by Wiley Cash
By the time Jay and Cody had begun hanging out again, the air had grown cool, and Jay was finally wearing blue jeans like the rest of the kids, and so was Cody, although he regularly wore his black mesh tank top as if it were a required uniform, his skinny arms browned by the sun, his bone-white belly and chest seeming to glow through the screenlike fabric.
Although the high school, college, and NBA seasons had begun, basketball was over in Jay’s mind, and it must’ve been over in Cody’s too, because they never played and never talked about playing. Instead, they explored the woods surrounding the Grove and the piece of land where Cody’s family’s trailer sat. If they walked far enough, the trees—pines mostly, racked with vines and scrubby shrubs—gave way to an enormous swath of cleared acreage where expensive homes were being built. They could reach the water here where the ocean opened to the waterway that separated Southport from Oak Island. Cody talked about fishing, but he never brought a rod, and he talked about setting up tin cans for target practice, but he never brought a gun either.
They spent more of their time either throwing things into the water, looking for things the water may have washed ashore, or slinking around the construction sites, doing their best to steer clear of the carpenters and various contractors pouring concrete, installing windows, or hooking up HVAC systems on the cement pads that sat alongside the houses, many of which appeared close to being finished.
Cody always kept his eyes out for tools—hammers, screwdrivers, staple guns: the more expensive, the better. And he always came away with a bit of copper wire or a handful of unused nails or a strip of rolled carpet: things that had clearly been left behind but held value to him.
One late afternoon, on their way home from the water, Cody had spotted a heavy framing hammer that had been left behind on the front porch of a home that had been framed up but not yet walled in. Cody had picked up the hammer and bounced it in his hand as if testing its weight and ability to do the job.
“Man, you’d better leave that where you found it,” Jay had said.
“If they’ll miss it, they shouldn’t have left it.”
“That’s no reason to steal it,” Jay had said, realizing that he sounded more like his father than himself.
“They’re tearing down my woods,” Cody had said. “Used to be we could come down here and fish without nobody running us off.”
“Nobody’s running us off now.”
“Not yet,” Cody had said, “but I’m keeping this for when they do.” He’d turned, the hammer still in his hand, and walked toward the woods that would lead them home.
Cody had no idea what Jay had done back in Atlanta that had caused him to be sent to live with his sister and brother-in-law. He wasn’t necessarily embarrassed by what he and Kelvin had done, though his guilt over the fact that he’d done it directly to Mr. Wright and indirectly to his mother and father had done nothing but grow over the intervening months. The reason he hadn’t told Cody wasn’t the implied stamp of criminality that something like that would garner, but instead the expectations that an act like that brought with it. Jay didn’t know Cody well enough to know whether or not he was a bad kid—a thief, a bully, a liar—and he hadn’t seen him at school enough to discern anything from his actions there. But Jay did not want Cody to know that he, in fact, was capable of being a thief, because perhaps that would trigger something dark and malevolent in Cody that Jay had not yet seen surface, and then Jay would be expected to rise and meet it.
But nearly the opposite happened: the more Cody stole from the new development—the more tools and bits of wire and other materials he was able to secret away—the more Jay felt something angry and resentful and dangerous rearing itself inside him. His sister and Rodney had not sensed it, and he’d known they did not know him or understand him well enough to perceive anything real or true about him, and he knew for certain that the same could have been said of his teachers and the kids at school. Cody had become Jay’s sole fulcrum of expression, the one person who’d kindled in him the desire to impress.
The first time Jay had taken Rodney’s rifle out of his and Janelle’s bedroom, he’d walked out the front door and stepped off the porch, the powder-blue plastic case bouncing against his thigh where he held it down by his side. Cody had been waiting for him in the driveway. The day had been warm, the sun having already settled below the trees. Fall had come, and the afternoon had taken on a soft, gauzy light.
“Woah,” Cody had said, his eyes locked on the case. “Is that what I think it is?”
Jay had tried not to smile or flush with pride. He’d looked around, making sure no one had seen them. Janelle had gone to the grocery store and taken the baby with her, and Jay knew they had at least an hour before she would return. Rodney wouldn’t be home until closer to dark.
Jay had walked around the corner of the house, past the gate that led to the backyard, and along the narrow strip of sandy soil tufted with grass that separated the neighbors’ fence from theirs. He had not spoken and did not stop walking until he and Cody were in the woods.
By the time they’d stopped, Jay had led Cody deep into the trees behind his house, well out of earshot of anyone’s backyard. Jay had knelt and set the case gently on the earth, making sure there was nothing beneath it to scratch the plastic shell. He unfastened the clasps and opened the case. Cody stepped behind him and looked over his shoulder.
“Well, looky there,” he’d said. Jay stood and looked down at the rifle. Cody stooped to touch it, but Jay beat him to it, scooping it up with his left hand and letting the barrel drop into his right.
“That’s a Springfield,” Cody had said.
“Yeah,” Jay said, although he had no idea what that meant or if it was true.
“Do you have any cartridges?”
Jay looked at him. The only time he’d ever used a cartridge was to play Atari with Kelvin in Terry’s room when Terry wasn’t home.
“Bullets,” Cody said. “They hold the bullets.”
“Yeah,” Jay said. Cody smiled. “There’s a couple boxes of them in the closet.”
“In the closet?” Cody repeated. “Go get them. Let’s fire this thing.”
Jay looked at the gun in his hands, thought about the sound it would make, what kind of attention that might draw. If someone found out, he wouldn’t be able to explain it to Rodney and Janelle, not the taking of the rifle or the showing it to Cody or the shooting it with someone Rodney clearly didn’t want him hanging around. And worse, he knew they’d tell his father, and Jay couldn’t bear the thought of that.
“I just wanted to show it to you,” he said. “We can shoot it some other time.”
“Let me see it,” Cody said. He reached out his open hand. Jay hesitated for just a moment, but then he passed the rifle over.
Cody bounced the rifle in his hand the same way he’d bounced the hammer he’d stolen, and for a moment Jay feared that Cody might tear off toward home and that he would never see Rodney’s rifle again. But instead, Cody lifted the rifle in a firing stance, closed one eye, and sighted down the length of the barrel.
“Man, I wish you had some cartridges,” he said. He squeezed the trigger, something even Jay had not yet done, but nothing happened. “Pow,” Cody whispered. He kept the rifle pointed into the distance, and he turned his head and looked over at Jay. “Your brother-in-law hunt deer?” he asked.
Jay opened his mouth to say something in response, but he wasn’t able to say it before the two of them heard a voice they had not heard before.
“Drop that rifle, boy.”
Jay spun around to face the woods leading to the development, and that was where he saw a white man standing, pointing a huge pistol at Cody. From the corner of his eye, Jay could see that Cody had lowered the rifle. He was staring at the man too. “You keep that rifle down, boy. You raise it and I’ll blow your goddamned head off,” the man said. Cody seemed to realize the implication of what holding the rifle meant, and he lowered it even more until it was pointing
at the ground. The man crept forward, his pistol pointed at Cody’s chest. With his free hand, the man gestured toward the rifle, his palm upturned, his fingers curling in the air as if trying to catch something floating there. “Give me that rifle, boy.”
Cody turned the rifle sideways in his hands and held it out like an offering.
Panic pushed Jay forward. If the man took the rifle, Jay knew he would never get it back, and Rodney would discover that he had taken it, and everyone would consider it stolen. Without thought of either the danger or his own foolishness, Jay lunged for the rifle, but the man lunged too, and he snatched it from Cody’s hands before Jay could reach it, and then he swept his pistol through the air until it was pointing at Jay’s chest.
“What the hell are you doing, boy?” the man asked. “You trying to get your goddamned brains blown out?”
Jay’s heart roared in his chest, and he could feel it beating in his ears, his body pulsing with terror. Although his vision felt sharper than ever, he could feel tears beginning to rim his eyes. He stared at the pistol’s barrel where the man held it pointed at his chest, and he imagined the sound of the bullet leaving the chamber, coursing through the long cylinder, and striking his body. He looked up at the man’s face; the man was smiling.
“You going to cry, boy?”
“Give that back.”
“This?” the man said. He holstered his pistol, and then he studied the rifle. He opened the bolt to see if it was loaded, and then he closed it. “Where’d y’all steal this from?”
“We didn’t steal it,” Cody said.
“Oh, yeah?” the man said. “How about I call the police and ask them.”
“It’s Rodney’s,” Jay said, immediately regretting it.
“Rodney’s?”
“Yeah,” Jay said. His breathing had slowed and steadied, and his heart, while still racing, was not governing his body in quite the same way it had been just moments before. He could smell the man’s body—either his cologne or aftershave—and he feared that even if he were able to get the rifle back, the man’s smell would forever taint it, and Rodney would immediately know it had been taken out and handled, and he would suspect Jay.
“You Rodney Bellamy’s little brother?” the man asked. He propped the rifle on his shoulder as if he were a soldier preparing to march, but Jay could tell that he was no soldier. He appeared too casual, one hand in his pocket, his hip cocked to the side. It seemed that relaxing in this way after pointing a gun at two boys was the most natural thing he could do.
Jay wasn’t Rodney’s brother, not really anyway, but he wasn’t clearheaded enough to think of the term brother-in-law. He simply nodded his head.
“Well, damn, I know who your brother is,” the man said. “Your daddy too.” He laughed as if this fact should be funny to all of them. “Jesus,” he said to himself.
“Give me that gun back,” Jay said.
The man widened his eyes as if shocked by what Jay had just said to him. He bent slightly at the waist and lowered his voice as if speaking to a dog. “Come and take it, boy.”
Jay felt Cody’s hand on his elbow. “Don’t,” Cody said. “Don’t.”
The man smiled, looked from Jay to Cody. “Y’all are like salt and pepper,” he said. “Jesus, it’s cute.” His face went flat and his eyes suddenly narrowed. “If I catch you back here in this neighborhood again, I’ll kill you both, I promise you that.” Neither boy said anything, but Jay’s mind flashed back to the many things Cody had stolen, the times they had tracked mud into a house under construction, and the one time Jay had thrown a rock through a window that had not yet been installed.
“These ain’t your woods,” Cody said. Jay looked over at him. Cody’s nostrils flared and his chest heaved as if he couldn’t gather enough breath in his lungs.
“You’re wrong about that,” the man said. He raised his free hand and pointed behind him. “I own every stretch of this land from the waterline”—he swept his arm around and pointed toward the Grove behind the boys—“to the little shantytown right there, and I’ll come to own it soon enough.” He lowered his arm and looked at Jay, and then he tossed the rifle on the ground at Jay’s feet. “Get home, boy.” He looked at Cody. “I know your daddy,” he said, “and I don’t think he’d look kindly on you running around with colored boys. Don’t let me catch y’all back here again.” He stared at them for another moment, and then he turned and disappeared into the trees.
Jay and Cody stood there until they could no longer hear the man’s feet moving through the woods, and then Jay bent to gather the rifle in one hand and the case in the other. They ran in separate directions: Jay headed back between the fences that separated Rodney and Janelle’s property from the neighbors’, while Cody tore along the edge of the woods toward his family’s land. Neither of the boys had said a word.
Jay squatted next to the house before rounding the corner to the driveway, and he quickly checked the rifle for scratches or smudges or fingerprints. Seeing none, he laid it carefully back in its case and closed it. He picked it up by the handle and carried it around to the front of the house and through the front door. Once he was inside, he’d inspected the case with the same quick meticulousness with which he’d inspected the weapon, and seeing nothing that caught his eye, he set the case back on the top shelf on Rodney’s side of the closet.
The man’s cologne seemed to linger in the small closet, but Jay thought it possible that the scent had either become trapped in his nasal cavity or perhaps had burrowed into his brain. He spent the rest of the day in this jittery, adrenaline-driven state of apprehension and fear, waiting for a knock on the door or a telephone call that would relay to Janelle or Rodney exactly what had transpired in the woods right behind their house. But neither the knock nor the call came that afternoon or evening, and by the time he was brushing his teeth and getting ready for bed, Jay felt certain that the only person he would ever talk to about what had happened in the woods was Cody himself, and he doubted that Cody would say a word to anyone, mostly because, like Jay, he didn’t seem to have anyone to say it to.
It was hours later, well after Jay had drifted off to sleep, that he was awakened by the baby’s crying and kept awake by the whispers of his sister and brother-in-law. He looked at the clock on his bedside table. It was a few minutes before 3:00 a.m. Jay had never been awake in Janelle’s house that late at night, and he wondered if the whispering between Janelle and Rodney was something that happened every night, or if the baby always woke and cried each night at this time.
And then he feared that something else had kept Janelle and Rodney from sleeping. Perhaps the man from the woods had called Rodney at work and told him what had happened. Jay replayed every conversation he’d had with his sister and Rodney that evening during dinner and later when they’d carved two pumpkins on the front steps, searching each discussion they’d had for any hint that either of them knew something. Or perhaps Rodney had sensed something in the closet, perhaps he had caught a whiff of the man’s cologne and asked Janelle about it. Perhaps they had sought out the source of the smell and opened the rifle’s case and discovered something different about it, although Jay couldn’t imagine what that would be. He’d put it back exactly as he’d always put it back each time he’d taken it down from the shelf. But then fear gripped him by the neck when he realized he could not remember which way the case had been facing when he’d taken the rifle down, and he could not remember which way he’d left it facing when he’d put it back.
He lay in bed listening to their quiet voices, and then he heard Rodney’s heavy footsteps in the hallway, and then the sound of the front door opening and closing quietly. In the driveway, Janelle’s car started, and the yellow glow of the Datsun’s headlights illuminated the blinds that covered the window above Jay’s bed.
He wondered where Rodney was going this late at night, and he wondered if Janelle was still awake, still staring at the rifle inside the open case that Rodney had left on their bed, her mind do
ing its best to decide whether or not Jay was to blame. Jay decided that he would wait to see what they asked him in the morning, and he hoped that he could catch the school bus without seeing either one of them so that he could find Cody and they could get their stories straight.
And school was where he’d been the next morning when Mr. Bellamy, Rodney’s father, opened the door to his math class and gestured to the teacher to join him in the hall. It wasn’t uncommon for a teacher or the principal or another administrator to interrupt a class to speak with a teacher, but even though he knew this, Jay could not stop the thrumming of his heart nor deny the sudden clamminess of his skin. Why did it have to be Rodney’s father at the door?
Jay’s teacher stepped halfway through the doorway and looked at him, and then she said his name and waved him out into the hall. “Get your things,” she said.
Jay stood, his body and legs feeling rubbery and cold, and slid his book and papers into his backpack. He could feel the other students’ eyes on him, and although none of them were speaking, he knew they were all wondering what the quiet Black kid from Atlanta had done.
His teacher was waiting for him at the door, and she put her hand on his shoulder as he passed through the doorway and into the hall, where Mr. Bellamy stood, his hands in his pockets. Jay had never spoken to Mr. Bellamy at school and had spent very little time with him outside of it, so he did not know how to read the man’s face.
“Jay,” Mr. Bellamy said. “Something terrible has happened.”
Chapter 5
The airport in Wilmington, North Carolina, especially in 1984, was small, and Colleen couldn’t help but think of it as a miniature model of a real airport. After getting off the phone with her mother, she found a bench near the curb outside baggage claim and took a seat, her suitcase on the ground at her feet and her purse resting on her lap. She wore a jean jacket over the T-shirt she had slept in the night before and a pair of white jeans with black Keds. She slid her headphones over her ears and pressed play on her Walkman; Pat Benatar’s “Shadows of the Night” came on in mid-song. She remembered a pair of black sunglasses in her purse. When she looked for them, she found the dog-eared copy of T. Berry Brazelton’s Infants and Mothers that she’d been carrying around in her purse for nearly a year like some kind of talisman that could change her fate. She thought about pulling out the book and flipping through its pages, but instead she found her sunglasses and slid them on, and then she sat there and cried.