Southernmost

by Silas House

  Asher tells Justin to go on and get a shower and he minds without any arguing although he usually hates to be left out of any interaction with Evona. His skin must feel as tight with sand and salt as Asher’s.

  Asher sits down on the step beside Evona and gives Shady a good pat on the head.

  “You were on the national news tonight,” she says. “Your ex-wife was on. She’s out of her mind with worry.” She takes her hand away from Shady, leaning forward so that he can no longer see her face. “I’d read before that your mother-in-law got hurt in the scuffle but tonight they showed pictures of her face. Tell me you didn’t do that, Asher.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Asher says.

  “Oh God—” Evona puts her hands on her face as if this is too much to bear. “One whole side of her face was blue, Asher.”

  “She got knocked down when I broke down the door. It was an accident.”

  “You didn’t do that to her, intentionally?”

  “She forgave me. She knew I didn’t mean to.”

  “Asher—” she says, and he can hear in her voice that she is ashamed of him.

  “I talked to her,” he says. “I begged her forgiveness.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “The less you all know the better off we all are.” His voice is shaking. Bell has stopped playing the piano and the absence of the music seems a widening thing.

  “What else don’t I know?”

  “There’s nothing.” He shakes his head no. “What all did they say about me?”

  “They showed a little bit of that video from you in the church—the part that makes you look the worst.”

  He nods, but she isn’t looking at him.

  He puts his hand atop hers to see if she will let it stay. “Please, believe me,” he says.

  She eases her hand away and there is no tenderness or malice in her voice. “What’re you going to do?”

  “I’ve got to take him back.”

  She shakes her head, her eyes on the ground. “Just lay low for a little bit,” she says. Her voice comes from the back of her throat. “Let this pass.”

  “I can’t raise him on the run,” he says, as if she needs convincing. He has had this conversation with himself so many times before, but never anyone else. “When I took him, I just thought, ‘I can’t be away from my boy. I can’t stand it.’ I should have listened to my lawyer. She said we could appeal. But I couldn’t stand the thought of a whole year without being with him properly.” Now he is just talking out loud. “When I take him back, they’ll put me away. I’ll never get to see him.”

  Help me, he thinks.

  Evona puts her hand on his back with some amount of hesitation, then moves her palm around in a circle. His mother had done this, long long ago, when he was little and sick. He had always been her pick. She had always been affectionate with him in a way she had never shown Luke, but he had resented her for it instead of relishing it. He recalled one time when she had touched him in this comforting way. He had been on the bathroom floor, his head against the cool porcelain of the toilet after vomiting with a stomach virus, and she had folded herself down in the little space beside him, rubbing his back. Bless your heart, honey, she’d said in a soft voice. He had forgotten that voice until just now because that was before she became so terrible. When someone turns mean, do we lose all that good that was in them, just as they do? He thinks that maybe we do, although we hold on to it as long as we can, hoping.

  “I sure don’t want y’all to go,” Evona says. “I kind of like having you two around.” She takes her hand away from his back, folds it atop her other one on her lap. “But her face, Asher. You’ve got to make this right.”

  Far out over the ocean there is the rumbling of thunder and seconds later lightning illuminates the night.

  He keeps his eyes on her slender hands. There couldn’t have been a less convenient time for him to find somebody he cared about. The thought of that is impossible, but he still can’t deny what he feels. He knows how foolish it is to even entertain the thought of wanting her, in this time and place, when he has made a complete mess of everything. But he also knows he has only this one life and now that he’s found someone he needs to hold on to her.

  He leans in to kiss her. But just when he is close enough to feel her breath on his mouth, he pulls away. He stands and looks out into the night as rain begins to peck at the shadowy yard.

  “Why did you do that?” she says from behind him.

  He doesn’t know if she is asking why he started to kiss her or why he pulled away. He can’t figure which has upset her. “I’m sorry,” he mutters. When he turns he sees that her face has changed, squared by a new kind of pain.

  “Ten years ago, I lost my little boy,” she says. “He was sick, for a long time. So every day he died a little bit more. But still, when he went, I wasn’t ready. They told me I’d have time to prepare myself. But there’s no way. So I shut myself down for years and years, after I lost him. I wanted to die. I kept thinking there might be some chance that I’d see him again if I did. But instead, I came here. And somehow I found Bell. You don’t know how similar you two are.”

  He is sick to his stomach from the knowledge of what she has gone through. He doesn’t know how anyone gets over that. But this explains so much: all the times he can hear her crying on her side of the house, the sleepless nights she spends on the porch, the days when she disappears. But also, the way she launches into the world on her good days.

  After a time he asks: “What do you mean, how similar we are?”

  “More like how similar she is to your brother. She was running away, too. From loving somebody. From parents who would have rather seen her dead than with a woman.”

  “I would’ve never thought—”

  “They don’t all act alike, Asher,” she says, impatient with him. Then: “And for the longest time, it was just me, and Bell. We worked hard every day. We ate supper together in the evenings. We learned how to talk to each other, and how to be quiet. The best part is we accepted each other for who we were, no questions asked. And even though every morning when I woke up and realized all over again that this was real, that my little perfect boy was dead and buried in the cold ground—” Her voice breaks but she does not cry. “—I did the best I could. Despite everything, I thought, I’ll live, for him. See what each day had to offer since he couldn’t. I don’t know if I believe in God, Asher. I don’t. Which scares the hell out of me. But I believe in something. I don’t know what. Music. Something.”

  Asher doesn’t know what to say. All this time he has been feeling sorry for himself, thinking about the mess he’s in, and not even thinking about the grief that Evona or Bell might be carrying around.

  “When you and Justin came, at first I thought there was no way I could bear having a little boy around here. I thought: I can’t do it; it’ll remind me too much. But Bell knew what she was doing. It was time. You all saved me.” She takes his hand again, gingerly. “Does that make sense?”

  “Yes.” He breathes the word against her face as he draws her to him. He puts his arms around her, holding her tight, her lips so soft, the smell of her, her cool ears beneath his palms, her breasts small and firm against his chest. He kisses her mouth, her chin, her forehead. When he kisses her cheeks he finds she is crying. So he kisses her eyes, too, the salt tangy on his lips.

  21

  The room is lit with white morning light and Justin squints as Asher shakes him awake.

  “Justin, come on—” His voice is trembling. “—we have to go, we have to leave.”

  Evona is hollering from the living room. “Go, Asher, go. You have to go.”

  Asher wants to take the time to explain, but there is no time. And if he stays here with Evona he will most likely lose Justin forever.

  “Come on, buddy, hurry. We have to hide.”

  “I’m tired of hiding,” Justin mutters, sleep in his throat. He is staring up at Asher with a furrowed brow that might
as well be stamped with the words Enough is enough.

  “We have to, Justin,” he says, trying to sound calm, but his whole body is thrumming with fear and sadness. “Please, little man. Come on.”

  Asher can see the moment of recognition in his son’s eyes (this is serious), and then Justin sits up on the edge of the bed, pulls on his shorts, shoves his feet into his Chucks, glancing around the room.

  “Where’s Shady?”

  “He ran out as soon as I came in,” Asher says. The dog had darted past him as if he knew what was happening. “Come on, buddy!”

  When Justin gets to the living room Evona is leaning in the front door. She’s been crying and her face looks like it’s been scrubbed clean with a rough washrag, her eyes pink, her cheeks rosy. When she sees Justin she turns her face away.

  “What is it?” Justin asks but nobody answers him.

  “Just go,” she says, trying to control her mouth and making her words sound like two big bubbles breaking on the air.

  Asher holds on to the door frame for a moment, too.

  “I can’t just leave you like this,” he says to Evona. “With all of this to tend—”

  “Go,” she says, firm and hard, pushing him away, pretending to be mean about it so he will listen. She’s strong Evona again, the Evona that Asher knows, the Evona who walks with determination even if she’s just crossing the yard to tend to some flowers. “Now. They’ll be here any minute.”

  “Who?” Justin yells this, stopping in the yard.

  Asher leans over from behind and he has a hold of Justin’s elbows. There is no other way to do this. “Bell’s passed away—” His voice against Justin’s ear.

  Something in Justin’s face changes, squares, hardens.

  “—she passed before the ambulance could get here and now Evona thinks the police might come. So we have to go. We have to get out of here right now. We’ll be able to come back.”

  “But I’ll never ever see her again!” Justin cries out.

  Asher put his hands out toward him, as if knowing what he would do, and he does: Justin runs. He runs to the cottage to see her.

  “No, Justin! You can’t!” Asher hollers.

  Justin stops on the porch when Asher manages to grab hold of his wrist. He can’t let him go in there and see her lying dead like that. But when Justin turns to face him there is something strong and magnificent about the way he looks up at Asher and Evona.

  “I’ve always been losing somebody. Roscoe, and you”—he says directly to Asher—“but you never thought about that, did you?”

  I did, I did know, Asher wants to say to him, a prayer, but he doesn’t interrupt.

  “I used to sit up all night, missing you,” he says. “And then I lost Granny. And Mom. Tennessee and the woods and the ridge and the river. And I’m gonna lose you sometime soon, again, ain’t I? You know I am.”

  Asher doesn’t respond. He concentrates on the small bones in his son’s wrist.

  “Let me see her.”

  Asher lets go of Justin and follows him into the house. And there is Bell, looking like a queen lying there asleep. There is a stillness in the room that exists only where the dead lie. Asher recalls it from his own mother’s death, from the many death beds he attended as a pastor. Justin leans over and kisses Bell on the cheek. Asher can smell the flowers Bell always wore in her hair, she wore them so long that she started to smell like them even when the flowers weren’t there.

  Then he hears Justin whisper: “Olivia Bougainvillea Iguana.”

  Justin turns to leave but Asher folds himself down and takes hold of him.

  Justin buries his face against Asher’s chest. Evona caps her hand over Justin’s head. Asher thinks about when he was the pastor and at the end of the service people would go to the altar and he’d anoint their heads with oil. The congregation would gather around the person who needed praying for and they’d lay hands on the person’s head and pray out loud in shivering sentences.

  “Shady knew before anybody,” Justin says, and he is off again, running outside to find the dog. Outside, Asher and Evona see Justin’s legs sticking out from under the house as he squeezes under. They don’t have time for this. They have to go, Asher knows. Evona will take care of Shady. “Justin!” he yells, too loudly, angry now. They have to go. “Come on, right now!”

  Asher gets down on his hands and knees, peering back into the darkness and Justin is sliding on his belly to the dog, who is lying back there in the shadows of the farthest corner, curled up right under Bell’s bedroom.

  “Come on, little buddy,” Justin says, clucking his tongue. “I’m here now. It’s okay, Shady-boy.”

  The dog blinks at him. As if saying, No, it’s not alright. Not by a long shot. Bell’s gone. She’s gone, and she ain’t coming back.

  Justin scooches toward Shady, ignoring Asher’s pleas, and there’s no way Asher can get back there. Justin manages to get his head and chest back past the two front rooms but beyond that he can’t do it. Shady is watching Justin as if he is very, very concerned.

  “Justin, please!” Asher pleads.

  And Shady recognizes the urgency and moves forward.

  “That’s it, buddy,” Justin soothes. “Come on, come on out.”

  Shady crawls toward him and Justin eases backward, urging the dog forward until they are all out on the yard. Shady spoons against Justin, their breath rising and falling at the same time in exhaustion. They lie there only a few seconds, but it seems much longer.

  Asher squats down beside Justin and Evona is crying again, standing behind him. “Come on, Justin,” he whispers, softly. “Let’s go, just for a little while. Shady will be fine here with Evona.”

  Shady flops his tail twice, so Justin stands up, and they go.

  22

  Justin lays his head against Asher’s back as they speed away on the Vespa, turning here and there because Asher doesn’t know where to go. Little dots of rain tap against his face and the sun fights the dark clouds above them. There has been much rain in the night so that some of the streets on the south side of the island are completely flooded, standing like still rivers. But a flood here is only an inch deep, not like back home, so the Vespa zips right through the water.

  Asher’s thumb presses the accelerator all the way down but the Vespa will go only so fast. He wants to drive as hard and fast as he can, not to escape, but to outrun what has happened. Bell has been so good to them for no reason at all, without any promise of reward. And now she is gone.

  He drives to the Atlantic and stops in a sandy place on the side of the road where the White Street Pier points out into the ocean. The clouds are low and gray and mean-looking over the water and waves churn below in a deep grayish blue.

  “What’re we doing?” Justin says. “We can’t stop here.”

  But Asher doesn’t know where to go.

  He thinks about going to the cemetery but that seems too close to home. They could take a tour out to the Dry Tortugas but they aren’t dressed for a whole day out and he worries about the chance of being recognized by one of the locals working the boats.

  Right now what he wants more than anything is the woods. He wants someplace that reminds him of Tennessee. Asher remembers the private beach where Evona took them but he can’t risk trespassing and being approached by a security guard. The closest they are going to get to the woods on this island is at Zachary Taylor Beach, where a little grove of pine trees stands close to the ocean. Turtles nest on the beach, roped off by the game wardens for protection. The guards at the ticket booth see so many faces they must all run together. He needs the woods, and he convinces himself it will be safe. He needs the trees. So he points the little Vespa that way. Justin clutches his waist as Asher guns the gas again.

  There are only a handful of people there so early in the gray morning. Asher sits on a picnic table overlooking the confluence of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, trying to think what they might do next. He breathes in the scent of the pines, a balm. H
e feels like a sleepwalker, awake but not awake, caught beneath some veil that won’t let him function properly. Justin walks down the beach, gathering shells and rocks for his nature collection.

  Asher thinks and thinks and thinks, not figuring out anything, his mind going in circles. There is no way out of this. He is going to jail and he knows it. Justin will be sent back to Lydia. She’ll put him on those pills and wipe that extra-goodness out of him and he’ll be like everybody else in the whole boring cynical world, missing the wonder of everything.

  Asher can’t stand the thoughts, but there is no avoiding them.

  But maybe Justin is stronger now.

  Maybe this trip will have taught him something about defiance. About taking chances.

  Eventually Justin comes back and slumps against Asher, drained from his grief. Asher puts his arm around his son’s shoulder and the boy leans into him. Small, real, alive, here, now.

  Cherish this, Asher thinks, and he does, he does, he does. He memorizes this moment as if it is his last. The feel of Justin’s shoulder beneath his hand, the way his hair moves light as dandelion fluff in the breeze coming in off the mixture of the Gulf and the Atlantic. Asher draws in his son’s scent. He catches the pines, and the salt air, seaweed and sand. But most of all there is Justin, that smell of his that is always there, unchanging since he was a baby. Warm, sweet, musky. The smell of Tennessee riverbanks and long summer evenings lying in a field, the scent of home.

  Surely there is a light in that boy that will never go out, no matter what he has to face along the way. That’s all a father can hope for his child, that a little fire will burn in them to keep them going, to keep them strong.

  They stay there for hours. The sun comes out and with it the tourists. Beach towels are spread, flapping on the ocean breeze. Golden bodies lather themselves in oil, children laugh, gulls gather close to the foolish people who feed them Cheetos.