B003UYURTC EBOK (24 page)

Gabriel looked at Cabot Searcy and, for a moment, thought of the many things he could say to him to shatter his delusions. He thought of quoting from the Bible, but changed his mind. He thought of once again denying his heavenliness, but didn’t. He wanted to call Cabot crazy. Misinformed. Confused. He wanted to scream to him that God would never lead a man to take a boy from his family. But he didn’t. Instead Gabriel Witter stood up, raised both hands into the air, and began to shout as sincerely and convincingly as he could manage.

“Oh God. Do with me what you will!”

And with that Cabot Searcy got up, walked through the door, and shut it behind him. Gabriel heard banging from the other room. He heard two quick yells, as if two people were arguing or one person was arguing with himself. He leaned his ear against the door, his breathing heavy and deep, his eyes closed. He heard words like “shit” and “damn” and “help me.” He heard the slamming of cabinet doors, the tapping of shoes on hard tile, the whir of a ceiling fan. Gabriel listened as Cabot Searcy yelled the following:

“I have sinned. I have sinned. Help me, oh Lord. I have sinned.”

Hearing footsteps coming quickly his way, Gabriel threw himself onto the bed and didn’t take his eyes off the door. It swung open, slammed into the wall, bounced back only slightly, and Cabot approached the bed. He looked down. He was breathing hard. His face was wet with what Gabriel assumed were tears. Cabot kneeled down. He took one hand and placed it on Gabriel’s shoulder. Closing his eyes, he began to speak.

“Gabriel, I need you to tell me the truth. I trust that God will tell me the truth through your voice. So, tell me. Tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

“I don’t know what you’re supposed to do,” Gabriel said as calmly as possible. “Don’t you see that?”

“You have to!” Cabot shot up, beginning to yell. “I can’t breathe. I can’t think. This should be easier. Alma and Cullen and back in Savannah. It’s all connected. It has to be. It has to make sense. Benton killed himself for this! He just left! Just like that! He just gave up! It was too hard! But I figured it out, right? I did it, right? I’m the one! I’m the one to finish the job. I’m the one to make things right!”

“Where’s your family?” Gabriel said, sitting up on the bed.

“What?” Cabot had tears streaming down his face.

“Your family. Where are they? Do they know who you are? Do they know how important you are?” Gabriel asked, now beginning to stand.

“Shut up! Quit distracting me!”

Cabot grabbed at the sides of his own angry face. He appeared to be trying to knock the thoughts out of his head. Gabriel stood up and, though he thought about running for the door, he fell to his knees, clasped his hands, and began to pray.

“Lord, help this man find his way without hurting himself or anyone else. Help him find his heart, Lord, the same heart that has provided me food and warmth. Help him, please. Please help him to stop and think.”

“Stop it, stop it, STOP IT!” Cabot took both hands and knocked Gabriel onto his side. He kicked at Gabriel’s back and
legs. He sniffled, cried, and reached down to pick Gabriel up and flung him across the room. Gabriel’s head smashed into the side of the television and he fell motionless and sprawled out on the hard floor.

“You should’ve just told me the truth,” Cabot said, slowly approaching the boy.

Though his face was pressed coldly against the floor, Gabriel whispered quietly and with certainty in his voice. Cabot yelled, “What? Speak up!”

“You’re not the one,” Gabriel said more clearly, pain in his voice.

With that, Cabot Searcy sat down on the edge of the bed, looked down at Gabriel Witter and his bleeding scalp, and said nothing. He looked over to the television to see a shot of a news program being broadcast from Lily, Arkansas. A small caption appeared under an image of a reporter standing before a patch of swampy woods. The caption read no
SECOND CHANCES IN LILY, ARKANSAS
.

Cabot began to laugh. He got louder and louder and finally stopped, abruptly, as he looked back down at the motionless figure on his floor.

“It’s time to say good-bye, Gabriel,” Cabot muttered, standing up and switching off the television.

           When I saw John Barling tossing a large brown duffel bag into the back of his truck, I remained on my porch and tried my best to read his lips as he mumbled under his breath. I couldn’t make out any words, but I imagined them to be things that one wouldn’t hear in church. He slammed the back door shut and, looking up at me, gave me the quickest of salutes with his right hand before hopping into the driver’s seat, starting the loud engine up, and driving off. I saw Fulton Dumas run around from the side of his house, yelling “HELL YES!” and “ALL RIGHT!” while throwing a handful of rocks toward the road. He caught a glimpse of me, waved one hand uncomfortably my way, and walked back into his house.

The Lazarus woodpecker weighs approximately twenty-six ounces, is twenty-four inches tall, and has a wing span of just around thirty-two inches. This would make it, as I mentioned once before, the largest woodpecker in existence. This would all be true if the bird existed, which it didn’t. It did in the 1940s, but not in Lily, Arkansas. Not the summer my brother went missing. Not in the woods near the White River. Not in John Barling’s poorly shot photograph. Not in the sightings on the highway. Not in the DNA tests done by the National Audubon Society of a feather found by a young girl and her dog.

Instead, what had my entire town full of hope and big ideas was what one scientist described on the news as an extremely rare group of albino woodpeckers by the name of pileated.

“They’re big birds,” the scientist told the reporter, “just not quite as big as the Lazarus was.”

Aside from being completely different species, there is a significant yet odd difference in the color of the Lazarus woodpecker and the pileated one, the latter having a distinctly darker bill. Given that the bird or birds seen near my home and supposedly seen all around town were albino species, their bills were just about the color that the Lazarus’s would have been. This, supported by the inability to trap or record an actual bird and the negative DNA tests, all led to the conclusion that my town had been living a lie for nearly four months. And if you listened closely outside of any window in Lily the week we found out, you could hear the deafening silence and disappointment.

“This guy at the store told me something cool today,” Lucas said to me as we sat idly on the porch.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“He told me the Lazarus used to be called the Good God Bird.”

“Yeah? That’s weird,” I said.

“Native Americans,” he said.

“Native Americans what?” I asked.

“They used to see it flying over their heads and in trees and the only thing they could do was yell ‘GOOD GOD!’ ’cause it looked so big.” Lucas smirked, shaking his head slightly from side to side, his hands spread apart to signify the bird’s enormousness in the air.

I wondered, riding in the passenger seat of my mom’s car one afternoon, whether there would ever be a break in the silence that now seemed to occupy all of my family’s time together. An awkwardness had sprung up after those few months, where before there would have been playful laughter and in-depth conversation and harmless bickering between us. I wondered if Lucas Cader would really marry Mena Prescott and if Gabriel would actually be there to hold their children. I wondered if Russell Quitman would ever walk again or if Ada Taylor had sentenced herself to a life of sitting around and waiting on him hand and foot. Then I realized that I didn’t care.

Dr. Webb says that life is so full of complications and confusion that humans oftentimes find it hard to cope. This leads to people throwing themselves in front of trains and spending all their money and not speaking to their relatives and never going home for Christmas and never eating anything with
chocolate in it. Life, he says, doesn’t have to be so bad all the time. We don’t have to be so anxious about everything. We can just be. We can get up, anticipate that the day will probably have a few good moments and a few bad ones, and then just deal with it. Take it all in and deal as best we can. We can learn to love the Mena Prescotts, we can imagine the Russell Quitmans to be zombies, we can fantasize all day long about the Ada Taylors, and we can wish we were more like the Lucas Caders. We can be comforted in the fact that life will always be a struggle. There will always be false hopes. Lazarus woodpeckers. There will be John Barlings to lead us astray and Oslo Foukes to remind us that maybe we
are
doing things right after all.

When I asked him the meaning of life, Dr. Webb got very quiet and then told me that life has no one meaning, it only has whatever meaning each of us puts on our own life. I’ll tell you now that I still don’t know the meaning of mine. And Lucas Cader, with all his brains and talent, doesn’t know the meaning of his, either. But I’ll tell you the meaning of all this. The meaning of some bird showing up and some boy disappearing and you knowing all about it. The meaning of this was not to save you, but to warn you instead. To warn you of confusion and delusion and assumption. To warn you of psychics and zombies and ghosts of your lost brother. To warn you of Ada Taylor and her sympathy and mothers who wake you up with vacuums. To warn you of two-foot-tall birds that say they can help, but never do.

When one is sitting in his bedroom and, happening to glance out the window, sees his little brother walking slowly down
the driveway, he immediately jumps up, knocks over a stack of magazines piled up beside him, and runs through the doorway and down the hall. He throws open the front door, slams his body against the screen and, hearing the
tap tap tap
behind him, jumps over the porch steps and down to the driveway. He stands several yards in front of his brother. He considers running, but doesn’t. His arms and legs are shaking. His bottom lip between his teeth, he walks slowly and carefully, making not a sound. He stops, reaches one arm out, and pokes Gabriel Witter on the left shoulder with his index finger. He smiles the slightest of smiles.

Book Title #89:
Where Things Come Back.

This novel, in all of its incarnations, wouldn’t have been possible without the assistance, inspiration, and support of many people.

I am endlessly and wholeheartedly grateful to Ken Wright, who took this novel under his wing and made sure to find it the perfect home; Namrata Tripathi, editor extraordinaire, who fell in love with this story and helped make it better than I ever thought it could be; and John Meils and the people at WeBook, who rescued me from literary obscurity.

There would be no story to tell had it not been for my parents, Wayne and Karen Whaley, who always let me be who I was: a loner with a knack for writing semi-depressing stories; my brother and sister, Brian and Deena, for the impact they’ve had on my growing up; and my extended family—from aunts and uncles to cousins and grandparents—whose lives and words have, no doubt, become many of my characters’ lives and words.

I will also never forget the encouragement I received before, during, and well after writing this novel. To Randi Anderson, for her skills with a highlighter and red pen; to Kimberly Powell, Charissa Sistrunk, Nate and Anna Nelson, Melody Harlon, and Lindsay Welsh, for their unending friendship and support; to
Buddy Merritt, for his tips on life; Dr. Susan Roach, for helping me appreciate being from the South; Dr. Andrew Higgins, for advising me not to settle for ordinary life; and to Genaro Ký Lý Smith, for teaching me to be a better writer. I also owe a great deal of gratitude to the many teachers I’ve had the honor of working with and to all of the hundreds of students, young and old, who’ve listened to me tell my stories for the last five years.

This story, while completely fictional, was inspired by an odd combination of the music of Sufjan Stevens; a story heard on National Public Radio; a small Arkansas town; my own home-town of Springhill, Louisiana; and a bird that refused to go away. Many thanks are owed to the above mentioned for their roles in what has been, for the past few years now, an obsession and a second life that I never expected to live.