Take Me There (23 page)

When I return to the farm, I’m surprised to see there isn’t a board of the barn left standing. Wade, who is busy digging up the floor, drops his shovel when he sees me and runs up to the truck. “Dylan, where ya been? Your grandma is fit to be tied. Pew-wee! You stink, dude,” he informs me as I get out of the truck. “Where did you go?”

“Mexico,” I say as I walk over to the hose and start cleaning
the dried vomit from my boots. “Why are you digging up the barn floor? Haven’t you demolished it enough?”

“Your grandma said she wants the whole thing dug up so she can build a new swimming pool for that dang pig, but I think she’s really after that box.”

“What box?”

“The old metal box with the padlock that was buried by the pig trough. Oh, I forgot. You haven’t seen it yet. I found it yesterday morning.”

I throw down the hose. “Where is it?”

“I took it up to the trailer and hid it under the couch.”

“Wade, I could kiss you.”

“I wish you wouldn’t. I’m kinda partial to girls. Besides, you don’t smell too good.”

I grab him and kiss his forehead anyway. “C’mon, let’s go have a look.”

“Not so fast,” Levida says, huffing and puffing toward me with Charlotte at her heels. “Where have you been, boy?”

“I went down to La Puerta to talk to my uncle Mitch.”

“I’m not runnin’ a hotel. You don’t just saunter in and saunter out at your leisure. If that’s the way you feel, you can collect your junk and find a Holiday Inn.”

“What did I do?” I ask. My mother never kept tabs on me, and I see no reason why this old woman should.

“I think she was worried about you,” whispers Wade, and Levida shoots him a look.

“You missed Wednesday night church,” Levida says. Her bottom lip is quivering, and I can see that Wade is right, but she’s not about to admit it. “You can make it up tonight, though,” she informs me. “There’s gonna be a special prayer vigil.”

“I got some stuff to do tonight,” I tell her, thinking of the rusted box waiting for me up at the trailer.

“Yeah, you’ve had a lot of ‘stuff’ to do. You keep runnin’ here and there all over the darn state, but you won’t sit still long enough to face anything.”

“Sit still!” I say. “You really expect me to sit still while they get ready to kill my father?”

She glares at me, the wheels of her brain working on some plan. Then she turns to Wade. “Go get the diesel. We’re goin’ to town.”

“Town?”

“Brenham.”

“What are we gonna do in Brenham?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Buy a hat. Get some ice cream. I believe Dylan needs to spend some time alone.”

“Fine. That’s what I was planning to do anyway,” I say.

“And be sure you meet us at the church at seven o’clock.”

“Levida …”

“Don’t even think about missing it. They’re having a prayer meeting. If you miss it and your father dies, you’ll have to live with that guilt for the rest of your life.”

I could tell her I don’t think that’s the way God works, but why waste the breath? “Fine!” I say.

“Fine!” she snaps right back. “C’mon, Wade.”

I go up to the trailer and find the rusted box Wade hid under the couch. It’s about the size of a school binder, only deeper, and I wonder what’s inside. Maybe money for a fresh start in Mexico, but when I shake the box I hear something solid and hard inside. My hand trembles as I twist the knob, this way and that, trying
to listen for any variation in the tumblers so I can figure out the combination. I try my father’s birthday, 5-15-72, but the numbers don’t go that high, so I try 5-15-7, but that doesn’t work. Then I try my mother’s birthday, 4-18-71, but that doesn’t work either because the highest number on the lock is 39. I consider that I will run into the same problem with my own birthday, when I realize I will be turning eighteen in two days. “Happy birthday,” I tell myself, knowing that if I didn’t remember, nobody else is going to. I wonder if whatever is inside this box will free my father. That would be the best present in the world.

After ten minutes I give up on the numbers game and go down to the workshop. I sort through Levida’s tools until I find what I think might help me, a file, two screwdrivers, and a hammer.

Setting the metal box on the floor, I try to jimmy the lock, but it’s no use. Next I try to loosen the hinges, but the box is sturdier than it looks. Finally I bang on the thing with the hammer, but I don’t even leave a dent. I throw the box against the wall in frustration, finally shoving it back under the couch.

Then it’s just me and the clock and the blood-stained curtains. What Levida thinks I’ll gain from sitting here staring at the walls is beyond me. The silence of the place is louder than a jet engine and builds between my ears, bringing back the alcohol headache of that morning.

I go to the back of the trailer and take a shower, in a bathroom covered in rose-colored tile that makes me want to vomit again. I wonder if it’s possible for a kid of seventeen to be an alcoholic.

I dry off and think about calling Jess and asking her to run away with me to Mexico. No, that wouldn’t be right. I can’t ask her to drop out of school just to be with me.

I feel like I’ll go crazy if I sit here staring at the walls and thinking about Jess. Then a thought occurs to me. I have my father’s book. I could try reading it.

I go out to the Ford and grab it, thankful for any diversion. Taking it back into the living room, I open to the first page and am startled to see my name printed there. It’s a dedication. A note to me, published right in the book.

To my son Dylan.

I’ve written this book for you.

It’s a guide for how not to live your life.

I’m sending it out into the world in the hopes
that someday it will find you.

Even if I never do.

All my love,

Dad

Wow! My father wrote a book for me, to tell me all the things he couldn’t say in person. I thumb through the pages, amazed that someone would go to all this trouble for me. I already know how
not
to live my life. What I desperately want to know is how to live it. So I keep on reading, hoping I’ll find some answers. It’s a slow, painful process, but I don’t have anything else to do.

I wake up to the sound of the cuckoo clock clucking out seven annoying chirps and realize I’ve drifted off to sleep, clutching my father’s book. I’m sure Levida wound up that stupid clock
just to terrorize me. I check the time again. Realize the prayer meeting is starting.

I splash water on my face, get into the truck, and drive to the redbrick church on Main Street. As I go inside and sit in the back row, I hear angry voices grumbling among themselves while the preacher tries to talk.

“All I said was that we should pray for God to have mercy on D.J.’s soul,” says the preacher.

A man sitting next to Red in the second row stands up. “Well, in that case, why don’t we just open up all the prisons and let out those killers and rapists and child molesters? If we’re gonna practice mercy and forgiveness, I say let’s get after it.”

“I didn’t say that,” the preacher replies.

“You might as well have,” a woman yells from the back of the church.

“You’re forgettin’ that the Goldens are our friends,” says another man. “Just because they aren’t Baptists doesn’t mean we’re gonna pray that the law lets Jack’s killer get off easy.”

“That’s not what I’m suggesting,” the preacher says, but the crowd doesn’t hear him. They’re all grumbling too loudly among themselves. My grandmother sits up front at the church organ, glaring out at them like a flashing neon sign no one notices.
Hey, remember me. That man you’re talking about is my son.

“Please, brothers and sisters, let’s try to remember why we’re all here,” says the preacher. “It’s a prayer service for everyone affected by this tragedy.”

“You weren’t here back when it happened,” says the first man. “You don’t remember how it tore this town apart, but we do.”

The crowd cheers.

“All I suggested,” says the preacher, “was a prayer vigil for
both
of the families. I’m not advocating public policy.”

“I agree with the preacher,” says a pretty blond woman about my mother’s age. “Not only that, but I think the governor should let D.J. go for time served.”

Voices rise up from the crowd, but the woman keeps talking above them all. “You all know that trial was a mockery. D.J. has paid his debt to society. I say they let him go.”

“That’s because you had the hots for him all through high school. Everybody knows you wrote all his papers. But in case you didn’t notice, he went off to play for the Longhorns and left you in the dust,” someone shouts.

“I know the wounds go deep,” says the preacher. “Which is precisely the reason we need to turn to Our Father in prayer to guide us peaceably through these dark times.”

“May I say a word?” asks Levida, and only then do the people in the church seem to notice her.

“All right, Mrs. Dawson.” The preacher steps aside, and my grandmother walks up to the podium.

Levida stares at the crowd for a long minute until she has everyone’s undivided attention. “My son was tried and convicted and sentenced to death by a jury of his peers.”

This hardly seems helpful, but at least no one can argue with her, and so she continues, unchallenged. “This town was left in turmoil, a woman was left without a husband, and a child was left without a father.” The crowd thinks she’s talking about Tornado T., but she’s looking right at me. “D.J. made some bad decisions. Some real bad decisions. And he’s payin’ for ’em. I ain’t here to argue about that. I just wonder if we can be honest with ourselves long enough to admit why we’re really angry. Is
it because we
think
the Dozer killed Jack Golden, or because we
know
he killed our dreams?

“If you don’t want to take a moment of silence to pray for D.J., maybe you can take that moment to pray for yourselves. What you feel about my son says more about you than it does about him. So take a moment. Figure out what truth you’re hidin’ that you can’t admit even to yourself. We all got a secret. I’ll tell you mine. I was nothin’ in this town but a poor pig farmer’s wife until my son became the school football star. Then I became the Dozer’s mama. He stole that from me, and it’s taken me eleven long, lonely years to forgive him … and myself.”

With that my grandmother steps down from the podium and walks out of the church into the light of the summer night. As I watch her go I whisper a silent prayer. “Dear God, please show me the truth. Let the truth set me and my father free.”

That night I dream again of the room with the pale blue curtains.

There are angry voices.

Gunfire.

Screaming.

Everything is darkness and confusion.

One thing I know.

Something evil has come to hurt us.

Kill us.

I remember a gun my father hid in the pantry, in a peanut sack.

I find it.

It fits in my hand, and I’m not so afraid as I hold it.

The door to the clock flies open, only it’s not the door to the clock, it’s the door to the house. Then the bird pops through the
door. Only it’s not the bird. It’s my father. And it’s his voice that screams, “My God! What have you done? You’ve killed Jack.”

And he’s looking straight at me.

But he doesn’t see me. At least not at first.

Where is he looking?

Over me?

Through me?

Then his arms are around me and he’s holding me very tightly.

He’s crying as he says, “It’ll be all right. I’ll fix it so everything is all right.”

I HAVE NEVER BELIEVED IN DAYS OF BAD LUCK OR OMENS OF
bad fortune. But I wake up on Friday the thirteenth feeling like nothing will ever be right again.

My dream from the night before haunts me. It is no longer a fuzzy vision but has become a crystal clear memory. The man storming into our trailer, yelling in a language I didn’t understand. The gun hidden in the pantry. Finding it and holding it in my hand. Jack Golden lying dead on the floor and my father carrying me away.

I must have been the one who shot Jack. I must have been scared and confused and trying to defend myself, and now my father is rotting away in prison, about to die, because of me.

Maybe I didn’t inherit bad blood from my father. Maybe all the bad blood belongs to me. Maybe everybody would be better off if I’d never been born.

I can’t remember actually pulling the trigger, but maybe it’s like Levida says. The mind can only remember what it’s willing to remember—because if you are guilty, then the truth
is not the thing that sets you free. It’s the thing that gets you locked away.

I showered last night, but I shower again when I wake up. I scrub myself for nearly half an hour, but I still don’t feel clean, and I’m afraid I will never feel clean again.

“I know you didn’t kill Jack Golden,” I tell my father.

“I’m glad you believe that.” He looks tired, like maybe he didn’t sleep last night, and I wonder what it’s like at night in this place. In juvie they dimmed the lights but never turned them all the way off.

“I killed him,” I say.

“What?”

“I remember.”

“You can’t possibly remember a thing like that, because it didn’t happen.” He looks like he’s telling the truth, but how can I know for sure when he’s so good at lying?

“I was the one who knew where the gun was hidden,” I whisper into the phone. “You showed me when you put it in the peanut sack. Why did you take the blame? The law wouldn’t have done anything to me. I was six years old.”

“That is
not
the way it happened, and that is the end of the story.” My father looks straight at me. “I don’t want to discuss it anymore. I already told you that today I’m the one who’s going to get some answers. Now I want to know why you didn’t get help with your reading. Things aren’t like they were when I was a kid. There are lots of programs to help kids with learning problems.”

“What happened to the gun?” I ask.

“Zorro took it. He found it while he was casing the house.
Jack surprised him and Zorro shot him with it. Then he fled and took the gun with him. Now it’s my turn to ask the questions. Does your mother know you have trouble reading?”