by JD Salyers
Her face is ashen at the thought of it, and Melody realizes, maybe for the first time, that she isn't the only one suffering here. All of them are in danger of losing on this night, and that thought is nearly enough to bring her to her knees right here in the kitchen floor. Instead she reaches for the desk chair and falls into it. Then she reaches for Janice's hand. "I'm sorry, dear. I just assume that James is safe at camp, but you're right. Even if he is, he'll be worried sick."
"And if I know him, he'll be beating himself up over this, even if it isn't his fault." Janice's smile is sad. "And I know him."
"This is all my fault," Melody says. Tears she thought were under control spilled from the corner of her eye. "I should have put my foot down, made Landon speak up."
"You were just doing as he asked. None of us could have known this would happen. Didn't you tell me that he's usually fine? That he doesn't have many of these episodes?"
"Yes, but that's because he stays in his familiar environment." She wipes her eyes and looks up. "Janice, the first thing - the very first thing - the doctor said to watch for, was confusion. He said that it would be the first and most severe symptom for Landon to fight."
"Sure."
"So being in a place we haven't gone in years might be just enough to tip him into an episode. I just don't know, but I shouldn't have risked it." She smooths her dark skirt down across her lap with cold hands. "We shouldn't have risked it."
"Well, it wasn't like you could stop him. I heard what you said when the boys asked. James told me, and that's why I called." Janice kneels down beside Melody's knees and takes her hands. "You couldn't have stopped him."
"I tried. He got it into his head that this was going to be some big blowout trip, their last hurrah."
"He's a grown man, Momma Mel."
Never in her life has Melody felt so torn between her husband and her family, but there is nothing she can do about it now. "Would you try to call James again?" she asks Janice.
"I just did, before you came in. No answer."
"I bought him that stupid satellite phone, and I bet he didn't even take it." Melody fights the urge to cry. It feels like the world has pulled the rug from under her feet - right when she thought she had taken every possible precaution. "Should I drive up there to help search?"
Janice pulls back and stares at her. "Of course not. First of all, you can't get there. Second, it's too dangerous." She softens her voice. "You aren't any younger than Pop, and the last thing James and Peter need is to have to find two of you. What if Pop is hurt? Getting him off that mountain will be a huge endeavor. If you get up there somehow and end up injured, too, the situation becomes impossible."
Melody sighs and swallows against the lump in her throat. "I just keep thinking about the worst scenario. Then I think that if he is having an episode and I were there, seeing me would help snap him out of it."
"I'm sure it would," Janice says, but she's shaking her head hard, "But we can't put your safety at risk and we can't put anymore of a burden on the boys to keep everyone safe."
"Have you checked the weather?" Melody asks, changing the subject abruptly. "Will this storm be clearing out any time soon, at least?"
Janice smiles softly and shakes her head. "No. The radar is just a never-ending blob of green. I'm sorry, but it might get worse before it gets better."
25
Landon waits. That irritable hesitancy isn't going away, but he still can't place the cause of it. What is he missing? The camp, the two men, the fire. His child, sleeping in the care of strangers. His wife missing.
The man put the baby in the tent, out of harm's way for the moment. Landon needs to take his shot now, and he needs to be careful not to kill the guy.
The man stands up and starts to pace again. He keeps glancing in the direction the other man went, and that makes Landon involuntarily glance, too. It breaks his concentration.
A gut shot. A leg wound might not stop the guy well enough, and Landon isn't in any shape to handle a wounded, angry criminal.
It's the noise.
The thought comes to him and brings part relief, part new worries. His hesitancy is over the possibility of the second man hearing his shot and coming to help his buddy. That's all it can be. Landon is worried about that possibility, but he also has to do something. He hopes that the storm will mask the sound - although it hadn't earlier when he heard that gunshot in the woods - and he can also hope that the second man has moved far enough away that he can't hear. Now that the mystery has been solved, Landon lines up the shot again, takes a steady aim, and watches the man bend into the wind and light a cigarette.
Then the man straightens and looks directly at Landon.
Landon is so startled that he nearly takes a step back, only catching himself at the last moment and forcing himself to hold very still. He holds his breath. Did the man spot him? Does he need to act fast, or just wait. He opts to wait, but not for too long.
Landon carefully, without moving any more than he must, checks the area, double checks, and is about to squeeze the trigger when the man moves. Landon follows him with his sights, but the man goes to the tent, kneels low, and looks inside. The angle keeps Landon from firing, but that's OK. The man will stand again in a minute and move away from the baby, and Landon won't hold fire again. He feels patient and sure, in spite of everything that could possibly go wrong in this moment. His caution has faded, now that he's confronted it. All he needs is for the man to stand up and take three paces toward the fire.
While he waits, he wonders again who these men are. How did they come to be in this situation? Landon knows he should remember, he also knows that they probably hit him on the head and dragged him to the river, left him for dead. It's the only explanation, really. That proves they are here for ugly purposes, and it's up to him to stop them and save his family. No one else is coming, not in this weather.
Finally, after so long that Landon has to change his stance and lean his shoulder against the tree, the man does what Landon needs him to do. He gets up, blows smoke into the air, and walks toward the fire to flick his cigarette butt into the flames. He picks up a long stick and pokes at the logs, making sparks fly. For a second, the flames roar higher.
Landon, ready, counts two beats and pulls the trigger.
The gun is loud and hot in his hands. He nearly drops it, thanks to the recoil.
The man goes down. Grabs at his ribcage. Rolls toward the fire, almost into it, then drops onto his back, kicking. It's like watching a silent movie, because all Landon can hear is a distant ringing in his ears.
Landon watches it all without moving. His mind....
He takes a step forward, then another. Something tells him to run, but he doesn't know whether to run toward, or away.
He turns and throws up, but forces another step toward the campsite and the damaged man.
He leans on the crutch, feels heavy dread and can't figure out why. It makes him angry. He stabs the crutch into the ground and forces himself forward.
The noise in his ears is fading, and he can hear the man a little. Screaming for help, for someone named Michael. Someone named Peter. Who are those people? The man who left a few minutes ago? Why does this all feel like some foggy nightmare? Why is he so afraid? The threat is down, Landon can go save his baby. He can make the man tell him where Melody is and save her too, if he can.
The baby. Peter - but that can't be right. If James is the baby in the tent, Peter hasn't even been born yet. What is happening? Landon throws up again, barely missing his soggy boots as he stumbles and falls to one knee. Pain rockets through his body.
It takes a moment to get to his feet, and now his head feels about to burst. The churning in his gut is getting worse, even though his stomach has to be empty now. He makes his way down the slope and steps into the soft glow of the fire. With a good bit of trouble, he keeps the barrel of the gun trained on the wounded man.
The intruder spots him. His eyes go wide and his face slack. His mouth work
s, open, closed, but no sound comes. He starts shaking his head.
Landon holds the pistol more firmly, sure that, wounded or not, this man is a threat. He finds his voice. “Who are you? Where is my wife?”
Before the man can work out his words, Landon is tackled from behind and brought face first into the mud.
26
Janice takes the phone call because Melody has finally fallen, exhausted, into a troubled sleep in James’s recliner. She refused to go to bed, no matter how much Janice begged. She wanted to wait.
Now, the waiting is over.
The sun is just peeking through the rain-washed clouds, showing some of the damage from the storm. Limbs scattered, bushes ragged, a few mailboxes fallen along their street.
The man on the phone is gentle, concerned. He apologizes over and over, but then Janice makes him tell her the news. He doesn’t want to. He stumbles over it, stops. Hesitates. Clears his throat. He says, “I’m sorry,” and Janice’s world drops from under her feet.
Now Janice carefully cleans up her tears and splashes cold water on her face, feeling robotic and cold. This wasn’t the news she expected. It wasn’t the outcome she’d imagined when this nightmare started.
Then she goes to the living room to squeeze Melody’s shoulder. “Momma Mel?” she asks.
Melody mumbles and sighs, but doesn’t wake. Janice resists the urge to shake her harder, scream her name. She tries again.
“Momma Mel, you have to wake up,” she says, leaning in and speaking louder.
Melody jumps and sits up, all at once. “What?”
She looks small and afraid. She takes Janice’s hand.
“What?” she asks again. Her voice trembles. “Landon?”
Janice nods, barely. She realizes that it’s dark in the room and goes to click on the table lamp, then lets her hand fall. She doesn’t want light.
Melody bursts into tears. “Is he...is he...?” She swallows. Struggles. “Is he alive?”
“Yes. He is.” Janice’s voice breaks. “James.”
His name. It’s all Janice can say before she collapses under her own weight. She will never see her husband again. Jakey and Pansy will never know their daddy. Never understand what happened. Her hands ache to rip something apart, tear up the news and throw it back in God’s face. This. Cannot. Be.
“James?” Melody asks.
Janice hears, but can’t answer. She shakes her head.
“Janice?” Melody’s voice trembles. She sounds so old. Fragile. Ancient. “Janice?”
In the dark house, down the hall, the baby starts to cry.
27
There are two funerals to attend this month, Melody thinks. She stands looking in the bathroom mirror, straightens her lace collar. Then she walks to the bedroom and glances out the window to where Landon is sitting in the back yard.
He hasn’t spoken to anyone at all since they got him home. Peter stops by every day, wanting to talk, but Landon just sits and stares at the forest behind the house. Sometimes Melody thinks he’s looking toward Michael’s house, but other times she thinks he’s not really looking at anything.
He’s shriveled up and gone gray in the last week. He’s a different man, the kind of man who is waiting to die. He refuses his food, his medication. She thinks that if he could, he would refuse oxygen and be done with it.
She tries to tell him that it isn’t his fault. Peter tries to tell him. Janice brings the babies around. Nothing gets his attention. Melody isn’t sure he’s even in there. His eyes are cold and dead, and she can’t stand to look at him sometimes.
When a car horn honks from the driveway, she leaves the window and goes. Peter will drive her to James’s funeral. She doesn’t want to drive herself - it’s too lonely.
He looks handsome in his dark suit and gray tie. It’s the only suit he has, she knows. His eyes meet hers and he offers a smile that is both empty and full of feeling. He’s been her buffer against the world these last two weeks, fending off reporters and throwing away the mail. Landon made national news this week, in a way that none of them expect or welcome.
“Are you OK, Mom?”
She’s tired of answering that question. Tired of saying yes just to soothe the worries of others. No, she’s not OK. She doubts she’ll ever be OK again, and at this moment, if somebody asked her, she’d tell them that the end for her can’t come soon enough. She wants to be finished. This world hurts too much.
When she thinks about it, she understands Michael’s reaction.
The service is held in Melody’s church. It’s the church she raised her boys in, the church she attends with Janice and the children. It is familiar, but today it is too loud, too dark, too wrong. It feels dangerous. She stumbles twice coming up the center aisle to her assigned seat. She does not look toward the front of the building, because that is where her son lies, too still and too young for this place.
Janice and the babies are here already, and Melody moves to her side. Jakey, looking very solemn, climbs into her lap. Melody catches Janice’s eye over his soft head. Janice shakes her head and looks away.
Peter slides in beside Melody, and she is grateful for his shoulder. She leans on it, and he holds her steady. Jakey sits in her lap and plays with a loose string on her collar.
It takes a lot of fortitude to lift her eyes to the long oak box at the front of the room. She almost can’t. She wants to run, to go home and make a roast for them. She wants James to be at the table, teasing her about something. She wants...
Janice sniffles into her tightly clutched fist and finally turns to look at Melody. She opens her mouth to speak, but then closes it again and looks away. Jakey crosses his legs and puts his feet up on the pew. No one corrects him.
Everything feels so insignificant.
Melody looks away, behind her. The church is filling up with people - James’s employees, their church friends, a few people that Melody doesn’t know. He was a good man, a popular man in certain circles.
None of that makes his service better.
She wishes Landon was here. She’s afraid he’ll regret it later.
From the corner of her eye she sees, with some surprise, Alexandria, sitting among the faces. Alexandria looks straight ahead, her long hair covering part of her face. She, too, looks aged and frail. Maybe they all do, and Melody decides it doesn’t matter.
It took two days, after Landon and the boys were rescued, to find Michael’s body. Search crews scoured the mountain, and the valley below, thinking that Michael had fallen into the river and would wash out downstream. He hadn’t, though. He had done the one thing no one expected. He hadn’t left a note, but it wasn’t hard to understand his why.
Melody suddenly wants to be home with Landon. She has lost James, but she still has Landon. Things could have been worse. Things could always be worse. She needs him here with her, not at home alone, but the one time she said it, last Wednesday, he simply turned away. When she brought him his supper, he was silently crying. His thank you was nearly inaudible. She knows he is punishing himself, and for a couple of days she wanted that. She wanted him to hurt as badly as she did, wanted him to suffer. But forty years of life together doesn’t go away, no matter what, and she has taken the time to remember - this isn’t his fault. Not really. Blame the pills, blame the storm, blame herself for allowing this to happen, but she can’t, in good conscience, blame Landon. Given the choice, he wouldn’t have this disease. He’s as much a victim as James.
He won’t listen to her, though, no matter how many times she says it.
Melody thinks that she should go visit Alexandria sometime soon, but then their pastor is stepping to the podium behind James and clearing his throat. He adjusts the microphone and begins.
Melody can not listen. She gathers Jakey into her arms and holds on tight.
28
His wife is at his son’s funeral.
Landon sits on the back steps and watches for the deer, but they don’t come. They may never come again, but he
still sits. Still waits.
The afternoon sun is sharp, blinding. Painful, like everything else.
The woods beyond their property are always dark now, not even sun-dappled. He has no desire to go walking. He just waits.
If he doesn’t move, time won’t. If he doesn’t fall apart, Melody won’t. If he stays put, exactly like this, nothing will trip his mind trap, nothing will open the hole in his chest.
He should go into a home. It’s not the first time the thought has crossed his mind. Melody has no life, and there is no reason for him to be here. He can’t help her, he can’t even help himself. He’s just here, trying not to think.
But he’s seen the, what do you call it, long term care facilities, and they are a certain kind of hell. Then again, he deserves hell, doesn’t he? Shouldn’t that be the punishment for murder?
He can’t keep living, and he can’t stop. What does a man do with that?
Pressure fills his head - it has since the moment his memory snapped back into place. That night is seared into his mind, no matter how hard he tries to - not forget, he’ll never do that - stop thinking about it. He lives an existence of hands fisted, teeth clenched, and tears close to the surface. His throat burns, as if he’s swallowed his sins and they are ripping him apart from the inside out.
He looks down at his t-shirt. It’s dingy and stained with something, he can’t remember what. He has on moccasin slippers and gray flannel pants that are getting to be too loose. The leg of one is split, to make room for the cast. He can’t bring himself to care.
His wife is at his son’s funeral.
His wife is at his son’s funeral, and tomorrow she will attend the services of one of their best friends.
The pressure builds. His ears ring.
He’s been cold since the night of the camping trip, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get warm. The wet seeped into his bones that night, when he fell to his knees, when he realized what he had done.