Volt: Stories (17 page)

The dogs sniffing about her feet, Miriam regarded the tins. She slid aside the flour first. Then the sugar. She took down the pipe and felt its weight in her hand. Light-headed, she passed into the kitchen and set the pipe on the counter and opened the hash and poured the meat into bowls for the dogs. The dogs ate greedily, bumping their bowls as they lapped up the meat.

Miriam watched them awhile, then grabbed the pipe and left again into the hall. She’d not even taken off her jacket, the truck keys still in her pocket, and though her mind was a mess and she was not sure she was fit to drive, her body moved, as if without her, toward the door.

6

Miriam sat parked in front of Freely’s General, the bottom floor of a three-story brownstone, staring at the length of pipe laid across her lap. A knock came on the passenger window. There stood Walt Freely, in a red nylon jacket and feed cap. He motioned for Miriam to roll down the window and she did.

“Hello, darlin’,” Mr. Freely said, and from under one arm he lifted a pumpkin and reached through the window to set it on the truck’s seat. “On the house,” he said, then slapped the truck door.

The pumpkin was bright orange, almost perfectly round. A white scar marred its flesh near the stem. Miriam laid the pipe on the seat beside it, then opened the door and climbed down from the truck.

Light from the store shone onto the walkway. In the front window hung butcher-paper sale signs, and smaller signs, an artist’s rendering of the missing boy. She stood pretending to study the sale signs in the window, stealing glances at the boy’s picture. The artist’s rendering didn’t look a bit like him.

She meandered to the end of the building, then turned down the alley. A set of wooden steps led to the second and third floors, the third floor where Helen Farraley lived, the second being the sheriff’s office. The office door was locked, and through the glass Miriam saw it was dark inside. She glanced up to Helen’s apartment, light shining warm from its windows.

Miriam was about to start up the stairs, when a shadow moved in the office. She tapped the glass, and moments later Helen was opening the door. Miriam and Helen nodded to each other, and Miriam stepped into the room, which had a desk, a coatrack, a treadmill, a metal door at the back that was the jail.

Helen’s face was slicked with sweat, her hair mussed. She was dressed in a tracksuit, a towel around her neck. “Was just working to get my old pants to fit,” she said, and took her officer’s hat from the coatrack and placed it gently onto her head. “You hanging in there?”

Miriam stared at the hat as if to see into Helen’s thoughts. “Was shopping,” she said. “Thought I’d come see you.”

“What a nice surprise.”

“Was wondering what happened. With the boy, I mean.”

“You haven’t heard?”

“No.”

The sheriff chuckled. “Our grapevine needs watering.” She stood quiet a moment, then walked behind her desk. “You want coffee?” she asked. “I’ll put a pot on if you want?”

“I’m fine.”

Helen sat at her desk. She blotted sweat from her chin, tossed the towel on the floor behind her. “No regard for humanity,” she said. “None whatsoever.” She looked up at Miriam. “You know him well?”

“The boy?”

“The father.”

Miriam thought a moment. “No.”

Helen motioned to a chair across the desk from her, and Miriam sat. “Talked to his kin yesterday,” Helen said. “His cousin lives out by the Prospect Dairy. Says McGahee used to live down by Petersburg. Says he moved here to get away from things, that his wife died giving birth to that youngest one. Says he might of been all right if she’d of lived.” The sheriff leaned over her desk, rubbed her knuckles against her chin. “Don’t know how much I believe it, a man like that.” She dug a piece of paper from the mess on her desk. It was the same picture that hung in the store window. “Didn’t have a single photo of the boy.” She studied the picture. “What kind of man doesn’t have a picture of his own boy?” She set the paper back onto the pile. “Though I guess it all makes sense, really.”

Miriam didn’t understand, but stayed quiet.

“Anyway, we went to ask about what happened with that older boy. Was smart enough to bring Harvey and Sid Bandy along. But then I forgot who it was, just went in like I was going to chat over tea.” She chuckled sadly. “Ol’ Seamus come at me with a kitchen chair.” Then the sheriff took her hat off, winced, set the hat onto the desk. “Miriam?”

“Yeah?”

“I always liked your mama,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner. It just never seemed a good time to get it said, like if I liked your mama it might hurt you more somehow. But I did. You always knew where you stood with her.”

“Not always,” Miriam heard herself say.

Helen rubbed a hand over her hair. “
Not always
,” she repeated. “Ain’t that the truth of the world?”

Miriam regretted saying it. “Thank you, Helen.”

The sheriff sat still, her head lowered. “I’ve just been thinking about her a lot this week. About how you got to know people.” She looked up, peered deep into Miriam. “That’s my job, really. To know people. I realized this and now it’s got me all screwed up. Because it ain’t how they train you. All that innocent until guilty bullshit. ’Cause out here, some are guilty the moment you lay eyes on ’em, and what the law ought to do is to stop ’em ’fore they can do what they’re born to do. What the hell good am I otherwise? Serve and protect?” Her eyes peeled across the office. “I’m nothing but a broom. Someone calls in a mess and I go sweep it up.” Helen straightened herself, pushed at some papers on her desk. “I’m sorry, Miriam,” she said. “I shouldn’t go on like that. It’s been a hard week.”

“You’re so strong,” Miriam said.

“I’m a broom. A damn broken broom.”

Then Miriam wanted to confess everything, wanted to get it all out and be done with it. But the words stuck high in her throat, like a bone gone sideways.

“He going to stay in jail?” she mumbled.

“McGahee?”

Miriam nodded.

The sheriff’s jaw flexed. “He’ll die there if I get my way.”

Miriam licked her lips, her mouth suddenly dry. “You think he killed that boy?”

Helen scooted to the edge of the seat. “Can’t see the wind, but you don’t have to think to figure what’s blowed off your hat.” Then she rose and walked to the window that overlooked the strip. “Had a hundred folks to look for a boy that might be alive. Made some calls the other night, seeing who might help look over that McGahee lot, and suddenly everyone’s busy. Not a minute to spare.”

A heaviness, like hands on her shoulders, pressed upon Miriam, and she had to push herself up to rise from her chair. Outside, the rain fell in fits. She stood behind the sheriff and watched the sky swirl above the rooftops. “What about the older boy?”

The rain hissed as static. Helen turned to Miriam, and through the gloom offered something just short of a smile. “He’s in the state’s hands now. Ask me, the boy hit the jackpot just to get out with a soul still in him.”

Miriam sat in her truck, the wipers shushing, the side windows fogged. The rain had dwindled, but the sky still churned. Her headlights shone onto the McGahees’ house, blankets covering its windows, yellow tape guarding the door. She felt oddly at ease, considering perhaps the others were right, that maybe somewhere in the bowels of that house, or buried in those weedy fields, they’d find a child.

She opened her door, stepped down into the dampness. She hadn’t planned it this way, didn’t think at all. She just chucked the pipe as far as she could, watched it thud beside the house, out in the open where anyone would find it.

Then Miriam climbed back behind the wheel and closed the door. The truck was warm. She set her palm against the side window, left a print in the hazed glass, clear but for a moment before it again began to fog.

Miriam unloaded the groceries she’d bought in town. She set the dogs’ dishes in the corner of the kitchen, let the dogs eat. Then, one at a time, she carried each to the upstairs bathtub. Afterward, the dogs lay shivering by the radiator in the front hall as Miriam picked up the house and loaded laundry into the washer. She changed the bed linens. Made chicken salad, baked a cake.

While in the parlor, ironing a blouse for church, Miriam heard the dogs rise in the hall, their nails scrabbling across the floors. The front door opened. Miriam moved, with great hesitance, into the foyer. There stood Evelyn, setting down her suitcase. A riot broke in Miriam’s chest. She braced herself against the wall. The dogs wriggled for Evelyn to pet them, but she only looked at her mother, dark crescents sagged beneath her eyes.

“I’m hungry, Mama,” she said.

Miriam led Evelyn back into the kitchen, sat her at the table. Hands shaking, she poured her daughter a glass of milk and made her a chicken salad sandwich.

Evelyn chewed, her head leaned on her fist.

Miriam busied herself at the counter, icing the cake she’d baked. They were silent awhile, everything stilted, everything not quite real. Then the cake was done, a white cake with strawberry frosting, Evelyn’s favorite. Miriam showed Evelyn and, mouth full of sandwich, she nodded.

She didn’t want to ask. She had to ask. “How was the city?”

“Fine,” Evelyn said.

“Get things settled?”

Evelyn nodded, vacantly.

“For school?”

She nodded.

“How’s that woman? Your landlady?”

Evelyn took a bite, chewed. “Mrs. Jamison?”

“That’s right. How’s Mrs. Jamison?”

“Fine,” Evelyn said, swallowed.

Then Evelyn held up her empty glass, and Miriam took it and walked to the refrigerator. As she opened the door and took out the carton of milk, Evelyn shouted,
“Damn it!”

Miriam spun to see Evelyn with her face buried in her hands. Her body shuddered as she sobbed.

Miriam rushed to her side.

Then she saw the sandwich, open-faced, a thick arc of salt trailing from the chicken salad on across the tabletop to the detached bottom of the saltshaker. Miriam took the empty shaker from Evelyn’s fist. She walked to the sink, wetted the sponge, waiting for the water to warm, listening to her daughter weep. Out the kitchen window, the rain fell as flurries, flakes sticking to the pane, melting.

“Where were you?” Miriam said, quietly. Evelyn fell hushed behind her. The tap was warm. Miriam squeezed the excess water from the sponge, and turned. Evelyn stared down into her plate. “Where were you at, hon?” Miriam asked again, louder.

Evelyn traced a thumb beneath her teary eyes, did not look up. “What’re you talking about?”

Miriam stepped to the table and swiped the sponge over the trail of salt. “You weren’t in the city,” she said, brushing salt off into her palm. “Where’d you go?”

Evelyn wiped her cheeks on her sleeve. “Don’t know what you mean.” She pressed the heel of her hand between her eyes.

Miriam wanted to touch her daughter, to hold her and make her feel right for what she’d done. But Miriam turned away, stepped again to the sink. She rinsed the sponge, watched the water flowing, the salt swirling down the drain.

She shut off the faucet. Snow striking the window was the room’s only sound. “Where’d you put him?” Miriam asked. “Where’d you put that little boy?”

Miriam listened as Evelyn heaved long sighing breaths, each slower, softer, than the last. “Does it matter where?” she whimpered.

Miriam quietly gasped. When she looked up from the sink, a face glared back from the window. Night had come early, and she gazed at her bleary reflection in the snow-streaked glass, stared at the room behind her, its faded wallpaper, its watery light, her baby girl slumped at the spot where each morning her mother had sipped her coffee and worked her puzzles.

Miriam set the sponge beside the sink, dried her trembling hands on the thighs of her jeans. Possessed by a great swelling of love, she went to her daughter and hugged her from behind, Miriam’s cheek pressed into Evelyn’s back. Evelyn clutched her mother’s arms crossed before her, gently kissed Miriam’s wrists.

Then it felt like victory, for they remained. They were still here while others were gone. Miriam pulled away from her daughter. She straightened her blouse and took up Evelyn’s plate.

“Would you like some cake?”

Evelyn gave Miriam her weary eyes, and nodded.

LAZARUS

The streets were plowed and salted, filthy banks of snow climbing the poles of lit signs before strips of bright shops. The high walls of the city airport stretched for blocks, a plane lifting off, its lights fading as it passed into the clouds. A day-glo truck pulled beside Vernon, its music thumping. Stoplight after stoplight, so many cars. A line of cars smoked in a chicken restaurant’s drive-through. In what looked like an old department store, a church lay between an insurance agency and a florist. Its sign by the road read:

THE KING OF ROCK AND ROLL

THE KING THAT ROLLED THE ROCK

Vernon glided through it all, feeling as he imagined young David must have as he pushed his way through lines of soldiers, sling in hand. Then he turned onto Balmoral Avenue, its row of brick buildings and blazing squares of windows, selfsame apartments flanking a road marked by streetlights and beneath them the endless line of parked cars.

One block up, he turned into the parking lot of the Avemore Condominiums. Set back from the street, the complex was a horseshoe of blond-brick buildings, seven stories high, the windows spilling light into the branches of three huge sycamores in the courtyard. Vernon found Martha’s car, the old silver Cadillac that had once been his. Then he was at the end of the lot and issued back out onto the street. He trolled two more blocks before finding a break in the cars, and with great difficulty edged into the space.

His nerves buzzed. His throat was sore. He grabbed the shoe box off the floorboard and removed the lid. In the streetlight’s glow, he peered down at the letters. It had to be done. He dug aspirin out of his pocket and chewed them, then placed the lid on the shoe box and opened the door.

Vernon climbed out into the cold. His breath plumed. The air stank of salt, of exhaust. He held his collar with one hand, the shoe box in the other. It was dark off by the buildings, so he stayed in the light and shuffled down the middle of the road.

Then he was at the Avemore lot, and hurried through the dark cars. He entered the snowy courtyard. Footlights marked three shoveled walkways to the building’s three wings. Martha lived in the rear. Vernon took its path and entered a dimly lit vestibule with a wall of metal mailboxes. He tugged the interior door, but it was locked.

Then he saw the box of buttons marked with names and unit numbers. Vernon found HAMBY 609, pressed the button. It made no sound. He wasn’t sure it was working. He waited, staring back out into the courtyard. A light rain had begun to fall, stippling the snow.

“Hello.” Through the box her voice sounded far away.

“Martha?” he said, glancing about the little room, not knowing where to speak.

He stared at the box, waiting for a response. At last, the interior door buzzed and he quickly took the handle. Just inside lay the stairwell, and though he was weary from not having slept, and brittle from a three-day flu, Vernon took the steps two at a time.

Vernon pushed through a door marked 6 and leaned huffing against the wall. A door opened down the hall. In the doorway stood a man in a brown coat with a white wool collar. Vernon stood away from the wall, gathered himself. Then he saw Martha behind the man and realized the cowboy was leaving apartment 609.

The man was young, not a hint of gray in his beard. He eyed Vernon as he approached, loudly asked Martha if she was going to be all right. She patted the cowboy’s arm. She wore a long sweater of white and tan cables, and hugged herself, a cup of coffee in one hand.

“You’re at the right place, Vernon,” she said, and Vernon realized how pathetic he must look.

“See you tomorrow,” the cowboy said to Martha, then turned and extended a hand to Vernon. “I’m Vance.”

Vernon firmly shook his hand. “Vernon.”

“I know.” The cowboy glared at him a moment, then ambled off. “Thanks for dinner,” he called back to Martha. Martha waved and then her eyes fell to Vernon and the corners of her mouth sank.

Vernon followed her inside. The apartment was small and filled with furniture from the parsonage. Furniture that had been theirs, tweedy couches, the oak coffee table, the bookcase dressed with angel figurines and other country knickknacks. She’d been gone only a few months, but the apartment felt lived in. Piano music played from a stereo, their son’s old boom box. Beneath a large window overlooking the courtyard, a little fountain gurgled water into a trough of slick black stones.

“Hope I didn’t interrupt your date,” Vernon said.

“He’s a classmate.” She smiled, but her tone was curt. “We have an exam tomorrow.”

Vernon didn’t want her to see the shoe box, and slyly set it on a wicker-seated rocker beside the door, laid his overcoat over the chair. “You going to pass?” he asked.

Martha stared hard at him. “Soon as the buzzer rang I knew who it was,” she said. “I’m still in the loop, you know? Sadie Walsh says you couldn’t even finish the service this morning?”

Vernon stood stiff. “He’s a nice man? This Vance?”

Martha stepped close and patted Vernon’s chest. “Poor Vernon,” she said, teasing. “Let’s get you out of that jacket and get you some coffee.”

She helped Vernon out of his suit jacket, plucked off his hat, and hung them both on the doorknob. She took Vernon’s arm and led him to the sofa by the window, then left off into the kitchen. He sat listening to cupboards being opened, cups clinking. A coffee cake, half eaten, sat on a small table in the kitchen, and Martha called to Vernon that he should have some.

“No, thank you,” he said, though he was famished.

Martha cut him a slice and set it on the coffee table. “I’m not asking, Vernon,” she said. “You look terrible. Folks’ve been telling me you aren’t taking much care of yourself.”

“Who’s saying that?”

“People.”

“Scuttlebutts like Sadie Walsh?”

“People who care.”

Martha left again into the kitchen and Vernon eyed the cake. He slid it toward himself, but didn’t pick up the fork. He watched Martha, washing up cups, pouring the coffee. He wanted to go to her, to hold her and lay his face upon her shoulder.

Martha carried in two cups of coffee and handed one to Vernon. He sipped it and it tasted wonderful, like it always had.

“It’s been a long day.” He drank again and closed his eyes as the coffee spread its warmth through him. Vernon sat forward, hunched over his knees.

“What’s wrong, Vernon?” Martha asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

She laughed. “You’ve always been the worst liar.”

“Thanks.”

“Lord knows, I wish you were a better liar. But one thing about Vernon Hamby is he just can’t help but let the truth be known.”

Vernon nodded. “It’s exhausting.”

“I know it is, sweetie. Was for me, too.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” she said. “I’m all done with
sorry.
No more
sorry.
Now what’s wrong, Vernon?”

“Not
wrong—
” He thought a moment. “Just disappointing.”

“There’s no such thing as
wrong
for Vernon Hamby?”

“It’s God’s will.”

“And you take comfort in that?”

“It’s not about comfort, Martha.”

She tucked her feet up under her, leaned against the armrest. “I take no comfort in it, Vernon.”

“I know it. Maybe you will someday.”

She grinned. “Eat your cake, Vernon. Am I going to have to feed you myself?”

“I don’t want it.”

“Because another man ate from it first?”

Thirty years of marriage, there was no place to hide. “I’m not here to fight, Martha.”

“You need to eat,” she said, firmly. “I used to not be able to get my arms around you, and now I could knock you down with a sneeze.”

“I’m fine.”

“You want some eggs? I’ll make you an omelet?”

“Coffee’s fine,” Vernon said.

“I do care, you know? I don’t hate you.”

“Anymore.”

She lowered her head. She gazed into her coffee. “Fair enough,” she said, nodding. “I don’t hate you
anymore.
”

“I’m glad, Martha.”

“In class,” she said, “we’ve been talking about forgiveness. How no matter what you say, or how much you talk, someone isn’t really forgiven until you can stand beside them without wanting to slap them in the face. Been thinking a lot about that. About a lot of things.” She chewed her lip, eyes drawn inward. She looked as if she might say more, then she smiled. “Why you here, Vernon?”

Vernon glanced at the wicker rocker by the door. “Sometimes,” he said, “I wake in the night and can’t remember his voice, or the way he laughed.”

She sipped her coffee, staring out the window at the dark sky and the lit tops of trees. “Someday maybe this’ll pass, and we can just get on with our lives.”

Vernon gazed again at the doorway. He shouldn’t have come.

“It was Henry who called,” Martha said.

Vernon’s shoulders fell heavy, his chin. Henry. He took up his coffee. “Yeah?”

“He told me about the vote, about the congregation meeting next Saturday.”

Vernon set his coffee back down, without having drunk. “Deacons came last night, stood around me in the kitchen with their coats on.” He chuckled, sadly. “They said folks’ve been complaining about the music. About how I hired Dillard Hurstenberg as organist.”

Martha’s eyes were solemn. “Oh, Vernon. It’s not about the music.”

Vernon nodded. “I know it. They’re cowards.”

“They’re your friends. It’s awkward.”

He pushed away the coffee cake. “I suppose.”

“I’m going to the meeting Saturday night. Henry said I could stay with him and Arlene if I need a place.”

“You got a home.”

“I don’t know about that, Vernon.”

“It’s as much yours as mine.”

“You are kind,” she said, like a lament. “You know, there’s a lot of folks saying a lot of things about you. Lots of folks wanting you out as pastor.” She picked at her sweater cuff. “Guess they think I want to hear it now that we’re apart. But I don’t. I listen and think they just don’t know you. Deep down you’re the kindest man I’ve ever met. I always believed that. Still do. I’ve always been so jealous of you, you know? As hard as I tried I couldn’t come close to that kind of care. Nobody cares deeper than Vernon Hamby.”

“That’s not fair.”

She tilted her head. “Maybe not.”

He felt such tenderness for her. “All I ever wanted was to try and explain my mind to you.”

Martha stared long at him. “There’s not a corner of my mind you didn’t shine a light over. Sometimes I think if only we were a little bit shallow and didn’t try so hard we just might’ve made it.”

“That what they teaching you up here in that big city college?”

“Every counselor’s first client is themselves.” To this, she blushed. “Oh, Vernon, there’s so many damaged people. Vance was molested by his own father. His mother knew and never did a thing about it. Can you imagine such a thing? His own father? Poor guy’s all alone—can’t even trust himself.”

Vernon’s knees ached from scaling the stairs, and he stretched out his legs. “There anyone left in the world that’s normal?”

“Normal,”
Martha said. “Gosh, I hate that word.”

Vernon rubbed his knees. “I’m sick of words. Sometimes,” he said, and suddenly felt himself sliding into that dark place, and breathed to keep himself level. “Sometimes,” he tried again, “what’s needed is just a good slap in the face. Maybe if you want to slap someone you ought to. Maybe it’d help as much as anything.”

Martha sat forward. “Vernon,” she said, “we’d be slapping folks until our hands were raw.”

“It’s better than silence.”

She nodded. “Yes, it’s better than silence.”

“I brought something,” he said. His pulse surged as he stood. He walked to the rocking chair by the door and lifted off his coat. He pulled out the shoe box, held it so she could see.

Her face fell grim. “Dear Lord,” she whispered. She pressed two fingers between her eyes. “He never lived away from us,” she said, her voice breaking. “He went away, but his home was always with us.” She stood, turned into the kitchen.

Vernon walked to stand at her back. He wanted to put his arms around her, but held himself against the urge. “It’s all we have.”

She turned to him. “You’ve never asked what I wanted. Not once. Not ever.”

“Please, Martha.”

Martha buried her face in his chest. Vernon embraced her, one arm tight around her shoulders, the other at his side, his hand clutching the box of letters.

They sat at the kitchen table. The letters had arrived weeks after the funeral, three letters in a large manila envelope. Martha had wanted to read them. But Vernon couldn’t face them. He put the letters in a shoe box and hid them in the cellar, behind the boiler, where Martha would never look. They’d fought bitterly over the letters, said awful things they’d long kept inside. Now Vernon took them from the shoe box and laid them on the table.

“Should we read them aloud?”

“If you want,” Martha said.

“Maybe we should take turns.”

“Just do it, Vernon.”

Vernon set aside the thickest envelope. He took up one of the others and with a butter knife sliced open the flap. Inside was a sheet of bluish paper with a scroll of vine around the edges. Vernon took a long sip of coffee. Martha sat sideways in her chair and stared out at the night through a small window above the sink.