A Land More Kind Than Home (27 page)

I ain't going to say that I hadn't ever done it before, and I ain't going to say there's not reasons good and bad for that kind of thing, but I knew right then there wasn't no way I was going to do it for Julie Hall, no matter who'd sent her. But I didn't tell her that with her standing out in the rain soaking wet and scared to death, bruises spreading out across her belly like flower blossoms.

“Let's just wait,” I told her. “Let's just wait another month and see what happens. It ain't going to hurt nothing at all if we just wait. You probably ain't going to show for a while anyway.”

B
UT
I
GUESS WHAT SHE
'
D DONE TO HERSELF MUST
'
VE WORKED BECAUSE
she never mentioned nothing else about it to me, and she sure didn't have no baby. I waited a couple of months before I asked her about it again, and I could tell then that she didn't want to talk about it at all. We were standing out in the parking lot one Sunday afternoon after the service had let out. I'd brought the children up from the riverbank, and they were all running in between the cars and chasing each other like they always did. Julie was standing and talking to a few of the women from the church, and I waited until she was alone before I went up and spoke to her.

“I reckon you had your cycle,” I said, “because you ain't been back around to see me.”

“I got it this month,” she said.

“You ever tell Ben?”

“No,” she said. “Turns out there wasn't nothing to tell. I was just late; that's all.” She turned around and hollered for Jess and Christopher, and then she loaded them up into Ben's truck.

“You come by and see me if you ever need to,” I said. “It ain't got to be about something like this, but just know you can come and talk to me whenever you need to.”

“Thank you,” she said, “but I reckon everything's all right now. I'm fine.”

I stood and watched her back Ben's old truck out of the parking lot and drive off up the road. I remember thinking,
There goes a woman who's gone and got herself scared good
, but I just couldn't figure out what in the world could've scared her so bad.

I turned back toward the building to talk to some folks before they left, and when I did I saw Carson Chambliss standing in the door of the church. The sunlight was right in his eyes, and he stood there with a wooden crate in each of his hands. He stared at me without even once blinking. He held those crates down at his sides by the little suitcase handles that were fastened to them; they had chicken wire stapled up around the insides, but he was too far away for me to see what was in there, although I knew well enough what they were.

“How're you, Sister Adelaide?” he asked me.

“I'm fine,” I said. “I'm just about to leave.”

“We had us a blessed service this morning,” he said. “And I pray our children did as well.”

“We got along fine,” I said. “We always do.” He took him a few steps into the parking lot and stopped in front of me, and when he did one of those crates he held bucked so strong I was afraid it would jump out of his hand. He looked down at it for a second, and then he looked up at me. He was smiling.

“That's good to hear,” he said. “Children are the lifeblood of this church. There ain't no future without them.” He turned and set those crates in the back of Tommy Lester's pickup truck where Tommy had put the ones he was carrying, and then he went around to the other side and climbed in beside Tommy. I watched them pull out of the parking lot and listened to Tommy rev the engine as they took off up the road.

I stood there and watched them go and thought about how that was an awfully strange thing for a man to say who'd go and show a mother how to kill her own.

B
UT JULIE DID COME BACK OUT TO MY HOUSE.
S
HE SHOWED
up at my door on Monday evening, the day after Christopher died, and when I saw her standing out there I could tell that she'd been crying.

“You told me before that I could come and talk to you,” she said.

“Well, of course you can, girl,” I said. “Come on in here.” I closed the door and led her over to the sofa and sat down beside her. It was only the night before when we were doing this very same thing, and it almost brought a chill to my bones, the very idea that we were almost going to relive it together. “Can I get you anything?” I asked her. “I got a little bit of coffee left on the stove, or I could heat you up a little water for some tea.”

“No,” she said, “I'm fine. I just need to get away from that house.”

“Well, Julie, you can stay with me for as long as you need to,” I said. I reached over and put my hand on hers, and when I did she took to crying. She tried covering her eyes with her hands, but it didn't do any good. “You can bring Jess over here with you too. He might want to be with his mama.”

“I can't,” she said. “Ben won't let me have him. We've already talked about it. He won't even let me be alone with him, he won't even hardly look at me.”

“He's just trying to get through this,” I told her. “Same as you. Everybody goes about dealing with things in different ways.”

“But he started up drinking after we got home from the hospital last night. And this morning, after his daddy took Jess to school, the two of them went off to his daddy's house and they've been over there all day. I wanted to pick Jess up from school, but he wouldn't let me have the truck, and I'm afraid he's drinking too much to drive and I'm afraid of what's going to happen. When I tried to talk to him, he just told me that everything that's happened is all my fault.”

“Well, y'all just lost your son yesterday, Julie,” I said. “Y'all just lost your little boy, and there ain't nothing that can prepare folks for something like that. People say all kinds of things when they're grieving, especially men. This is just one of those things you can't be prepared for.”

“It's not just that,” she said. “I'm scared of him. I've never seen him like this in all the years we've been together. He's acting just like his daddy did, and I hoped he wouldn't ever be that way.”

“Now, you know that ain't true,” I said. “You know he's a better man than that.”

“I'd hoped he would be,” she said. “But he's blaming me for what's happened, saying it was my idea, saying the healing must've been my idea.”

“Well, Julie, you did the best thing you knew to do,” I said. “And you know it's not right of Ben to blame you for trying to help Christopher.”

“But it wasn't my idea,” she said. “It wasn't my idea to do it.”

“Well, who in the world said it needed doing?”

“Pastor,” she said. “It was his idea. He told me there was something in Christopher that wasn't letting him talk, and he promised me he could get it to leave him alone. He told me to trust him and that I shouldn't even tell Ben about it until after it was done. He said that Ben would understand God's truth eventually, that everybody would see how God had healed him.” She dropped her hands in her lap and sat there staring down at them. “But I shouldn't have let them do it again last night,” she said. “Not after what happened yesterday morning.” She raised her eyes and looked at me. “But, Miss Lyle,” she said, “I swear I heard him speak. I swear he called out for me with all of them laying their hands on him. I know he was scared, but it worked. The Lord was healing him. I know He was. And Pastor wanted me to bring him back last night so he could finish, but I was scared after what had happened, and I wanted to say something. I wanted to stop it, but I just didn't know how.”

“You really trust him, don't you?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Chambliss.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do. I do trust him. I know he's a man of God. I know God speaks through him.”

“Julie, like I told you, you can stay here as long as you need to. But I can't have that man over at this house, and I'm asking you to please stay away from him, at least until all this gets settled. Your little boy died in his church, under his hand. I just think it's best if you stay away from there for now. At least as long as you're staying here with me. Can you do that?” She looked down at her hands for a minute like she was thinking about whether she could or not, and I honestly didn't know how she was going to answer. She finally looked up at me.

“Yes, ma'am,” she said. “I can do that.”

“Good,” I said. “I just can't have him coming around here. Not after what's happened.”

As I was saying that, I'd already started thinking about how Carson Chambliss wasn't going to like Julie staying with me, and I knew for sure he wasn't going to like me talking to the sheriff on Tuesday afternoon, even if I didn't know anything for certain about what happened to Christopher. Chambliss knew there were other things that I'd seen and heard, other things that I could talk about that might make him look bad or guilty. So I wasn't a bit surprised when Julie came into my room on Wednesday evening after the funeral and told me he wanted me to come down to the church the next day, and I can say that after I did I knew for certain that I'd looked right into the face of evil.

A
DELAIDE
L
YLE
'
S SKIN WAS THIN LIKE PAPER, AND HER
veins were blue smears across the backs of her hands. I watched them roll over her knuckles where her fingers kneaded the chair against which her body leaned. It was Tuesday morning, two days after they'd brought that boy's body out to her house on the night he died.

“Would you like something to drink?” she asked me. “Something to eat?” Before I could even answer her, she turned her back to me and shuffled over toward the cupboard and started searching the shelves.

“I'm fine not to eat,” I said, but she kept staring into the cupboard as if she couldn't hear me. “I'm fine not to eat,” I said again, louder this time to make certain she heard me. She turned around and looked at me for a moment like I'd hurt her feelings somehow, like I'd denied her something by not eating whatever it was she might have been able to pull from that cupboard. I motioned toward the empty seat at the head of the table. “I just want to talk to you for a few minutes,” I said. “Just a few minutes. That's all. Shouldn't take too much longer than that.”

She hesitated for a minute, and then she walked back to the table and pulled out a chair. After she had lowered herself into the chair she smoothed out the tablecloth and interlaced her fingers and left them resting there before her. Her brown eyes were bright and uncertain, and I watched tiny flecks of gold flash across them.

“I need you to tell me everything you know about what happened to Christopher on Sunday evening,” I said.

“I don't know anything to tell you,” she said. “I wasn't there. I was at home. They brought him here after it happened.”

“After what happened?”

“After he died, I reckon,” she said.

“How did he die?”

“I don't know for certain,” she said. “Like I told you, I wasn't there. All I know is what folks told me.”

“What did Julie say about it?” I asked.

“She said they were trying to heal him. That's all she said.”

“Where's she at right now?”

“I don't know,” she said. “But she ain't here.”

“How long has she been staying with you?”

“Just for one night,” she said. “But she may be staying here a little while longer.”

“Why isn't she at home with her family?”

“Because she says it ain't safe there. She says Ben's taken to drinking and blaming her for what's happened.”

“Why doesn't she feel safe? Has he threatened to hurt her?”

“I don't know,” she said. “You'd have to ask her about it, but you saw for yourself what he did to those boys who came out from the church on Sunday night.”

“I did,” I said. “But there's a lot of men who would've done them the same way.”