“I don’t think so,” Onie said.
Mayhill bristled at the thought of her walking the land alone. He bristled that Onie didn’t know exactly where she was. Perhaps she was mistaken. He tried not to think about her out there, though every instinct in him was to find Birdie right then, to protect her from Dale or Bradley or hitmen or whatever else lurked like a disease among the loblollies.
Had all of this taught him nothing? Still the thought nestled in the back of his mind. Surely, she hadn’t gone into the woods. She wouldn’t be so stupid, not with the possibility of what was out there.
Onie washed her hands in the sink, got two cream-colored teacups from the cabinet, and then heated up the teakettle even though it was a hundred degrees outside. Mayhill walked around the barn and looked at the place, how bare it seemed without Van, without Birdie. A big brown couch much too nice for the space, the piano too nice for the space, a breakfast table in the corner that he placed his hat upon. The house was small but his boots echoed as if he were in a cavernous museum.
“You’re a good man, Randall.” Onie leaned against the sink and watched him while the water heated. “We’re lucky to have you.”
Randy turned to look at her. He felt unexpectedly choked up, a lump in his throat. “I don’t know if—”
“Shhh…” She scrunched her face and held her finger to her mouth. “Van wouldn’t shut up either.” Onie looked beautiful in the way that an old tree looked beautiful. Her face reminded him of tree bark, carved in cross-hatch lines. She turned off the stove and poured the water. Onie walked into the living room and handed him a cup.
“Awww, no, thank you, Onie. Hot as hell.”
But she pushed the cup into his hand. He took the tea and blew across the top.
Onie plopped down in her recliner. Van’s recliner was empty next to hers but he couldn’t bring himself to sit. “We weren’t always a good family,” she said. “I think that’s why we latched onto you. You were always good. Always a good man.”
“You latched onto me, Onie?” Mayhill’s throat caught at the thought of anyone latching onto him. He bobbed the tea bag in the water and looked again out the window, unable to meet her gaze. He didn’t know why she was saying these things. “Onie, please stop. Please, really. Stop.”
She looked up at him all twinkle-eyed—delighted in his discomfort, it seemed. She always looked at him with impossible love, as if he were a man who didn’t have to earn it. It made him tense.
Mayhill kept quiet and walked around the house. He looked at the books on the living room shelf. Emerson, Hurston, O’Connor, a condensed encyclopedia that he, too, had been suckered into buying just because the salesman had made the Odyssean-like effort of finding them in the middle of nowhere. He put his teacup on the shelf and thumbed through the O’Connor. Flannery’s face had the same delight and deviousness that Onie’s had before Van died.
“A good man is hard to find.” Onie nodded to the book in his hand and winked at him. Definitely a good day.
“I miss Van,” Mayhill said to change the subject. It was the first time he had ever said it.
Onie didn’t respond to this—just drank her tea—and he was glad because he regretted the words coming out of his mouth. He wasn’t allowed to grieve in front of her because her loss had been so tremendous that his barely counted. She loved Van more than anyone.
He put Flannery back on the shelf. “Birdie hates me.”
“Well, there’s only ever one satisfactory conclusion for a hero,” Onie said. Another odd thing to say. True, of course, but odd. “Even Jesus didn’t try to save people the way you do.”
“I heard he saved all of humanity.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Onie asked.
“I get all my gossip from Patsy Fuller.” He looked out the window at the hummingbirds drinking at the feeder. He needed something from Onie but didn’t know what. “Patsy Fuller said Van was in hell.”
“Maybe so,” Onie said.
He spun on his heel and looked at her. “Onie, you don’t really think—”
“The kingdom of God is a hand!” She held out her right hand, thin skin with liver spots like camouflage, and flipped it back and forth. “Heaven looks terrible.”
“You’re losing your mind, Onie.”
“Now that is heaven.”
Silence. She stabbed her tea bag at the cup. Maybe she was depressed, but her mind was still good.
“Why’d you say that wasn’t my dog?” Mayhill asked. He picked up his hat to leave, but Onie just looked at him blankly. “Yesterday,” Mayhill said. “I had my dachshund here. You said he wasn’t my dog. Little long-haired thing.”
Onie’s gaze was on the television again, and she rocked back and forth in the recliner. “Is it your dog?”
“Yes,” Mayhill said. He looked her right in the forehead.
“Then why give credence to what an old lady says?”
Randy smirked and turned again to watch the hummingbirds. Two of them moving a mile a minute just to stay in one place.
“Birdie thinks I’m going crazy,” she said.
“After Van…you just got so quiet.”
“A person gets quiet,” Onie said. “And everybody thinks they’re nuts.”
“But you’ve never been quiet.”
“I’ve never been nuts either.”
Mayhill cocked his head and smirked.
Onie wagged an excited finger at him, “Awwww, Randall.” She chuckled with an affection that stole his breath. “I knew you wouldn’t buy that one.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Of course Onie had been right about the dog, and this was disconcerting.
It had all begun with the police scanner. In most households, personal police scanners had gone the way of rotary phones and young people making eye contact, but in many households, they were as much a fixture as the television. After Van died, Mayhill sometimes felt as if the scanner was talking directly to him. He had always felt that way even when he was a boy, when he listened to the scanner the way his parents had listened to Hank Williams, for inspiration and meaning.
At one point, though, the scanner had been talking to him. He had been the sheriff, and it had told him all he needed to know about his domain—all of the misery of the past perfect tense. It had alerted him to house fires, domestic disturbances, suspected meth labs, child neglect, and loose cows. Cows on the loose made up half of the work of his patrolmen. A Houston deputy had inquired about the percentage of Mayhill’s cow-related work, and the deputy had laughed at the answer, but Mayhill, for once, was not defensive. Until that deputy had helped lift a dead, bloated cow off of a dark highway, cars swerving to miss it, the man had no room to talk. They could keep their crack houses and sex crimes, which Mayhill got to enjoy on top of dead cows too, thank you very much.
After he lost it all, Mayhill spent a good few months moping. He thought of what jobs he might be qualified for, but Sam’s Club Security Specialist was as long as the list got. During those months, he silenced the scanner and refused to listen to it—defiantly—the way one might burn his ex-wife’s records, the song they first danced to. He couldn’t bring himself to turn it on. Then, one night, when he was giving up booze for Dr Peppers and eating frozen pizzas every night, in a haze of what-if insomnia, he reached out like the Creation of Adam, with a single finger, and pressed the flat, beige button. A galaxy of problems crackled through his house again, and his whole world opened up. He was no longer confined to the unsolvable mess of his own problems. He could again tackle the problems of other people, which, for some reason, were so much more solvable and the answers so much more obvious than his own. For the first time since he handed over his gold star like a hangdog schoolboy, he felt like he could breathe again. He felt that there was finally, finally some goddamn possibility!
Lucky for Mayhill, and unlucky for everyone else, that particular night was brutal, one of those nights in which the stars aligned in the shap
e of a dazzling pile of shit for everyone underneath them. There was a big fire out toward Mitday (possibly arson), and on the other side of the county, there were—count 'em!—three drunk drivers at the county line. A party out of control (strippers, homemade explosives). Near the dump, somebody had reported a cow loose on the highway, and Mayhill knew then that nobody would be dispatched for a loose cow, not on a night like that.
He put on his jeans, which did not offer the comfort they had months before, and slipped into his truck and drove into the night. He wouldn’t find anything. He often didn’t on these calls, but they had to be checked.
It was out by the dump, and despite the chaos, it was a glorious night—beautiful, cool—and he rolled down the windows and let the wind blow in, even with the charred remains of people’s lives hanging in the air. He passed a bunch of hogs, their eyes glinting in his headlights. He drove a few roads and when he pulled onto the main highway, his headlights fell on a big white mound, like a pile of sand in the night. It was a cow, dead in the ditch, stiff-legged and peaceful, and thankfully off the road. Mayhill was disappointed for the cow’s death and his continued uselessness, but the outcome was not unexpected. At least no humans had been hurt.
When he turned to drive back, he saw a pair of eyes flash in the dark. The reflective eyes of an animal. Then, his headlights caught a little dog, a dachshund, emerging from the ditch. He recognized the dog immediately as the dump dog that belonged to Patsy Fuller. Despite living out his days at the dump in piles of scraps, the dog appeared underweight—unlike Patsy Fuller, he noted—his little ribs showing more than Mayhill liked, his deep brown fur slightly gray from the ash. He was not an abused dog. He was taken care of just fine, but he was not a celebrated dog, and a dog was meant to be celebrated, with padding on his bones.
Mayhill knew that the right thing to do was to drive that dog right back to the dump and drop him off at the Fullers’ front steps because this dog, treated decently enough, should return to his rightful owner because that was the law. Still, seeing Pat Sajak looking like hell, he began to consider that he didn’t need rules to be the hero he knew he could be. He could judge the world by his own compass and what it needed. Mayhill opened the door to his truck and held out a piece of beef jerky. Lord, forgive me for what I am about to do.
***
Back at his house, after talking with Onie, Mayhill stir-fried some pan sausage and mixed it with dry dog food from a high-dollar Houston pet store populated exclusively by homosexuals. He poured the greasy concoction into the china bowl his mother had served Thanksgiving mashed potatoes in. His own mouth watered at the memory. He settled his large body into the leather armchair, bowl in lap, then double-patted his large legs, and an expectant Pat Sajak popped onto his lap and put his head in the bowl, which Mayhill secured with one hand to prevent it from crashing to the floor.
Mayhill chuckled and patted his back while he ate, the sun going down slowly. When the feast was done and night fully-baked and black, Mayhill and Pat Sajak loaded into the truck and the dog snuggled into his old matted towel for a sleepy ride.
The dump looked astonishing at night. Islands of red embers covering an area the size of a football field, an occasional low blue flame feathering out of the ground. The Fullers’ house had a single porch light on, an anemic flickering yellow.
He rolled up the window to keep the low, lingering smell of a barbecued world from getting in the truck, and felt the shock of regret at this being anyone’s home. Mayhill cut the engine and Virgil was already standing outside, using the excuse of a visitor to light a cigarette. Even in the dark, Mayhill could see Virgil’s face was still dirty from the day. Virgil worked harder than anyone he knew, and all he had was Patsy and chronic bronchitis to show for it.
Mayhill got out of the truck and shook Virgil’s hand. “I figured you had enough smoke, Virgil.”
Virgil laughed and took a drag. “You out late. What can I do for you?”
Mayhill walked around to the passenger’s side of the truck and opened the door. Pat Sajak jumped out and sniffed a frantic and invisible trail, zigzagging his way to Virgil.
“My God! Is that—?” Virgil dropped the cigarette and crouched down to meet the dog. He scratched him frantically, and Pat Sajak turned over to reveal his belly. “Patsy!” Virgil turned and yelled into the house. “Patsy! Get out here!”
Mayhill braced. “Evening, Patsy.” She wondered out of the house and looked more tired than he’d ever seen her. In the porch light, she appeared wounded and battered, much smaller than her bark.
“Leroy!” she squealed. “Is that you?” She picked the dog up in her arms and his long body squirmed excitedly. “You’ve gotten fat! You’re a fat little piggy!” For a moment, Mayhill could see a shadow of who Patsy had been in her teens. Severe and intense, always, but without the bite—her features had been filed down. Without the years of worry about money. Without the decade of being spit on as a guard at the prison because that was the only job she could find around here. Without the years of worry that her husband would blow up in Afghanistan.
“Where’d you find him?”
He couldn’t look at her, but watched the embers burn off to the side. “Patsy, I’m embarrassed to say I found him a while back on the road out there. Didn’t put together he was yours until you said something the other day.”
Virgil kept his eyes on Mayhill, a tired smile, an exhale of smoke cloaking him like a magic trick. He knew.
“Found him a while back…put it together,” Patsy repeated. She squatted down to scratch Leroy’s back. “Guess you ain’t too stupid after all!”
Mayhill nodded, oddly moved by what was meant to be Patsy’s rare attempt at a compliment.
“Stay for a beer, Sheriff?” Virgil asked. “You a hero around here now. Heroes drink free!”
“Nah,” Mayhill said. He shook Virgil’s hand again. “Got some place to be. Y’all have a good night.”
They petted Pat Sajak like a soldier come home, and Mayhill was glad for it, but he rushed to his truck as a wave of sentimentality threatened to overcome him like stomach flu. As he retreated quickly into the dark, Patsy yelled after him. “He’s almost as fat as you!”
“Thank you for noticing, Patsy!” he yelled out the window.
“His Aikman jersey ain’t even gonna fit now!”
“Good!” Mayhill yelled as the reflection in his rearview mirror filled with embers like rubies.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The second time Birdie saw Tommy Jones:
At the beginning of August 1995, a few weeks before Van died, Birdie worked on supper (greens, bacon) while Van slept in his new leather recliner. Onie was in the garden watering the squash when the phone rang.
Birdie answered and then handed the phone to Van.
“Aight,” Van said, deflated. “Be there in a few.”
“Where you going?” Birdie asked.
“Gotta pull somebody out. Stuck behind Earl Martin’s house.”
“Who is it?”
“You don’t know him.” Van moved slowly out of the chair. His normal, bouncing energy had been replaced with a lethargy that made her ache. He grabbed his keys off the counter.
“Well, who called you?” Birdie asked.
“Dale.”
“Dale got stuck?”
“No,” he said.
“Who, then?”
“Some trapper.”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“You don’t know him!” Van said. “Not a secret.”
“Can I come?”
“You don’t need to come,” Van said.
“Why not?”
“He’s not a man for you to meet.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Jesus, Birdie!” Van slammed his hand on the counter. Birdie jolted and looked out the window. He lowered his voice. “Why you care so much? Just somebody stuck in the mud. I’m gonna go pull him out. Dale doesn’t have the c
hains.”
She didn’t say it, but they both knew why she cared so much. Van had been short and distant lately and regularly fell asleep in the recliner before the Ken dolls of the ten o’clock news came on. She had barely seen him the past few months since his trees all went and died.
“Come with me,” Van said.
She ignored him and stirred the simmering pot. She knew her father hated nothing more than to be ignored. It was the greatest transgression against another human. She guessed this was why he gave too much attention to everyone he met, no matter how little they affected his life.
“Come on,” Van said, louder this time. “Don’t be like that.”
She watched the bubbles of the boiling water roll to the surface and pop, and she thought about keeping her silence going. She could ignore him more and punish him infinitely for his recent neglect, but more than that, she wanted to spend time with him again.
“Aight,” he said loudly. “I’m leaving now. I’m opening the door. I’m walking out the door.”
With that, Birdie quickly turned off the burner and trotted out behind him.
***
Van’s truck had always been impossibly clean, especially for a man who worked in the woods, the leather seats sometimes so slick with Armor All that Birdie would slide a good half foot forward anytime he braked. Now his truck was dirty. The inside was covered with mud and grime and an entirely different set of tools than she was used to seeing. Where there usually was a rope and measuring tape, there were giant branch clippers and a few different sizes of gardening shears. A shotgun lay on the backseat next to a thin phonebook inexplicably covered with silver duct tape.
She moved a dirty pair of gardening clippers from the passenger’s seat and squeezed the handles open and closed, which made a piercing squeak over and over and over until Van said, “That’s annoying as hell.” She opened the glove box to put them away, but the glove box was packed with stacks of paper and his little .357 revolver on top. She squeaked it one more time out of obligatory rebellion, and then begrudgingly placed the clippers on the floorboard.
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