Where Mercy Flows (19 page)

THE RING of the phone startled me awake. Darkness covered my eyes like a strange hand that I couldn’t pull away. In my confusion
I felt the objects around me—the soft upholstered arms of the big chair, the table full of papers and magazines—and realized
I was still in the living room. The telephone rang loudly again from across the room. Who had turned off all the lights? And
who would call at this hour? Suddenly I knew. My heart. They have found me a heart! I scrambled across the black room, half
crawling by the time I reached the table next to my father’s leather chair. I picked up on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

There was only silence.

“Hello,” I repeated. Someone was there. I could hear them breathing.

“Who is this?” It was a male voice, hoarse like an older man’s or a heavy smoker’s.

“This is Samantha Weatherbee—but this is the Dodd residence.”

“Samantha.” There was a long pause. “Samantha. Formerly Samantha Dodd, by any chance?”

“Yes, I’m . . . visiting. Who is calling, please?”

“Well, now, that’s interesting.” He drifted off on me like he was taking a drag on a cigarette and I was sitting across the
table from him. “Hey, Samantha. Is it dark there?”

My heart did a sluggish flip-flop. For the first time I noticed that the darkness was total, inside and out. The floodlight
on the garage turned on automatically every night. The lawn should have been bathed in its light.

“Who is this? What do you want?”

A chuckle rose up from his raspy throat. “What do I want? I want your daddy, girl. I want to see him squirm. Just like those
worms he’s got out in that barn there.” There was another long pause. “He ought not have done what he done. I’m going to see
him pay. You tell him that for me. You tell him I’m going to see him hang.” There was another long pause. “I’m going to watch
him shake until his toes curl up. Then just let him dangle in the wind.”

I dropped the receiver to its cradle as if it had turned into a snake, then stared wide-eyed into the darkness. Terror radiated
from my chest. I felt my way into the bedroom and touched TJ’s body beneath the quilt. His breath was slow and steady. The
light switches were worthless. I called into my parents’ room but it was empty. The Judge’s cell phone. His number would be
on the list by the kitchen wall phone. I fumbled through a kitchen drawer until I felt a book of matches and lit a candle.
The light danced elusively on the page of emergency numbers. Dr. Sovold, the hospital, Dad’s office, Dad’s cell. My fingers
shook as I punched in the number. A spicy pumpkin scent rose from the candle. Two rings, and then a canned voice. “I’m sorry;
the cellular customer you have dialed is not available at this time. . . .”

I swore. The wind grew wilder. Rain pelted the window in a violent spray. I held my watch up to the candlelight. Almost midnight.
I checked the doors and windows. My bedroom window was unlocked. I slid the lock into place and backed away. How did the caller
know that our power was out? Did he disconnect it somehow? Was he close by? I pulled the afghan from the sofa and wrapped
it around me as a security blanket, staring into the darkness beyond the windows as I picked up the receiver again. Donnie’s
phone rang and rang. It was Saturday night. Wherever he went, he hadn’t invited me. I wasn’t much fun anymore. I thought of
calling Lindsey and David but remembered they had gone to Seattle for a Seahawks game and were spending the night in a hotel.
Weakness overwhelmed me. I huddled in the big living room chair and felt the familiar painful heaviness of my heart. My father
really was in trouble. What had he done? Why had they been gone so long?

“Oh, God,” I finally whispered, rocking forward and then back, hugging my knees. “God . . .” He didn’t answer. The wind whipped
through the trees outside and rattled the windows, but inside the house was too quiet. My own whispers were shocking. “I’m
afraid.” I knew I sounded like a little girl; there was a pathetic whine in my voice. “Please keep us safe. Please be real.”
I rocked some more and pondered what I had just said. “If You are . . . I need to know it. I need to know if You care about
me. . . .” My head fell onto my knees and tears squeezed from the corners of my eyes. The wind grew momentarily silent and
I imagined that God was really listening. “I know I don’t deserve anything good from You. But TJ, he hasn’t done anything
wrong. Please don’t take me away from him. And what about my father? If he made a mistake . . . Whatever he did, I think he’s
in pretty deep. I think he needs Your help.”

A peaceful feeling settled over me then. When the wind began to howl again, it was not so scary. I pretended that the arms
of the big chair were the strong and tender arms of God. I snuggled into them and eventually drifted off on a gentle cloud
of sleep.

THE NEXT MORNING Sheriff Byron leaned against the kitchen counter, sipping a cup of coffee, a revolver hanging against his
right hip. (That seemed strange to me—a gun in my mother’s kitchen.) I used to think Sheriff Byron was a hunk. He was younger
then and his belly didn’t bulge at the belt. He said they didn’t ordinarily respond to prank phone calls, but this was an
outright threat—and against a judge. The sheriff took my statement while sitting across from me at the breakfast table, carefully
writing and then looking up at me without moving his chin. He was still handsome but in an older-man way, with long black
eyelashes and the rough shadow of a beard.

I never noticed his nose hairs before, though. Of course, my only close encounters with him had been at night, and both times
I had been under the influence.

The first incident was at the rest stop off the highway just outside of Dixon, where you could park your car under the trees
and listen to the river wander around the bend to the Fillmores’ farm. Jerry Mattson was at the wheel. We had been in love
for about a month before I realized that he was boring and lacked a spirit of adventure. Upon discovering his well-concealed
secret, I had no choice but to drop the let’s-just-be-friends line, only by then I really didn’t care whether I ever saw him
again. He kept telling me we were meant for each other, and that I stimulated him, which I knew to be true but he said he
didn’t mean it that way. He sounded like an attorney pleading a case, as if love was a verdict I should make based on the
facts as he saw them. I just kept drinking his beer and trying not to be too honest because he was a nice guy and I didn’t
want to destroy his fragile male ego. By the time Sheriff Byron shone his flashlight through the window of Jerry’s black Camaro,
we had been discussing our relationship for what seemed like hours.

“Young lady, are you here of your own free will?” he asked.

I leaned toward him and let my sweater drop over the six-pack of empty bottles on the floor of the car. “Well, actually, sir,
I asked him to take me home a long time ago.” He suggested that Jerry drive me home. Jerry was furious, especially when the
sheriff followed us all the way back to my driveway. Sheriff Byron probably hadn’t placed me as the Judge’s daughter until
then.

Our next confrontation was not so innocent. My best friend, Trudy, had dated an older man who was nineteen and already had
an apartment of his own. He told the guys at the gas station where he worked that she had gone all the way with him, which
was an absolute lie. She had been forced to sit real close to him in his old Chevy sedan since he had the passenger door tied
shut, with ropes crisscrossing every which way because the door was supposedly broken. He kept putting the moves on her even
though it was only their first date and she had nowhere to go because of the web of ropes. She wouldn’t even kiss him good
night because he smelled like a pile of greasy rags. Trudy was a virgin and intended to be one until her wedding night. I
knew that because I was her best friend. So when I heard what Gene had told Randy from Tim, who overheard them bragging where
they smoked cigarettes out behind the Darlington Automotive Service, I was indignant. Trudy was enraged.

Our plan was not firm. We usually just went with spontaneous inspiration when things like this came up. That particular Friday
night, we had been discussing the Gene thing while sampling a variety of liqueurs from her mother’s pantry. We decided the
best thing to do was confront him. But when Trudy pulled onto Gene’s street in the Mustang her father had given her to assuage
his guilt over leaving them for another family, the ground-floor apartment was dark. We tried the door. It was bolted tight.
Luckily, the third window we tried gave way. We crawled into the dark living room and let our creativity flow. We had been
in there redecorating the apartment by candlelight for about an hour when headlights suddenly illuminated the room. There
was no back door. In a panic, Trudy climbed up on the toilet, squeezed out through the tiny bathroom window and dove into
the laurel hedge that fenced the backyard. I was only halfway through the window when I got stuck.

It was Sheriff Byron who came around to the back of the house with his long black flashlight and lit me up like a vaudeville
queen. “What are you doing in there? Is Gene back from Frisco already?” I acted like I was glad to see the sheriff. He went
around the building and apparently crawled through the same living room window we had used. Soon I felt his strong hands guiding
my feet back to the plastic toilet seat. I jumped down and turned to stare directly at his silver badge. I thanked him for
rescuing me again. He nodded and led me out of the bathroom. The lights were on now. He just folded his arms across his chest
and surveyed the main living area. It was an absolute mess. The pictures on the walls hung cockeyed. Half-full ketchup and
mustard bottles bobbed in the aquarium. That was Trudy’s idea. She had taken all the food out of the fridge and arranged it
strategically throughout the apartment. While she hid open tuna cans in the back of the bedroom closet, I froze the underwear.
Luckily, most of our sabotage was not visible to the naked eye. It would probably be discovered for days and weeks to come.
“Would you like to tell me about it?” he had asked.

That was a long time ago but I still felt sheepish now with him standing right here in our kitchen, talking with my parents.
It turned out that the lights had been off for miles around last night, not just at our house. The wind had thrown a tree
onto a major power line serving greater Darlington, Carter and Dixon. That’s why the sheriff asked the Judge so many questions
about his relationships with neighbors and local folks. The caller had known that the power was out. But the Judge just shook
his head. “The oldest James boy from over there across the ravine—Cameron—he’s been through my courtroom a time or two. I
sent him up to the state pen for a couple of years on his third felony charge. He’s made no secret about how he feels about
me, but he just doesn’t fit. The voice doesn’t match, for one thing. I can’t think of anyone else around here who would have
reason to threaten me.”

I hadn’t known that about Cameron, though it didn’t surprise me. Of all the James Gang, he was our most treacherous opponent
in the pinecone battles Donnie and I and our friends fought in the woods.

Mom’s forehead was pinched and she stood with an elbow resting on her crossed arm, one hand covering her mouth. She had been
quiet all morning and her eyes had the look of crying, like she had been—or was on the verge of it. She had reason to be afraid,
but I couldn’t help but suspect that she knew something else, maybe a reason that someone was threatening her husband. Before
the sheriff came I had asked her what she and the Judge talked about last night. She shook her head and said, “Oh, lots of
things. Nothing in particular.” But I didn’t believe her. Secrets buzzed like hornets around us and I was the only one acknowledging
their presence.

My father tried to brush the phone threat off. “It was probably just someone’s idea of a joke.”

For some reason he didn’t mention the call he had received the day that he and TJ were cleaning the fish. He had said it was
nothing—just a prank call. I almost brought it up but thought better of it, remembering Matt’s fiery words.
You’re a judge, for God’s sake! Judge yourself!
If my father was involved in something illegal, I would not be the one to implicate him. “It was a grown man,” I said in a
subdued voice, “and he wasn’t joking.”

The sheriff strode to the window. “This person might have been calling from a cell phone.” He surveyed the property. “Did
you hear any interference? Any scratchy sounds in the background?” I didn’t think so. He turned to the Judge. “You still have
people coming by here to help themselves to worms?”

“Not too much this time of year.”

Sheriff Byron folded the written statement and pushed it into his shirt pocket. “I’m just going to look around outside before
I go.”

The Judge stood tall at the kitchen window and watched the sheriff stride through the wet field toward the barn, carrying
a pair of green barn boots that were kept on the back porch. Branches and leaves torn loose by the storm littered the yard.
I sat at the table with my coffee and a bran muffin as Mom rinsed dishes and placed them in the dishwasher.

My father’s face was as hard to read as a map held upside down. His jaw did not flinch; his countenance was expressionless.
Who was he? What was happening behind those piercing eyes in the intricate places of his soul? He was the Judge, the one with
the power and authority to decide a person’s fate. He had judged me, and beyond reason I felt as if the woes of my life were
my punishment for failing to keep his law. For failing to measure up. But what about him? What had he done to make someone
want to kill him? What had he said that shocked and infuriated Matthew? Would the Judge take the law into his own hands to
get rid of this stalker? If so, he must have something terrible to hide. He seemed deep in thought, as if he had forgotten
that Mom and I were there. If he had broken his own law, then more than the law would be broken. That was for sure. There
would be a shattering of hearts all around him.