After the second injection, my mother’s eyes closed, and I could feel my heart rate quicken, my breathing slow, my vision narrow, turn dark, and I kept repeating to myself, silently, “Relax. Relax. Everything will be okay,” and after a while I was able to breathe again and the world stopped its trembling. Everyone held their breath. The couple next to me held hands, the woman clutching a tissue. But she didn’t cry. She just stared resolutely at my mother as she lay there motionless, like she was simply taking a nap, like she was just waiting for someone to wake her, ask her how she was doing.
After the third injection, the doctor watched the clock. One minute went by, then two. He put his stethoscope in place and placed the monitor on her chest. He moved it up, then down, then up again, searching for any trace of heartbeat, and I couldn’t help but pray. Dear God, please, oh please, oh please, oh please, I begged, yearning for this to not be true, for her to rise up, to say something, anything, it didn’t even matter what, just some sign she was still alive and would be alive and would be forever, but my prayers went unanswered. The doctor called her death, and yet no one moved. We all just sat there silently, uncertain what we were to do next.
CHAPTER 7
WE FOREWENT A FUNERAL, NOT THAT ANYONE would’ve shown anyway, but Jonah and I thought it best to keep it a private affair, to dispose of her ashes where she’d been happiest, back in Bartlesville before we’d moved to Grove, at our old house. It hadn’t changed much since we’d moved years before. The tree that had once adorned our front yard had been cut down, and the basketball goal where Jonah and I had practiced our free throws had been removed, but the cement foundation in which the pole had stood was still there, the little circle filled in by a now-barren flowerpot. The roof had been replaced, and the walls shined with a new coat of paint, though it resembled the same color it had been when we lived there.
It was odd being back in Bartlesville. Everything seemed smaller somehow. The house and the street and the hill where Jonah and I had once sledded during winters. It even had a different smell, a mixture of gasoline and motor oil, wafting in from a new auto-repair garage that had been built a street over. I wondered if any of the same families still lived in the neighborhood. If Adam’s mom, Jan, still lived across the street, if the Morrisons were still next to her, what they were doing now, if they were retired or moved on or still chugging away as they did years ago, working the same jobs and watching the same television shows and eating the same dinners. I wondered if they’d heard what had happened to us once we moved away, about the church and the raid and all those people who had died. I wondered if they told people at parties about us, an icebreaking anecdote: “Oh hey, did you hear about the Gunters? They used to be our neighbors. Crazy, right?” I’m sure others tried to distance themselves from us, act like they hadn’t heard a thing, repress it as something disdainful, as if they could be guilty by association if anyone ever found out just how close we truly were.
At least one person realized what had happened. Clifton Mathews, a kid I’d gone to school with, had sent me a letter while I was inside at juvenile detention. It was a short letter, to the point, only saying, “I am so sorry this happened to you.” I remembered just how odd it was to have received his letter out of the blue like that. It wasn’t that Clifton and I had been close, and we didn’t stay in touch after my mother and I’d moved to Grove. But he was the only one who reached out to me. I wish I could say his letter made me feel better, forgiven somehow, but it didn’t. It made me angry. I didn’t want his pity or his sympathy. It felt cheap and wrong, and I balled up the piece of paper and stuck it in my mouth and I chewed and tried to swallow it but couldn’t. Instead, I choked, and I ended up vomiting it up into the corner of my cell. Standing there that night with Mom’s ashes in my hand, I had half a mind to ring the doorbell, and if he answered, confess what I had done to his letter and tell him I was sorry for rebuking his gesture. But I didn’t. I didn’t and still don’t have the courage to.
We spread Mom’s ashes in the middle of the night. It was just me and Jonah and Atchley, and we didn’t say anything. We just emptied her ashes onto the front yard, none of us knowing what to say or if there was anything to say, and so we didn’t. There wasn’t any wind, and so the ashes just lay there in a pile on the ground. It resembled an anthill in a way, larger, though, a mound of human dust, no more a person than the dirt it rested upon. We stood there for a minute, stared at the ashes on the ground, and then made our way back to our car to drive off.
Across town, the nursing home was a long white building. Out front were a few dead bushes, their branches brown and thin. The wood panels were warped from exposure to the elements. Paint chipped, revealing the worn, gray wood underneath. Though the windows were dark, I could make out a few ornaments hanging on the other side, little yarn knickknacks and dream catchers, a few Christmas decorations. A couple old men sat out front in wheelchairs, blankets draped over their legs, smoking cigarettes and looking cold and miserable. When we passed them, they didn’t acknowledge our presence, still staring straight ahead, as if watching something far off in the distance. The place reminded me of juvenile detention in a way. It was cold and lonely, housing people who would rather be anywhere else. I immediately felt ashamed this was where my father would spend the rest of his days, blinking at daytime game shows and sitting in front of an unmarked bingo card as a disinterested and underpaid attendant read off the latest ping-pong ball. I felt as though I’d failed him. His situation was all my fault.
A young attendant greeted us with a sign-in sheet and a practiced smile, one I was sure she’d grown accustomed to giving unfamiliar faces, judgment reserved for the relatives of her charges who did not visit often enough. Despite her warm veneer, her twanged “hello,” and her seasonal red-and-green manicured nails, I could feel the contempt she held for me, Caleb Gunter, the murderer and cult leader, visiting his father for the first time. Nothing in her reaction indicated she recognized me, but I’m sure she no doubt did, the rumors spreading across the home once it was learned Dad had once been married to the notorious Evelyn Gunter and that his son, now released from juvenile detention, might one day come to visit. I respected her restraint, her façade—I bet she was a practiced poker player, continually raking in the chips of an unsuspecting tourist—but despite her calmness, I could feel her eyes burning into the back of my head as I walked down the hall.
Dad we found near the back, in a small room by himself. He lay in a hospital bed, snoring, a blanket pulled up to his chin. The room itself was packed with Dad’s belongings, old photographs dating back from his childhood to school pictures of Jonah and me when we’d been in elementary school. On a dresser was a picture of him and Mom at their wedding, looking happy dancing at a sparsely attended reception. A few items adorned his dresser and side table: an alarm clock two hours too fast, a watch with a cracked crystal, an empty money clip, and a receipt from a few months prior. The money clip and watch I recognized, gifts from Mom and Jonah and me for Father’s Day or his birthday, things Jonah and I had given very little thought to when growing up, but items Dad valued enough to keep throughout the years, even when his health was wavering and he had little room to store his things.
“You can take those, if you want,” Jonah said when he caught me staring at them. “He doesn’t have a use for them anymore.”
Dad stirred and made a noise like he couldn’t catch his breath, gasping for air. He inhaled deeply, once, twice, three times, all without exhaling, and then blinked when he spotted us in his room.
“Dad?” Jonah said. “It’s me. I brought someone to see you.”
He nudged me toward Dad, but I didn’t move. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, it frightened me to see Dad this feeble, his mind deteriorated and his body wasted. He was pale and frail and his teeth had turned yellow. He looked like he was on the verge of death, and I just thought that couldn’t be. Not Dad. He’d always been Herculean, someone larger than life, someone made of gravel and sandpaper a
nd who could take pain after pain after pain and keep on standing, no matter what. He was immovable, my dad. An immovable rock. But there he was, so feeble I doubted he could pull himself out of bed.
“Hi, Dad,” I said. “It’s been a long time.”
Dad blinked at me, nodded, but I wasn’t sure what that meant. I couldn’t be sure if he recognized me, or if he was just indicating he could hear my voice, a subconscious reaction so he didn’t have to admit he didn’t understand what was going on.
“You look good,” I said. “You look like you’re happy here.”
He raised a hand and pointed at me, his index finger dangling, and alternated between me and Atchley.
“This is Atchley,” I said. “I—uh—well—she’s my friend.”
“Girlfriend,” Atchley said. “I’m your son’s girlfriend.”
Dad scowled. It wasn’t so much out of anger, I thought, but confusion. He was having a hard time following the conversation perhaps, or maybe he just couldn’t quite fathom me with a girlfriend, the idea striking him as too unlikely to ever occur.
“You,” he said, his voice garbled and deep like he had cotton balls stuffed into his mouth. “And him?” He pointed between Atchley and me, and smiled.
“Yes,” Atchley said, laughing. “I’m with him.”
“Good,” Dad said. “I’m glad.”
We talked and we talked. Or I did, mostly, about my place in Oklahoma City and how I was thinking about going back to school, perhaps go into social work to help troubled teens or maybe become a history teacher, about how so much had changed in the past six years, in such a small amount of time I just couldn’t believe it, how everyone had cell phones now and was constantly moving, and about how sometimes I just liked to sit, it didn’t even matter where, outside a sandwich shop or in the frozen-food section at the grocery store, just watch people, a mother trying to herd her two young twins or a man confused by the incredible plethora of deodorant choices. I talked about how I was thinking about getting a dog and how I found myself binge-watching television reruns from before I’d been incarcerated, shows like Seinfeld and Friends and Full House. I talked about how I was sorry for how things turned out. I talked about how I was sorry I didn’t listen to him sooner. I talked about how I would visit more often, and how things would be different from there on out. That he’d see. Things were finally looking up. And Dad just listened. He nodded his head and grimaced and smiled and scooted upright, but after a while, I knew he was tiring. His eyes drooped and his face strained and he kept sucking on his teeth like he was trying to keep from losing focus, and eventually I told him it was time for me to go.
He was too tired and too medicated to say goodbye. He jerked open his eyes, but they slowly drooped closed. He returned to snoring, his face relaxed, and he no longer seemed to be in pain.
STEPPING BACK INTO GROVE WAS difficult. About thirty minutes from town, my skin began to itch and turn red and little bumps formed around my elbows and forearms. My throat constricted. I suffered from a mild case of vertigo. My mouth flooded with saliva and I felt nauseated and for a moment I thought I might be sick, and Atchley kept asking if I wanted to turn around, if I was feeling okay, and I just nodded and pointed forward and held my breath as we crossed the sign denoting city limits. I held my breath until I saw stars and everything looked bulbous and blurry and dark. I held my breath until my lungs hurt and I couldn’t hold it any longer, and when I finally exhaled, it came out of me in one fell swoop, and when I did, we were on the other side, and there was no turning back.
Despite only being six years since I’d last been there, the town had changed. A new four-lane bridge brought us into town, and as soon as we crossed, shiny new shopping centers accosted us: Old Navy and Bed Bath & Beyond and a scuba-diving shop. There were seafood and Italian restaurants and a new office-supply store. There was a Chili’s and a Best Buy and a brand-new Walmart Superstore. Outlet malls sprawled on both sides of the highway, shaped like a community of teepees. I almost didn’t even recognize the place. And I was thankful for that. It made the whole prospect of facing my past that much easier to bear.
The old trailer park looked nothing like it had before. The dozens of tiny homes and Sam’s house had been razed, but the barn still stood. It had warped and faded and had fallen into disrepair, its door hanging from its hinge. The fences still stood, but the wood had begun to rot. About sixty or so yards toward the lake, a fire pit smoldered where a large bonfire had recently burned. Dark smoke still wafted up into the air and over the canopy. Where once there were well-manicured, rolling fields was now an overgrown underbrush, thick with waist-high Indian grass, dandelion, and blackjack saplings. Cut through that was a gravel driveway, marked by dirt tire tracks, and at the end stood a mobile home, its siding oxidized and turning brown.
We got out of the car and stood on the side of the road, and I pointed out to Atchley where everything once was, telling her how we had services every morning and how we grew soybean and wheat on that side of the farm and corn on the other. How the well was at the back of the property, and how we’d played pickup football games in front of the house and put on Shakespearean plays on a makeshift stage, and how we’d been planning, before everything had gone bad, to build a go-kart track on the eastern side of the property. There were lots of plans we never had the chance to enact, good plans, plans that would’ve made a difference in the community, like how we’d hoped to start an after-school program for at-risk teens from the town, teaching them how to till and work the land, the intricacies of combustible-engine repair, carpentry, or how we’d started an environmental program cleaning up litter from the lake strewn about by tourists and drunk, sunburnt youth, how it was funny that nobody ever wanted to talk about those things, the good things. That it was always about the death and the crazy and the brainwashings and the lies and the lies and the lies. That’s not what it was all about. That was such a small part of it, actually, if you really, really took the time to understand what had happened. If you got right down to it, all we were trying to do was some good in the world.
“Do you miss it?” she asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“You talk like it was the best time of your life,” she said. “It sounds like you miss it.”
“There were some good times. In the beginning. Sure. I suppose I miss parts of it.”
“But not all of it?”
“No. Definitely not all of it.”
We heard a truck engine approaching. The owner of the land was leaving his property, and so we moved off to the side so as not to block the end of the driveway. When he neared, however, we noticed the driver carried a shotgun. He stopped about twenty feet from us and pointed it out the window and yelled for us to get away from his property. His face was wracked with rage, burnt red, and he seethed. He seethed and he cursed and he spat and he waved his gun about, screaming he was tired of everyone always coming out there all the time, that there wasn’t anything left to see anymore, that all the crazies had left town years ago; they were gone, dead, adios, gone forever, and we didn’t have to be told twice—we turned and got back into the car, figuring sometimes it’s best just to run.
When we pulled out onto the highway, the man was still behind us, waving the shotgun above his head, but in front of us we could see for miles. The sky burned a blue I didn’t think possible. It was bright, indigo even, iridescent so the whole world lit up. It lit up the corn and the wheat and the soybean. It lit up the lake and the farmhouses, the Indian grass and cattle. It lit up everything like I could see the whole of the earth. It was like it was just one big continent again, and all the world was still connected.
Born and raised in the Bible Belt, Noah Milligan is the author of the novel An Elegant Theory and the short-story collection Five Hundred Poor. His work has been named a semi-finalist for the Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize and a finalist for Foreword Review’s 2016 Book of the Year. His short fiction has been published in Cowboy Jamboree, Orson’s Review, Windmill: The
Hofstra Journal of Literature and Art, and elsewhere. He lives in Norman, OK, with his wife and two children.
Also from Central Avenue Publishing
FIVE HUNDRED POOR
Noah Milligan
Short Stories - 978-1-77168-139-1
From acclaimed author, Noah Milligan, comes a short story collection, Five Hundred Poor. The title comes from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, “Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.”
These are ten stories of those five hundred poor, the jaded, the disillusioned, and the disenfranchised.
“Noah Milligan writes about Oklahoma in such an uncanny, dark, compelling way.” —Brandon Hobson, author of Where The Dead Sit Talking”
Into Captivity They Will Go Page 27