Under the Mercy Trees (10 page)

The baptism didn't mean anything to Martin, except that it made his mother happy. Hodge, though, took it very seriously. He talked about his personal walk with Jesus until Martin began to feel jealous that Hodge had found a new best friend. The creek ran behind the church, a good twenty feet wide, close enough that the sanctuary flooded every few years. The day of the baptism, the four candidates waited in the doorway of the church, watching the rest of the congregation assemble on the bank. The preacher's wife was in charge of them, to make sure they had clean underwear on under their white cotton robes and another dry pair to change into afterward. They couldn't hear what Brother Pike said from where they were, but when he raised an arm and motioned to his wife, she told them to come on and led them toward the bank and their waiting families. Crabgrass cut the bottoms of Martin's bare feet. The Gaddy girls were in front, then Hodge, then Martin. Brother Pike beckoned for Nancy Gaddy to come forward.

While the preacher was prodding Nancy to state her profession of faith out loud, Hodge whispered, “Martin?” His face was even more earnest than usual. “I ask your forgiveness,” he said.

“Huh?” Martin said.

“I ask your forgiveness,” Hodge hissed as Nancy Gaddy rose dripping from the creek and Betty Gaddy started forward.

“What for? I'm not God, you know.” Martin watched the preacher put Betty Gaddy under and counted one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, wondering how long he would be able to hold his breath.

“That time, when Leon came down to the sawmill and started hitting on you,” Hodge said.

Martin remembered. He'd had other beatings from his brother, but that one stood out.

“I'm sorry for running away. I'm sorry for leaving you like that.”

Martin wasn't sure what to say.

The preacher beckoned to Hodge. Hodge grabbed Martin's arm. “Do you forgive me?”

“Sure. Sure I do,” Martin said, because it seemed important to his friend.

Hodge breathed a sigh and walked down to the water. As the preacher immersed him, Martin's mother leaned forward from the front row of people on the bank and caught Martin's eye, smiling at him. He smiled back. Hodge rose dripping from the creek, his thin hair plastered to his head, and Brother Pike called, “Martin Owenby.”

Martin walked down to the bank. The sand was wet and cold under his toes. The preacher put a bony hand on his back, just as he'd said he would. Martin told the crowd that Jesus was his Lord and Savior. Brother Pike tipped him back. He could feel the cloth on his nose. Above him, a mockingbird left a branch and flew into white sky. He went under the water and came up, catching his breath, his robe heavy around him.

“Martin Owenby, you are a child of God, and He takes great delight in you,” the preacher declared.

From the bank, Martin heard his mother's clear, plain contralto begin a melody, and others join in, weaving harmony.

From every stormy wind that blows,

From every swelling tide of woes,

There is a calm, a sure retreat;

'Tis found beneath the mercy seat.

There is a scene where spirits blend,

Where friend holds fellowship with friend;

Tho' sundered far, by faith they meet

Around one common mercy seat.

Brother Pike helped Martin wade back up the bank, and Mrs. Pike shoved him up the hill to get changed. Martin and Hodge never talked again about the day Leon caught them.

*  *  *

At ten, Martin had no sins to wash away, and the baptismal cleansing didn't last for him like it did for Hodge. In particularly drunk moments since then, he had wished he could do it again. He could use a wash now, a good soak or scrub, to remove all the sins he'd accumulated. But God only lets you go under one time.

He turned onto Main Street. The few trees that lined the street had dug their toes into the dirt, pushing up squares of sidewalk. Martin tripped and stumbled, noticing as he caught himself how much less nimble he was than just a few years ago. Time was taking the spring out of his step. He sat down on a bench in front of the liquor store he had visited that day, now closed. In the window of the antiques store next door objects vied for space, iridescent dishes of carnival glass, old
Life
magazines, delicate silver picture frames holding photos of people long forgotten. He lit a cigarette and waited for the cold October air to dull his buzz.

A sheriff's patrol car pulled up to the curb. Shit. Martin exhaled smoke all around him, waving his cigarette back and forth like the pope swinging incense on Christmas eve, to cover up any marijuana smell that hadn't yet aired out of his clothing.

The patrol car's passenger-side window rolled down. Hodge leaned out on his elbow. “Want a ride?” The sheriff was at the wheel.

Martin couldn't refuse. He exhaled one more time and crushed his cigarette out on the sidewalk. He got into the backseat of the patrol car, realizing only after he closed the door that there was a cage between him and the front seat.

“Make you nervous?” Hodge grinned back at him.

It did make him nervous. He stared out the window to his right to keep from feeling claustrophobic.

“We were just over in Punkintown, talking to a witness who told one of my deputies she'd seen your brother,” the sheriff said.

“Really?” Martin leaned forward.

“Yep.” Wally's strong, square-nailed hands rested at two and ten o'clock on the steering wheel. The hair on the back of his neck was cut in a perfect straight line. “Old lady called and said she saw Leon at the bus station yesterday, getting on a bus to Charlotte. Me and Hodge go out there to her house, turns out she hadn't seen a thing. She heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody.” He shook his head. “Happens all the time. Witnesses are useless. I'll take good, hard physical evidence over an eyewitness any day. The deputy who sent me out on this goose chase is going on crosswalk duty tomorrow.”

“What'd you do tonight?” Hodge asked Martin.

“Ate Chinese with Steven and Trina.”

“Fong's Fine Foods. Gives me indigestion,” Wally said. His police radio blurted something unintelligible. He ignored it.

“Did they tell you about Ivy buying that nice headstone for Shane?” Hodge always knew the Owenby family news before Martin did.

“Yes.”

“Who's Shane?” Wally said.

“Ivy's oldest son. He killed himself, maybe ten or twelve years ago,” Hodge said.

“Twenty years ago.” Martin felt carsick. He tried his window, but it was locked. He leaned his head against the cool glass. An oncoming car's headlights swept over them, imprinting him with the cross-hatched pattern of the patrol car's cage bars.

“Has it really been that long?” Hodge said.

“Before my time,” Wally said.

Wally pulled into the well-lit parking lot of the Municipal Building, next to Hodge's pickup truck. Hodge freed Martin from the back of the patrol car, and Wally drove off. They got in Hodge's truck and drove toward Eugenia's, where Martin would be able to retrieve his bottle from under the bed and finally get a decent drink.

“I've been wanting to float an idea by you,” Hodge said.

“What's that?”

“The dean over at the community college told me last week there's an opening in the English department. They need somebody to teach literature. I mentioned to him that you'd be in town and that I'd tell you about it. He was real excited. He was a student of Liza's in high school. She makes all her students read your plays.”

“Oh, God.”

“Don't be embarrassed. The Lord gave you a talent. You should be proud of it.”

Martin wondered if Hodge had ever read his plays. Hodge loved him enough that he'd probably tried. “Hodge, I can't teach at the community college. I live in New York.”

“But you don't have to go back just yet. You could stay in the apartment we built for my mother-in-law in the basement. She was only in it six months before she died, and now it's filling up with junk. We'd charge you two hundred dollars a month rent, you could come and go as you pleased.”

Martin looked over at him. “You've got it all planned out.”

“This situation with Leon is hard on your family. They need you. Every day that passes without us finding him, I think about your mama, how much her family meant to her. She would have wanted you children to look out for each other. Think about it.”

Martin knew it would make his family happy if he stayed, not because he could do anything, but for the comfort of having one more person to stand with while they waited for word.

Hodge's headlights swept over cornfields. A night fog was descending. A possum scuttled off the side of the road.

He had once assumed he would stay in this place. Despite his experimentation with Mr. Samuels and the games he played with Hodge as a child, he assumed he would grow up and marry Liza. Deke Armstrong changed that. If Deke hadn't, some other man would have.

*  *  *

The night of Martin's play, Deke's muscled chest pressed against Martin's back, slick with sweat. Warm hands defined Martin's body. Deke opened him up, split him in two, and the old Martin dissipated into air, leaving a new Martin breathing hard into cool sheets.

When Deke fell asleep, Martin slipped out of the house, wanting time alone to think. He was aghast and exhilarated at what he had just done, guilty and triumphant when he imagined what his father and brothers would think if they knew. His muscles were sore, as if he'd been in a race and won. The night was silent, except for the occasional sound of tire chains chinking or the metallic scrape of a snow shovel on concrete. He hoofed across backyards, snow spilling over the tops of his shoes. He lost the feeling in his toes, but the rest of him had never felt so sharp and alive. As he approached Mrs. Bowen's boardinghouse, the glare of the bare yellow bulb that lit her porch hurt his eyes. Mrs. Bowen opened the door and peered out. He began to formulate the excuse he would give her for coming in so late, but when he reached the porch she called out to him, her voice kind.

“Martin, come in here.”

He climbed the steps. Mrs. Bowen's gray hair hung long down her back. Her face, instead of being angry, was full of pity. “It's your mama, son.” She pulled him into the stale warmth of her foyer. “Dr. Vance called and said she passed.”

His mother had died while he was luxuriating in applause and pleasure. He felt his whole body go numb, like a slept-on limb. In front of him Mrs. Bowen's mouth opened and shut. He couldn't process her words.

He stumbled upstairs and stuffed his good suit, toothbrush, and a change of underwear into his duffel bag. Out in the hall he could hear Mrs. Bowen whispering to her sister. His ears cleared, and he understood the word “cancer.” Mrs. Bowen tapped on his door and handed him an envelope. He opened it. Eight five-dollar bills. Mrs. Bowen had tears in her eyes. “You pay me back when you're able,” she said.

No one met him at the Whelan bus station. A man he knew by sight offered him a ride to Solace Fork. The man had known his mother. “Nell Owenby was a fine woman,” he said, leaving unsaid the trials and harshness of her married life, perhaps because such hardship was unremarkable for a woman. Martin thanked him and stared out the window. Deer had chewed bark off the trees that lined the road, trying to avoid winter starvation. A young deer, tossed off the road by a car, rotted in a ditch.

The snow that had hit Chapel Hill hadn't swept this far west. From the crossroad at Solace Fork he walked the rest of the way to his father's house, feeling under the thin soles of his shoes every familiar bump and rut. When he was younger he had walked home from school this way, reading as he walked, and never tripped or slid, even when Leon rode by in the truck and veered toward him, laughing when Martin jumped. He rounded a final curve, and the house came into view. The porch was bowed, propped up by cinder blocks. Sweeping the yard had been his mother's job. In her sickness, chicken leavings had piled up in forlorn drifts.

As he approached the house he smelled smoke. His father came out of the front door without seeing him, carrying a knot of sheets, and went around to the side of the house. Martin followed him.

“Pop,” he said as his father tossed what he'd been carrying into a fire he'd lit on the ground.

His father looked up. “Martin. You got here all right.”

“Yes, sir.”

The wind changed, and Martin moved away from the ashes from the fire. “What are you burning?”

His father didn't answer. Martin moved closer. He saw in the fire charred leather and paper, wood and sepia, his mother's framed photograph of her parents, her Bible, softened with wear, her clothing, the sheets she must have lain on in her final sickness. His father was burning all of her intimate things, all the things Martin might have tucked away to remember her.

“What are you doing!” Martin reached into the fire for the Bible.

His father knocked it out of his hands with the stick, cracking two of his fingers. “Don't touch it! It's got the sickness on it!” Flames lit the Bible's pages, eating words, erasing the penciled comments his mother had written in the margins in her years of close Bible study, gnawing at the leather cover.

Martin felt sick. His mother had lived with this man for decades, borne his children, borne her tumor, and she hadn't been dead a full day before he started burning her things in fear of catching her cancer.

“You ignorant bastard!” he screamed. His father ignored him, stoking the fire higher. Leon emerged onto the porch. He looked at them, curious. James walked up from the henhouse to check on the commotion.

Martin pleaded with his brothers. “He's burning Mama's things.” They blinked in response, as if they couldn't see why he was upset.