Steal Away Home

by Billy Coffey

  Nor would I on that June morning so long ago. But I remember it now these many years later as Country stands out in the left field grass playing toss with some kid in the right-center field stands, some boy in a Yankees cap who is having the absolute best three minutes of his life, having a catch with Bobby Kitchen himself, a man only forty good swings away from having his plaque in Cooperstown, and I remember Momma’s words. I remember them well.

  “You need to keep away from Shantytown, Ma. It’s time you stay home and try to fix things with Dad. He thinks he’s failed us.”

  “He’s not failed anything. Your father is a good man, but so wounded. And for that he’s got to know I’m coming back because I love him. I love you. But I’m not coming back the woman I was. I made my choice, Owen. I hold you both closer to me than any people in this world, and I know you both love me in the best way you can. But there is another love greater than anything you can give me. That is my true north, and there is where my heart must point most of all. I don’t expect you to understand any of that now, you or your father. But I hope you’ll both understand it someday, because she’s right. Michaela is right. You’ll have to choose, and that choice will mean everything.”

  -3-

  We never did have what could be termed a modern law enforcement presence in Camden. It was Clancy, one secretary, and three deputies, one of which was the secretary’s husband and the other two some sort of Clancy’s kin, all shoved into a building near the mayor’s office no bigger than Mrs. Hamrick’s flower shop. Things were hopping when I went in. Phones ringing, people waiting. The secretary said Clancy was busy but let me through anyway. It helps when you can hit a baseball 440 feet to win a state championship. It also didn’t hurt that I had in my possession some information regarding some unfortunate events in Shantytown from the night before, which the sheriff would find valuable.

  Clancy’s office was a glass cube near the cells in back. I found him behind his desk with the phone against his ear. His uniform shirt was a wrinkled mess, one collar pointed straight up so it brushed against a snarl of white uncombed hair. He waved me in and hung up the phone. I stood in the doorway instead, not wanting to be there long.

  “Know you busy,” I said.

  “More tired. Long night. Reckon you know something about that, according to your daddy.”

  “Need a word is all, Sheriff.” That’s what I called him—not Mister Townsend or even Clancy, though either name would have sufficed. I’d known him for all my years in Camden through either church or baseball. Shoot, him and Louise had been over to the house for supper more times than I could count. “How’s Louise?”

  “Bawling. What you think? She leaves the house last night saying she’s off to play bingo at the VFW, next thing I know your daddy’s callin’ me in a panic to say Louise is down in Shantytown worshippin’ with the likes of Earl Dullahan. And more, Earl’s got him a mess a illegal drugs down there right in the middle of ’em all.” He leaned back, making the chair beneath him scream for mercy.

  “’Course it wasn’t nothing there when me and some deputies got there. No drugs, just a few Shanties along with Louise, milling about wanting to explain it all. Wanting to say how it was all your daddy’s fault. But it was some pills there, Owen. Earl’d run off, and Michaela, but they didn’t manage to get everything. And what them pills was wasn’t prescription. They’s illegal through and through, and I can’t keep it quiet neither. That’s the thing. I know your momma’s drawn up in it, and for that I’m sorry. But for the Cross family this is all naught but an embarrassment. For the Townsends it’s a scandal. I’m the sheriff, Owen. And to hear what some is saying, my own wife’s mixed up in some hillbilly drug ring.”

  “That ain’t what was going on down there. You know that.”

  “Don’t know that. Not until I round up the people I mean to. Louise won’t say a word against none of ’em. I got everybody I can out looking for Earl and Michaela both, but they done holed themselves up somewhere nobody can find them. Or they both in somebody’s woodshed or closet out in Shantytown getting protected. I got to bring them in at least for questioning. It’ll cost me so far as Louise goes. That woman says Michaela Dullahan’s some kind of Second Coming of Christ Almighty. But it’s a line I dance between town and home, Owen, and I got to end up on one side or the other.”

  “Know you’re right.” I leaned a hand to the door. “Louise have such high regard for Earl as she does his daughter?”

  “What you mean?”

  “I mean maybe you should leave Michaela alone, Sheriff.”

  “It’d be hard to do. To hear most talk, that girl’s the start a this whole mess.”

  “Not the church, though. That weren’t her doing, not right off. All Michaela did was want to talk to folk. That barn’s been out in the Pines for how many years? Sitting there falling down. Who bought the wood and nails to fix it up?”

  “Earl did,” Clancy said.

  “Who comes to town every week to get out all the money those Shanties put into an account from their welfare and disability? And whose name’s to that account?”

  Clancy went quiet. I’d made my point with more ease than I knew I was able.

  “Comes to that church, Sheriff, it’s Earl Dullahan’s fingers all over it. What’s Louise say about him?”

  “Says Earl’s changed,” he muttered. “But it’s shades, not colors.”

  “Talked to my mom this morning. She said not a word of Earl, but she spoke of Michaela like a saint.”

  “You believe that?”

  I shook my head. “Nosir, I do not. I don’t think Michaela ever meant harm in anything she’s done. But I know about that money. She aims to share it all with everybody. That way no one in the Pines gets left out.”

  “Sounds like communism to me.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s a pile. And it’s in Earl’s hands.”

  Clancy’s eyes narrowed. He asked, “How you know that?” and nearly caught me.

  “Mom said. Shanties get what checks the gover’ment sends them, they cash it at the bank, then turn around and deposit it into Earl’s account. Earl gets the cash and keeps it at the house. Michaela divvies it up.”

  “Makes her just as liable. Just as guilty.”

  “I understand there needs to be an end to all this, Sheriff. And I know justice needs met. But you got to leave Michaela alone. Them Shanties think she’s touched by God. Some in town too. Your wife. My momma.”

  Clancy made a face like he tasted something sour. “Touched by God.”

  “Truth is that’s how they see things. You bring Michaela in, you’ll stew a war. Bring in Earl, that might be enough to settle things.”

  “Earl’s gone.”

  “You ain’t looked every place.”

  “You know something you ain’t telling me, Owen?”

  “Nothing more than anybody else. We were all friends enough. Hung out at school in a little group. Things get said sometimes that pass over until something happens that causes you to remember. Call it a hunch.”

  “Then you need tell me. This ain’t no youth group scavenger hunt. It’s a law enforcement matter.”

  The phone rang. Clancy didn’t pick up.

  “All I want’s to keep everybody safe, Sheriff. Same as you. Maybe I can find Earl and maybe I can’t. But if I do, I get Earl here or I call and tell you where he is, you got to promise you’ll leave Michaela out of it. It’ll be a hard enough road for her as it is, momma in the ground and daddy in jail.”

  “Could be you’re right on that one. Keep me outta Louise’s rage, leastways.”

  The ringing kept on. In the clamor of voices and bodies out front, I heard his secretary say, “You gone get that, Clancy?”

  I waited for our sheriff’s answer.

  He said, “You let me know you find him. Pass word to Michaela if you can. Tell her Earl’s all I want, but she’ll have to help me get him. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Clancy sat forward and pulled the ph
one free, barking into it once more.

  -4-

  The bottom of the eighth starts out well enough. Johnson gets Oliver on four pitches, sending the Yankees catcher back to the dugout with his bat on his shoulder. But now the Yanks are beginning to rally. Soriano steps up and doubles to right center and Country can’t flag the ball down, lets it roll all the way to the wall. Knoblauch follows with a shot to near that exact place. The ball looks like a rocket off the bat. Country’s caught on his heels. He takes off too late and lays out in a dive, but the ball misses his glove by a good two feet. Richard tracks it down from right field and fires the ball in, but not before Knoblauch is standing at second. Soriano has scored, it’s 8–2.

  Mike looks worried enough that he tells the pitching coach to get on the phone to the bullpen. It’s ghosts that’s got into our manager’s mind and ghosts I’m thinking of now, but it’s Country I’m seeing. That man of forty years, young for the world but ancient for the game, getting himself up off the grass and limping back to his spot in center. Shaking his head like he should have gotten that ball. Knowing he would have if it was ten years ago.

  -5-

  How I would find a single cabin away in the hills and hollers beyond Shantytown was a question I didn’t entertain until I reached the wilderness. I had only the general description Micky had provided the night before to guide me: it was along the Saint Mary’s River, and it was approximately one mile east of the waterfall.

  The problem was I had been to Saint Mary’s exactly once in my life, this when I was all but kidnapped by Reverend Sebolt to attend a “youth spirit camp” that involved little more than a lot of sitting around and praying.

  No hint of a waterfall presented itself in my fuzzy memory, meaning I’d be all but going blind into that stretch of wilderness, which only added to another complication that loomed even greater: I never liked the woods. Sounds crazy, a boy raised up among the Blue Ridge with no desire whatsoever to go tromping through every square foot of it, but those tall sapphire walls and all they held never brought me an ounce of comfort. It wasn’t so much the ghost stories told me by Travis and Jeffrey when I first moved to town, haints and witches and angry Indian spirits doomed to walk the hollers. Was the breadth of it all, dark forests and wide meadows that stretch on for miles in the hundreds, threatening to swallow you whole—that’s what always bothered me. When you’re alone in the mountains you have none but yourself for company. There is no single distraction, only a grandeur that turns thought inward and makes you consider your own self and place. Never once did I find benefit in such a thing. I’ve always been the last person I wanted to know.

  Nor did I have much interest in knowing myself that day, given what I had decided needed done. One way or another, I was going to find Earl Dullahan and hand him over to Clancy. And for one reason only: to save Micky. To get her away from Camden with me and preserve a future we were meant to share no matter who said otherwise, whether her or the Lord God Himself.

  Saint Mary’s was little more than a wide stream born among the mountaintops, a neglected cousin of the wide Maury that flowed through town. I followed the trail as best I could and told myself all would be well so long as I kept water in sight. The day was hot and muggy, the bugs fierce. I saw no wildlife larger than a wild turkey that scampered at my coming. The way was littered with the same smooth river stones Micky would leave as marks on our hilltop. A crow called from the trees. I had no way of knowing how long I would be in those woods and so occupied myself with the days and nights ahead rather than the day and night before me.

  So much of my childhood was spent in such dreaming. The past was unchangeable, better forgotten, the present often boring toil. Yet my tomorrows shone like lights on some far hill, offering me guidance and direction. I walked a path that wound not through a forest patch but through days and weeks and months. Seeing myself at Youngstown State, coming back from class to an apartment that then existed only in my mind. Opening the door to a rank smell and Micky fanning smoke from the oven because she’d burnt our food, which I would eat anyway and ask for seconds. Scraping by because that’s what college kids did, but only for a year. Two at the most. I’d get drafted, sign a big contract, a few hundred thousand at least and maybe even a million, guys signed for that much all the time. Camden no more than a memory, our last summer there lost among all the others come before. And at night we would lie in our nakedness, Micky’s body pressed against mine.

  My ears popped as the stream climbed higher. A roaring sound wormed its way through the thick trees ahead. I left the path and traveled down to the bank where the swift current swirled into deep pools of a blue so dark it looked like trapped night. Ahead of me lay a wall of white. Time had sheared away that part of the mountain, leaving a drop of what must have been fifty feet from which water captured near the peaks tumbled onto the mossy rocks below. I had reached the waterfall, and with it an end to my reverie.

  The last bit I traveled was the longest, made harder by the June heat and the rough terrain. Maybe a mile I walked, could have been two or closer to three. I would have missed the cutoff completely were my head not hung so low. The trail pointed ahead clear and winding but branched off in little more than a worn place through the leaves toward my left. Far into the trees I spied a break where a stack of hewn logs formed something of a wall. Cabin was a loose term. All I saw of the place was a one-room windowless shack, its leaning wooden door cocked open to catch the sun.

  It occurred to me Earl was likely armed. Not only must he suspect he was now wanted, but there was all the money he’d taken from the house as well. I backed away and spun in all directions, making sure I hadn’t been spotted, then swept closer in a wide arc. I’d call out. Make up something that would get Micky away from there, then I’d call Clancy.

  I kept low, just in case. “Hey to the cabin.”

  No answer came. I shouted again and set to counting, moving only when I’d reached twenty. The cabin was empty. A rough table sat in the center of the dirt floor. On it were two cans of beans and an empty Coke bottle. The radio beside them was on but low and tuned to static. For a moment I thought I had the wrong place, this was some squatter here or a moonshiner guarding a nearby still.

  “He’s gone,” said a voice behind me.

  She stood by the door looking harried and worn in a white dress soiled by dust. Lines were etched along Micky’s forehead and the corners of her mouth, drawn tight into the first convulsions of weeping. It looked as though she’d lived a lifetime through the night.

  “I can’t find him, Owen. I been looking all day down along the river, but Earl’s not come.”

  “The money?” I asked.

  Micky shook her head, freeing a tear. It glimmered at her cheek before sliding down the side of her neck. “I think they got him.”

  “Didn’t nobody get him. I was just to Clancy’s. He’s got everybody looking, Micky, but Earl ain’t nowhere close. He’s run off with that money.”

  The meaning of my statement slammed into Micky’s chest with as much force as it did mine, though for differing reasons.

  “Daddy wouldn’t do that.”

  Wouldn’t he? That had always been Earl Dullahan’s way, trying to keep a step in front of whatever chased him. Always keeping close because he had no funds to flee. But that wasn’t true now, was it? Now Earl had thousands.

  “That’s money for the people,” Micky said. “It ain’t his to do with. What’s going on in the Pines? Is folk scared?”

  “Earl don’t count for nothing right now, and neither does anybody else. I got a way out for us.”

  “’Course it counts.” Her head began swinging in some unending No, arms clasped at her breasts.

  “It don’t. Listen to me, Micky.”

  “Them people’s hurting, Owen. They trusted me to care for them. That money’s gone, won’t nobody have a dime in Shantytown.”

  Her head turning No and No, Micky not even listening to what I had to say. The picture that flashed to
me was the time Mom and Dad took me to the Natural Bridge Zoo and the bear they had, a big brown bear stuck in a cage no bigger than it, shaking its head NoNoNo against those metal bars as its mind and soul fell bit by bit to darkness, and how I cried all the way home and so had Mom.

  “Listen.” I went to her. Micky held to me like she was sliding off an edge. “We’ll find him, okay? Clancy said. He’s got his guys looking for Earl everywhere, and Earl’s all they want. Me and you can still leave out of here. All we got to do is wait out the summer, then we’ll be off to Youngstown and everything new.”

  Micky’s head stilled. “What?”

  “What we always said. You and me together, no more hiding.”

  “You still want me to go away with you.”

  “Ain’t nothing left for you here now. You know that. Those Shanties will be after your head once they find out Earl took their money.”

  “All those people are counting on me, Owen. I can’t let them down now. I don’t have much time left.”

  “You got all the time if you just play it smart.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  I could feel the anger rising in me, all of it and not just over her. Over Mom’s lies and Dad’s endless needling, over the whole cursed summer. “I understand. You’re choosing a bunch of poor people who always been that way, who always will be that way, over me. Over everything I’ve always loved.”

  “Everything you always loved will be the thing that breaks you. Don’t you see that? The treasure you hoard is going to ruin your heart someday, Owen. You love what can’t love you back.”

  I picked up the table and heaved it against the wall, breaking off the wooden top held by a single nail. Micky screamed and shrank away as it crashed onto the cot and released a snowfall of dust into the sunlight by the door. I felt no better a man than her father.

  “Always been there for you, Mick.” I couldn’t look at her. “Spent all the life I can remember climbing up a hill just to see your face. Because I love you like I love no other. And now here I stand wanting a simple answer you won’t give me.”