Dark River Road

by Virginia Brown

  After a minute, Leon put up a hand and said something to his friend, then jerked his head at Chantry and led the way to the side of the red brick building that held classrooms. He turned to look at him, something raw and dark in his eyes.

  “So what’s up with her?”

  “You tell me.”

  Leon scowled. “Like I’d know? You’re the one she always talked to all the time. Or about all the time.”

  That surprised him. He shook his head. “You’re the one she went out with. Is it yours?”

  Leon didn’t pretend not to know what he meant. “I haven’t been out with Tansy in nearly six months. I thought she was hanging with you.”

  “Not like that.”

  It was Leon’s turn to be surprised. Then he just looked off toward the gym, the basketball stuck under his arm, distance in his eyes.

  After a minute, Chantry turned and walked away. He had his answer. And it was just what he had thought it’d be.

  Mama couldn’t keep a close eye on him forever, and the day finally came when she had to take Mikey to a doctor’s appointment before he got off work from the clinic. Doc gave him a ride and didn’t say much, even though Chantry felt him look at him from time to time.

  “You sure this is where you want to go?” Doc asked when he stopped his big Suburban in front of Six Oaks. It was nearly dark. Deep shadows stretched all the way up to the house settled in behind the massive bare oaks. Lights gleamed from windows, but out here it was dark and cold.

  “I’m sure.”

  Doc put the Suburban into neutral gear. “Got a ride back home?”

  “I’ll hitch. Thanks. See you tomorrow.”

  Doc nodded, and when Chantry shut the door, he leaned out his window and said, “Just watch your step.”

  Chantry stared at him as he shifted into gear and left, headlights sweeping across the lawn. There were times he suspected Doc knew a lot more than he let on. Hell, everybody probably did. Secrets just weren’t that easy to keep in Cane Creek. It couldn’t be like Chris’s mama claimed. Even if he hadn’t known she was “delicate,” Mama had known. And people had known drugs were being sold out at the Hideaway but he hadn’t heard about that until it was too late. There were probably so many things he still didn’t know, just like Tansy had said about the lies piling up like dead leaves. But there was supposed to be a difference between a lie and a secret. Sometimes it was just hard to tell which was which.

  A lady in a uniform answered the door and let him in to wait on Chris. He stood in the entrance hall, where he could hear a television on somewhere close by, and the murmur of distant voices. Music played. He watched the staircase, and in a few minutes, saw Chris coming down the carpeted steps.

  Chris paused when he got to the landing and saw who it was, then came down more slowly until he stood right in front of Chantry. “What are you doing here?”

  He looked wary, defensive, but afraid, too. Chantry stared hard at him.

  “Is it yours?”

  Like Leon, Chris didn’t even try to play stupid. He just looked quickly around to be sure no one was close, then he jerked his head to one side for Chantry to follow him. “Come in here.”

  Chantry went with him, feeling all tight and angry inside, but oddly calm. He waited until Chris closed the double doors, then said softly, “You sorry piece of shit.”

  Skin stretched back tight over Chris’s cheekbones and his mouth went thin. There was a bleak light in his pale eyes. “You don’t understand.”

  “Hell, yes, I understand. You’re man enough to father a baby off Tansy but not man enough to own up to it. I ought to beat you till you can’t walk.”

  To his surprise, Chris laughed, but it wasn’t with humor. He shook his head. “I wouldn’t lift a hand to stop you. It might help. Anything has to be—better than this.”

  He could understand that well enough. He’d felt the same torment too long.

  “So? What are you going to do about it? You going to go get her? Do the right thing? She doesn’t deserve this. You know she doesn’t.”

  Chris shoved a hand through his hair, pivoted abruptly and walked to a fireplace large enough to roast a whole hog. A cheery blaze burned, cedar logs that spiced the air. He stared in at the flames, then he shook his head. “I can’t. It’d—ruin everything.”

  “You mean ruin everything for you. Ruin your perfect life up here in this big house where you got folks running around to make sure you got everything you need and everything you want. I get it.” He took a step closer to Chris, anger vibrating through him so hard and fast his voice shook with it. “But you don’t get it. Damn you, you don’t get that Tansy’s been crazy a long time for you and you just fucked her over big-time. This is serious. This isn’t just playing around. Not any more. You wanted her, and you got her. There’s consequences. Payback for what you do and get in life. Hell, I should know that.”

  Chris had turned to look at him, silent and somehow desolate, a look on his face that was nothing like his usual cocky sneer. He looked—desperate.

  “I want to. God, I would, but you just don’t know. I didn’t even know. My mother—she says things. You saw her. What she’s like. What no one’s supposed to know. Why do you think they’re gone all the time? They’re not always off on some trip around the world. There’s a place she has to go when it gets bad, where they have doctors to take care of her until she gets right in the head again. She’s a Quinton. I’m a Quinton. We aren’t like everyone else. But sometimes I want to be. Crazy, isn’t it? And here’s news—sometimes I’ve wished I was like you.”

  You could have knocked him over with a feather. Of all the excuses he might have expected Chris to come up with, this didn’t even come close. After a minute, he blew out a heavy breath.

  “Then do the right thing. Even if you don’t want to. Even if you know it’s gonna cause a world of trouble for yourself.”

  Chris just looked at him. “I can’t. It’d hurt too many people.”

  “Bullshit. You just don’t want to.” He stepped closer, voice low and raspy. “You do the right thing or I’ll tell everyone anyway.”

  Some of Chris’s old arrogance returned, and he smiled. “No, you won’t. I know that much about you. You don’t tell what you know. You’d make a great poker player, my grandfather says. And he should know. He’s the king of the gamblers.”

  “I don’t know what the hell that’s supposed to mean, and I don’t care. We’re talking about Tansy. I’d do anything to help her, and that includes standing up in New Cane Creek Baptist Church on Sunday morning and saying you knocked her up and won’t stand by her.”

  Silence fell, and only the crackling of burning logs and muted ticking of a clock made any sound in the room for a while.

  “Then do it,” Chris said. “I won’t. You’ll have to. But before you do, I’ll tell you what I just found out a couple of weeks ago.”

  Chantry didn’t move, just stared at him. Something flickered in Chris’s eyes, and he stuck his chin out to indicate a portrait on the wall. “That’s my Uncle Ted. My daddy’s brother. He was named after President Theodore Roosevelt, who used to go hunting bears with my great-Granddad Quinton. Uncle Ted is Tansy’s real daddy.”

  Chris swung his eyes back to look at him, and there must have been shock in his face because he nodded tightly. “Yeah, a kicker, ain’t it? I never would have known. No one ever talks about it, if they even know. I guess some folks have to know, but they must know better than to say anything about it. Granddad can get pretty mean when he wants to, and most folks know not to cross him.”

  “Dempsey—”

  “Married Julia when he was told to, just like your mama married Rainey when she was told to. Don’t be stupid. Uncle Ted got disinherited and run out of town, and hasn’t been back here since. He knows better than to cross Bert Quinton.” He looked up at the portrait again. “It hangs here as a reminder to the rest of us. So. Now you know why I can’t help Tansy. I can’t even help myself. If my Granddad finds out
I was even with her like that—” He shook his head. “It’d be worse for Tansy than it is now. I’ve done her and Dempsey a favor. At least she got out of Cane Creek. If you really care about her, you’ll keep your mouth shut too.”

  Chantry looked up at the painting of a man that vaguely resembled Chris’s dad. Only his hair was red, not blond, a copper color the artist reproduced on the canvas with subtle intensity, and instead of blue or gray, the eyes were amber-colored. Tansy’s eyes.

  He was maybe only a mile away from Six Oaks when a car stopped beside him where he was walking along the shoulder. He had his hands stuck in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold wind, mind still back in that warm living room with Chris and family secrets. Family lies.

  “Get in,” a voice said through the car window, and he looked over at the Suburban and got in without a word. Doc drove in silence, light from the dashboard low and subtle. Nothing was said all the way to Liberty Road, and when Doc braked he looked over at him. “You okay?”

  Chantry didn’t know how to answer that, so he just shrugged. That seemed to satisfy Doc, because then he said, “See you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mama was waiting on him when he came in, anger sparking her eyes and her mouth tight. “I suppose you have a good reason for not coming straight home after work?”

  “Good enough.”

  “Chantry Allen Callahan, turn around and look at me.”

  He swung around to face her. Words he hadn’t planned to say just tumbled out. “I want to know how old man Quinton made you marry Rainey. And I want to know about my father. Now. No more waitin’.”

  Mama stared at him coolly, and despite her composure he saw a flicker of something in her eyes like dread. “Do not drop your g’s, Chantry.”

  “Jesus. I ask you something like that and all you can do is give me a grammar lesson?”

  “Mikey,” Mama said calmly, “please go to your room and shut the door. Do not come out until I call you.”

  He hadn’t even noticed Mikey in the doorway, his hair slicked back and still wet from his bath. He clamped his mouth shut. The kitchen was warm from the oven’s heat, food smells still lingering in the air. The sound of Mikey’s uneven gait faded down the hallway, and then his door shut. The electric clock on the wall hummed softly.

  “There are some things that are none of your business,” Mama said after a moment. “My personal reasons for certain decisions will remain private. However, I will tell you some things about your father now since it seems the time has come for it. Sit down. I have a box put up that I have been saving for you. I’ll bring it out.”

  He sat down at the kitchen table, the light overhead making stark shadows on the wall and floor. The refrigerator clanked on, a noisy rumble. The rest of the house was quiet, not even the TV on in the living room. He hadn’t noticed Rainey’s truck absent from its usual place in the ruts that formed the driveway, but he must have taken it to the Tap Room.

  Mama came back with a small blue box tied round with a slender yellow ribbon. She set it on the table, her hand resting atop it. He stared at her hand, at the long slender fingers with short nails, and calluses. A familiar hand, work-worn and loving. She pulled the ribbon free of the bow.

  “This has been a difficult year for you, Chantry. So much has happened, things over which neither you nor I had any control. While I am not at all certain this is the right time, there are some truths I think you may be ready to know.”

  Something knotted in his belly. Mama pulled off the top of the box and reached inside, and came up with a handful of photographs. She gave them to him one by one, faded color images of a tall man with a wide smile holding a girl that looked too happy to be his mother. Sometimes his father was in uniform, sometimes not. They were always laughing at the camera, even in shots where they weren’t together. He studied them for a while, searching for a connection. A surge of emotion. He saw or felt nothing but vague disappointment.

  Then Mama pulled out some papers. She held them a moment, and he heard them rattle as her hand shook though she sounded calm.

  “These are some letters he wrote me. I’ve saved them for when it was time. I wanted you to read for yourself how happy he was to know you were on the way.”

  Chantry’s throat tightened, and he couldn’t have said a word if his life depended on it. He took the letters she held out, and looked at the bold scrawl slashing across short pieces of paper. There were no envelopes, just these few pages, and he spread them out on the table and smoothed them with his hand, as if he could feel the energy of the man who’d written them almost sixteen years before.

  “Hey, sweet thing,” he read, “guess you know how happy I am to hear the big news. You could have pushed me over with one hand when I got your letter. Well don’t worry. This is the best thing that could have happened to me. To us. It’ll be a boy. We’ll name him Junior of course, after his dad. That would be me. Can’t believe I’m going to be a father. Carrie, don’t worry about anything. We’ll do it up right as soon as I get back. I intend to be there for his birthday, even if he’s a girl. Next time I get to a decent size town, I’m buying him a football. Take care, honey. And remember how much I love you.” He’d signed it with a big C that took up the last inch of the page.

  A big ache settled in the middle of Chantry’s stomach, but he flipped over the next page. It was just as short, saying he’d found a football and would bring it home with him, but it looked like it was going to take longer than he thought. “Hot as hell here,” he read, “enemy everywhere. I can’t say where or they’ll just black it out, but I’ll be home soon, honey. I’ve sent you some more money. Take care of our baby until I can get there and take care of both of you. Remember that I love you enough.” Another scrawled C across the bottom ended it.

  The final letter was heavily marked in black ink, not as light in tone. “There’s been some fighting . . . don’t worry. I’ll be okay . . .forget ever going to the woods again. I’ve seen enough jungle to last the rest of my life . . . Take care of my boy. Or girl. Remember I love you enough.”

  “Are these all the letters?” he asked without looking up.

  “No. There are others. Those are letters between a man and a woman in love and they are mine. One day they’ll be yours, but by then you should be old enough to understand the things men and women say to one another.” She paused, then said, “Two days after that last letter there was a skirmish somewhere near Da Nang. A police action, they called it. But of course, it was more than that. Your father was killed. I was told that he died defending a fallen comrade. If he hadn’t gone back for him, he would have come back home. As it was, they both died.”

  After a few minutes of silence, Chantry looked up. Mama was watching him, her face so sad that he almost felt bad he’d done this to her. “I had to know, Mama. He . . . it’s been a mystery to me so long that sometimes I thought he’d never really existed.”

  “He was real. Very real. And I loved him. I suppose I’ll always love him. You are all I have left of him, Chantry. I would want him to be proud of you.”

  Something hot scalded the back of his eyes and he looked away. For a minute he couldn’t say anything. Then he said, “Mama, I know what you think but Tansy’s baby isn’t mine. I could never do that to Dempsey. He trusts me. I couldn’t hurt him like that.”

  When she didn’t reply he looked back at her. Her eyes were all shiny but she didn’t cry. She just nodded.

  After a moment, Mama stood up and put the letters and photos back in the blue box and retied the yellow ribbon. He still had so many questions. He wanted to ask about his father’s family and hers, if he had any aunts or cousins out there somewhere. He wanted to ask her about what Chris had said, about how old man Quinton had made her marry Rainey, but she’d made it pretty clear she wouldn’t answer. She hadn’t even asked how he’d found out. Maybe she knew.

  At the door, she turned around to look at him, the blue box under her arm. “Chantry, I’m not going to
answer your question about Mr. Quinton, and I don’t want you to ever ask it of me again. Rainey is Mikey’s father, whatever my reasons for marrying him were, and I ask you to respect that.”

  “Respect Rainey?” He stared at her incredulously.

  “No. Respect me enough to trust that I did what I felt necessary. You have a right to your feelings about Rainey and I won’t ask you to ignore that. I do ask that you not hurt your brother by your words or actions. He is too young to understand.”

  “Not as young as you think. Neither of us is. We’ve done lived with Rainey too long.”

  He really hadn’t meant to say it like that, and saw Mama’s back go rigid. It was implied criticism. He sighed. Mama looked at him like she’d just been slapped.

  “If you’re going to insult me, Chantry, at least use proper grammar.”

  He was on his feet. “Mama—I’m sorry. Sometimes I just say things and they come out all wrong.” He didn’t mean his grammar and saw that she understood that.

  Her expression softened. “Yes. So do I. Perhaps that’s a family trait we should do our best to exterminate.”

  It was as close as she’d come to saying she might be wrong, he figured, and he didn’t push his luck. He just nodded.

  There wasn’t a chance to go down and talk to Dempsey for a few days, but finally late one afternoon after Mama had cooked supper and he’d done the clean-up, he said he had to talk to him and she nodded. While he was on probation he couldn’t go off with Donny anymore since all the trouble out at the Hideaway, but he could still have limited freedom once he got home from school and all his work was done. Usually he just stayed home anyway, reading or listening to music, but now it was too hard to get away from everything he was thinking if he didn’t stay busy.

  Dempsey had been fishing. He had a string of catfish out back of the house on the old oak board he used for cleaning, and blood and fish parts speckled his old flannel shirt. It was one of those late winter days that had turned out sunny and almost warm, a promise of spring in the air but the reminder of how fickle the weather could be nudging up right behind it. His thin-bladed skinning knife flashed in the fading sunlight.