by Silas House
After that, Shady wouldn’t stop nudging at him with his cold, wet nose, like he wanted to go out.
So they had gone outside in the middle of the quiet night. They sat still on the porch while nothing moved about the island except the Everything.
At daybreak, the light was so orange and big that Justin expected a sound to come with it. He reckoned the waves must have shifted and shimmered, just to welcome it in. Then the glow grew to the full brightness of day like a little knob was being turned with careful ease to “on.”
Then, the sounds of Key West:
Birds, mostly.
And those crazy-ass roosters. Crowing and picking through the dirt, roaming every whichaway, standing on top of the tombstones, clicking along on people’s porches, perched on fence posts, fancying down the street like they own the place. Maybe they do.
Justin feels like all the world exists beneath a conch shell and the sky is the pink of its insides. He knows his father will be up soon. He has to get moving.
He wishes he could have Evona and Bell and his father and Uncle Luke and Granny and his mother, all right here together, and they’d get along and everything would be fine. The light here makes you better and the water makes you happy and all the birds singing and all the flowers blooming and the trees greening and the sky pinking in morning and purpling in the evenings—they all remind you every waking minute that you’re living and breathing.
It’s a Sunday morning so Uncle Luke is bound to be at the church. It’s not far; just a few blocks. Every little house Justin passes is shut up tightly for the night. On one porch there are several beer bottles that have been left lined up on the banister. There is a single orange flip-flop lying in the middle of the street. A rooster is strutting along the sidewalk on the other side of the street like he’s on his way to church, too. Shady darts across, pulling the leash tight and causing Justin to almost lose his balance. Shady gives a deep whuff! which causes the rooster to jump in the air a little before flapping its wings and charging toward Shady, who retreats.
There is something about the morning quiet that reminds Justin of the day before the flood, the day before it rained so much. He and Roscoe had risen early and gone down to the water’s edge. Roscoe had jumped right in the Cumberland, holding his head high out of the water as his small legs dog-paddled around in a circle, showing off. Then he had gotten out and shook off, so hard that he couldn’t hardly stop wiggling. There had been nothing but the sound of the river, the occasional song of a bird. The hills green and full of leaves. High summer. Then they had lain on the grass and watched the clouds, which were already turning green, a full day before the storms came. If he could have any day back, it’d be that one. The day before everything changed. But then again, he’d have never met Bell, or Evona, or even Shady.
He walks along with the leash in his hand and watches the sky for a time. The sun latches its heat to his face. But mostly he feels the cool air that is soothing itself over the island, moving in from the ocean in that last moment before the day will heat up.
There are lots of bright-red fire hydrants down the street and Shady has to pause to mark each one of them. He lifts his leg in the air, spurts out an arc of pee, a very serious look of concentration on his face.
At the corner of Olivia and Duval he isn’t completely sure which way to turn but he takes a chance on it and goes right. For a long while he is passing stores and restaurants—all closed this early on a Sunday—and then when he gets to the fancier shops he can see the white tower of the church up ahead. A man on a scooter zips by, then a couple of women who have been laughing as they approach him stop and spend a long time loving on Shady, who eats it up. The women have on party clothes—shiny, short dresses and big heels.
One of the women is leaned over so that her titties are plainly visible. Lately he has started to think that titties are about the best things in the world so Justin can’t help but stare at them jiggling there right in front of him. When the woman looks up from Shady she caps her hand over her cleavage, but a little smile plays on her face.
“What a sweet doggie,” the other woman says. She’s letting Shady lick her entire face. Justin starts to tell her that Shady sometimes eats his own poop but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to say much so he can move on. He’s got something important to do.
“Are you from here?” the woman with the pretty titties says to him.
“Yes,” he lies. It’s easy. “I have to go.”
He pulls at Shady with the leash and they trudge away. He hates to be rude but he knows he doesn’t have much time before his father finds him.
Before long there is the church, which seems very big when he stands on the sidewalk and arches his neck back to look at the white cross at the top of the tower. There’s nobody about but there is a sign with small white letters:
st. paul’s episcopal church welcomes you
sunday
7:30 a.m. eucharist i
9:30 a.m. eucharist ii w/choir and incense
So Justin tries the door to see if it is already open. Sure enough, it is. Shady doesn’t want to go in, but Justin tugs at his leash and he obeys, padding lightly on the tiles like he doesn’t like the feel of them.
There are voices back beyond the communion rails, people from the church getting everything ready. Shady eases alongside him as they move their way up front.
“Justin?” Luke is moving toward him with his white robe billowing. “What are you doing here?”
Luke stands before him and the robe settles around his legs. Luke glances down at Shady like he’s not supposed to be inside the sanctuary but as far as Justin is concerned the dog has the right to be there as much as anybody. “I need to talk to my granny,” Justin tells him. “And then I need you to take me back home. That way Dad can stay here with Evona, and he won’t get caught.”
30
A rectangle of sunlight settles on Asher’s eyes and causes him to awake. A rooster crows. These last few days have worn him out and he can’t seem to get caught up on his sleep. This morning he awakes feeling less rested than when he lay down. Still, he can’t go back to sleep.
Asher doesn’t panic at first, when he finds Justin’s bed empty. His stomach drops a bit when he doesn’t find him on the porch. And he’s not in the courtyard or the pool, either. By the time he rushes back to pound on Evona’s door, terror is rising through his torso, the same as when Justin disappeared during the flood and then that first day in Key West, when he awoke exhausted on the beach and thought the boy had run off. But this time he knows that Justin has left intentionally, that Justin is headed back to Tennessee. He should’ve listened to him last night when he said he needed to see Zelda and Lydia. Did he find a bus leaving in the middle of the night? He could’ve pocketed a dollar here and there over the last few weeks, saving up. Who knows what a clever boy like Justin could do. Asher’s mind feels cloudy but he knows he last checked on Justin around one-thirty. Almost six hours ago. Who knows how far he could have gotten by now. He could be anywhere.
Evona questions him, sleepy-eyed but completely awake, while they look everywhere, even inside Bell’s house. They look under Bell’s house, where Shady likes to hide out. But of course he is not there. He is not anywhere.
If he is gone, then Asher deserves it. This is how he made Lydia and Zelda feel, after all.
Time slows. Asher feels like he is moving underwater by the time he decides there is nothing else to do but get on the Vespa and go looking the streets for him. And just as he is taking off, there is Luke, and Shady and Justin.
Later, on the porch, while Justin is eating breakfast with Evona, Luke tells him what he already knows.
“This is no life for him, Asher. You have to take him back.”
Asher nods. So weary that this one motion of his body wears him out.
“You’re going to have to face up to what you’ve done, brother.”
I know it, Asher thinks, but he can’t make his mouth move to say the words.
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“You did what you thought was right, to stay with him. But you just have to pay for your mistakes and go forward,” Luke says. He puts his hand on Asher’s shoulder and shakes him. “Hey. Are you alright?”
After a moment Asher nods. “It’s just that I’m so tired.”
“He is, too, Asher. He wanted me to take him back. Mostly he wanted me to find a way to get him back so you wouldn’t have to go to Tennessee. He just wants to protect you. And I know this is the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do in your life, but you’ll have to go back and face the consequences. It’s all you can do. I just don’t see any other way around it.”
“There’s not,” Asher says. “That’s the only way.”
He’s so bone-tired. But at the same time, he will be okay. When Lydia had taken Justin from him, the boy had been all Asher had in the world. But now Asher also has his brother and Evona. Luke may not be able to forgive him yet, but he’ll stand by him. And so will Evona.
Asher might go to prison for years. He might go for life. But he has to do what is best for his son. He has to go back.
31
Luke prays with Asher before they leave.
Asher feels an immense sorrow, as if the ocean is inside his body, pushing and pulsing to escape.
While Luke is praying, Asher is thinking about God and he is thinking about the God that lives in this place, right here on Bell’s little patch of land, and in Evona, and in the palm trees and the ocean and the sand and the particular light that exists here, and nowhere else. He doesn’t want to leave Key West the way he had once never wanted to leave Tennessee.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Justin had said. “Maybe Mom will forgive you and move on. Maybe she won’t even call the police.”
But Asher knows that is not the way it will go.
“You could just let me out somewhere close to home, and then run off,” Justin had said, trying to think of every option. “You can come right back to Key West and nobody will ever know the difference. When I get eighteen I can come see you.”
“I can’t do that, honey,” Asher had told him. “I can’t go that long without seeing you.” What he had not said was that it was time to stop running.
“It’d be better than going to jail,” Justin had tears in his eyes by then, trying his best to figure out a way to help his father.
“I have to go and make things right,” Asher had said. “A man can’t run from his troubles. Remember that.”
Asher and Luke are knelt down across from each other but Luke has his big hand wrapped around the back of Asher’s neck and even though Luke is praying Asher can’t keep his mind on what he’s saying. He is too busy trying to keep from falling apart at what is about to happen. He keeps his eyes shut so tight he can feel his eyelids trembling to stay closed. Luke’s words circle round and round their heads and he pauses and they say “Amen” in unison.
Evona’s been watching them because just when they finish she comes from her side of the porch and stands near the Jeep, which they’ve already loaded. She stands there looking at Asher.
Justin hesitates in the doorway but eventually comes down into the yard.
“You’ll write to me, won’t you?” Evona asks Justin.
He nods.
“And call me whenever you’re able. Won’t you?”
“Yep.”
“What if they put him in prison, Evona?” he whispers, as if Asher isn’t standing right there.
“They won’t,” she says, but she’s not a good liar.
“Will you come see me? In Tennessee?”
“If there’s any way in the world for me to be there, I will.” Evona holds out her hand and there are two silver chains coiled all around two small medals just like the one Asher found in the guestroom. Instead of Saint Francis surrounded by animals, this one has a picture of a man with a child on his back. st christopher protect us in written around the edges in tiny letters.
Justin turns his back to her while she latches the chain round his neck.
“If anything bad happens,” she says, looking at Asher while she fastens the necklace onto Justin, “if the cops pull y’all over or anything.” She is measuring out her words to steady them. “You put your hands up and think about Saint Christopher. Alright?”
Evona leans down and kisses Justin’s forehead. She draws in a big breath.
“Get on in there, buddy,” Asher says, motioning for Justin to get into the Jeep. Luke helps him get settled into the back seat and lifts Shady up to join him. “Get ye seat belt on, buddy,” Luke says.
And the rest of it happens very fast.
“I’ll be right here,” she says to Asher. That’s all she needs to say. He doesn’t want an extravagant goodbye. He can’t stand it. But he kisses her, his lips against hers, a real love that he can’t have, not now, maybe not ever. He feels the bones and muscles of her back beneath his hands, memorizing her.
Then Luke’s up front, Asher’s in the driver’s seat, glancing back to make sure Justin has on his seat belt—an unbreakable habit—and Evona is rolling back the driveway gate and then they’re pulling out onto Olivia Street.
“Olivia Bougainvillea Iguana,” Justin whispers in the back seat, Asher hearing him clearly while he thinks
Good-bye Good-bye Good-bye
Olivia Olivia Olivia
Good-bye, sweet Evona, dearest dear
and the tires are carrying them away. Asher watches through the rearview mirror as Justin turns in his seat to see Evona standing in the street, watching them, waving, waving and then Evona isn’t waving anymore. She drops her arm and stands watching until she becomes so small Asher can’t see her anymore although he is seeing her face in his mind and she is not crying, she just looks determined. She looks like she’s saying a prayer with her determination and nothing else.
Asher turns left at the graveyard, then left again, and right, and right, and they’re on Roosevelt and the ocean is on their right side. All those people out on the beach, setting up umbrellas and volleyball nets and spreading out their towels and blankets. And he loves every one of them.
Good-bye Key West, goodbye.
Part Four
The Last Days
1
Up through the South in the dying breaths of summer.
Justin and Shady in the back seat. At least Luke is with Asher now. Helping him drive. Helping him to do this hardest thing of his life. And for miles and miles and miles there are:
Cotton fields.
Soybean fields.
Tobacco fields.
Cornfields.
On the radio: country music (steel guitars, cheaters, drinkers) and Holiness preachers (the blood of Jay-sus! Rapture! Abomination!).
Gas stations. Trucks stops. Cinder-block restaurants.
Thousands of churches.
A legion of church signs:
you think it’s hot out here? hell will be worse
read the bible. it will scare the hell out of you
gay is not okay
Dogs in yards, on porches, on chains, running free near the side of the road.
Tractors crossing wide pastures.
Eighteen-wheelers and police cruisers and school buses.
Evona has given them some Joni Mitchell CDs but Asher can’t stand to listen to them. They remind him too much of Bell, and of Key West, period.
Oh, Florida.
They drive all the way to Valdosta. Nine hours split between Asher and Luke. They collapse into the scratchy sheets of motel beds near the interstate, exhausted from driving, from grief, from fear.
Georgia.
And finally, Tennessee.
Bugs stick on the windshield. The wind whips in when Asher takes off the top. Luke sings along to Peter Paul and Mary’s “Early in the Morning.” Justin watches the trees, his eyes glazed over with sadness so that Asher can almost read his mind. Shady sits in the back seat, watching the road with his whitish-blue eyes, so good, such a peaceful presence traveling with them, like Go
d resting his hand over their Jeep as they head into the unknown.
2
PUMFPH TA-THUMPH go the tires and they cross the bridge over the Cumberland River and they are back home again, just like that. The trees, bushy and dark green, lean in on either side of the road with their big old limbs. Asher has missed the trees most of all.
All at once he’s shaking so hard he can’t drive anymore and he pulls to the gravelly shoulder so he and Luke can switch seats. He looks down at his hands, which are trembling.
“Let’s go back, right now,” Justin says.
Asher fastens his seat belt and looks straight ahead as Luke pulls back onto the highway.
“Please don’t do this!” Justin cries out, as if he has been wanting to say this all the way across Florida and Georgia and Tennessee. “You should’ve let Uncle Luke bring me back. They would have never found you.”
“It wouldn’t work that way—”
“He could have just dropped me off at Granny’s and driven away and they would’ve never found you!” He is yelling to keep from crying. “They would’ve never known.”
“I have to own up to this, Justin,” Asher says, turning to face him. “I was wrong—”
“But she was, too. Why won’t she get punished?”
“That’s just not how it works,” he says, feeling numb, feeling as if he isn’t in his own body. “She went by the books—”
“That’s bullshit!” Justin cries out, causing Luke to look back at him as if he might chastise the boy, but he doesn’t. “Please go back.”
“Hush now,” Asher says, twisted around in his seat so that his seat belt is strangling at his neck. He puts his hand on top of Justin’s. “We’re going to be okay. I promise you.”
Luke doesn’t say a word. He keeps his shoulders square and drives. There has always been something about Luke that has made Asher feel safe. Asher knows how hard this must be for him, to come back after all these years of exile. Luke is holding on to the gearshift and Asher caps his hand over his brother’s.