Fear Has a Name: A Novel (20 page)

Margaret had never hung up the phone.

27

Standing in a dusty corner within the old Greyhound station with its yellowing tile floors and tired cream-colored walls, Evan was deflated to learn from the reader board that the next bus heading for south Florida didn’t leave until late that night.

He peered up at the board again—the old-fashioned kind with the black felt background and white plastic letters and numbers—then picked up his bag and approached the ticket window. The old gentleman with white beard stubble and a checked conductor’s cap sitting low behind the glass assured Evan that the bus he was interested in would depart at 10:40 p.m. and arrive in Venice, Florida, the closest stop to Englewood, the next afternoon, with many stops along the way—
too many
.

Evan purchased a ticket and quietly thanked the man. He walked to a nearby wooden bench where he set down his bag and gazed through the dirty, crooked blinds into the motionless street.

He looked at his watch and figured he had something like seven hours to wait.

He was so tired. His stomach burned with hunger, but he wanted no food. In fact, Evan actually wanted to suffer. He wanted that unanswered hunger to burn off all the fat and dross and sinfulness, to quicken him, to bring him close to the bone.

He slid onto the bench, elbows on knees, head in hands. He could change his mind, walk back to the car, fill it with gas, and take back roads all the way to south Florida; the GPS would get him there.

But he just didn’t have it in him. Besides, his car would be spotted. Then he would be apprehended, brought in, possibly charged, and there would be press coverage. Wendy and the boys would go through endless humiliation—as if they weren’t going to face enough already.

The tips of his fingers tingled. He opened and closed his hands numerous times to make it go away, but it wouldn’t. He felt like a guinea pig that was being poked, prodded, and drugged in some miserable testing lab. He contemplated the weirdness of all the different side effects popping up since he quit the antidepressants. If they were capable of causing all those visible effects, what had they been doing to his brain?

Why hadn’t he killed himself already? He’d had plenty of time alone at the cabin. Could he do it? Would he go to hell for it? He eyed the black duffel. The gun was right inside. He’d gone from one cheap motel to another, the gun in the room with him each time. One time he had even taken it out and, with hands sweating, pushed the slide back and inserted a bullet into the chamber.

You don’t have the guts.

Yes he did.

He stood, caught his balance, snatched the bag, and headed for the doors and the sidewalk beyond. He would go to the car and decide what to do from there.

All this time he had been determined to visit the cottage in Englewood one last time. Something was calling him back to that particular slice of life and sand and ocean where everything had been so right.

As he walked along the sidewalk toward the library where he had parked, a breeze kicked up and with it came memories of the cottage where he and Wendy had slow-danced countless times on the screen porch and even out on the dock, beneath moonlit skies and shimmering seas. They’d gone to that same cottage since before any of the boys had been born. They’d made passionate, fun, breathless love in most of its rooms. Later they even determined that Nathaniel, their oldest, had been conceived at the cottage during one of their vacations.

Evan took a turn on Bell Street. The gun made the bag heavy. The library was down just a ways.

He and the boys had always bonded in Englewood. They would fish and fly kites and ride bikes, while Wendy read book after book. She even had a membership at the local library. Most of all, Evan and the boys would laugh and love and ride the pounding Gulf waves until their bodies collapsed beneath the gold umbrella stuck in the sand, where Wendy waited for them with towels and sandwiches and ice-cold sodas.

He’d thrown it all away—his precious marriage, his life as father to those three wonderful sons, his reputation, his ministry.

Because of the depression, there was no going back or making things right. His life was controlled by it. He’d battled it for years and lost. Yes, lost. Period.

Many days were so heavy and bleak he didn’t want to get out of bed. But he had to. So he would end up fighting, fighting, fighting—just to keep his sanity, to somehow find some light—just to live the kind of day a “normal” person lived without even thinking about it.

Why?

Why was he like this?

So weak and hopeless.

He dug out his remote, unlocked the car, and headed toward one of the back doors.

Why had God made him so frail?

Oh, it wasn’t as if he was actually asking God those questions, because he and God weren’t on speaking terms. Whenever Evan thought about communicating with God, he sensed some sort of invisible ceiling above him. It wasn’t that God didn’t hear him; God was just silent. An observer. Evan’s prayers were hindered, a thought he was sure old Andrew Satterfield would have appreciated.

But he was good at helping people.

Were. You
were
good at helping people.
Your reputation is ruined.

Right there! Who planted that thought? Satan? God? He didn’t know the difference anymore. Everything had blurred. He’d lost the moorings on which he had once built a life.

Evan pulled open the back door on the passenger side of the car, stood there, and looked around the shady parking lot to make sure no one was watching. A mother and three boys entered the library. Pushing back thoughts of Wendy and his sons, Evan tossed the duffel to the floor of the backseat, got in, shut the door, and lay down.

After looking at his watch and trying to get comfortable—finally nestling his head in the crook of his crossed arms—he closed his eyes.

He would sleep.

Sleep till the bus came.

Or until someone found him.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered …

The harsh taste of the pill he had spit out came back up his throat, into his mouth.

The lyrics of an old James Taylor song whispered into his drifting mind.
Set me free, sleep come free me, please, please, please …

Granger noted the heft of the gun in his right hand as he crept down the hallway back toward his parents’ den. Man, were they in for a surprise. For once, he would be in control. For once—perhaps one last time—
they
would have to listen to
him
.

What exactly he was going to do, he still didn’t fully know. Whatever it was, he needed to move swiftly. The cops could be nearby.

It was his deranged mother he wanted a piece of. She was the one—

“The prodigal returns.”

Granger froze at the entrance to the dining room. Slowly he turned to his right. There stood his father. Calm. Older. Smaller. One arm comfortably at his side; the other, bent at the elbow, pointing at Granger’s heart with the bulky, dark gray .45 caliber that had been missing from the Rockport box.

“The police were here,” Father said quietly. “Said you might pay us a visit.” From behind smudged glasses, Father’s cataract-glazed brown eyes flicked to the weapon at Granger’s side. “Give it here.”

Granger did not move but looked directly into those hypnotic eyes. “You wouldn’t shoot your own son.” He too spoke softly but sarcastically.

“I have an excuse,” Father said. “You’re wanted. You broke in. You’re armed. Give it to me.”

Granger came within a second of lurching for the man and bashing his lights out with the metal in his hand, but he was a bit too far away, maybe four feet. His own gun wasn’t cocked, or he might have tried to beat the old man to the draw.

Although his father was slight and seemingly tranquil, he had a ferocious side when heated to a boil. As Granger eyed the gun pointed at him, then his father’s unflinching face, he realized the man might just blow a gaping hole clean through his stomach.

Figuring he could overtake the old man as things played out, Granger slowly handed over the gun.

“Smart,” Father said, taking the gun in the palm of his other hand, turning his back on Granger, and walking toward the den. “Your mother’s not well. Come see her. And give me the other clip.”

Granger debated tackling the old man from behind; it would have been a piece of cake. But the confidence with which his father had turned, the curious words about his mother, and that familiar, mesmerizing spell that seemed to make Granger fall into submission caused him to simply follow his father toward the den, handing him the spare clip as he entered.

Granger thought it odd that his mother wasn’t whizzing about, all up in his business. But as he approached her, he realized why. What he hadn’t seen before when he had peeked into the den was the wheelchair in which she was seated. He approached her from behind. Even from that angle he could tell something was very wrong. She leaned awkwardly to one side, facing the TV but slumped. As he came around her side, he saw the knot of severely bent wrists and fingers locked in grotesquely shaped fists.

This was serious. And it was permanent.

His heart seemed to weaken. She was a sad and hideous sight. The ramifications were too much to grasp in that split second. At the same time, however, a strange and somewhat deranged sense of elation—perhaps relief—settled into Granger’s bones.

“Can you turn that down?” he said to his father.

The volume on the TV cut in half.

“Hello, Mother.” Granger knelt at her side.

Her watery yellow eyes and piercing blue pupils stared straight ahead at the flickering TV. Her small mouth hung open an inch; he wanted to reach up and close it. Her putty-colored skin looked soft and fuzzy and was tightly stretched against her bony face. The thick, straight hair was now a blend of silver and black. He could tell Father had tried to brush it and part it the way she liked but had failed miserably.

“Mother.” Granger was within ten inches of her face. “It’s Granger. I’ve come to visit.”

She was like a statue, the eyes unblinking, fixed on the boob tube.

While on his knees, Granger shifted around to his father, who was seated on the ottoman with his knees wide apart, handing the big gun back and forth from one palm to the other. The other gun rested between his legs on the ottoman.

“Massive stroke,” Father said. “Back in April.”

Granger looked around the room, which he now realized was cluttered with dirty dinner trays, rags, adult diapers, medicine bottles, and old newspapers. “Do you have any help?”

“Nah.” Father stared down at the gun.

“What about when you have to go somewhere—the store, errands?”

“Van has a lift.”

“That’ll wear you out,” Granger said.

“What’re you gonna do?” Father’s shoulders jumped. “It’s the plan.”

Some plan. This is what their religion has gotten them.

Granger didn’t say it aloud; his father would have detonated. Instead he said, “How does she eat?”

“I feed her.”

“Tube?”

“Mouth,” Father said. “She can eat.”

“You mean she’s okay from the neck up?” Granger said. “She’s not …”

“Brain-dead? No son,
you’re
the only one who suffered from that around here. What’d you do in Trenton City? They wouldn’t tell me.”

“What’d you do with all my stuff—my trombone … my keepsakes?”

“You’ve been gone how long?” Father said.

“So you just threw it all away?”

“We figured if you really wanted that junk you’d have gotten it by now,” Father said. “Are you kidding me? It’s been years.”

“Does she know I’m here?” Granger said.

“She knows,” Father said. “What’d you do, kill somebody?”

Granger thought of Pamela. How he wanted to blurt out that, no, he hadn’t killed anyone—he’d gone back to find the only person who’d ever loved him.

He turned back to his mother, whose head had moved slightly toward him. Her eyes were wide open, fixed on his face, burning into him now. She flinched. Her head and shoulders began to shake. The pace of her breathing kicked up. Her face went pink, and a strand of drool spilled over her bottom lip.

“Uh oh, she’s mad now.” Father laughed. “She wants to know what you did. She’s upset you’re gonna ruin our good name.”

Mother’s fiery eyes continued to lock onto Granger’s face, even as he used the rag on her shoulder to remove the drool, and she shook so bad the wheelchair began to rattle.

Granger stood and stared down at his father.

“I think she’s reminding you,” Father said, “once a vessel of dishonor, always a vessel of dishonor.” He smirked. “We’ve always expected this. In the back of our minds, all these years, we’ve been waiting for the day you would self-destruct. It was inevitable.”

To heck with this.

Granger walked into the kitchen, got a bowl and spoon, found a ladle, and served himself some chili. He grabbed saltines from the pantry, broke two fistfuls into the bowl, and took it back into the den.

“Help yourself,” Father joked.

Granger had forgotten the power of the awful words spoken under that roof. How deeply they penetrated. How much they hurt. But he remembered quickly how he had trained himself to let the words roll off, as if he’d never heard them. It was a battle of the mind.