The Bright Forever (17 page)

July 9

M
R. DEES
drove a powder-blue Mercury Comet, bought new in 1965 and used mainly in the winter when it was too cold for him to make the walk to school and whenever he wanted to drive to Bloomington to do some shopping. Otherwise, he preferred to walk.

But on this night, when he needed to be able to cover ground quickly, he backed the Comet out of his garage and started toward the Heights, where he meant to put his mind at ease by seeing that Junior Mackey had left Gooseneck and gone home, as Mr. Dees had recommended, rather than driving to Georgetown with that crazy scheme still in his head.

It was a sweetheart, that Comet. A Super 289 V-8 engine, multidrive Merc-O-Matic transmission, a deluxe sixteen-inch steering wheel, only twenty-one thousand miles on the odometer. It hummed along the Tenth Street spur, and even though it wasn’t one of those jazzy Mustangs or GTOs like the kids drove, it was in apple-pie order—Mr. Dees saw to that; he brought it in regularly to have the oil changed and made sure the tires had the proper pressure—and he felt confident driving along the empty street.

Then, as he was passing Mackey Glass, he recalled the details of Junior’s plan, and he had the thought that it wouldn’t hurt just to turn in and drive around behind the long buildings to make sure that everything was quiet there.

He pulled back into the yard behind the humped ridges of sand and limestone, and there he came upon a sight that stunned him. He had to step hard on his brakes to keep from rear-ending Junior’s truck. The Comet’s headlights swept over Junior and Gilley and a third man they had crowded up against the truck’s front fender. All three of them swung their heads toward the Comet’s lights to see who was finding them. Mr. Dees could see that the third man was Raymond R. and that Junior had the gun, the one he had carried into Mr. Dees’s house.

Mr. Dees switched off his headlights and the sight in front of him faded into the darkness. Little by little, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, the image came back to him, the three figures reemerging. Behind them, he could see the shadows of the smokestacks from the glass furnaces. Even though it was after midnight on Sunday and the glassworks were shut down, he could smell the heat from those furnaces in the muggy air.

He heard Junior shouting, intent on his business, unconcerned that Mr. Dees had happened to appear to witness it.

“All right, now,” Junior said. “Here’s what I want. I want to know what you’ve done with my daughter.”

Raymond R. was trying to get his breath. “I swear, mister. It’s like I’ve done told you. I don’t know.”

Junior held the Colt to the soft flesh under Raymond R.’s chin. He drew back the hammer. “You better know,” he said.

Gilley

I
WENT DOWN
there. My mother said, “Gilley, don’t.” But I went. Why did I do it? Because I’d taken to heart what my father said. This was about family, and I had something to prove—that I was man enough to stand beside him and do whatever we had to do to bring Katie back.
Love finds you,
Margot Cherry had told me.
Be ready
.

“Gilley,” my father said when he saw me. He had that Colt up under Raymond R.’s chin. “Gilley,” he said again, as if he were trying to make sure that what he saw was true. I’d had the nerve to come there, to be with him, to be whoever he needed me to be on this night when we didn’t know what would happen next.

July 9

M
R. DEES
sat in the Comet, and he closed his eyes. He wished he could put the car into gear and drive away and be finished with this night. But he was afraid to move because Junior had Raymond R. up against that truck, a gun under his chin, the hammer back. That was the last thing Mr. Dees saw before he closed his eyes: Junior pulling back that hammer. The sound lingered in his ears, that ratcheting that reminded him of the martins’ alarm call.

“Tell me,” Junior kept shouting, and Mr. Dees was afraid to do anything for fear that if he did, that gun would go off and Raymond R. would be dead, and then they would never know what had happened to Katie.

“I mean it, brother,” Raymond R. said, his voice quivering. “I don’t remember. That night? I was hopped up on booze and dope. I was a different man then. My life wasn’t mine. That night you’re wanting me to remember? It’s gone from me. I took too much junk, twice as much as usual, and now the truth is I don’t remember anything that you want me to. Believe me, brother. I’ve tried. It’s all gone. It’s like it never happened.”

And there they were, in a fix. What do you do, Mr. Dees wondered, when your daughter’s been missing nearly four days, and you have a gun to the head of the man you’re sure is responsible, and he can’t—or won’t—tell you what you need to know?

You go back. That’s the thought that came to Mr. Dees. It was what he told his students. You break the problem down into its parts; you zero in on a simpler computation and you learn it. You work your way back until you’ve learned everything you need to know to find the answer you thought was beyond your reach. You work your way back.

So he started. He got out of the Comet and came to where Junior and Gilley had Raymond R. pinned against the truck. “Let me talk to him,” he said to Junior. “You’re not the one to be doing this. Not now. You’re not in your right mind. I don’t blame you. Not for a second. It’s a horrible thing. Let me talk to him. Let me try.”

“Now you want to help?” Junior said. “After you already turned me down? Now you come sticking in your nose. This isn’t your affair. Go home.”

But Mr. Dees was already talking. “Listen now, Ray,” he said. “You know you had Katie that night.” Mr. Dees knew that he was risking that Raymond R. would recall that the two of them had seen her on the courthouse square, but he was willing to do that if it would mean information in exchange, information that would lead them to Katie. “Ray, all we want is for you to tell us what you did with her. Where did you take her? You need to tell us, Ray.”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” Raymond R. said. “Brother,” he said to Junior. “I know this uncle here, this Teach, he had his eyes on your girl. I’ll tell you that much. If you want to know what happened to her, you ought to ask him.”

“What’s he talking about?” Junior said.

“He’s talking out of his head,” said Mr. Dees.

“Teach, you know you took that snatch of hair from that little girl’s brush.”

For a while, no one said a word. Then Junior said, “Like you picked up that snapshot of Katie? Henry, what’s going on here?”

Then Mr. Dees had no choice. He had to say the words. He told Junior that on summer evenings he had hidden himself in the darkness and watched the Mackeys on their patio, had seen Gilley in the backyard practicing golf shots, Patsy tending to her roses, and Katie running over the grass, chasing after fireflies. “And you,” he said to Junior. “You were lucky. You were all lucky, and you didn’t even know it.”

He kept talking, and Junior let him. Everything that Mr. Dees had kept hidden came out. One night, when the Mackeys had driven to the Dairy Queen for ice cream, he had come up on their patio and taken a petal from one of Patsy’s roses and a fluff of hair from Katie’s brush. And yes, later, as he had already admitted to Junior, he had come into their house, had made his way to Katie’s room. He had opened her dresser drawers. He had stolen the snapshot, the one Gilley would later find on the porch swing. It was on that swing where the shameful thing had happened, where he kissed Katie, but he couldn’t tell Junior that. He could only say that he was a lonely man, that he was afraid of his loneliness. “You had everything I’ve always wanted,” he told Junior. “You had a family—a beautiful, beautiful family—and I couldn’t look away from it. I wished your life were mine.”

Junior eased the Colt’s hammer down and let his arm fall to his side. It was too much for him to listen to Mr. Dees describe how their family had been that summer. He could see the three of them on the patio, their figures dim and shadowy in the gathering dusk. He could hear Katie saying, as she had that Wednesday evening,
The library’s open until seven o’clock.
He could hear the noise her bicycle chain made as it rattled against its guard. Her hair flew out behind her as she pedaled away.

It made Junior angry that Henry Dees had seen them when they hadn’t known he was watching.

“What kind of man are you?” he said, his voice shaking with rage.

He took a step toward Mr. Dees, and that’s when Raymond R. swung his hand down, chopping at Junior’s wrist. The Colt fell to the ground. Raymond R. crouched down, his hand reaching out for the gun. Gilley reached for it, too, and he and Raymond R. fell to the ground, wrestling. Mr. Dees couldn’t see who had the gun, and for a moment, as the two rolled over and over in the gravel, puffs of dust rising around them, the Colt was held between their chests, each of them trying to get a good grip.

Junior was down on his knees, hovering over Gilley and Raymond R., trying to find his own opportunity to grab the Colt. “Gilley,” he called out. “Gilley.”

Raymond R. jerked his elbow backward and caught Junior in the head. At the same time, the gun came free, and it skittered over the gravel to lie at Mr. Dees’s feet.

He felt weak with everything that was happening so quickly. Junior was shaking his head, trying to get his bearings. Raymond R. had Gilley on his back. He was sitting astride his chest, his hands closing around his throat, choking off his air.

Mr. Dees told himself to move, to kick the gun away, to pick it up, to do something. But then a shadow stretched out over the gravel, and he saw Junior scrabbling on his knees to grab the Colt.

The breath rattled in Gilley’s windpipe. Mr. Dees heard it.

Then Junior fired. Raymond R.’s shoulders jerked back, as if someone had suddenly yanked on them. He fell backward onto the gravel. Junior shot him again, and again, and then three more times. Each time, fire flamed at the end of the barrel, and for an instant—Mr. Dees would remember this later—they were all standing there, lit up, unable to escape the brilliant flashes of light.

July 5

D
ARK WAS
coming on when Don Klinger, manager of the Georgetown Big John Grocery Store, saw Raymond R.’s truck pull into the lot. He parked at the far end by the Salvation Army drop-off box. He got out and walked through the glow from one of the lot’s sodium lights, and he took a minute to look at a couch someone had left. He sat down on it and crossed his legs.

“I couldn’t see into that truck,” Don says to this day. “Like I told you, it was nearly dark—must have been after nine—but I know it was that Ford pickup, the one with the black circles on the doors, and I know the man who got out of it was that Raymond R. And I’ll tell you what else. I could see that truck had wet mud on it. I could sure as shooting see that.”

Lois Treadway was working the cash register that night. “He come through my line,” she says when someone asks her for the story. “He bought a box of Hostess cupcakes—the orange kind, not the chocolate. That’s why I took note of him. ‘Not many people like these orange ones,’ I said to him, and he said he liked them just fine. When I give him his change, he held out his hand and I saw it was dirty. That’s when I noticed. He smelled like wet leaves, like river water, like mud.”

Mrs. Mavis Childs was standing at the front door of her house trailer on the south side of Georgetown where Route 59 angles to the east along the White River. “I was looking out for my husband. He was working across the river, building that power plant in Brick Chapel. He was putting in overtime and I was watching for him, hoping pretty soon I’d see his truck coming across the bridge. It was just after eight-thirty. That’s when that Raymond R.’s truck went by. I remember thinking what a funny-looking thing it was, that old truck with those black circles on it. I thought, Well, there goes someone down on his luck. I just got a peek as he went by. A little girl? I couldn’t tell you. Only that it was that truck, and it went across the river toward Brick Chapel.”

Danny Ginder, of Ginder’s Farm Service, was on Route 59 north of Georgetown, heading back to town. He’d been out to a farm to fix a tractor tire. “Must have been a little after nine-thirty. Yes, it was dark, but I was sitting up high in that winch truck, and when my headlights caught that Ford pickup, I could see good enough. There was one man in that pickup. One. That’s all. And he was driving slow, drifting over the centerline. I had to blow my horn at him to get him back in his lane. I’ll swear to it now just like I did then. It was that crazy-looking truck all right, and it was headed north toward Tower Hill.”

Tom Evers has long ago retired as chief of police, but even now when he walks into the Top Hat Inn or the Super Foodliner or the Coach House, no one can look at him—even folks who weren’t around back then—without thinking of that summer and Katie Mackey.

“We could trace him,” Tom says whenever someone convinces him to tell the story. “That Raymond Wright. We had him every move he made except for that time between when Mrs. Childs saw him cross the river and when he showed up at the Big John and then that Ginder boy saw him going back north. About a half an hour or so we couldn’t account for, like he just up and disappeared.”

July 9

W
HEN GILLEY
was a young boy, his father showed him how to make glass. Sand and limestone and soda ash went into the furnace, where the fire, its temperature anywhere from 1,500 to 3,200 degrees, melted the mix down until it was like honey. “You wouldn’t want to be in that furnace,” Junior said. “You’d be vaporized. There wouldn’t be anything left but the nails from the soles of your shoes. Now that’s no lie.”

The night he shot Raymond R., he lowered the Colt and said to Mr. Dees, “I imagine you didn’t bargain for this, but now you’re in it. Mister, you’re all the way in.”

Mr. Dees knew it was so. He’d been there as a witness to it all; he’d even involved himself by trying to make Raymond R. talk. Soon it would be clear that Raymond R. had vanished, that someone had come with the bail money that night, and then the man the police knew had kidnapped Katie Mackey was gone. Not a trace of him.

If it got out to Tom Evers that Mr. Dees knew something, he’d want answers, and those answers, if Mr. Dees gave them, would lead to this night and this moment—the one burned into him now forever: Junior Mackey and his boy, Gilley, and Mr. Dees, no closer than before to knowing where Katie was, and Raymond R. dead at their feet.

Gilley was sitting up now, rubbing at his throat, gulping breath into his lungs.

“You wanted my life?” Junior was shouting at Mr. Dees. “Well, now you’ve got it. As close as you’re ever going to come, anyway.”

He crouched down by Gilley, rubbing his hand in slow circles on his back, telling him to take his time, to breathe, everything was going to be all right. “You did what you had to do,” Junior said. “You went for that gun. You remember that. Whatever else you carry away from all this mess, you make sure you remember that you stepped up. You protected your family. That’s what we did here tonight, Gilley. We looked out for family, and how can that ever be wrong?”

Soon, Gilley’s breath came more easily and Junior helped him to his feet.

Mr. Dees was thinking that if by some chance Tom Evers never knew his part in this—if he went back to his house in Gooseneck and come September he stood at the head of his classroom and the years went on, years and years of other people’s children—there would still be Junior Mackey to answer to. Junior Mackey, who came to him now and leaned in close and whispered, “You can’t tell this. You know that, don’t you?”

“But he was choking Gilley. You had to do something.”

“You can’t tell it because I got him out of jail. You don’t need to know how. No one needs to know that. Tom Evers knows all about this Colt.” He held up the gun so Mr. Dees could get a good look at it. “He tried to get it away from me.”

“I wish you’d given it to him,” Mr. Dees said. “Now look what’s happened.”

“Listen to me,” Junior said. “I got this Wright out of jail and I brought him here under force. That’s conspiracy, Henry. Now there he is, dead. Not one bullet in him, the way someone would have shot him in self-defense, but six, the way someone would have shot him for the pleasure of it. Do you understand what I’m saying? Add it up, Henry. What’s this going to look like? Whatever they call it—murder, manslaughter—you’re in it, too. You were here when it happened. You tried to get him to talk. Is that much clear to you?” Mr. Dees nodded his head to say he understood. “Good. Now I want you to go home. I want you to forget what’s happened here. Go on, Henry. Gilley and I are going to take care of things.”

Mr. Dees knew he would drive away. He and Junior would seal the secret between them. As full of horror as it was, he would carry it with him the way he did the martins’ dawnsong, a memory all fall and winter, until he heard them again come spring. It would be his to recall, this night when Junior traveled so deeply into his love for Katie that he came to something else, something savage and seemingly not born of love at all. But there it was: how far a man would go, a man who was powerless to turn away from the most monstrous part of himself—the man he was when he was alone in the dark.

“I suppose you had your reasons for watching us, for taking those things of Katie’s,” Junior said. “I can’t say I understand it. In fact, if you want the truth, it disgusts me. If this was some other night, I’d show you what I think of it. I wouldn’t want to be you on some other night, Henry. If we were alone and I had a chance to hurt you, I would. The only thing I regret—I mean it, Henry—is that I still don’t know where to find Katie.” He leaned in even closer, the way boys sometimes did on graduation night to say quietly so no one else could hear,
Thanks, Mister Dees.
“Henry,” he said, and his voice was shaking, “if there’s a God, he’ll forgive me, don’t you think?”

“It’d be nice to think so,” Mr. Dees said.

Junior nodded. “Just tell me. You would have done it, too, wouldn’t you? Killed him? If she were your little girl and you were sure he was the one who took her, and you were sure .  .  .” His voice died away, and he couldn’t finish. Mr. Dees knew that. How long would it be before Junior would be able to say the words? How long before any of them would be able to say them? So many days had passed now, it was unlikely that Katie was still alive.

“Yes,” Mr. Dees said, knowing that he was lying, that the lie was necessary. As soon as he said the word, something opened inside him, and he knew it was his heart filling with a love unlike any he had ever felt: the truest kind, selfless and tolerant and enduring, the love a father had for his child. “Yes,” he said again. “I would have done it, too.”