Take Me There (26 page)

I consider what she has told me. “So by the time my father got up to the trailer, Jack had already been shot.”

“As far as I can figure. I was sittin’ there, tied up, not able to do anything. Not even able to get to the phone to call the police. I started yellin’ for you. ‘Dylan,’ I called. You were supposed to be asleep in the front bedroom. I kept callin’ for you, but you didn’t call back. I didn’t know where you were. I was out of my mind. Didn’t know what had happened to you or your daddy. Then I saw him in the moonlight, down by the barn, takin’ something out of his back pocket that looked like a gun. He went into the barn, and a few minutes later he came out. Came up to the house. Untied me. He was cryin’. Told me he had some plan to get out of that awful business he was in, but it backfired and Jack was dead. I told him to find you. He said he already did. Said you done run up to the trailer for some fool reason and he’d taken you to Travis Seagraves’s place. Then he gave me a big brown envelope filled with certificates of deposit
and bank account numbers. He said there was enough money in there to take care of all of us. He told me to give a third of it to Jack’s widow, keep a third for myself, and use a third to take care of you and your mama.

“After he gave me the money, he hugged me and told me to call the police. Then he left. I figured he’d run off to Mexico or at least flee the state. I had no idea he’d gone back up to the trailer to wait for the authorities.”

“He didn’t run?”

“Didn’t even try.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. “After he went to jail, I put my share with the money I left for the Goldens.”

“You didn’t keep any of it?”

“Just enough to hire that ambulance chaser he found to represent him, along with a private detective to try to locate you and your mama. But by then you were long gone. That uncle of yours knew where you were, but he wouldn’t tell me. Against my better judgment, I gave him the third your daddy intended for you and Mollie. I never trusted that man, but I didn’t have much choice except to hope he’d do the right thing.”

I try to process all she has said. “If the shots were fired before my father went up the hill, he couldn’t have been the one who killed Jack.”

“I know.”

“But he wouldn’t let you testify to that effect.”

“His lawyer told me they decided I was an unreliable witness. The jury would just think I was tryin’ to protect my son, and if the DA cross-examined me, I might fall apart on the stand.”

“And you never told the newspapers or the TV reporters what you knew?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“They wouldn’t have believed me. Besides …” She looks down at the dirt. “The day you take away a man’s right to choose his fate, he starts to die. I saw it happen to your granddaddy.”

“You can’t possibly think my father chose to be where he is.”

“I believe he looked at his options and did what he thought was best. Who am I to say? Maybe he was right.”

I WAKE TO THE SOUND OF A HONKING HORN AND LOOK OUT
the window to see Levida sitting in the diesel pickup. I slip on my pants and am surprised when Wade and Dorie both come out of the back bedroom, half-dressed. I slept so soundly I never even heard them come in last night.

“What time is it?” Dorie asks in alarm.

I look up at the cuckoo clock. “Eight thirty,” I tell her.

“My daddy is gonna kill me,” she says, buttoning her blouse.

I walk out the front door, while Dorie crawls out a back window. “What’s going on?” I ask Levida, surprised to see her in her black dress.

“It’s Sunday. Time for church,” she says.

“After what happened there last Thursday night?”

“Put a shirt on, and tell lover boy to do the same.”

There’s no use arguing, so I go back to the house and put on one of my father’s cotton shirts. It feels good to wear it today.

“Put a shirt on,” I tell Wade. “We’re going to church.”

“Do you think Dorie’s father will shoot me?” he asks.

“He’s a preacher, Wade.”

“He’s gonna know what we’ve been doing. He owns a twelve-gauge, you know.”

“Everybody in this town owns a twelve-gauge. Besides, don’t you think he’ll get more suspicious if you
don’t
show up?”

“Good point. He might come lookin’ for me.”

Wade throws on a shirt, and we get into the backseat of the extended cab diesel.

When we get to the church, no one will talk to us. People walk right past us. Like the gun in the middle of the table.

The exception, of course, is Pastor Bob. He hugs Levida before she goes off to sort through her music. Then he shakes my hand and slaps Wade on the back. “I want to thank you for what you did with Dorie last night.”

“Uh,” replies Wade, his jaw hanging open like it’s become unhinged.

“She told me how the two of you stayed up all night with Widow Spencer. I’m sorry to hear her rheumatism is giving her so much trouble that she can’t sleep. You’re a fine example of Christian charity, Wade. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he manages to say.

For my friend’s sake, I’m glad the preacher is so stupid and naive.

“I know it isn’t easy being the preacher’s daughter. Living next door to the church. You’re the first boy who’s shown any real interest in her.”

“I should probably find her,” Wade says, awkwardly backing away.

“You go right ahead. She’s in the fellowship hall setting up for the potluck.”

When he leaves, the preacher turns to me. “Would you consider Wade a loyal friend?”

“Loyal?” I say, not sure what the preacher is after.

“Does he stick by people, keep his promises?”

“To the death,” I say truthfully.

The preacher nods his head. “I’m glad to hear that.” And I realize he’s neither stupid nor naive.

Levida plays the church organ like there’s no tomorrow, and I think about how brave she is to show her face here every Sunday. She hasn’t just lost her husband and her son, she’s lost her friends. Her place in the world. Maybe she has a right to be bitter.

Pastor Bob gets up in front of the congregation and opens his Bible. “Matthew, chapter five,” he announces. Then he looks straight at Wade, who sits next to Dorie in the front row. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Then he looks at my grandmother, sitting at the organ in her black dress. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” He looks at his daughter. “Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Then he looks at me, his dark eyes boring their way through my soul. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they SHALL BE SATISFIED.”

It’s like he’s made a prophecy right then and there. Justice will win. I know it has to be true. The preacher read it from the Bible.

“And blessed are the merciful,” says Pastor Bob, looking up and down the aisles until people start squirming in their seats. “For they shall receive mercy.”

He goes on to spend half an hour talking about the pure
in heart and finishes with a prayer, while carefully avoiding the subject of my father, but by avoiding it, he seems to drive it home even more.

The preacher has nerve. I’ll give him that. It takes a lot to stand up to people. Especially if they sign your paycheck. Even if it is only by what you don’t say.

An easy peace settles over me. The peace that comes from knowing there is nothing you can do, that decisions are out of your hands. I look at the cross hanging above the preacher, rub the cross on my hand. I pray for myself, for my father, for my mother, for Jess and Wade and Dorie and Levida.

After church everybody starts heading downstairs to the basement for the potluck. Red and Dakota glare at me as if they don’t care a rat’s ass for the part of the reading about mercy.

“I think I’ll go on back to the farm,” I tell Levida.

“You run now, boy, and you’ll spend your whole life runnin’.”

“I’m not running. I’m just avoiding trouble.”

“In my experience, it always finds you.”

“Maybe. But there’s no reason to go looking for it,” I say.

“Suit yourself, but I’m not cooking for you when there’s free food at church,” she says, then goes downstairs, followed by Wade and Dorie, whose arms are intertwined.

I walk outside into the wet Texas summer. A storm cloud has gathered overhead, cooling things off slightly, but if anything, it’s even more humid than usual. It’s about a two-mile walk from Main Street to the country road where the farm sits, but I can see that I can cut my time in half if I go through the pasture behind the church. I start walking but am stopped by a voice in the church parking lot.

“Dylan, I have to talk to you.”

It’s Jess.

She’s wearing a white cotton T-shirt and a skirt that billows in the hot wind. I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming.

“What are you doing here?” I ask as she approaches, green eyes smoldering. I wonder if she’s come back to finish telling me off.

“I went looking for you up at your grandmother’s place. You weren’t there, and nothing else is open in this town on Sunday morning but this place and the Catholic Church.”

“Why aren’t you in California?”

“Can we take a walk or something?” she asks, and I realize we’re still standing in the middle of the church parking lot.

“Sure. There’s a tree,” I say, pointing to an oak sitting by a pond out in the middle of the pasture. “Maybe we can find some shade.” There is a stone house in the distance, but I’m not worried. Everybody in this town is at one church or another.

“I tried to leave,” she tells me as we cut across the grass.

“Why didn’t you?” I ask, still unable to believe she’s here. My legs are shaking so badly I’m not sure I’ll make it across the pasture.

“I was standing in line at the airport with my boarding pass, but I just couldn’t get on the plane.”

“Why not?”

She stops and shows me the poem I scribbled on the greasy paper place mat.

My heart skips a beat.

She looks up at me grimly. “If you wrote this, then who wrote the poems in your journal?”

“I did.”

“Liar! The handwriting is completely different.”

How can I explain to her the words that came into my head when I didn’t expect them? How could I confess that I was reciting love poems about Jess to another woman, who wrote them down for me in the leather book? How can I ever make her believe that I love her after the way I acted? “Somebody else wrote them down for me.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me!” She covers her face with her hands and starts to cry.

I feel like someone has stabbed me in the heart. I never meant to hurt her like this. “Jess, the best thing you could do right now is to turn around, go back to Houston, get on a plane for California, and forget about me.”

The tears keep pouring down her face. “Who wrote the poems in your journal?” she demands.

“My reading teacher.”

“Why?”

“Because I couldn’t do it myself.”

“Are you telling me they really were your poems?”

“I got words in me, Jess, fighting to find a way out. Sometimes there’s so many words and they get so crowded in my skull I think my head is gonna explode. I want to write them down. I’ve tried, but most of the time my thoughts and my feelings are bigger than what I can get on the paper.”

She wipes her eyes. “Those poems about me. Did you really mean them?”

“Yes.”

“When I read that first one, I knew I was never going to
find anybody like you again.” She moves toward me. Takes my hand in hers and traces her silk-soft finger across the tattoo on my right hand. “Things moved kind of fast last time. Maybe we could start over.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, unable to believe she’s even willing to talk to me.

She puts her hands on my face, pulls my lips to hers, and kisses me so deeply I forget where I am.

Who I am.

I wrap my arms around her, holding on for dear life, and I decide if she can believe in me, then maybe—just maybe—I can believe in me too.

OCEAN BLUE

I was

holding her

and she was

holding me.

Couldn’t see

we both were

going down.

When holding on

is the only thing

you’ve got,

how can you know

this is how lovers drown?

I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG WE SLEEP, INTERTWINED IN THE
grass beneath the oak tree. I open my eyes every now and then, see Jess beside me, and then immediately close them, afraid to disrupt the dream. I am finally awoken by someone kicking me in the back with a boot. “You got any idea where you are, boy?”

I look up to find Arnie Golden standing over us with his nephew, Tornado Tim. I sit up, see that the sun has moved far into the west, realize that we were here talking most of the afternoon, until we fell asleep, exhausted, under the oak tree. I take a closer look at the house up on the hill and realize I am on the Goldens’ property.

Jess opens her eyes, sees Arnie and Tornado standing there, and quickly sits up, straightening her clothes.

“Have a nice afternoon?” Arnie asks us.

“We were just about to leave,” Jess says, slipping into her sandals.

“Yes, you are,” he tells her. Then he turns to his nephew, who looks like he’d enjoy shooting us and burying us right here
on his property. “You drive the girl home. I got a few things to say to Mr. Dawson here.”

“But—,” Tornado says, but Arnie cuts him off.

“Do what I say.”

“No, please!” I stand up, imagining all the horrible things Tornado might do to Jess to get back at me. “She hasn’t done anything. Please leave her out of this.”

“I am leaving her out of this,” Arnie tells me. “That’s why Tornado is taking her home.” He turns to Tornado. “And the boy is right. Don’t bother her.”

“Yes, sir,” Tornado says. Jess looks at me questioningly.

“Go on,” I tell her, figuring it’s better for her to take her chances with Tornado than to stay here and watch what is going to happen to me.