Where All Light Tends to Go (17 page)

The reverend had already gone home, and the church parking lot was empty. I’d waited in the pickup till he drove away, and though I was certain he saw me sitting there, he knew there was no sense trying to reach me. I was long past that and had been for as far back as I could remember.

Hamburg Baptist sat on the side of Highway 107 right where the woods thinned and Lake Glenville came into view. Across the highway, the Hamburg cemetery rose up a steep hill where some-time back in the 1940s workers had spent weeks moving graves from down in the valley when the river was dammed and the water drowned the township. The lake had been built to fuel a power plant down the mountain that was used to turn out aluminum for airplanes during the last world war, but all that lake was good for anymore was pulling tubes loaded with children during the day and sinking carloads of bodies once night fell.

The steep hillside tilted so sharply that gravediggers couldn’t dig so much straight down as at an angle that simply cut into the slope. The head of the grave was always a good three or four feet deeper than the foot. There wasn’t a flat piece of land on the whole plot, and so the flowers left on graves blew downhill and stacked in the ditch by the road.

I crossed the highway and climbed the hill with the urn and flowers held to my chest with my bad hand and the shovel carried with the other. Mama’s family was buried at the top of the hill, a small patch of headstones that all read
Franks
. She’d been the last survivor from that line of Frankses, her mother, father, and baby brother all burning up in a house fire when she was nearly out of high school. Mama had never talked about it, but when I was younger and those types of questions mattered, I used to ask Daddy about her family. He said it was a lightning strike that lit the house up, burned it down before the first fire truck arrived, none of the family hitting downstairs before the smoke and flames consumed them. He said that Mama had been with him when it all happened, and even at a young age, I remember thinking that all that pain probably had something to do with how she turned out.

I found the place where those three were buried, her father, Joseph, on the left, her mother, Cecilia, on the right, and a small headstone with a lamb on the top that stood between them. At the foot of that small grave I dug a hole about as big around as a milk jug a few feet deep, settled that urn down into the hole till it stood just so. I swiped the dirt I’d dug back into the hole, the red clay staining the rag that bandaged my hand, and watched as the last bit of brass disappeared beneath the soil. Digging a hole, burying something inside, and filling it in always left more dirt than had originally stood, a small red mound built up there now. I mashed it as flat as I could with my boots, but it would take a good rain to wash it smooth.

I left the flowers above the hole I’d dug, between that oval of squashed red clay and the headstone with the lamb. There was a part of me that felt something needed to be said, but those kinds of words had never touched my breath. It was done and settled with me, though, and it felt good. There was nothing left for me there.

I was almost down to the highway when I saw her, Maggie Jennings sitting with her legs crossed and swinging off the back of my tailgate. She had on a beautiful garden dress that showed off the tan of her legs. White fabric was striped with dark blue outlines of forget-me-nots, a silken strap wrapped around her waist, and blond curls bunched behind her head. Even from across the road, I could see the way afternoon sunlight glinted in her eyes, light still flickering when a wide smile creased those eyes damn near shut. I couldn’t smile back.

I reached the pickup and propped the shovel against the bed by the rear tire. Standing in front of her, I felt those eyes of hers reach way back into me again, and I knew the hurt I carried was something that I hadn’t buried with the urn.

“I wanted to be here for the service.”

“It’s all right, Maggie.”

“I don’t really know what to say.” Maggie reached out with both of her hands, and I grabbed them. She looked down when she felt the dressing on my hand. “Jesus, Jacob. What happened?”

“Went through a window and got cut up.”

“You need to take better care of yourself.”

We stood there holding hands like we were about to dance, and when I looked into her eyes, I could see everything I ever wanted but couldn’t have. Knowing I couldn’t have it, knowing that everything I’d ever had I’d lost, brought on a sick feeling. I was alone in this world, even with her there, and I was certain I’d cry.

“Will you tell me something, Maggie?”

“What, Jacob?”

“What is it you see in me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what is someone like you doing here with a piece of shit like me?”

Maggie pushed me away and held me at arm’s length. She looked at me with as serious a face as I’d ever seen. “You’re not a piece of shit, Jacob. You’re strong. Do you hear me?” She shook me. “You’re the strongest man I know.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are, Jacob. You really are.”

“You can’t save me, Maggie.” I don’t even know where those words came from, but when I said them it suddenly felt like the world fell apart.

“I’m not trying to save you, Jacob, and you’re right, I couldn’t even if I wanted to. All I’ve ever wanted is for you to try to save yourself.”

I pulled her back into my chest and stared up into the sun when the tears came, and even though they were thick and heavy on my eyes, I wouldn’t let them fall. I didn’t want her to see how much I hurt. I didn’t want her to know that kind of pain. She nuzzled her head into my chest and pressed her cheek where my heart pounded. I lowered my head and dug my nose into her hair, a few tears falling from my eyes onto her curls. I squeezed her as hard as I could and she squeezed back, and we just stood there with that June sun beating down on us, both of us lost, but only her having somewhere to go.

It wasn’t our first time together, nor had she been my first. In the years since that morning I woke up from my first wet dream, I’d been with my fair share of women. It was part of growing up in the house where I did. There had always been skeezies around willing to put out for a slack bag or a chance to get in good with my father. They never seemed to mind too much how young I was, seemed to take it as a challenge like they might teach me something. They looked at me how they might’ve looked at a cute little puppy or a baby, but I didn’t care. None of them had ever been all that pretty, nothing compared to Maggie, but those moods came on me like they do any man, and I never said no.

I’d fucked a lot of women, but that night in the truck with Maggie was the first time I can honestly say I made love to one. The pile of clothes made the bench seat lumpy, but she didn’t seem to care about all of those clothes pushing into her back. In time, they worked flat. There was little room in the cab, and we banged against the console, our feet kicking at the door, and she knocked her head against the steering wheel as we slid over each other. I cradled the back of her head like I was holding an egg, my forearms pressing down over her shoulders as I pulled into her. She locked her legs tight around my back and her thighs dug into my ribs when she came, her whole body trembling in my arms, and I wasn’t long after.

All of that steaminess fogged the windows, and Maggie wiped her hand across the passenger-side glass to look outside. Until those mountains came into view, the lights of houses on the hillside surrounding us like a pack of wolves, I was certain we’d traveled someplace else. I was certain that what we made in the cab of that pickup was another world, a place fit for living where I might want to stay for a while. Seeing those mountains in the distance and knowing that we’d never left brought back the uneasiness. I just wanted the window to fog again, let me go on believing for a minute or two longer. I didn’t need forever.

A late-night rain had already fallen and passed, but left behind a thick fog that put all of the mountains in a cloud. Warning lights at the road’s edge, put out earlier in the day to slow traffic while the state evened a deep slope in the asphalt, still flashed. Each time the yellow lights flicked, the light hung on the fog, lit the whole world yellow for as far as I could see. I parked the pickup on the backside of the shop, right next to where Daddy kept the Nova concealed beneath a gray tarp.

He had always kept somewhere around a hundred thousand dollars cash in the safe. That was how much he said it would take to start fresh should the need ever arise to run. “All the money in the world won’t do you any good in the bank when the law comes. They can freeze all of that shit,” Daddy’d said. “Cash, Jacob, it’s got to be cash if you’re going to run.” When I was a kid, he’d had to explain it to me for when the time came. Never knowing when that day might come, he kept one safe at the shop and a second at the house, both of them holding similar stacks of rubber-banded bills. He’d had to reinforce the floor at the house with six-by-six joists to support the weight of the safe, but the shop was built on a slab, the whole building floored with concrete.

I still didn’t know where I was headed, but I was leaning toward following Maggie. The money in the safe was enough to give her what she’d need for those first few years of college, and still get me the fuck out of town. The idea of heading east with her to some sunny place like Wilmington sounded more and more like the best option I had. Maybe when the money ran low I might even do what she said and get a job working in a shop. But staying, staying was just a slow suicide, and if I were going to kill myself, I’d have done it quick and painless like Mama. One shot. Brains blown up the wall.

Inside I hit the switch and the tube lights above flickered and buzzed till they glowed bright white. Two of the bays were empty, but on the far lift a long, low Cadillac floated in the air with tires drooping beneath uncompressed springs. I don’t remember ever being in there when it was so quiet before. Everything I did seemed to echo: my footsteps, boot soles scratching against scattered Oil-Dri, blue jeans brushing together, my breathing, my heartbeat. All of those sounds seemed loud, and I was spooked.

Sweat beaded as fast as I could wipe it away, especially on my palms. I’d found a tube of Super Glue in my truck, unwrapped the shoddy bandage from my injured hand that Daddy put through the glass, and used the glue to seal my skin together. But if my hands kept sweating, there was no telling how long those hillbilly stitches would hold. I kept wiping my palms down my pants to try and keep them dry but it didn’t help. My eyes were wide and itchy, and I looked my hands over, not so much trembling, but certainly not still. If he caught me, he’d kill me. Whether it was in the act or whether I was headed for the county line, if he caught me, I was dead. I knew that more than I knew anything else in my life. So I moved quickly.

The door to the office was paper thin, one of those cheap doors like might’ve been used to close off a closet or washroom. Only a turn lock on the doorknob kept the door sealed. I pulled the old Case Stockman I’d carried since I was a kid from my pocket and opened the blued clip blade, carbon steel stained into a dark patina. The door was loose, and the thin blade slid into the crack and popped the latch without a hitch.

The lights were off in the office, and a bright orange glowed from the on-switch of the coffeemaker. The acrid smell of burnt coffee mixed with settled cigarette smoke. I flipped the lights. Daddy’s leather desk chair rested in the middle of the room. Stacks of paperwork had been shuffled square and set just so on the desk. The safe stood in the far corner, a shiny green finish scrolled with gold leaf and lettering.

I remembered the day the deliverymen had wheeled that safe off the truck and into Daddy’s office. He hadn’t had a legitimate business for long at that point, and back then he did most of the work himself. It was the summer after Papaw died, and I was still too young to stay at the house by myself. With school out for the summer, I spent most days playing around the shop and watch-ing my father cuss like mad when something didn’t go just right. Daddy’d called me into the office that afternoon when the safe was brought in. He’d shown me the velvet-lined interior, the heavy steel bars, and the large chrome dial. “Going to use the day your Papaw died for the combination,” he’d said. “That way it’ll be something I won’t forget.”

Almost ten years since, I still remembered that cold day when Papaw choked on his blood just two weeks before Christmas, December eleventh, 19 and 99. Those first two numbers being so close made spinning the dial just right about as simple as taking apart a master cylinder. 12, 11, 19, 99. Repeat. 12, 11, 19, 99. Repeat. Every time I finished and cranked on the five-spoke handle, there wasn’t a bit of give. Left four times, right three times, left two times, right one. Repeat. 12, 11, 19, 99. Repeat.

I was getting agitated. My hands sweated and that dial became more and more slippery each time I turned. I took a break from the safe, plopped down in that big rolling chair of Daddy’s, and tried to calm my nerves. A thin metal ashtray on the desk was piled with mashed-out cigarette butts, but in one of the divots along the rim rested a smoke that hadn’t been more than lit before it was placed there and burnt out. The Bugler was in the truck, but I wanted a real cigarette. I hadn’t had one in days. I picked that cigarette up, put it to my lips, tore a match from a pack that lay by the ashtray, and struck it aflame. I puffed on the Winston to settle my nerves, and when my hands quit shaking, I focused back into the dial.

Left four times, right three times, left two times, right one. 12, 11, 19, 99. Repeat. It took two goes that second time around, but the wheel pack lined up and when I turned the five-spoke handle, the four lock bars rolled back loudly, and the heavy door eased open. I expected to see the long guns, maybe a pistol or two on the top shelf, and those stacks of banded bills layered like bricks on the second shelf. What I saw, though, was the sheen of black velvet, not a single thing inside except a yellow sheet of paper in the bottom.

I knelt on the floor and grabbed the slip of paper from the bottom of the safe. It was an invoice printed on stationery from the Law Offices of Irving L. Queen III. My eyes ran down the list of fees: legal counsel, a payment to the crematorium, $52.34 to In Bloom Flower Shop, $300 to Hamburg Baptist Church. The bill totaled $2,064.72, with the largest chunk going to counsel. In the center of the page, a big red block with ink barely holding in the bottom right corner stamped
PAID
on the invoice. My hand shook and that thin carbon paper rattled like a dried leaf.

With the paper quivering in my hand, I stood up from the floor, and just as my legs straightened, I felt a stiff forearm hook deep under my throat, the other arm forcing my head down from behind. Trying to breathe proved worthless. There was absolutely nothing there. No air. No breath. I tried to turn my head, twist my body to see who held me, but whoever had me was strong, much stronger than me, and all of that spinning and fighting got me nowhere. Whoever had me cinched my body up onto my tiptoes, just the tips of my boots still making contact with the floor. Even in a moment when time passed slowest, it didn’t take long. The curtains went down on my eyes, fell and fell till there was only a sliver left of the floor, then surrender.

—

DUCT TAPE WRAPPED
my wrists and elbows to the arms of Daddy’s tall leather desk chair. I couldn’t see how my legs were attached, but they were tucked back under the seat of the chair so that I leaned forward, and they were bound tightly. A cigarette dangled from my mouth and had been hanging long enough to have dried to my lips. As I tried to open my mouth, the skin held on the butt of the cigarette and I had to lick at that dry stub to get it to fall free.

I was facing the desk and that yellow invoice from Queen lay on the top of a tall stack of papers, the invoice squared off and even with the rest of the pile. I turned to the corner where the safe stood open. I turned the other direction to where shelves held the black-and-yellow cases of DeWalt tools. My neck couldn’t wrench far enough to see the door. Yanking and hopping, I was able to spin the chair an inch at a time, the wheels of the chair smacking the laminate each time I jerked. When I got turned enough to see, the door into the garage was open. There was no one in the room with me.

I screamed wildly and shook in the chair, and as the first scream faded I heard metal clanking against the concrete slab in the garage. I knew the sounds of that place well, and it sounded like a wrench falling onto the floor. Next came the footsteps tromping toward me. Then he appeared in the doorway.

“You truly are your mama’s bitch, aren’t you? Couldn’t raise the pussy out of you.” Daddy stood there and wiped grease from his hands onto a ratty red rag. The white T-shirt he wore was smudged with grease stains, those black marks extending past his shirt and onto his jeans. He scrubbed at his forearms with that rag and itched hard at a place where it was hard to say whether oil or ink tattooed his skin. A day unshaved left stubble sprigging from those aged acne scars. A crescent of hair had fallen from his part and cut a sickle across his forehead. He walked over to the radio and turned on the tunes so he could talk.

“What do you want?”

“What do I want?” Daddy smiled and laughed a little under his breath. “You come in to
my
shop, break in to
my
safe to steal
my
fucking money, and have the gall to ask what
I
want?”

“If you’re going to kill me, then kill me! But don’t waste the time I’ve got talking a bunch of bullshit!”

“Bullshit?”

“Yeah, bullshit. You know goddamn well you owe me. You know goddamn well the work I’ve done!”

Daddy looked at me for a while like he knew I was right, but he didn’t say it. He didn’t say a word.

“How’d you know I’d be here?”

“There’re people watching this place all the time, Jacob.”

“Well, go ahead and kill me, goddamn it! Quit wasting your fucking time!”

Daddy walked over and picked up the cigarette from where it had fallen into my lap. He held it to his lips and struck a lighter from his pocket, took a few quick drags, and pushed it into my mouth. Smoke rose from the cigarette and wafted into my eyes. He pulled a soft pack of Winstons from the pocket of his jeans and flicked one up into his mouth. He lit it and walked behind me, spun me around in the chair so that I was facing him as he leaned against the desk.

“I’m going to talk now, and you’re going to listen.” There wasn’t a bit of hostility in his voice and hadn’t been since he walked into the room. “I’m tired, Jacob. You understand me? I’m goddamn tired.” Daddy angled back and blew a long, narrow cloud of smoke over my head. He resituated himself on the desk and glared into me with narrowed eyes. “When you do the type of shit that I’ve done, you get to worrying that one of these days someone out of your past is going to show up to put a fucking bullet in your skull. You understand? I’m tired of having to look over my shoulder. I’m tired of not knowing who might be watching. I’m just goddamned tired, Jacob.”

Daddy took one last drag from his cigarette and snubbed it out into the ashtray. He took the cigarette from my mouth too, a long, curved piece of ash breaking loose and crumbling on my lap. He stood from the desk and walked over to the safe, shut the door, turned the handle, and the bolts sounded loudly. He spun the dial and looked at me. “Now, I understood a long time ago that you weren’t cut out for this shit. It just ain’t in you. You’re weak, Jacob. As much as it kills me to say it, you’re weak.” Daddy walked to the desk and shifted the stacks of already evened paper till he’d reset them all exactly equidistant from one another. He slouched against the desk again and looked me square.

“I’m out of here come winter, Jacob. I’m going to finish fixing up that old Nova out back and drive till I find a place that suits me. That’s the plan. But there’s something that I need done in order for that to happen. And there’s something that you want.”

“What is it you think I want?”

“It’s not really a question of whether or not you want it. The money, Jacob. That’s why you’re here, ain’t it? So you do this for me, and I’ll give it to you.” Daddy looked up at the ceiling. “Every last dime you ever earned, and that’s my goddamn word. That’s all a man has is his word. I’m not a man of much, but I’m a man of my word.”

My arms chafed under the duct tape. Sweat beaded on my brow and rolled down my forehead. Though I hated to ask, there was only one way out. “What is it you want?”

“Robbie Douglas.” Daddy slapped his hand down on the desk, that loud slap echoing from that room to the far end of the garage and back. He slid the soft pack of Winstons out of his jeans, fired up another cigarette, and offered them to me. “Robbie Douglas is the only fucking thing left alive that could ruin me.”

“And how exactly do you expect me to do it? Ain’t like I can just waltz into that hospital and put a bullet in him. Folks say the goddamn law’s been standing outside his door since he went in there just waiting on him to wake up so he can say who did it.”

“That ain’t my problem, Jacob.” Daddy stood from the desk, the cigarette hanging and smoking from his lips, and peered into me. He pulled a folding knife from his pocket and flipped it open with his thumb, that old sodbuster blade shining under fluorescents. Daddy knelt and swiped the duct tape loose from my feet with the blade, ran the knife clean through the tape on one arm then the other. The thick rolled tape popped when the blade slid through and I was loose, but I didn’t move. Daddy walked past me, his footsteps sounding toward the door, and left me in that chair staring at the stack of papers on his desk, Queen’s invoice on top of the pile. I listened to him stomp through the garage. The door hinge creaked open then slammed, the latch clicking as it shut. I was left in the room alone now. The only sound came from the radio. But there were no longer words to hide.