Dogwood (15 page)

“Is that what Mama saw in you?”

He chuckled, one eye closed, one focused on a twinkling star a million miles away. “Your mother shattered all my theories about marriage and matters of the heart. It was like finding out the law of gravity sent apples flying up instead of down. I was in her spell the moment I met her.”

“So there is love at first sight?”

“I suppose. Though I think for most people it’s not ‘falling in love’ that happens; it’s more of a slow drift. If you can drift one
way, you can drift the other. That’s why it’s so important to have your heart right.”

“Meaning . . . ?”

He turned on his side, an elbow crooked. “When you say ‘I do’ to someone—no, when you tell her you love her and ask her to marry you—you’d better be ready to commit yourself to that person for the rest of your life. And that means no matter what. You find someone you click with better, she turns out to be a slob, you strike it rich and want to go some other way—no matter what happens, you have to find a way to love her the rest of your life.

“Most marriages get tough. Sometimes it’s right away, sometimes it takes a while, but usually you find out somewhere down the road that the things you wanted and the things you got were different. The trick is to hang in there long enough to let your hearts win out over everything else. If you pick a woman who’s looking for a good heart in her husband, you’ll make it.”

He squinted at the fire as the embers grew hotter. Our extra potatoes steamed in their foil wrapping. “You got someone in mind already?”

I smiled at the memory and the way I’d tossed the question away, but I think he could tell even then there was someone. It would be years from that night before I could prove to Karin that my heart was something to fight for. That it was worth her devotion. It was to be a blood sacrifice neither of us could imagine.

I drifted off to sleep with the crackling fire and night noises. An owl flew overhead. Crickets chirped. There were no slamming doors, laughing guards, clinking keys, or flushing toilets.

Are you looking at this right now?
I thought.
Is any part of you thinking of me tonight, Daddy?

My father once told me that your first waking thought in the morning—the first thing that pops into your mind other than having to run to the bathroom—that’s the thing your heart is turned
toward. If you immediately think of work or a baseball game or something political, that’s what holds you.

If he was right, my heart had been turned toward Karin a long time. Whether it was wrong to want her as my wife, whether someone would judge me because of her situation wasn’t my concern. It was simply the truth. I loved her. I wanted her back. And as I closed my eyes and drifted off, I knew the first thing in my mind when I woke would be her.

I let my mind wander back to the concert—the last full night we spent together.

July 1, 1980

Cincinnati, Ohio

Our lips had never touched until that night.

Karin and I had driven to school together for a few months before the concert. Her father had set up the ride, promising Karin would pay me a few dollars for gas each week. She had returned from a failed year away at college—she hadn’t talked much about it—and was without a car. I assured her father that payment wasn’t necessary. I was glad to give her a ride and it was right on my way, which wasn’t true. It took a few extra minutes to get to her place, but I looked forward to time with her. On some days I waited three hours for her to finish class, but I spent my time in the library studying. Before her last class ended, I would make my way to the stairs and move outside, where I could catch her coming out the doors. She always seemed surprised to see me.

In all of our rides and talks, Karin hadn’t come close to showing an interest in me romantically. She’d actually talked about her different boyfriends, pulling me into her inner world as a confidant. I was taking a summer school photography class and asked if she would be my subject in a black-and-white assignment. I convinced her that she would be perfect because of her hair color and its contrast with her skin. After a few days of cajoling and a promise that I would buy her dinner afterward (which I had cunningly devised as a pretense—I would have taken her
to dinner in a second), she agreed but on the condition I would take her photographs at a cemetery. It seemed odd at the time, but I didn’t question it. I was just glad she had said yes to my proposal.

It was during the photo shoot that the subject of my birthday came up. Karin had begged me to turn off the makeshift cassette player I had hooked up and let her listen to the radio. I could not believe a person would listen to commercials and music others picked, but I let her flip stations until she found a song she liked.

“You like Jackson Browne, don’t you?” she said, taking my camera and trying to make sense of the settings.

“I only have a couple of shots left—”

“He’s coming to Cincinnati in a few weeks,” Karin said, holding the camera to her eye, a slender finger dancing over the shutter release. “July 1.”

“I heard about it, but I have to work the next morning.”

“I got us tickets,” she said, then laughed as she took my picture.

There’s a line in one of Browne’s songs about a man taking a picture of a lover turning—the camera captures a moment in time, a childish laugh, and that recorded moment secures a trace of sorrow. She perfectly captured my surprise at the invitation.

“How did you get tickets?” I said.

“The morning show I listen to was giving them away. I won two in the VIP section on the floor. We even got backstage passes.”

My mouth dropped.

“You want to go, don’t you?”

“Yeah, it’s just that I don’t—”

“Take a walk on the wild side. We can drive up in the afternoon, see the concert, then drive back on your birthday. That is your birthday, right?”

I nodded.

“Come on, Will. It’ll be fun.”

Over dinner we talked about the trip and the effect Browne’s
music had on me. “I was walking by the electronics section of a department store months ago. There was a record on the player spinning, the sound down, but there was something about the voice and the words that drew me. I listened to the entire side, flipped it over, and listened to the next. I stood there, mesmerized. It was incredible.”

“Did you buy the album?”

“No, but I thought seriously about it.”

“You are so cheap. Just like my dad.”

I said little to my parents about the trip, just that I was going to be out late. I assumed Karin said little to hers.

After work, we drove the three and a half hours to Cincinnati. I found parking close to the Riverfront Coliseum, as it was called then, and we wandered around the city, looking at the buildings and stores. I took a picture of Karin at Fountain Square, the middle of the city, and an older man asked if I wanted one of both of us. I smiled beside her, as happy as I had ever been, not making much physical contact. Before the man snapped the photo, she grabbed me around the waist and hugged me tightly, burying her head in my chest. I reacted by wrapping my arms around her. The shutter snapped, and we had our first photograph together.

“You need to loosen up, big boy,” she said.

We ate at a quaint restaurant she picked out because it served Italian food. I gasped at the prices but tried not to show my concern. Since the tickets were free, I figured we could splurge for the meal.

“Where do you want to be in ten years?” Karin said out of the blue.

The question took me by surprise, but I dabbed at my mouth with a stunningly white napkin and came up with an answer. “After tonight, I think I want to be somewhere with you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Come on.”

“Seriously, I think this is the most fun I’ve ever had.”

“Good answer, but not good enough,” Karin said. “
Where
do you want to be? Do you want to be like George Bailey and see the world? Or is Dogwood enough?”

“You say it like it’s a hellhole.”

“It is to some people.”

“I guess it’s all in your perspective. The way I look at it, the world is filled with lots of places, all of them different but basically the same. When you surround yourself with good people, it doesn’t really matter
where
you are.”

She poked at her shrimp and scallops in white sauce, finally snagging a swirl of pasta. “People are looking for more than just friends and a place to stay. They want passion. They want to
live
. They want to abandon their lives to something bigger than they are. Do you understand that?”

“I think people want their lives to mean something. That when you get to the end and look back, you’ll be able to say it counted. If that’s what you mean about finding something bigger, I agree.”

Karin sat back, dropping her fork. “I don’t think I could ever go for a guy like you, Will.”

The way she said it was painful, so matter-of-fact. “And why’s that?”

“You’re too predictable. Your idea of passion is planting something and watching it grow or working at the same job for thirty years. The world’s a lot bigger than Dogwood. There are places waiting to be discovered, waiting for the first person to set foot in the sand of some exotic beach.”

“I could go for an exotic beach or two. But have you ever put a foot on the limestone on our hill?”

Karin gave a heavy sigh. “That’s just what I expected. I’m talking about islands, places where the people have never seen a person with skin as white as ours.”

“As pretty as yours.”

“Stop trying to win me with compliments.”

“Stop being so passionate.”

“You’re incorrigible,” she said, stuffing a shrimp into her mouth.

“Does that mean you like me? They don’t use big words like that in Dogwood.”

She laughed and I knew I’d won at least some part of her heart.

We finished our meal and walked around the city some more. We ate ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins, and she threw most of hers in the trash, crunching the cone.

We walked to the Coliseum, taking pictures of Jackson’s bus. Mostly we found 18-wheelers carrying equipment. We did get one shot of David Lindley, the long-haired lap guitar player who punctuated Browne’s music with the searing lead riffs. He wore sunglasses and his hair flowed down his back, and he flashed us the peace sign.

Karin paused at the doors to the Coliseum. Six months earlier the Who had performed here, and in the confusion of fans storming these very doors, eleven were trampled to death. It was eerie walking inside the building. Standing on a spot where people had lost their lives seemed to unnerve her.

Our seats, assigned and numbered because of the tragedy, were on the floor, in the middle. The air filled with familiar concert smells, beer and an occasional waft of marijuana. The crowd began to sense something happening onstage when the lights went out. I heard drumsticks clicking through the whistles and cheers, and then the blasting beat of the guitar and the drums engulfed us.

I awoke, cold as a stone, something sizzling in the fire behind me. My back stiff, I turned and saw ashes smoking as a man poured a yellow stream. It didn’t take me long to figure out what the liquid was or that the person zipping up his brown pants was Eddie Buret.

He spat a stream of brown tobacco juice at the ground by my head. I could tell he had deadly accuracy, and I wondered if he was as good with his gun.

“Checked in with your parole officer yet?” Eddie said. He spoke around the chaw.

“Yesterday,” I said.

“Good for you, Hatfield. Nice and prompt. Keep that up. Hate to see you get thrown back in over a technicality.” He scanned the view and took a deep breath. “Real nice up here. Imagine you never thought you’d get back.”

I let the statement hang in the reddening sky, remembering the old proverb my father used to quote:
Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.

“It’s a pretty piece of ground. Too bad your dad didn’t have the gumption to sell it when he could.”

“What do you mean?”

Eddie waved a hand. “What’s done is done. Can’t go back to the past, right?” He crouched like a catcher, his knees cracking, looking into my face to read something that wasn’t there. “How’d
those old boys treat you up in Clarkston? Probably a lot better than Moundsville, huh? I’ve heard stories of that place. But you don’t look too much worse for the wear. Must’ve found somebody to protect you.” He smiled and I saw bits of tobacco on his yellowing teeth. His star had the word
Chief
on it.

“Didn’t know you decided to go into law enforcement,” I said. “Last I heard, you were trying to break into NASCAR.”

“When your father has lots of influence, you take what you’re offered. He convinced me it might be a good career move, and I guess he was right.”

Eddie didn’t wear a wedding band, and I imagined a string of lonely apartments he had moved out of that would never look the same.

“Thanks for your concern,” I said.

“You don’t have to get smart about it.” He stood, kicking a rock into the fire and sending a fresh wave of ashes over me. He surveyed the scene like a conqueror of a new world. “Everybody’s asking about you. If you’d actually have the cojones to come back. I think they wanted to know if you were really that stupid, to tell you the truth.”

I kept quiet, letting him grandstand. My father always said to let people talk who seemed to have the inclination. You could learn a lot more that way. He also said when a man talks to an empty theater, he’s doing it for himself.

“That friend of yours Arron—you always called him Elvis. You hear from him?”

“I heard he was missing.”

“Well, that’s what his mother says. And his sister. Now there’s a choice piece.” Eddie shook his head. “I figured you and him being best friends and all, he might have said something to you.”

“Elvis wasn’t much of a writer. The last time I saw him was before Thanksgiving last year.”

“Didn’t mention any trips or plans he had?”

I shook my head. “What do you think happened?”

“Guy like that—in trouble most of his life, not too bright—probably just decided he needed to make a new start. Know what I mean?”

I knew what he meant, but he was wrong. Elvis wasn’t some dim bulb. We used to pass notes to each other in school about various teachers and class members. Veiled and shaded meanings that often took me days to decipher. I couldn’t wait to tell him about this meeting.

Eddie looked at me through his sunglasses, then crouched again. “I’m gonna be straight with you. This is a bad idea, you coming back here. There’s family and kin of those dead kids not two miles from here. My daddy was the first one on the scene that morning, and he still can’t shake what he saw. Those kids lying there in the mud and the blood. Gravel all over. Your license plate embedded in the guardrail. And all the radiator fluid. That’s not an easy thing for a town to get over. You’d be a lot better off over in Poca or St. Albans—just about anywhere other than here. It’s for your own good.”

“So you’re worried about what might happen to me? I didn’t know you cared.”

“I care about keeping things peaceful, just like they are. You stir some people up, they’ll come here with a long rope and a noose on the end of it. Then I have to go throw some good people in jail.”

I sat up and brushed the dew and ash from my sleeping bag. “That’s real kind of you. I know people have bad feelings about me, but I can’t help that. This is my home. I grew up here and I plan on staying.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“I guess we will.”

Eddie stood, and the leather belt and holster creaked like an old bedspring. “It’s her, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Yes, I want to take care of my mother until—”

“You know who I’m talking about, and it’s not your mother.”

I yawned and stretched in the clothes I had worn on my trip from Clarkston, popping my neck and back. I felt something return, like some injured warrior or bruised lineman about to enter the field of battle. “I don’t know that my personal life is anybody’s business but mine.”

He kicked another stone into the fire. “You’re a marked man. There’s not a person in this county who wouldn’t hire me for life if I was to pull out my pistol right now and put a bullet between your eyes.”

“Maybe, but you’d have some explaining about why you shot an unarmed man who was just trying to take care of his mother.”

“Not a soul would care, not even your brother. He’s so tired of hearing it from people around here that he’d probably write a thank-you letter to the editor.” Eddie spat again, this time splattering the sleeping bag with brown juice. “You know what your problem is? You’ve got real bad timing. You realize if you’d been a minute earlier or later all those years ago, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d have finished school, probably married some cheerleader or professor’s assistant, and moved on to the big time. Instead, you’re sleeping out here on the ground in your prison issues with no future.”

I crawled out and began rolling up my sleeping bag.

“You could have done something with your life. You and that girl you were so taken with.”

My muscles tensed. In my mind, I was on him fast, driving him into the fire pit like a blindsided quarterback, then jumping on top of him and pummeling him. My heart beat wildly, the dormant juices of anger flowing. He said something else about Karin, and it was all I could do to hold back.

“I did a drive-by the other night for some people who thought they saw a prowler. She was standing next to a window with the
shades up, undressing. And you know what? That girl still has it. I remember the taste of those lips. How about you?”

I stared at him, and this time I had his attention, his eyes trained on me, waiting to see how I’d react. “I’m not going to cause you any trouble. Last thing I want to do is draw attention.”

“See to it, then.” Eddie took a few steps down the hill and spoke over his shoulder as he walked. “Your mother told me to tell you she has your breakfast ready. Best not keep her waiting.”

I scraped dirt onto the embers of the fire, but he wasn’t finished. He took one more look from hill to hill. “Sure is a fine piece of land.”

The lineaments of the mountain helped me settle into the task of daily living outside my prison. I called it
my
prison because each inmate seems to carry with him a singular impression of the steel and linoleum, the sounds, the smells. Ask any prisoner what it is like to lose his freedom and if he’s honest or if he believes you really care, he will give a distinct answer. It may be the types of music you are forced to hear or not hear, or it could be the wafting fecal smell that permeates that world. Whatever it is, whatever the cost of freedom to the individual, it is impossible to shake that knowledge as you sit outside the scope and range of those interior walls. It continues every day of your life, every time you wake, every drifting moment of sleep, every time you sit down to a meal.

For me, it was the loss of an innate dignity I had experienced since childhood—the ability to watch nature’s sublime work on the land. The planting and growing, the process of seeds dying and springing forth to harvest. I regimented my mind inside those walls with reading, exercise, word jumbles, and crossword puzzles. If I couldn’t finish the four words in the jumble in less than thirty seconds, I considered my effort a failure. But no matter how much I trained my mind to think of other things, I never
became used to the fact that nothing on the inside of prison ever
grew
. Other than weeds through the concrete on the basketball court, we didn’t participate in growth. We were simply wasting brain cells, flushing them from our bodies like toxins, never to be used again.

The first few weeks after my release, I set my mind to several tasks, including cleaning out the basement, dismantling what was left of the barn, and taking inventory of all the farm supplies and equipment worth salvaging. To my surprise, much of the wood I pried loose from the barn was weathered but still usable.

The pile of boards was growing steadily when a younger man turned in to the driveway and joined me. His name was Earl, a cousin of someone who lived back in the hollow.

“You could make a fortune by selling this stuff,” he drawled.

“That so?”

“Yeah, people are hungry for old things. Spinning wheels, corncribs, that kinda stuff. If you can take it apart, I can help you get it down to the flea market, and you could make some good money.”

“Why don’t I just sell it to you?” I said. “I’ll probably use some of this for a shed later, but the rest you can have.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “How much you want for it?”

“Take the whole thing for five hundred dollars.”

“I ain’t got five hundred dollars.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Just take what you think you can sell and give me 20 percent.”

Earl lifted his eyebrows. “How much is that?”

“You make a hundred dollars; you give me twenty.”

His eyes lit up. “I can put some stuff in the back of my truck right now.”

I helped him load an old loom and some rickety farm equip
ment, a seed planter, a few chairs, and some of my grandfather’s old records.

“You’re that fellow, aren’t you?” Earl said as he closed the truck gate. “The guy who killed—”

“Yeah, I’m him.” He just looked at me and I coughed. “I’ll keep the stuff for a few more days, so if you want any more, just have at it.”

In my quest for what I’d missed, what I’d lost, I rented every Academy Award–winning picture since I had been incarcerated, becoming conversant with the stars and subject matter. I also applied for a library card and printed the
New York Times
best-seller list for the past fifteen years. I vowed I would read each number one fiction and nonfiction book that I hadn’t read in prison and round out my list with several classics.

My first trip to rent a video was a sensory experience I could hardly handle. The rows of movies left me helpless, and I gradually found myself retreating to the meager shelves of the library for less choice, more substance.

I went into town as little as I could, other than to take my mother for groceries, and my mission this day was a permit for a bonfire to rid the barn of every scrap Earl didn’t take. I kept the car at or below the speed limit in town, but I nearly swerved into oncoming traffic when I spotted what was left of our high school.

I parked on the street and crossed, oblivious to traffic until someone honked. I waved, stepped back, and waited in front of the only familiar sight left, the F-86 Sabre that was displayed near the entrance to the school. It was now flanked by a defunct hot dog stand, peeling orange paint on the building, eaves hanging precariously.

The junior high had been built on a knoll with the high school directly behind it and much lower, which made it prone to flood
ing each year. But there was nothing on the knoll—it was just a vacant piece of land.

There is something about the loss of a school that tears at the soul. Memories of teachers and plays and music performances cannot be bulldozed from the mind, but the town had tried. How many times had I run up the front steps of that school in practice, toning my body, keeping in step with a coach’s whistle? The cinder blocks holding up the school’s name were gone, and a weathered sign was sunk deep into the ground in its place: “Future Home of First National Bank.”

I climbed the diminished knoll, then walked down the other side toward the covered bridge. It had been restricted to foot traffic now, blocked by orange and white traffic horses. Even the river below had changed. It had eaten away at the bank, and several trees that had looked like pillars were gone, torn out by some flood. Most things in town seemed smaller to me, but this was one exception. The river had widened its path and seemed much deeper.

The new high school was another five miles west, and I wondered how early the kids at the other end of town had to awaken in order to make the bus trip. I shuffled to the edge of the river and up to the walkway. The murky water rushed past, deep and troubled beneath, as if I were somehow looking at my future in Dogwood.