Southernmost

by Silas House

  And in that way she had made him feel loved for a while.

  By the time he had figured out that she had God and judgment all mixed up he had been preaching along those same lines for years. And then he had begun to realize that he had married a woman who did not disagree with her, who was not unlike her except for the abuse. If Lydia had ever laid a hand on Justin he would’ve kidnapped him long before now. At least she didn’t possess that kind of meanness.

  They passed a scattering of small, tidy houses with red geraniums and hanging pots of wandering Jew, a collection of rockers and chairs on the porches.

  Old couples hoeing corn in the gathering heat, their gardens rectangle-shaped wounds of rich brown soil among the green yards.

  So far out across the fields they could not hear its engine, even if they had been standing still: an orange tractor bumping along the edge of a tobacco field.

  Barns. Gray, red, white.

  Abandoned houses with tiger lilies growing in the windows. Look how perfect, Asher. He had loved her even after she had pulled a gun on his own brother. He had become a preacher for her, to please her because Luke had not.

  A small cemetery with plastic flowers on the graves, the tombstones wiped clean recently, most likely back on Memorial Day. Country folks still took that seriously.

  Spaced out every few miles, cinder-block stores with good names: Daddy and Them Grocery. Lord God Almighty Hair Salon.

  Occasionally: a Confederate flag hanging on a rusty pole, or draped over a porch banister.

  Church after church after church. Asher had preached in so many just like them, back when he was doing revivals. He could conjure the smells of those little churches (musty, perfumy, the scent of plug-in deodorizers or soured mop water or acrid hair spray that lodged in the back of his throat). The people coming forward, asking for prayer, his hand capped over their foreheads, their lips trembling with the Holy Ghost, dotting oil on their temples, praying like a fever let loose. The drummers—almost always women—playing so hard and fast, pianos pounding. A church’s kind of rock ’n’ roll. The church people dancing, cloaked in the Spirit. The electric guitars and the singers and the tambourines shaking with their ancient sounds. He had believed in all of it with everything in him. He had believed and believed and believed.

  All of the churches were small, some of them with names so long they didn’t fit properly on their signs.

  little dove full gospel church in jesus name

  the one true god gospel celebration church

  holy ghost revival church of the new savior

  Most of them with shelter houses nearby, filled with picnic tables. Most of them white, but a couple redbricked, all with crosses. Only a few possessed steeples, squat and fat.

  The boy looked out the open window with such concentration that Asher wondered if he, too, was mourning the loss of Tennessee, grieving the loss of a past whose passing ought to have been celebrated.

  Good-bye forever goodbye, he thought, his mother’s face before him.

  6

  Georgia. Justin had dozed off again and Asher kept the music off so as not to disturb him. The Jeep humming a steady song on the long, gray line of I-75, the guilt straddling Asher’s chest. The image of Zelda lying on the floor playing over and over in his mind.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered now, not to God, but to Zelda, way across the mountains and pastures.

  Justin stirred beside him, his big eyes sleepy but open. “Dad?” he said.

  “It’s all right, buddy,” Asher said. “Go back to sleep.”

  “You said ‘forgive me,’ ” Justin said. “What did you do, Dad?”

  Asher kept his eyes on the road. He tightened his jaw, turned on the music but Justin snapped it off, quick.

  “What did you do?”

  “Justin—”

  “No, you have to tell me. Is Granny alright?”

  “Yes,” Asher said in his and-that’s-final voice, turning to look Justin in the eye so the boy would know he was telling the truth. “We’ll call her, once we get past Atlanta.”

  As soon as they got on the other side of the city they began to see large red-and-yellow billboards for

  TIGHTWAD’S

  “THE CHEAPEST GAS IN THE SOUTH,

  NOT GUARANTEED”

  and after a while the Jeep carried them off the exit to find a similar, gigantic sign perched on the roof of a massive truck stop painted highway-stripe yellow.

  “I’m going to call your granny right quick,” Asher said, shoving the gearshift up into park. “You want to talk to her?”

  “She’ll just cry,” Justin said. “And tell me to pray.”

  “Sure?” Asher was fishing quarters out of the ashtray. “It’d do her good to hear from you, little man.”

  “Yeah,” Justin said with some amount of exhaustion, so Asher closed the door and went to the phone.

  A young Cherokee woman in cutoff jeans and a red halter top strutted across the parking lot while she smoked a cigarette. Her breasts bounced with each step she took. Her black hair struck her at the waist and she flipped one side of it over her shoulder. A trucker swung down out of the cab of his eighteen-wheeler and whistled at her. “Oh, squaw woman!” he hollered, but she kept her eyes on the truck-stop door. “You’re killing me baby!” He patted his hand against his open mouth as he yelled to make a wo-wo-wo-wo sound. At this she thrusted her middle finger into the air, still refusing to look toward him.

  The coins dropped into the phone. Asher was lucky to even remember Zelda’s number, but he had learned it in the days before cell phones. Only two rings and she answered.

  “Hello? Asher?” she said, as if she had been awaiting his call. Her voice was held back, like she couldn’t catch her breath. “Where are you?”

  “Zelda? You alright?”

  “My hip’s hurt, but I’ll make it.” How easy it was to be folded back up by someone who has been good to you.

  “Your face?”

  “Asher, what were you thinking?”

  “Nobody’s ever been as good to me as you, Zelda. And I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t know any other way—”

  “I know it, Asher.” He could picture her, sitting at her supper table, drinking coffee in the hot part of the day. The nit-nit-nit of the yellow plastic clock on the wall.

  But maybe not. Maybe cops were sitting right there with her. Lydia with her ear pressed up to the phone receiver, listening to every word. This was the end of their relationship, and he knew it, grieved its passing.

  “You know I was a good father.”

  “I should’ve done something. I should’ve talked sense more to Lydia.”

  The phone receiver was shaking against his ear. He steadied his nerves, glanced at Justin to make sure he was alright. The boy was studying the atlas now. In movies phones got traced or not, but always in them it depended on how long a person stayed connected. He wasn’t going to take the chance of talking long.

  “Asher, bring him back. Before she finds out. You can fix all of this if you just bring him back. Right now.”

  “You haven’t called the law?”

  “She doesn’t know yet,” Zelda whispered.

  “What?” Asher couldn’t believe it. They had left Cumberland Valley over six hours ago, thinking the whole time he was running from the police. “You haven’t called her?”

  “She’s gone to Knoxville for a revival and won’t call until lunchtime.”

  Thank you thank you thank you.

  He felt the fear roll off him. If she didn’t listen to her voice mail, which she never did, then she wouldn’t know.

  “Nobody has to know, Asher. If you’ll just bring him back.” Asher could picture Zelda’s lower lip trembling, her violet eyes full of tears. “I was wrong, before. I set in that courtroom and let it happen. But this ain’t the right way. You have to bring him back.” In her own way Zelda had had the saddest life he had ever seen, always minding someone else, never thinking for herself. Seeing the way Lydia
treated her had made him see that he wasn’t going to live his life that way. “You know I have to call her.”

  “I know it,” he said. “But I can’t bring him back. I won’t—”

  “And she’ll call the law.”

  “I know.”

  “Asher, please don’t do this,” she said. “I don’t blame you for being so mad at me. At her. But please. I’m begging you.”

  The world tilted, spun, straightened. Asher could hear every breath he took, loud in his own ears, his blood pumping, the heat humming all around him. He could hear the gas being pumped into a farmer’s truck, the electric bells chiming as the gas station door opened, the breath of hot air in the stand of pines nearby.

  “Asher?” Zelda said loud and forceful, as if she had said it many times without him hearing.

  “I’m here.”

  “Please don’t take him.”

  Asher put his finger on the silver button to hang up but stood there holding the phone to his ear. He needed a minute before he got back in the Jeep. He was shaking all over. He had talked to Zelda and she was all right. They had a head start of six hours on the law. And this was really happening.

  He put the phone on the hook but as he started toward the Jeep, he saw that a young man was heading straight for him. Bleached hair, a mangy beard, a tee shirt with the sleeves torn off, emblazoned with the face of one of those male country singers who all sounded alike.

  “Thank you—for what you did,” the boy said.

  “I’m sorry?” Asher said.

  “For what you said, on that video. It meant a lot to me.” The boy—not much more than a teenager—kept his brown eyes right on Asher’s face.

  “I’m glad, son,” he said, and realized he had not used the word son with a stranger since his preacher days. He put his hand out to be shaken. “I’m so glad it helped you, buddy.” He let go the boy’s hand. “Please don’t ever tell anyone you saw me here, alright?”

  “Okay,” the boy said, a confused smile playing across his mouth. “I won’t.”

  “Take care of yourself,” Asher said, sliding into the Jeep.

  Justin had turned the key so he could listen to music. He sang along until they got to the interstate ramp, where a skinny man with long hair and a full, red beard stood on the shoulder. He looked exhausted as he stood in the heat holding a cardboard sign. hungry stranded had been printed on it in neat block letters. A worn backpack sat at the man’s feet.

  “Dad, let’s help him,” Justin said as they passed the man, and turned in his seat to keep his eye on him. “Let’s go back to that McDonald’s and buy him a fish sandwich.”

  “Justin, we can’t, honey.” Asher watched the man growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. The man had turned to watch after them as if he knew they were discussing his fate. “We need to keep going.”

  “But he’s hungry. We should help him,” Justin said as the Jeep curved up the interstate ramp. Too late to turn back now.

  “I’m already on the interstate, buddy.”

  Justin fixed his eyes on the highway. “We should have helped him.”

  He didn’t speak to Asher down the entire length of Georgia. Instead, he turned his face to the passenger window and watched the pinewoods and pastures pass by. Churches and homes and cows. But mostly the signs alongside the Georgia highway:

  just ahead: boiled p-nuts

  ripe ga grown water meluns

  this flag is heritage, not hate

  g

  e

  t

  right with

  g

  o

  d

  ice-cold watermelons 5$

  jam jelly molasses

  god hates fags

  best peaches 4 miles

  7

  Asher sat by the window, watching the trees. There were thirsty-looking pines and short little palm trees, and the parking lot blacktop was covered with a thin layer of sand that had blown in during some time when there was actually a breeze moving around. The trees were completely still in a way that they never were back home in Tennessee and not a single bird he could see. Maybe they were way back in the deepest parts of the woods where the pine shade was cool and fragrant, a better place for winged things than out by the treeless interstate where it was nothing but rotting motels and truck stops.

  They were in a motel near the Florida – Georgia border. Asher had driven more than eight hours before he started falling asleep. He had coasted into the Shady Oaks Motel, gotten a room and had dived into a hard sleep after making Justin swear to not leave. He had fallen asleep to the sound of his son watching the television but now was awake after only a couple of hours. Justin’s small snores were singing across the room to him.

  At least the room offered those two hours of sleep. There was a rust stain on the floor around the toilet and the bar of soap was thin as a Hershey bar and smelled like funeral flowers. The towels were like sandpaper. He was pretty sure there was dried vomit on the carpet in the corner. Justin had said the remote felt sticky.

  “It’s perfect that the word ‘shady’ is in the motel name,” Justin had said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “This is the shadiest hellhole I’ve ever seen,” Justin said.

  Asher started to tell him to watch his mouth, that little boys weren’t to handle language like that, but that was just an old habit that didn’t even make sense to Asher anymore. Besides, Justin was right.

  He had clicked off the television and now he sat on the air conditioner at the window.

  An old dog moseyed across the parking lot. If he were a dog, Asher thought, he’d be crawling up under a cool porch somewhere or getting off that hot blacktop. There was something pitiful about the dog. Maybe because he was all alone out there. Asher reckoned he probably hadn’t had a bath his entire life. He was black and white but everything about him had been grayed by dirt. The dog stopped and sniffed at the air—maybe he was out hunting food and too hungry to be lounging around under a porch—and then he turned and set his eyes right on Asher’s. The dog turned and headed toward the little pinewoods and then Asher could see that his right back leg never touched the ground.

  Justin’s snoring piped up like a bad muffler and then he snorted and rolled over, his deep breaths hushed by the pillow. In so many ways he was like a little old man.

  Asher looked back to the window but the dog was gone. Now he knew he’d be worrying about him the rest of the night.

  He wondered if Lydia had listened to her voice mail by now. And Zelda had reported it by now, surely. That meant the law was most certainly after them. He could have picked up the phone and ended this whole thing before it got any worse. But then he’d have to give up Justin. He couldn’t do that.

  The dog was back, his limp more pronounced. His tongue lolled out and it seemed to Asher that the dog was lost. Not lost in the sense that he didn’t know where he was, but that he had no idea what his next move might be, as if he had exhausted all of his options for survival.

  Asher padded into the bathroom and filled a thin plastic cup with water. He slipped out of the moldy room and onto the sidewalk where a dozen air conditioners leaked thin streams that ran in jagged lines down the concrete. The heat was thick as curtains. Night was fixing to slide over the world and the cicadas were calming down for that hushed time between daylight and darkness, when crickets rosined their bows. That was what happened in the deepest parts of the pinewoods. Out here by the motel there was only the sound of eighteen-wheelers groaning down the interstate, one after another, an endless noise of commerce.

  The dog lay on the narrow rectangle of grass between the sidewalk and the parking lot, his back legs splayed out and his front paws tucked under his chest. Asher leaned over, trying to not spill the full cup of water, and put his hand out so the old boy could draw in his scent. Luke had taught him how to do this as a child. The dog sniffed his fingers and latched his eyes on to Asher with a mixture of trust and suspicion.

  “Hey th
ere, buddy,” Asher said in a voice like he was talking to a baby.

  He set the cup on the sidewalk and the dog glanced up at him to make sure it was a gift and then his tongue lashed at the water as if his full thirst had only now overtaken him. Asher tipped the cup to the side for him to get more water and the dog continued to stare at him as he lapped up more. The whole time his eyes were saying Thank you so much that’s the best damn water I’ve ever had in my whole entire suffering life.

  Then the dog was going crazy, licking Asher’s hand and jumping up so he would squat down and give his full attention. He smelled like he’d rolled around in something rotten and dead. Asher petted him anyway.

  The dog looked like beagle, pit bull, perhaps some mountain feist. He had a strong chest and a noble head, a slender but muscular body, despite his obvious hunger. Asher patted down the dog’s back and he could feel pebbles under his skin that he knew were shotgun pellets because Roscoe had had them, too. He had been out gallivanting and one of the neighbors had shot him right in the hind end for digging up her flower bed.

  Asher sat down on the grass and let the dog cover him up with loving, regardless of how badly he stank. The dog climbed into his lap and licked at his face, perching one of his paws up on Asher’s chest, and this was the first time Asher had been truly happy in a long while.

  “Yes sir, buddy, that’s a good boy, yes him is,” Asher sing-songed to him, and the dog seemed to talk back by the way he wiggled around and licked Asher’s hands and face when he could sneak in a kiss. There was no way he was leaving this good old boy here.