked it up to give to Bobby, thinking it was his, then saw the vulgar condom ring worn in thirty-year-old black leather. It was Leon’s wallet.
She ran into the trailer, where Cherise and Bobby were settling the baby in the bassinet Bertie had bought to have at their house. She waved the wallet at them. “What did you do?”
Bobby’s eyes got big. He raised a hand to rub under his nose, then dropped it again.
Bertie opened the wallet and turned it inside out over the floor. It was empty. “Where’s his money? Leon always kept cash. Where is it?”
Bobby looked over at Cherise for an answer. She wasn’t going to help him. “I don’t know, Mama,” he said.
“You took it!” The wallet felt cold and dead in Bertie’s hand.
“What if I did?” Bobby said, defying her. “So what if I took money out of his billfold? He owed it to me. I drove the man around whenever he needed, ran errands for him. He could have said thank you by letting me put a trailer up, but no, that was too much to ask.”
Cherise’s eyes beaded out of her fat face. Bertie pointed at her. “Was she with you?”
“What?” Bobby said.
Bertie stepped up to him and slapped him with the wallet as hard as she could. “Was she there with you at Leon’s?” she screamed, shocking him. Haylee woke up and started to howl.
“Jesus, Mama, get out of my face! She was there. It ain’t no big deal.” He clutched his cheek where Bertie had hit him. The skin reddened under old pockmarks.
Bertie turned on Cherise LaFaye. She drove her fingernail into Cherise’s chest, backed her up until Cherise had to sit down on the couch. “You put him up to this. I know you’re the one got him to do it. What did the two of you do to Leon?” Bertie was screaming her throat raw. Cherise looked genuinely scared, and Bertie wanted to keep her that way.
“We didn’t hurt him,” Cherise said. “All we did was take the wallet, honest! It was laying there. Leon wasn’t around.”
“You lying hussy,” Bertie yelled at her.
Outside in the yard, Leon’s dogs heard her and set to barking. Their noise disturbed Bertie’s mama. Bertie heard her mama’s screen door knock against the house and imagined her starting to walk across the road.
“Get rid of it!” Bertie grabbed Cherise by her arm and tried to haul her off the couch. Cherise lurched to her feet. Bertie shoved the wallet into Bobby’s hand. “Get rid of it!” She pushed them both toward the door. Cherise dug in her heels and slipped behind Bertie, heading back into the living room toward Haylee’s bassinet.
“You leave that baby here!” Bertie shrieked.
“No!” Cherise grabbed Haylee and shoved past Bertie, holding the baby away so Bertie couldn’t get her. Bertie followed them out and stood in the yard while Bobby started up the truck and they pulled away. Then she kept on standing there, crying.
“Bertie?” Bertie’s mama stood on her porch in her housedress.
“It’s nothing, Mama.” Leon’s dogs howled, as miserable as Bertie. “Go on back inside.”
35
Martin
The Dumpster Martin frequented was behind a gas station on the way to downtown Whelan. Hand-lettered signs taped to it said No Public Dumping, but no one had ever bothered to come outside to tell Martin to take his empties elsewhere. He pulled into the parking lot and drove around to the back, planning to toss his bag of bottles and head downtown to the liquor store, but h
e braked when the Dumpster came into view. His nephew Bobby stood next to the Dumpster, his pickup truck idling beside him. As Martin watched, Bobby’s right arm arced and he threw something small and black into the Dumpster.
Martin thought of turning around and leaving, but he couldn’t drive around Whelan with a bag of liquor bottles in the bed of his truck. Word might get back to Eugenia or Bertie. He parked behind Bobby’s truck and got out, holding his breath against the smell of rotting garbage. Bobby turned around. When he saw Martin he froze for a second, glancing back at the Dumpster.
“How’s it going?” Martin said.
The passenger door of Bobby’s truck opened, and Cherise LaFaye heaved herself out, holding the new baby. She came around to where Bobby and Martin were standing. James would have said her stretch pants made her rear end look like ten pounds of potatoes stuffed into a five-pound sack. The baby slept, her strawberry hair curling in a spiral around the top of her head.
Bobby eyed Martin. “What are you doing here?”
“Just dumping my trash.” Martin reached into the bed of Leon’s green truck for the bag of bottles. He lifted it out as gently as he could and held the bag against his leg, to minimize the telltale noise of glass on glass.
Bobby stuck his hands in his jeans pockets. He looked tired, the skin under his eyes puffy. The baby was probably keeping them up all hours. Things hadn’t gone Bobby’s way lately, and Martin almost felt sorry for him.
“Hey, Bobby, about last night with Steven and Trina, I hope it all worked out,” Martin offered. He didn’t want to make an enemy of Bobby.
“Whatever. They didn’t catch up to us,” Bobby said.
“You heard what we found out about who owns the property?” Martin said.
“Yeah. I don’t get shit.” Bobby kicked a tin can that lay at his feet, sending it clanging against the Dumpster.
Cherise shifted the sleeping baby in her arms. “It’s not right. After all we put up with from that stupid old man. Jumping every time he needed to go somewhere, taking care of him up in that filthy house.” She looked at Martin, narrowing her eyes. “Hey, what about your share?”
“What?”
“We could put a trailer up on your part. Everybody knows you don’t want it.”
Bobby took his hands out of his pockets. “That’s an idea, Martin. Why not?”
Martin thought of Leon. Whatever his brother had been when they were younger, he was nothing but an old man when he disappeared and Martin felt protective. He wasn’t going to let Bobby live on the property. He could do that much for Leon. “It’s not going to happen. I’m sorry.”
“I should have figured,” Bobby said, disgusted.
The bag of empties was getting heavy. Martin switched it to his other hand. Glass shifted, giving him away.
“Your family’s useless, Bobby,” Cherise said.
Martin swung the bag up over the side of the Dumpster, listening to the bottles break as it landed inside.
* * *
On Main Street he found a parking space just down from the liquor store and slid across the seat of Leon’s truck to get out on the passenger side. In front of the antiques shop next to the liquor store he stopped to get out his billfold, to calculate exactly how many bottles of Scotch he could afford. The antiques store was open. A woman inside was dusting a display of vintage picture frames in the front window. She smiled at Martin through the glass. The picture frames were lovely, some gilded, some silver. A small one in the corner caught Martin’s eye, ornate sterling silver with a bead border where the picture would fit, a picture the size of the photograph of Liza he kept in his wallet.
He couldn’t read the tiny price tag from outside so he stepped into the shop and asked. The shopkeeper told him the cost, almost as much as he had on him. She lifted the frame out of the window and set it on the counter in front of Martin.
“It’s more than I expected,” he said.
“Would it be a gift?” she said.
“Yes.”
“For your wife?”
“A friend,” he said.
“It’d be money well spent,” the woman said.
He should have been able to buy it for Liza without a thought, but he could feel the liquor store to his right, like a human being standing next to him, close enough to warm his skin with body heat. This was the last of his money. He could taste the Scotch it would buy, that first swallow especially, soothing on the back of his tongue.
“I can gift wrap it for you,” the woman said.
Martin’s fingers knotted around his billfold. He felt ridiculous. It was a simple matter of motor control, his brain instructing his hands to count out the money and his hands obeying, but he couldn’t do it. He was pathetic. He tried to laugh at himself but couldn’t force air past the tightness in his chest. Instead his eyes teared up.
The shop owner smiled at him. “Sometimes I get nostalgic about these old things, too.” She rested her hands on the counter, perfectly patient, waiting for him to make up his mind.
* * *
That night with Liza at Rendezvous Falls, she snatched the car keys out of his hand and drove the two of them back down the mountain, gunning it around sharp turns until Martin felt sick to his stomach. At the bottom, when the road straightened out, she finally spoke. “Where are you staying?”
He had planned to stay with her. That was impossible now. “I don’t know.” He would rather sleep in the road than go to his father’s, and it would frighten Eugenia if he showed up at her place this time of night.
Liza drove toward her house. Moonlight striped her face, illuminating her mouth and cheekbones but leaving her eyes in shadow. “You can sleep in Daddy’s infirmary tonight. I’d appreciate it if you’d leave in the morning.”
“I will.”
They reached her street. The cars that had lined it earlier were gone. Clouds rolled over the face of the moon, obscuring it. Aunt Fran had left lights on, on the porch and inside. They could see her though the dining room window, putting china away. The infirmary was dark.
Liza turned off the engine. “The infirmary’s not locked. I’ll put your bag outside on the porch.”
Martin couldn’t think of anything to say. He had come home to comfort her and had only caused her more pain. He opened his door to get out.
“In case you wondered,” she said.
He stopped.
“He left you the money to finish school. We read his will today.” She was crying again. Her hands slid from the steering wheel to her lap.
“I don’t have to accept it,” Martin said. The doctor had based his gift on the expectation that Martin and Liza would marry.
“He’d still want you to have it. I’ll have Aunt Fran handle it.” She pulled the keys out of the ignition and got out of the car, closing the driver’s-side door quietly. She walked up the porch steps into the house, and a moment later put his bag out on the porch and turned the light off, leaving him in darkness.
The next day Martin went to the doctor’s funeral. He declined Aunt Fran’s invitation to sit up front with the family, instead taking a seat in the back, where women’s wide hats blocked his view and he didn’t have to watch Liza suffer. No members of his own family came to pay their respects. When the service was over he skipped the receiving line and headed for Whelan to start the long, lonely bus ride back to Chapel Hill. Every month for the next three years, Aunt Fran mailed him a check, each envelope bringing with it a mix of guilt and resignation that he hadn’t had a choice.
* * *
* * *
The antiques shop owner was still waiting politely. Martin flexed his fingers and found he could move. He counted out bills one by one. He extracted Liza’s picture from its place in his wallet, holding it by its frayed edges, and had the shopkeeper put it into the frame before she wrapped it.
Outside, he walked toward his
truck, head down, deliberately not looking back at the liquor store. He put the wrapped gift in his glove compartment for safety and drove home. At Hodge’s house he pulled into the driveway. Hodge and Liza were in the yard. They walked toward him, Liza raising a hand against the sun that glared behind Martin, concern carving a deep crease between her brows. Hodge looked flustered, his thinning hair mussed. Martin turned off the truck’s monster engine and got out.
“They found him, Martin. They found Leon’s body,” Hodge said.
Martin would not have predicted the sick, falling feeling that coursed through him, the vacuum created in the space vacated by a brother he hadn’t known he cared about. Liza reached for him, her familiar scent of wildflowers touching his nostrils, allowing him to breathe.
36
Bertie
When Bertie answered the phone in the kitchen and Hodge said, “Bertie?” she knew why he was calling. She could hear it in the careful way he said her name. They had all been expecting such a call.
“Where was he?” she said.
“At the home place. Down by the sawmill. A hunter found him.”
“How did he die?”
“Can’t say yet. There’s a hairline fracture on the left side of his skull. Wally thinks it could have been caused by being hit, but also by falling. Animals and bugs had got to him, so there wasn’t a lot left to tell how he got the crack on his head. I’m sorry, Bertie.”
She fought back moving pictures in her head of Bobby and Cherise hitting Leon with something and said, too quick, “He must have had one of those strokes and fell, don’t you think?”
“Could be. We’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“James is at work, Hodge.”
“I already called him. He’s on his way to the morgue.”
“Why didn’t he call and tell me himself?”
“He’s taking it hard, Bertie.”
“How in the world did they not find the body before, when everybody was looking?”
Under the Mercy Trees Page 27