“Where’d you go to, you bad cat?”
She shook her head, then went down the steps.
“May Belle?” she called out. She squinted over at the woodpile. The cat was sniffing at something on the other side, her tail sticking straight up into the air. “May Belle?” The cat turned around and looked at Miss Eula but still did not come toward her. “What you got there? You ain’t got a bird, have you?” And, at her usual snail’s pace, Miss Eula hobbled over to the cat.
She stopped. “What you got—”
She dropped the saucer of milk and gasped. The cat was licking a hand. The hand was clutched to a gun. Miss Eula stepped around to the other side of the woodpile and saw him. He was lying on his back, his eyes open, his mouth slack. Miss Eula looked at the man’s eyes. She had never seen anything like them in all her many years. The eyes seemed to be fixed on something hovering overhead, something so terrible that he would have to go on looking at it even after he had crossed over to the other side. “I know who you are,” Miss Eula whispered. “1 know who you are.”
2
Totally exhausted, Larry had fallen asleep the moment he put his head against his pillow. But what sleep came failed to bring much rest with it. Instead, his dreams seemed to be a continuation of the previous night, both elaborating and distorting the incidents he had witnessed out at the Randolph house. Painted faces loomed up from the dark; they grinned at him from the canvas, then twisted and changed. A voice kept repeating desperately, “He tricked me. ... he tricked me.” In the last, worst sequence, Larry was being chased through the woods by something. He fell and found himself staring down into the dark nothingness of the snake well. Unable to move or scream, he had watched as a face—a monstrously disfigured face—had emerged from the well, grinning, leering, the eyes glowing like the eyes of the water moccasin. Only they were set in Jamey’s face. When he awoke from this dream, Larry sat up in bed. He looked and saw the light all around him. The clock by his bed told him it was five minutes after nine.
It was just a dream, he told himself. Maybe it was all just a dream; the Randolph house, the paintings, the old man, Jamey’s last words to him by the gate. He got up and went into the hallway. He stopped and listened. From the kitchen he could hear two men talking. One was his dad. The other, Tom Harlan. But what struck Larry was the way their voices sounded. It was the voice he had always heard adults use whenever something terrible has happened.
Larry crept on tiptoe to the passage leading into the kitchen. From there he saw his mother, too. She was cooking breakfast. Tom was standing by the door. Charlie sat with his back to Larry and shook his head.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Tom said. “He sure was the smartest man I ever met. One of the finest, too. Ain’t a person in this whole county doesn’t owe him a debt of gratitude. Always doing what he could. Didn’t matter what time of the day or night it was, either. If you were sick, he was there. I just hope that’s how people can remember him. Instead of. . . you know ... the way he got to be.”
“I think they will, Tom,” Larry’s dad said.
There was a pause. Lou Anne asked Tom if he was sure he didn’t want to stay and have some breakfast with them. But Tom declined. “I got to be going over to Tommy Lee’s. Make some arrangements. Then I’ll need to be getting some telegrams off. Notify the next of kin, what there is of it. I think his daughter died about three years back, and that leaves mainly the boy. His grandson. What was his name? He used to come down here in the summers, back before. . . you know. Let’s see, he was about fifteen that last summer he come down here. So that’d make him about twenty-nine. Smart boy, way I remember it. Took after Doc. They was real close, those two. Doc, he was more like a father to that boy.”
Charlie got up and walked to the screen door. He pushed it open. Tom started to go through the doorway but stopped. “Sure is puzzling,” he said. “Wonder what it was going on in his mind at the last.” He shook his head sadly. “It just don’t make sense to me, Charlie. I figure he must have had a stroke and he knew it and that he was trying to get somewhere. But what’d he be doing in Miss Eula’s woodpile? And why’d he be carrying a gun, Charlie?” Tom again shook his head. “Just can’t figure it. What’d he be needing a gun for? It just ain’t like him. Hell, he gave up hunting when he was fourteen. The only time I ever seen him with a gun after that was...you know...”
Charlie nodded. He knew, they all knew. It was that day, years before, when he and old Doc had found Luther in the woods. The day old Doc had saved Charlie’s life.
“I can’t figure it either, Tom.”
The two men stood there awkwardly. “Well, got some things to do. Be seeing you.”
Larry waited a moment, then went back to his room. Five minutes later, he was dressed and standing in the corner of Miss Eula Watkins yard. He walked over to the woodpile. Right behind it was the woods. Go straight through them and you would come out at old Doc’s place. Larry stared down at the woodpile, then looked up on the other side of it.
There, not even twenty yards away, was Abigail Parker’s house. It faced the side where Jamey had his room.
“Shit,” Larry whispered to himself.
He stood there, wondering if Jamey was awake yet. Wondering if he had even gone to sleep at all. Wondering...
And again he heard the words the old Doc had whispered at the Randolph house, the same words that returned to Larry in his dreams that morning. “He tricked me...he tricked me.”
Of course, he would have to tell Jamey. And yet, as he stood there, looking back from the woodpile to the boy’s window, Larry shuddered at the prospect. Let him sleep for now, he told himself. There’d be plenty of time later.
3
For the next two days Larry did little more than mope in his room. He kept expecting Jamey to appear, but Jamey didn’t. Twice Larry worked up enough courage to go over to Abigail’s and knock on her front door. But each time he was greeted by Abigail in the same harsh, peremptory way. She came to the door, peered down at him, then snapped, “My orphan, he ain’t fit to be seen.” When Larry asked if she meant Jamey was sick, Abigail said with a snort, “I say he was sick? I said, ‘he ain’t fit to be seen.’”
And so it went until two days before old Doc’s funeral was to take place. This time Larry decided that no matter what Abigail told him, he was going to see Jamey, even if it meant sneaking up the back steps.
It was a little before eight in the evening when Larry mounted the gloomy front porch. He was just about to knock when suddenly he became aware of a noise coming from inside the house. He stopped, listening. At first he thought it was the TV. But then he realized it was Abigail. She was yelling, “Go on! Get out! Right this minute, you hear me! Go on!”
Larry stood there with his mouth open, not knowing whether he should go on standing where he was or turn and run for his life.
He squinted at the dark hallway on the other side of the screen door, but he couldn’t make out anything in the customary gloom of the place.
Suddenly the screen door flew open. Larry automatically backed down two steps, keeping his eyes fixed on the front door. Somebody stepped outside.
“I hear you,” the man said.
Larry blinked. He had naturally expected to see Jamey. But it wasn’t Jamey.
The screen door slammed shut and Abigail yelled out one last “Git!” The man stood there a moment. Then, swaying a bit, he turned around and walked to the steps. Larry was too dumbfounded to move, but just stood there looking up at the man.
“Evening,” Larry said uncertainly.
The man stared back at him, then said, “You here to see Jamey?”
Larry nodded yes. “Is he okay?”
“Beats the shit out of me,” the man said brusquely and with a northern-sounding accent.
Larry frowned, not sure what to make of this last remark. Or anything else. And as he stood there, it was imp
ossible for him not to notice that the man smelled strongly of liquor. Without another word, the man started down the steps, not quite staggering but not quite walking straight, either. Larry stood there, watching him, not knowing whether to offer to help him. “Evening,” he called out to him in a whisper. But he either did not hear or didn’t care to answer if he did.
Larry went back up the steps to the porch, where he stopped and looked down into the street. The man had gotten up to the corner, where he stopped and lit a cigarette. He stood there a moment, inhaling, then continued walking. A moment later, he was on the other side of Harper T. Boone’s tomatoes.
Staying at a safe distance, Larry followed the stranger, losing sight of him only when he turned at the corner of Asbery and Coke streets. Larry ran to catch up. Suddenly he stopped, his mouth open, and stared at the startling spectacle that met his eyes.
“Goddamn,” he whispered. Always before, as long as Larry had any memory, old Doc’s house, that house, sat in isolation on its corner, looming up in absolute darkness, as remote from the touch of light as the dark side of the moon. But not tonight. Tonight every window in the place was brightly lit up, every curtain or drape drawn back.
Larry stood there, staring at the house in wonderment. A figure stepped out onto the side porch. It was the man Larry had seen leaving Abigail’s moments before. Even at that distance he could tell by the man’s slight sway.
“Shit,” Larry whispered. He waited another second, then turned around and ran back home. He threw open the screen door to the kitchen and, even before he had a chance to notice who all was there, he blurted it out, as if it were a near-miraculous prodigy he had witnessed and one, moreover, requiring immediate and decisive action on everyone’s part: “Mom, Dad, there’s somebody in Doc’s house!” He stood there, then saw that it wasn’t just his folks who were sitting around the kitchen table. With them, smiling in her usual sweet-natured way, was Miss Amelia Amos. Larry nodded and said hello to her.
“Why, Larry,” Miss Amelia said, addressing him as if he had been a whole Sunday school room full of preschoolers, “You look out of breath. You must have been running.”
He nodded at her—he had never been sure exactly what he was supposed to say to Miss Amelia’s remarks—then looked at his dad. “Really. I just saw it. There’s a man. And he was at Abigail’s, but she threw him out. And then I went by Doc’s and I saw him. Standing on the porch. And every light in the house was on.”
“Why, Larry, honey, I expect that’s just old Doc’s grandson,” Miss Amelia explained. “I went by to see him earlier. Such a nice sweet young boy.”
Larry frowned at this description. The man he had seen on Abigail’s porch hadn’t exactly been brimming over with sweetness, and it looked like he hadn’t been a young boy in at least two decades. But Larry knew Miss Abigail’s ways: As Big Phil once remarked, every male was a young boy to Miss Amelia until the moment Tommy Lee Anderson put the embalming fluid in.
“You remember him, don’t you, Charlie?”
Larry’s dad nodded.
“Old Doc, he used to think the world of that boy. And such a smart boy, too. Why, the questions he’d ask and the things he’d talk about,” Miss Amelia went on. “Old Doc, he used to call him the Little Philosopher. Remember, Charlie?”
“He was a smart boy, all right.” He turned to his wife and said, “You remember him, don’t you?” And she, too, nodded.
“That’s how I could always tell it was summertime,” Miss Amelia went on, “seeing those two taking their evening walks, old Doc and his grandson. Somebody really should ask him for supper. Don’t you think that would be a nice idea, Lou Anne, honey?”
Larry recognized this as one of Miss Amelia’s ultimatums. Apparently so did his mom, for no sooner had Miss Amelia issued it than Lou Anne turned to Charlie and said, “Why don’t you go over tomorrow and ask him to come to supper?”
“That’s so sweet of you, Lou Anne,” Miss Amelia said. “I know he’ll appreciate it.”
Larry frowned in consternation. “But Mom, he was—”
“He was what, honey?” Miss Amelia said, beaming.
“He was drunk,” Larry blurted out, “drunk as a dog.”
Miss Amelia tilted her head, as if she hadn’t heard him right. Then, in precisely the same tone of voice she used when evaluating a particularly wretched crayon drawing in vacation Bible school—usually one of Larry’s—Miss Amelia smiled and said, “My...isn’t that a surprise.”
“And Abigail threw him out!”
“Wonder what he would have been doing at Abigail’s,” Charlie said.
“Why, don’t you remember? Abigail married old Doc’s first cousin, Lester Parker. So I imagine it was just family business,” Miss Amelia explained, as if that put everything right. One of those little family disagreements that everybody has now and then. Isn’t that right?” Miss Amelia looked up at the clock over the refrigerator. “Oh, my, I didn’t realize it was so late. I still have so much to do. I thought I’d write a little something for the funeral.”
Miss Amelia’s “little somethings” were well known around Lucerne. They were poems she composed on the occasion of any major transition—births, marriages, deaths. Miss Amelia drew her inspiration only from the really big stuff. The one on Larry’s birth was still tucked away inside the Bible he had been awarded for five straight years of Sunday school attendance, and had concluded with these memorable lines:
Today Lucerne hearts are gay and merry,
As we thank you. Lord, for our little Larry.
Lou Anne and Charlie walked Miss Amelia to the door, with Larry trailing along. Here Miss Amelia stopped and looked back at Larry. “I nearly forgot to ask you, hon. How is that little friend of yours?”
“Jamey?” Larry asked. He glanced away quickly and mumbled. “He’s been...sick.”
“Oh? I’m so sorry to hear that. But I want you to know how proud we all are of you, hon.”
Larry frowned, drawing a blank. “What for?”
“Why, because the Lord likes to see us helping out those who are less fortunate than we are. The downtrodden and the afflicted.” Then she beamed at him. “You’re earning yourself crowns in heaven, hon.” This was one of Miss Amelia’s fundamental principles—that heaven was organized along much the same lines as her Sunday school department, with awards going to those who showed the greatest capacity for prolonged and pointless suffering.
Larry looked at his mom. He knew from experience that there was only one response left to him. He lowered his head and said, “Yes’m, Miss Amelia.”
When the old woman had left, Larry wandered back to the kitchen. His dad came in after him and patted Larry on the back. “You did good, son.”
Larry shook his head. “Why does she have to think everything’s sweet and nice?” Larry asked his dad. He shrugged and said that was just her way. Then he smiled and said, “Why, don’t you think everything’s sweet and nice?”
“No,” Larry said softly. “I guess I just don’t understand why people pretend it is, when it isn’t.”
“I reckon some folks just like to make the best of things, son.”
“Yeah, but—”
“But what?”
“What do you do when something happens, something that isn’t nice at all, something that’s pretty. . . horrible?” Charlie dropped his smile. He detected a genuine tone of concern in his son’s voice. “Why? Has something like that happened to you?”
Larry kept his eyes fixed on the table. It was an issue he had been turning over and over in his mind ever since he and Jamey had gotten back from the Randolph house. Should he tell his dad about it? He wasn’t so much worried about getting into trouble over it. After all, he really didn’t have much choice. It wasn’t even a question of breaking his promise to Jamey: Larry knew that, if worse came to worst, he would tell his dad if he had to. What held him back w
as something else—something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He kept trying to convince himself that he just didn’t want his dad to think that they were lying or, even worse, that they were crazy. And, after all, what else could his dad think, hearing a story like that? But as he sat there, mindful of his father’s scrutiny, he suddenly became aware of the real source of his reluctance to talk about it—a source that, until that moment, he had not consciously suspected. Larry realized that what held him back was not a fear that his dad would think they were crazy, but the exact opposite—the fear that he wouldn’t think they were crazy that he would go out there to the Randolph house as soon as he had heard the story, crawl through the passageway into the hidden room, and that, in the strong beams of an unwavering flashlight, see the same face that Larry had glimpsed in the swirl of shadows.
He looked at his dad. “No, sir,” he said softly. “I’m okay.”
“Jamey too?”
Larry nodded yes.
“Couldn’t help noticing that he hasn’t been around in the past couple of days. You sure everything’s all right between you two?”
“Yes, sir,” Larry said, then—again keeping his eyes averted—he fell back on the old story. “Jamey, he’s just been sick.”
A little later, Larry sat out in the tree house alone. He stood up and went to the railing and then, with the same restlessness, lay down on his back and looked up through the leaves. Maybe, he suddenly found himself wondering, maybe Miss Amelia did have the right idea. Maybe it was better just not to see things, to pretend that the world was all sweetness and light and that whatever shadows might chance to fall across the bright surface of things were merely passing and harmless—like the times when he would be playing baseball and would watch the course of a cloud’s shadow as it glided with nearly supernatural rapidity across the diamond, leaping over the bleachers, only to disappear without a trace in the neighboring stand of pine trees.
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