What Dies in Summer (12 page)

Now Shepherd Boy said, “Good morning, Miz Vickers,” looking at Gram’s throat, bending slightly at the waist and letting her take his hand. “It’s so good to have you
with us today.” He pushed his noodly black hair back up across his forehead with the other hand, showing us his zits.

“Good morning to you, Brother Shepherd,” said Gram, giving the limp hand one businesslike shake and then dropping it.

Then he offered his hand to me, L.A. and finally Diana, who looked up at him through her eyelashes as she took his hand. When we went on into the church she said something into L.A.’s ear
that made both of them cover their mouths and snicker.

For a change Mom and Aunt Rachel were both here, and I looked around for Jack, feeling lighter in my chest when I didn’t see him. Gram slid into the pew next to them, glancing down at Aunt
Rachel’s short red dress as Mom leaned over Rachel’s lap to hand Gram a bulletin. Rachel wouldn’t look at Gram. I noticed her eyes were puffy, but Mom looked fresh and pretty. It
was easy to see they were sisters.

Diana, L.A. and I sat in the next row up and across the aisle, L.A. slipping in first, then Diana and me. Diana shifted around a little to get settled, my favorite part of the whole sitting-down
process.

I liked the booky smell and royal feeling of the church almost as much as the singing. The hymns themselves were okay, with simple lyrics and easy chords, but what I really enjoyed was trying to
hit harmonies with L.A. and Diana, whose voices went together perfectly.

We had even caught Shepherd Boy’s attention with our singing, and he was always trying to get the three of us to join the choir. I could have gone either way on this myself, meaning
I’d probably have been willing if the girls were interested, but they definitely weren’t, possibly because of the way Shepherd Boy always looked at us. His eyes just never seemed to
make it any higher than our necks, and with Diana and L.A. especially he’d sometimes just stare at their breasts while breathing through his mouth. It wasn’t that I didn’t
understand his feelings on that point and, being fair, that was more or less the way he looked at everybody. Still, something about him froze us out, and the choir thing never happened.

As Brother Wells began his sermon I was enjoying Diana’s occasional movements and the warm feeling of her body against mine. She was gripping her small white Bible and looking serious, the
way you try to do when you’re in trouble and getting a lecture. It was from past sermons that I knew too much talk about eternal damnation would scare her, and I was hoping for something more
along the lines of brotherly love and Christian charity today.

I watched Brother Wells getting his momentum up. He was a big, hearty, pink man who looked as if he’d been squirted down into his clothes like drive-in ice cream, with a little overflow at
the collar, the fancy ring on his little finger flashing impressively as he opened his Bible. As it turned out, his text this Sunday was Jesus in the desert and temptation, which meant the fright
factor was going to be a toss-up, depending on the angle he took. I glanced at Diana to see how she was taking it, and to my relief she looked composed and unworried.

I looked up at the huge stained-glass window in the eastern wall, where Jesus seemed to be standing on a little puff of cloud and holding his punctured hands out with an expression of
unbelievable forgiveness, and wondered why nothing like Noah’s flood or the loaves and fishes ever happened anymore and why moments in history didn’t light up like colored jewels the
way they had in biblical times.

But then I gradually lost my awareness of Brother Wells and started reviewing my plan, which involved some thorny issues. One of these was my inability to think of God as a three-man crew, which
I usually dealt with by ignoring the concept of the Trinity altogether, at least in the privacy of my own mind. And because I had no new ideas on the subject, that’s what I did today,
settling on what seemed like the most practical approach based on Gram’s notions about how things got done. In other words—meaning no disrespect to the Lamb of God or the Holy Ghost or
anybody, just going straight to the top when the situation was serious, as Gram always recommended—it was God Almighty Himself I had business with today.

But approaching God directly took nerve. I felt like a dumb farm hand tracking mud into the parlor, and didn’t know whether I could expect a fair and impartial hearing or not. But now that
I thought about it, fair and impartial were not what I actually wanted. What I was looking for was a break.

Naturally I had the regular mental picture of God as an oversized, fierce old man in a hospital gown, with thick white hair and a flowing beard, seated behind a huge golden desk in a high-backed
swivel chair upholstered in black leather. And sure enough, that’s exactly how He did look in my imagination as I felt myself being surrounded by the holy air and perfect light of His
presence.

A semitransparent shadow that I could only assume was the Holy Ghost drifted silently in and out of view in the corners. Based on what little I understood of scripture, I wasn’t surprised
not to find Jesus here, because I took it for granted he’d be at the jail or the Cowboys game or some other place where there’d be a concentration of needy souls.

But it was beginning to dawn on me how many pitfalls were involved in dealing with authority at this level. I had questions about whether Shepherd Boy really worked for God, for example, and I
wanted to know what was the point of letting the girl at the overpass die the way she did. I also wanted God’s holy word that nothing like that was going to happen to Gram or Diana or L.A.
But asking those particular questions could be taken as criticism, and requesting favors for certain people might make it sound like I was willing to throw everybody else to the wolves. I decided
to stick to the main topic.

But it wasn’t actual conversation I was here for, because I pretty well grasped that God didn’t speak to humans straight out, generally relying on methods like writing on stone and
blasting cities to get his ideas across.

Thinking in complete sentences seemed like the best bet:
Sir, it’s about my dad
, I thought as hard as I could.
I mean, I know You took him for Your own good reasons, and I swear
I’m not trying to tell You how to do Your job, but that was really a terrible wreck
—

They’d said the troopers had had to shoot all four of the horses that had been in the trailer, but it was too late for Dad. He was burned, like they say, beyond recognition, like
recognition would have helped somehow. I plowed on:
Anyway, Sir, I know Dad wasn’t good all the time, maybe hardly ever, like Mom says, but I’d appreciate it very much if You could
keep in mind that he was good to me. He let me go with him to the horse auctions all the time and promised he was going to teach me to ride his motorcycle someday. I don’t think the fights he
got into were all his fault, and even though Mom is fairly honest about some things, she’s probably not Your best source when it comes to that woman she threw her scissors at him about.
Anyway, he told me it was only a onetime thing and Mom was blowing it all out of proportion. At least I know he didn’t mean any harm, because he hated having anyone mad at him.

I realized I was starting to ramble, and edging toward dangerous ground to boot, but somehow couldn’t stop myself:
So, I just hope You were able to see Your way clear to put Dad in, uh,
heaven, Sir, because I think he made a pretty sincere effort to be good most of the time, and as far as I know he never did anything bad enough to belong in hell.

Reminding God of the hell option may have been a reckless move, but living with Gram and L.A. this long had apparently weaned me away from half measures. Before I could think through the
implications of that, though, Diana moved against me and I was back in the real world, just in time to pass the offering plate. I sucked in a deep breath and looked around at the ordinariness of
everything, the high colorful windows, the sanctified spaces overhead, the dressed-up people in their pews. Focusing my thoughts on Diana’s clean peppery smell and the warmth of her body
against mine, I decided to let myself believe I’d taken my best shot for Dad. This, along with the fact that the dead girl hadn’t visited my bedside since I’d actually seen her
lying naked in the grass, tempted me to hope that maybe things were going to turn out all right after all.

Outside, after the service, I saw Aunt Rachel talking to a man who had appeared from somewhere, a guy exactly the same color as Colossians but completely different in every other way, with
close-cut hair, big knotty hands and edgy eyes. He looked quick, limber and hard all at the same time, like a riding whip. I wondered if maybe he was a friend of Colossians, but that idea made me
uneasy. I looked around, half expecting Colossians to come at us out of the bushes with his red eyes and his broom, but he was nowhere in sight.

When the man turned and walked away, light as a dancer on his feet, I caught up with Aunt Rachel and asked her who the guy was.

“A middleweight, I think,” she said, her breath strong enough to take the paint off a lamppost. “Does odd jobs.” She gave a little snort. “Or maybe not so
odd.” At that angle, in that light, she would have looked like an older version of L.A. if her hair had been wild enough.

I couldn’t get anything else out of her about who the strange man was or why she was talking to him.

We drove Diana home, then headed for Harlandale. When we got back to the house, I knew something was wrong. L.A. obviously felt it too; she went straight to her room, checked her pillows, looked
under her bed and into her closet, then opened her underwear drawer. She stood there frowning for a minute, then looked at me. In that moment some decision was made between us, and we never told
Gram or talked about what we both knew, but we went on knowing it just the same: somebody who didn’t belong here had been in the house.

WE KEPT EXPECTING
to hear or read something new about the murder, some solution to the mystery that seemed to hang in the air around us like a dark
humidity, but there was nothing. The papers were down to column heads like “No New Leads” and “Police Seek Witnesses,” and TV reporters had started collecting old unsolved
murders to compare this one to, their tone opening the door just a crack to the possibility that the cops weren’t doing their job.

Then we got the call about Jack. Somebody had beaten him up and left him lying in the street, where a cabbie found him. He was still unconscious when he arrived at Parkland by ambulance, but
they got an address from his driver’s license and notified Mom.

At that point it sounded to me like he was going to survive, but you never know.

When Gram hung up, she said, “We’d better go on over there, you two. Leah’s just beside herself.”

L.A. jammed her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and looked down at her sneakers without saying anything. It was clear to me that somebody lying unconscious in the street could very well
get run over. Maybe even by a truck. Or a trolley.

Grabbing the keys, I headed for the door and held it as Gram and L.A. walked out, then locked it and double-checked the knob. As far as I knew it had never been locked before. Gram didn’t
say anything, but she gave me a curious look.

I suddenly remembered it was L.A.’s turn to drive, so I tossed her the keys and we loaded into the Roadmaster with her behind the wheel. Since Gram favored young ladies having practical
skills, I had no choice but to share driving time with L.A., but the truth was I didn’t mind riding while she drove. I know that sounds like disloyalty to guys, who are the true drivers of
the world, but L.A. was a special case. Other people drove on the principle that all the bad things that are possible are equally likely to happen and had constant frights as a result. In fact, I
had to admit that was more or less my style, because when you got behind the wheel of a car the streets turned into a jungle screaming with predators. But L.A. was basically a gunfighter by nature,
about as bluffable as Doc Holliday, and didn’t think survival had anything to do with traffic signs and lanes and stuff like that. Instead, she kept us out of wrecks by seeing absolutely
everything and always knowing exactly who her enemies were and what they were going to do next. But I could tell Gram didn’t understand this because she just kept stomping her imaginary brake
pedal at every crisis point as we went along.

As much as it seemed to amaze her, we made it to the hospital and got the Roadmaster parallel-parked without incident. With her feet on solid ground again, her nerve returned and she briskly got
directions from the candy striper at the desk and marched us all straight back past a sign stating that these weren’t visiting hours. She was very law-abiding in most ways, but once she laid
her course she was unstoppable. We took the elevator to the third floor, got off, turned right and kept going until we saw Mom standing outside one of the rooms blowing her nose into a tissue.

“Well, how is he?” asked Gram.

Uninterested in secondhand reports, L.A. went to the door of the room and craned her neck to look in.

Mom snuffled, her eyes red and puffy. “Goddamn nigger beat him up,” she said. “He got a call and went out in the truck to pick up a car, and the guy just jumped out of the
bushes or something and beat the livin’ shit out of him. Jack said Murval Briscoe was out there too.”

I knew by now that Murval Briscoe was the name of the huge cop who’d talked to Jack at the hospital after the fight at Mom’s house, but I couldn’t imagine what he might have to
do with this.

We all went into the room. L.A. stepped fearlessly up to the bedside for a clinical inspection of Jack, who was a little hard to recognize in this condition. His eyes were purple and black and
swollen almost shut, and his nose was flattened and pushed off-center. His lips, which looked like raw meat, were kind of ballooned out, like he was blowing the ceiling a kiss.