Behind The Pines

by Lauren Brown

  

  Lauren J. Brown

  Copyright © 2017 Lauren J. Brown

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  Originally published Amazon.com Inc. E-book and Paperback August 2017

  THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  First paperback edition August 2017

  Book design and cover by Cinyee Chiu

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN-13: 978-1548987169

  ISBN-10: 1548987166

  Disclaimer:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  In addition, this book contains subject matter that may offend some readers including the following: profanity, sexual references, violence, graphic imagery, ethical issues, and religious material.

  For Conner,

  My best friend, my field

  September 1, 1976

  The trees pass by the window fast. Too fast. They’ve become a sickening blur.

  “Mom, I don’t feel good,” I groan as I tap her bare shoulder.

  She got her hair cut before we left, and I’m not sure if I like it. I cried when she came home because she looked different. She said it’s hard for me to let go of things, but that it’ll grow back in time.

  “I know, John. We’re almost there.” She hands me the map over her shoulder. “What does it say? Can you see where I’ve marked the court house?”

  “The court house?”

  “Yes. It’s the one with the big red ring around it. See it?”

  I’m not smart when it comes to maps. My first grade teacher, Mrs. Briggs, says I’m better with math. I spot the red ink and flip the map.

  “It was upside down, Mom.” I look in the rearview mirror and see her smiling. She turns on the windshield wipers on our new station wagon. Dad bought it just last week after winning a case. He wins a lot of cases.

  “Why are we going to Johnston City?” I ask.

  “It’s Johnson. There’s no ‘t’ in the name.”

  “There’s a ‘t’ in my last name. Livingston.” Dad gave me my name just as my Papaw gave him his. He said it’s a special family name. “Have I been to Johnson City before?”

  “No, not Johnson City. But when you were born we took a trip to the Smoky Mountains, which are about an hour away from here. They’re beautiful.” The car slows to a stop. “Do I turn here, John?”

  I look at the map again. “Yes. I think so. Are the Smoky Mountains any different from our mountain?”

  “They’re larger.”

  My head pounds with each winding curve. I set the map down. All the little lines make me sick. I frown and mumble into the glass, “It’s my birthday today.”

  “Look, John. Your father has asked that I bring this folder to him because,” she points to the yellow folder in the passenger seat then continues, “it’s important. You know he works hard for the family and it’s the least we can do for him. I know it’s your seventh birthday, but we’ll be home in no time. I promise.” I see her wink at me.

  I am about to be really sick when she says, “We’re here.”

  I look up and see a big white building with large columns. I think that’s what they’re called.

  Mom parks the car, grabs the folder and motions for me to get out.

  It’s starting to rain a little harder. I open my red umbrella and follow behind.

  Inside, there’s a big police officer. He asks to see inside Mom’s purse. He asks me to pull out my pockets. I say no, but Mom makes me. He smiles down at me as he points to a staircase. “He should be in room 2A. That’s the lawyer’s lounge,” he says.

  “Can I give the folder to Dad?” I ask.

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Will you hold my umbrella?”

  “Sure,” she says.

  Mom holds my free hand as we walk up the stairs. I’m excited to see Dad, because it’s my birthday and it’s Fall Break. She peers into the room.

  “I don’t see him. Certainly the hearing hasn’t started. Come on.” She pulls my hand again. At the end of the hallway, I see Dad open a big wood door. He’s talking to a man in an orange suit and doesn’t notice me. A police officer walks behind them. I am so excited to see him that I sprint as fast as I can to him.

  “John!” Mom yells. But I don’t care. I’m excited to see Dad.

  “Dad, I have your folder!”

  Dad and the man in orange stop talking and look at me. Dad tries to step in front of the orange man. I am breathing so hard. I am almost there when I trip and all the important stuff in the folder scatters across the floor. I can hear Mom running behind me.

  I look at the important stuff in front of me. There’s a woman with only half her face and dark red stuff all over a white wall. She’s in a wood chair. She only has one eye open. There are small dark pieces on the wall behind her.

  That’s blood. It’s blood. Oh no. The sick feeling from the car ride comes back and I throw up all over the pictures.

  “John!” Dad yells. He falls on the floor and shoves all the nasty pictures back into the folder.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mom tells Dad.

  I start to cry.

  “What the hell, Lora! Why is he even with you?” Dad is yelling at Mom. He’s mad.

  “There was no school today. He’s out of school for Fall Break, remember? Anyway, I’m really sorry. You didn’t tell me what was in the folder,” she whispers. “Where’s a restroom? I’ll get some towels to clean this mess.”

  A lady in red pants is now talking to Dad. She goes to a bathroom with Mom to get towels.

  Dad turns and tells the police officer to hold on for a moment. The police officer isn’t happy. Dad lowers himself so he can see my face.

  “John, I have an important case that starts”—he looks at his watch—“in ten minutes. Thank your mother for bringing the folder when she comes back. We’ll play ball Saturday, okay?”

  I nod okay. He stands and joins the man in orange and the police officer. They leave me in the hallway.

  Mom comes back with a lot of towels. After she wipes the floor and my face, she grabs my hand. “Let’s go,” she says.

  “Why was that woman bleeding, Mom?” My voice is shaky and my stomach hurts.

  She didn’t see the pictures before Dad put them back in the folder. “I’m sure she wasn’t, John.”

  I want to tell her that she’s wrong but she doesn’t let me.

  “No more questions, okay. It’s Dad’s business, not ours.” She hands me my umbrella and pulls me back down the stairs towards the big police officer. He smiles at me but I don’t smile back.

  “Let’s go home,” she says as she opens the car door for me. I close my umbrella and get back in the car.

  “He didn’t tell me Happy Birthday,” I tell Mom, putting my hand on my stomach.

  She doesn’t say anything for a while then she says, “He whispered to tell you Happy Birthday when I was leaving the bathroom.”

  “He did?” I smile temporarily before feeling the windy curves again. The trees are moving faster and faster.

  “He did.”

  I close my eyes and soon I’m falling asleep, forgetting all the big, confusing words I heard in the courthouse. I have a bad dream about the
woman in the pictures and then I’m home and the bad dream disappears for a while because it’s my birthday and it’s Fall Break.

  PART I

  Hope in Living Well

  “The stars never lie, but Men and Beasts do.”

  C.S. Lewis

  Chapter 1

  To Whom It May Concern,

  The earth was pressing into my back, into my soul. If I was still long enough, I could feel the pounding of the Underworld. I wasn’t scared of disappearing into the darkness though, of being consumed by the soil and earthworms beneath me. No. The sky was much larger in my mind. The sky was bright and hopeful and pulling on me from above with so much force that I could never fall into the world.

  At least, that’s what I thought before everything happened.

  Sure, the idea of getting caught had crossed my mind when I first went against the law. There was an occasional wisp of a worry that pulled my hand back from the prescription pad a few times when I was selling painkillers, but I could never seem to keep it by my side. My life had become dependent on those tiny white pills. As if my primal inner self knew there was danger lurking, and survival of the fittest meant selling those devils no matter what it required of me.

  And, trust me, it required more than you could possibly imagine.

  If only I could go back to that morning in the field, to that day when I was twenty-four years old, visiting home just before my board exam and tell myself that when it was time to choose a specialty, I should steer clear of pain management. All it would do is create more pain.

  I had returned home near the end of my second year of medical school, April of 1993, to help my father move boxes. Following the death of my mother, my father had decided to retire early. He had asked me to help him move the boxes into a storage unit on Broad Street. I decided to help him, as I always did, despite needing to study for my board exam that I was to take that summer.

  The field had always been my escape, the place where as a kid I could escape my parents, where as a teenager I could escape the law, drink my first beer, steal my first kiss. It was an old Civil War battleground with a direct connection to the Appalachian Trail hidden behind the trees on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. It was about a ten-minute climb down from our neighbor’s back yard. It could only be accessed this way for a fallen boulder had caused the road to be closed for years.

  The clearing was about the size of a third of a football field. It was home to two massive, beige concrete monuments, one of General Bragg and one of General Sherman, and a large marble slab listing details of the battle and the names of those that had died there. It was supposed to be visited by tourists, but due to the road closure, I seemed to be the only one who ever went there. I can remember laying there, spine relaxed, closing my eyes and taking in a deep, satisfying breath of sweet Tennessee mountain air, like the kind right outside these windows; the kind with a hint of honeysuckle mixed with fresh morning dew; the kind that fills more than the lungs, if fills the soul. I often tried to escape in my mind, to go back there in my dreams, but I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried.

  Anyway, on that spring day in 1993, I rested in the field and reminisced on my childhood. Moving the boxes out of our home had stirred deep emotions within me. I wasn’t ready to let go of my mother, although she had been dead for two years. And, I certainly wasn’t ready to let go of my freedom. The board exams were consuming me, and to be quite honest, I was afraid of what was to come. Little did I know at the time that my instinct had been correct, as if the future was warning me not to go back to Johnson City.

  The trees held me there for some time. I thought back on my father, my mother, on the many memories my father and I had packed away in those boxes the day before.

  My father, John Livingston, Jr., had lived a predetermined life in Chicago as his father and grandfather had done before him. Wanting a change in scenery, he had attended Sewanee in Tennessee to pursue the traditional pre-law degree. There he met my mother, Lora Jane Petal, an English major with jet black hair and lively green eyes, and married her in the fall of 1964. After my father finished law school at Harvard, they decided to move back to my mother’s hometown of Chattanooga, settling on the “old money”—although some would argue “new money”—mountain just outside the hustle of downtown.

  We lived in a five-bedroom renovated brick home on Lookout Mountain my entire childhood, which, looking back on it now, was excessive considering I was an only child. I suppose the love for more was genetic.

  We had old money and my father was, as my mother would say, “famous for all he did for our community.” He had worked at the Livingston Law Firm Monday through Friday in a restored tailor shop from the early 1970s in between Main and Martin Luther King Boulevard my entire childhood. His office had been glorious with big gold letters spelling out LIVINGSTON across two weathered wooden and glass doors. Visiting his office had been like traveling to a king’s palace with shiny paneled walls that held the secrets of the guilty, and secretaries who shined the glass doors so clean that I could see my reflection in them. My father devoted days, sometimes even nights, particularly if the case was a difficult one, to defending the guilty.

  Once when I asked why he chose to defend the murderers, robbers, and rapists of our city, he replied, and I’ll never forget it, “Because we’re all guilty of something, son. The world doesn’t make us perfect, and their something needs proper defending. It’s only fair to help all of man. Plus, you want to eat don’t you?”

  I furrowed my brow, trying to understand, watching as he went back to sipping his coffee and reading the paper behind his skinny glasses; and when I couldn’t, I just shrugged, asked for a dollar for a Coca-Cola, and walked away.

  The older I got, the more I started to understand his answer, and the more I began to dislike it. How we managed to escape social condemnation remains a mystery. Maybe our money and his fame was a blanket that covered our family, shielding us from the judgment and criticism we would have otherwise received. And maybe that’s the reason I wasn’t bullied at school despite the fact that my father had kept the lonely alcoholic who had murdered his boss out of jail for “lack of proper evidence.”

  But I was essentially happy and had, for the most part, a normal childhood. It wasn’t until my mother’s cancer returned for a third time that our family crumbled.

  Her cancer, in part, led me to medical school. I suppose the other part of me had wanted to be different from my father. I had been accepted to East Tennessee State University in Johnson City. Being three hours away from Chattanooga, it was far enough to feel independent but still close enough to feel like home. There was something about being in the mountains that always brought me home.

  I could feel the sun’s warmth gradually progress across my face with each passing hour. After I had enough of the past, I finally decided to leave. I stood, brushed the grass from pants, and climbed through the thickening brush to our house. I would only visit the field one more time, thankfully with Hope, before my life would take a turn. I haven’t been back since.

  I paused on our stone driveway, looking at our brick home. Tightness took over my chest. I could hear my father shuffling boxes around in the moving truck. I could see my bedroom window where I had spent so many years, and instantly my heart was flooded with frustration. My father had retired, yes, but because of a drinking habit that had escalated following my mother’s relapse. His gambling had become a problem too, though I didn’t know it at the time. I wouldn’t know for another year. It was obvious. He was retiring from more than a job, he was retiring from our home.

  “Son,” he called out from the moving truck. “Can you bring me the last box inside the kitchen. I’m in a hurry. The storage unit clerk leaves in two hours, and I need to swing by the office one last time before we unload.”

  The sun was beginning to set behind our house as I made my way into the kitchen and carried the last box to the truck.

  “So that’s it? Last box?” I asked with sadness in my
voice.

  He didn’t seem to notice. “Yes, thank heavens. We had too much stuff. Plus all my files from the office. It’s a miracle we got it all into this one truck.”

  He braced himself as he exited the back of the truck and let out a huff before straightening himself. He was older, weaker. I walked over and pulled down the door and handed him the key.

  “Thanks for helping, John.” He placed one hand on my shoulder as if to comfort me. “Where did you run off to?”

  “I was at the memorial, the clearing, you know. It’s been awhile since I’ve been there,” I said, kicking a rock in the driveway, hands in pockets.

  “Hmm, yes. Your mother said it was nice. I’ve been meaning to hike down there with you. Or we could drive. Maybe next summer?” he asked as he made his way back to the front door and locked it.

  “Next summer I’ll be in rotations.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s right. Well, there will be time.” He hoisted himself into the moving truck and rolled down the window. “See you at the storage unit. It’s the one on Broad.”

  “Yeah. I’ll see you there.”

  It was dark by the time we finished unloading the truck, and though he offered me a place to stay for the night in his new house downtown, I couldn’t. I was ready to go back to Johnson City.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay one night?”

  “No. I really need to review for the exam.”

  “Well, all right then.” He gave me a quick hug. “Thank you again, John,” he said before he closed my car door.

  After a tiring three-hour drive, I walked into my apartment and collapsed in my desk chair. I can’t remember the time exactly, but it was late, maybe 10:00 p.m. when I returned. I looked at the piles of textbooks and sighed. My arms were sore from lifting boxes, and my back was stiff from the drive.