Take Me There (20 page)

She finally returns to her work and starts tightening the valve cover gasket. “I heard about you causin’ trouble in town,” she says.

“I was just asking questions.”

“Humph!”

I wonder how a person who seems to be almost completely ostracized gets the town gossip so fast. I take a deep breath and say, “Arnie Golden told me you were the one who gave Jack Golden’s widow all that money.”

Levida throws the socket against the shop wall, and it echoes off the metal siding. Then she wipes her hands on a rag and puts them on her hips, puffing out her angry chest. “What are you doin’ here, boy?”

“Helpin’ you fix my car.”

“Not here in the workshop, here in Quincy. Why did you come back after all these years?”

“It was drug money, wasn’t it? Did he give it to you? Did you take it from him?” Maybe that’s why my father couldn’t split it with Travis and his “border connection.” Maybe there’s more money hidden in the barn, and that’s why Levida has us tearing it apart.

She studies me. Wrinkles her nose in thought. Seems to
thaw ever so slightly, like an iceberg when the temperature rises to thirty-five. Rubs her forehead with her fist and leaves a trail of grease. “Jack Golden was your daddy’s best friend. His mama and me went to school together,” she finally says. “Jack and D.J. played football together at Quincy High School, but then you would have known that if you had read the newspaper articles I gave you.”

I think of the third boy in the photo with my father and Travis Seagraves, and I realize it’s Jack.

“Why was Jack Golden with my father that night?”

“I don’t know.
I
wasn’t there,” she says, slamming down the hood of my car.

“But you do know
something
,” I say, wondering why she has to evade every single question I ask.

“Oh, I know a lot of things,” she says, pointing a black-stained finger in my face. “I know that your daddy couldn’t do enough to make your highfalutin mama happy. Her always talkin’ about goin’ to New York City. Always wantin’ fancy clothes. Never liftin’ a finger to help around this place. He worked like a dog to afford all the fine things she thought she needed, but it was never enough. Then her brother started comin’ round in his fancy blue Cadillac with all his talk of get-rich-quick schemes.”

“You mean my uncle Mitch?”

“You got any idea what it’s been like for me livin’ in this town after your grandpa died and your daddy went to prison? Havin’ to sell my land off piece by piece ’cause I didn’t have any help workin’ it? Havin’ to live with the cold stares of the townspeople who used to be my friends?”

She grabs the edge of the work table to steady herself as she
tries to catch her breath. “This town used to be a decent place to live, but it’s been losin’ itself, piece by piece, just like me and this farm.”

“Why didn’t you just leave?” I ask, thinking about how often my mother picked up and moved us. Wondering what it would be like to live in a place where everybody hated you because of something your kid had done.

She points out the window. “My daddy, my mama, and your granddaddy are all buried out on that hill. I ain’t goin’ nowhere till they put me in the dirt with ’em, so I don’t need you stirrin’ up trouble. Understand?”

“Yeah, I understand,” I say, thinking how old she looks in the light coming through the shop window, with her greasy coveralls and her frizzled gray hair going in a million directions.

Levida grabs a rag from the workbench and tries to wipe the dried grease from her hands, but it doesn’t help. They stay black and stained like mine.

I spend the rest of the afternoon helping Wade tear down a third wall in the barn, working like a crazy man. Sweat pours down my body like a river, and the glass cover on my watch actually steams in the heat, dragging on the hands until they finally stop.

That night Levida fixes us another huge meal. Pork chops, green beans, red potatoes, and something called red-eye gravy that she makes out of coffee and pork fat. I wonder if she puts on a spread like this when it’s just her and Charlotte. From the way she treats the pig, giving her extra gravy on her potatoes, I wouldn’t doubt it. Surely she’s not just cooking like this for our benefit.

Dorie, who came by to visit Wade after her shift at the drugstore, stays to eat with us.

“There are only three animals more intelligent than the pig,” Levida informs us. “The chimpanzee, the dolphin, and the elephant, none of which are worth a darn on a farm.”

All through dinner Levida continues to barrage us with pig facts. Dorie keeps one hand under the table, and Wade keeps a smile on his face so big he can hardly chew his food. I’ve never seen him this happy, and I’m glad he’s finally found love or lust or whatever this is.

“Pigs can run seven miles an hour. They can live up to twenty-seven years. Some of them can weigh as much as twenty-five hundred pounds, though Charlotte is a slim four-eighty-five.”

Wade giggles, and even Levida isn’t stupid enough to think it’s because of her recitation of pig trivia. “What have you got to be so cheerful about?” she asks him, as a piece of cherry pie falls out of his mouth.

“I got religion now.”

Levida glares at Dorie, who quickly loses her smile and puts both hands on the table.

“Be careful about gettin’ too much religion,” Levida warns him, looking from Wade to Dorie. “You don’t want folks to call you zealous.”

“Oh, don’t worry, ma’am. I ain’t the jealous type.”

Dorie and Wade watch old Looney Tunes reruns, giggling and holding hands while Levida and I wash the dishes. At ten o’clock Levida turns on the news and sits on the couch next to Dorie, bringing an end to the girl’s fun. She finally goes outside to the front porch with Wade for a very long good-night kiss.

I am surprised to see Arnie Golden on the TV screen in front of the Walls Unit in Huntsville. Tornado Tim stands beside him, along with a pretty black-haired woman I can only assume is Tornado’s mother.

“When a good man like my brother is shot down and slaughtered, the scales of justice are tipped, set off balance, made unstable—and that’s a dangerous situation for all of us. There is only one thing that will right those scales, and that’s what we’ve been waiting for these last eleven years.” Tornado and Mrs. Golden nod their sad heads in agreement. “The governor needs to understand that any lesser punishment for D.J. Dawson would minimize the value of the lives of the law enforcement officers who risk their necks each and every day for the people of this state.”

“Damn!”

“Watch your mouth,” Levida says. Then she turns off the TV and studies me. “Well, I don’t guess you boys can sleep in the barn no more. You better go fetch your gear.”

I can’t believe my luck. I walk outside to find Wade with his tongue halfway down Dorie’s throat. “C’mon,” I say. “We’re moving uptown.”

Dorie says good-bye reluctantly. Wade and I go out to the barn with flashlights to gather our few belongings, along with the sleeping bags Levida has loaned us. It would have been nice if she could have decided to be hospitable while it was still light out.

When we walk back to the house, I am surprised to find my grandmother standing on the porch, holding a lantern. “Follow me,” she says, and takes off down the dirt road that leads up a hill toward the family graveyard and into the darkness.

“Where we goin’?” Wade whispers to me as we approach the white picket fence that surrounds the row of wooden crosses.

For all I know my grandmother could be planning to shoot us and bury us with the rest of the family, but I don’t think it would help to share this notion with Wade.

“There it is,” Levida says as a single-wide mobile home appears in the glow of her lantern, over the hill, just beyond the graves. “Home sweet home.” She strides toward it, finds a pile of empty beer bottles in her path, and kicks them out of the way. “Darn kids,” she says, and then walks up the metal steps and opens up the door, which isn’t locked, because the handle has been jimmied. I imagine late-night beer parties at an abandoned trailer, wonder if any liquor has been left behind, and try to push away the thought as Wade and I follow her inside to a darkened living room. “I’ll fire up the generator tomorrow so you can have electricity. You can keep the lantern until then.” She sets it down on a table next to an old coffee can filled with ashes and cigarette butts. Picks up the can. Shakes her head. “I shot the back window out of one of their trucks last month, but they don’t ever learn.”

By the dim light of the lantern I can see a couch and a table with names carved into the wood.

I remember it. This is the place where I lived with my parents. This was our home. It hasn’t changed one bit, except for the vandalism.

The memories come washing over me in waves.

The couch, still covered in a hideous brown plaid fabric, is where I used to watch
Seinfeld
with my mother. Next to the couch are the pencil marks on the wall where my father used to chart my growth. The living room opens up across a bar into a kitchen. There is the pantry door next to the refrigerator. I think about the bag of peanuts my father used to keep
on a shelf in the back, remember what was hidden there, and shudder.

“Sweet dreams,” Levida tells us, but there is nothing sweet in the way she says it.

That night I dream of blood. Rivers of it flowing across the floor of the trailer. Blood dripping down the metal steps, finding its way into the dirt, where it cuts a trail all the way from the Hill Country of Texas to the sandy beaches of California and the Pacific Ocean, where it stains the whole sea red.

It’s just like Arnie Golden told me. Blood never forgets. It has a memory of an ancient path toward home.

THE RIVER

Blood is a river.

       One drop follows another

                    until they all reach the bottom

                                                            of

                                                                   the

                                                                                deep

                                                              blue

                                                                    sea.

I
T IS THE EARLY MORNING HOURS, JUST AFTER DAYBREAK
, when I hear a gunshot. I scramble to my feet from the couch, still half asleep. Look around the living room. Wade and Baby Face are curled up on the floor.

I look out the window, half expecting to see Tornado T. and his friends or maybe even Eight Ball, but no one seems to be out there.

Take a closer look at the window itself. See blood splattered across the blue curtains.

I kneel down next to Wade and shake him awake. “Are you okay?” I ask him.

“Let me sleep,” he mumbles, rolling away from me.

I check Baby Face, thinking maybe she’s been hit by a stray bullet, but she’s perfectly fine.

I check myself, thinking maybe I’m in shock and dying and don’t even know it, but I’m completely intact, except for my imagination, running wild.

I glance toward the door, wondering if someone is going to burst through at any moment, and notice the clock.

It’s an old windup clock shaped like a house.

A cuckoo clock.

I stagger backward a step. See the graffiti above the clock.

THE DEATH HOUSE

This is the room of my nightmares.

This is the room where Jack Golden died.

I walk slowly back over to the window.

Inspect the curtain.

The blood is dried. Old. Black.

I slip on my shoes, don’t even bother with a shirt, and run as fast as I can down the dirt road back to Levida’s house.

She is outside hanging laundry on the clothesline and does not seem at all surprised to see me.

“What kind of game are you playing with me?” I say.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says curtly, applying a row of clothespins to a flowered sheet. Levida picks up her basket and moves down to an empty place on the line.

I take the basket away from her. “What happened in that trailer?”

“I wasn’t there!” she yells, grabbing the basket back, and then she throws it on the ground between us, sending socks and underwear flying. Her voice grows as quiet as a whisper but keeps its razor edge. “But you were.”

With that she hurries back to the farmhouse, leaving the clothes behind.

I can see the clock. I can hear the gunshot. I can even see the blood on the curtains, but I can’t see anything else.

I take a deep breath, try to steady my shaking limbs, and go
inside the house to find my grandmother chopping potatoes, hacking at them with a butcher knife. “I was six years old,” I manage to say, though my throat is as dry as a bone.

“That’s old enough to remember,” she says, without looking up.

“But I don’t.”

“Or maybe you just don’t want to.” She scoops the potatoes up in her hands and throws them into a pot filled with water, then finally looks me in the eyes. “Maybe all this runnin’ around and askin’ questions, nosin’ into other people’s business is to keep yourself so busy that you don’t have to look at the truth.”

I open my mouth to reply, but I cannot speak—because I have no answers.

“So quit asking everybody else questions, unless you’re ready to answer some questions yourself.”

I walk back up to the trailer, go inside, try very hard not to look at the curtains or the clock as I grab a shirt from the cardboard box. I look for Jess’s note, but it has fallen out of yesterday’s pants. Searching frantically, I find it under the couch. Open it. Look at the words to make sure they are still there; half-afraid they might have erased themselves. Jess is the only thing in my life that seems real, but she is a thousand miles away.

I carefully refold the paper. I hold it to my lips, then slip it into my pocket, and I am gone.

When I get to the prison I’m not even sure my father will want to talk to me, but his eyes fill with relief when he sees me through the glass.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come back,” he says.