The Last Road Home (27 page)

C
HAPTER
55

I
stocked up on new towels and sheets at Salem's General Store, got home early in the afternoon, and fixed up the bed. After sweeping out four years' worth of dust and dirt and wet-mopping the floors, I decided to ride to the Wilsons.

Mrs. Wilson answered my knock. She looked thinner, her face pale and drawn. Time had not been kind to her. Her mouth gaped open. “Well, Lord have mercy.” She yelled toward the back of the house. “Clyde, come see who's here!” She took my arm and pulled me inside, giving me a big hug. “I'm so glad to see you, Junebug.”

Mr. Wilson came through the kitchen door, his gut drooped over his belt like a fat woman's butt. He walked with a cane for support, hadn't shaved, and blotched red patches crisscrossed his nose and sagging cheeks. “Junebug Hurley! Well, ain't you a sight for sore eyes.”

I was glad he looked bad. “Came home last night and thought to drop over, so if you noticed somebody at the house you wouldn't worry.” Didn't want him to think he had any black folks for neighbors.

“Where in the world have you been these long years? Sit down here and tell us about it.” He motioned to a chair. “You want some iced tea?”

“No, I appreciate it. What's with the cane?”

“Hurt my back a while ago, ain't been able to do much of anything since. Then Lila got sick, so we just been living like two wore-out mules.”

I looked at Mrs. Wilson. “What caused your sickness?”

She dry-washed her hands. “Got to feeling real poorly one day, went to the doctor, and he sent me to the hospital to run some tests. They think I've had a couple of little strokes. I'm better now, though.”

She must not have been looking in the mirror. “You need to take care of yourself, slow down some.” We spent a while catching up.

“Did you have to go to Vieet Naam?” Mr. Wilson asked.

“Yep. Spent a little over a year there.”

“What did you do? Was it bad? Did you get to kill any of the little chink bastards?”

“Never fired a shot. Worked in the motor pool.” I could see the letdown on his face. “Mostly it was like living through a year of late Julys, hot as hell, and the place smelled like Fido's ass. How's the farming business been?”

“Ah, you can't hardly make much of a living no more. Can't get help. All the niggers”—his eyes made a quick cut at me—“is moving to town and getting public jobs. Plus, Roy's got too damn old to do much of anything. Hard to farm tobacco without good labor.”

That was enough for me. I got up to leave.

“We sure are glad you're home, Junebug. A lot of boys are being killed over there. We're real proud of you.”

Heat rose up my face. Him saying he was proud of me was like spitting in my face. But I let it pass. “Appreciate it, happy to be home.” I paused at the door. “By the way, whatever happened to my old mule, Sally?”

Mr. Wilson shook his head. “That was the craziest thing. She didn't live a month after you left, just lay down one day and died. I could swear she was grieving.”

“To tell you the truth, she was what I missed most.” His face wrinkled, like his feelings were hurt.

Mr. Wilson walked as far as my truck. When we were out of earshot, I turned around to face him. “I know it was you.” I held his gaze until he looked away. “You should know I ain't forgot.” My face flushed red as that night came back to me. “If you or any of your sheet-wearing sons a bitches ever show up around my place again, I'll kill you. You understand?”

He nodded and quick-limped back to his house.

I stopped at Roy and Clemmy's. I ran my hand over the fender on Granddaddy's old truck. Clemmy answered the door. She didn't say anything, just grabbed me around the neck, held tight, and started crying. She took my hand and led me to a chair. “I was worried we might not see you again. Fancy said you got hurt.”

“I was worried a bit myself there for a while, but the docs fixed me up, so no worse for wear.” The little house had good cooking smells, a hominess unlike the Wilson place. There was a line of pictures on one wall, a few of Fancy and Lightning as they grew up, and a big black-and-white framed one of Fancy. I walked over to it. “Is this recent?” It showed her from the waist up. She wore a white shirt with a collar that stood up against her neck. I could see a river behind her, and it must have been spring because her sleeves were short. Seeing that face never failed to stab me in the heart.

“She sent it about a year ago. That girl has sure grown up, ain't she?”

Fancy was far from a girl anymore. She was a beautiful woman. Her hair was cut and fashioned around her face like I'd seen in magazines. She looked stylish, but I could still see my Fancy, the one with bowed teeth, skinny legs, and that fire in her eyes. I could almost feel her saying, “I dare you.”

Roy was out in the backyard and came shuffling as fast as he could when Clemmy hollered to him. We hugged each other. I was truly happy to see the closest thing I had to a family. Roy was showing his years. His hair had turned completely white, and a lifetime of hard labor was catching up with his once-powerful body. We sat down and I teased him about being gray-headed. “Weren't you and Grandma about the same age, Roy?” I asked.

“I expect so. I'll be seventy-one next month.” He said it proudly. I looked at his eyes. When you're young, all grown-ups look old, and by the time you are a grown-up, they are old. Only pictures assure you they were young once. I wondered if this was the way Roy thought his life would turn out, what his dreams might have been when he was young.

When we settled down, Clemmy wanted to talk about Fancy. “She decided she would stay and live in France, did you know that?”

“Got a letter from her a while back that said she was. I sure have thought about her a lot, hoping she would make out good. She sounded happy.”

Clemmy smiled. “I think she's doing fine; homesick some I can tell, but don't expect she'll ever come back here after what them Klan people did. That scared her down deep.”

Roy spoke up. “Things are changing, Junebug. Black folk about had a bellyful of being on the bottom. These young bucks ain't going to take shit no more.” Fancy's words rang in my head, “
One day the blood's going to run the other way
.” “What are you aiming to do now that you're back? If you're considering farming, I'll help you.”

I shook my head. Roy was fooling himself if he thought he'd ever prime another row of tobacco. “About had enough of ruining my back growing up. I'm going to take some time and wind down, figure things out as I go along.”

Clemmy rubbed her hand down the side of my face, the same way Fancy used to do. She'd always had knowing eyes. “I'm guessing you got some stuff that's going to take a bit to get out of your system.”

I pulled up from the chair. “If you hear from Fancy, tell her I'm home.” I hugged Clemmy and Roy. “Y'all come down anytime. I expect I'll be around.”

Roy held on to my arm for an extra minute. “You know, Junebug, we ain't heard nothing from Lightning since before you and Fancy left. I can't help wondering if one of these redneck sumbitches didn't kill him and never let on.”

I gripped his shoulder. “Maybe he'll just show up one of these days like he did before.” It galled me pretty bad to lie to such a good man, but what could I tell him? That Lightning tried to kill me and I'd just been lucky to kill him first? I believed if I could sit down with Roy in the right circumstance I could tell him the truth, because I felt like he'd always known the truth about Lightning. But at this point it would just cause more hurt, and I figured Roy had suffered enough pain in his life.

C
HAPTER
56

I
pulled all the machinery and tools from the barn, tinkered, oiled, rubbed the rust off, but had no urge to use them. My farming days were over. I went to Durham, bought a television, and would sit watching it for hours, turning it off when there was news about the war.

I dreaded the nights and my dreams. I began to roam the woods in the dark again, slipping in and out of the shadows, reliving the jungle. Other times, I'd just sit and talk to Grandma. “You always knew more than you said. I need the comfort right now to know I'm not completely lost.” I never sensed her around me.

I was still haunted by the rush of war. Lieutenant Heaney had warned the taste for that feeling of living on the edge caused many soldiers not to be able to adjust to regular life. It drove many to risk everything to feel it again, others to drugs to dull their minds, and some simply disappeared. I would see Huy over and over, asking me why. I still didn't have an answer. Many times I considered sticking the rifle in my mouth, but was never brave enough, or maybe desperate enough, to do it.

At the end of October, Roy had a heart attack sitting at the supper table. I did as much as I could for Clemmy, paying for the funeral in a way she wouldn't know it had come from me. As long as Roy had lived in the community, and had at some time or other worked for about everybody in it, I was the only white person at the church. “Glory be to God for letting us have such a fine man all these years,” said the preacher. “Amen,” echoed the congregation. I listened to Clemmy cry. The choir sang beautiful hymns, and I couldn't help but think it would have been a big comfort if Fancy had been there for her momma. I sat in the pew and confessed silently to Roy about what happened to Lightning. Maybe he could forgive me. In the graveyard, I watched another box lower into a hole in the ground.

Mr. and Mrs. Wilson assured Clemmy she could stay on in the house as long as she helped Mrs. Wilson. Mr. Wilson said he'd plant her a garden so she could make do. It turned out to be a blessing. Mrs. Wilson had a major stroke the first of January 1970, and was bedridden. Clemmy looked after her because Mr. Wilson was too frail to do it. He fixed up a room so Clemmy could stay in the big house at night. I wondered what the neighbors thought.

* * *

In late spring, May I think, an old dog wandered up in the yard. He was bowlegged and ratty-looking. I chased him off. “You need to get your behind somewhere else, mutt, ain't nothing for you here.”

For the next couple of days, I would see the dog hiding behind the barn or lying at the edge of the trees. I couldn't figure out why he didn't just move on. One morning he was under the woodshed.

“Dog, I thought I told you to stay away from here.” He lay looking at me, wagging his tail. “Dogs don't make out too good around this place.”

He didn't make any effort to get up, and I wondered if he was hurt. I squatted and looked him over. He stumbled to his feet and licked me in the face. It didn't look like he had any injuries. “Are you just hungry? I've been hungry.” I went in the house and got a bowl for water and some leftover chicken. “When you finish this, move on down the road. Go find somebody else to mooch off.” That night when I looked, the dog was gone.

The next morning, I went out the porch door and almost shit in my pants when the dog ran out from under the steps. “You son of a bitch, git your ass away from here!” He took off across the road and into the woods.

That night I found him in the woodshed again. I sat down on a peach basket. “Persistent cuss, ain't you.” He got up and shyly walked over to me, head down, looking up with sad brown eyes. “Think you've found a home, do you? Two old lost souls wandering around in this world.” By the time I fed him for a month, he turned out to be right good-sized, and younger than he looked when he first come around.

The dog got so he followed me everywhere. Pretty soon, he was sleeping in the house, and rode in the truck like a person. We got in the habit of riding over to a little country store a few miles away every day after supper to get us a five-cent ice cream cup. I'd eat mine with a wooden spoon and he'd lick his clean.

I named him Grady. We had many long conversations, him being almost as good a listener as Sally Mule. “What makes a man take pleasure in killing other men, Grady? I didn't start out like that, just seemed to happen.” He would sit and watch as though he was interested, then give me a sloppy cheek kiss when I was through. Grady showed up just when I needed him.

Thanksgiving Day that year came in cold. The sky was a deep cobalt blue, but the bright sun didn't offer much warmth. Since there was only Grady and me, I didn't want any big meal, just some chicken and dumplings from a can. After dinner, I went for a walk in the sunshine. At the edge of the yard, I remembered Momma and Daddy driving off the last time I ever saw them, her blowing kisses and laughing. Grady followed me behind the house to the old iron pot, and I thought about the time Grandma and me sat plucking a chicken, seeing her patient smile when I asked questions, and the way her nose wrinkled when her glasses slipped down. In the woodshed, I sat on the kindling stump and relistened to Granddaddy's stories of the old days, and what he intended to be life lessons for my future days. And I remembered the funerals for all of them.

I thought about Fancy when she was a little girl, scared of anything that went bump in the night, and how she'd become my partner, willing to stand with me and face the world. I missed her a lot.

Thanksgiving night the temperature dropped low, and Grady decided he wanted to snuggle under the quilt. I slept deep and dreamed I was walking in fields of clover. The day turned to night and I lay down in the sweet-smelling grass. Huy was lying next to me, the watch I gave him stuffed in his mouth. The air filled with fireflies; they began to attack me like a swarm of angry bees. Lightning was speaking some Vietnamese gibberish to the fireflies while he struggled to pull bullets from his chest. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

Grady woke me licking my face. In the darkness I got up, put on clothes, grabbed the gun on the way out the door, and headed to the woods. Grady wanted to follow, but I chased him back to the house. At the edge of the field, I slid to the ground beside an oak tree. The butt of the Remington went between my knees, and the barrel under my chin. I closed my eyes. “God forgive me for what I've done. I ask for mercy.” I thought about Mo and hoped he had prayed for me.

I lifted my eyes to a sky lit bright with stars and a winter white moon, and located the Big Dipper. I wanted to keep that vision as I passed from this world. I wondered if it would hurt. My finger tightened on the trigger.

Something touched my leg. I opened my eyes. It was Grady. “Git, dog! Get your ass out of here!” I needed to get this over with. I shifted the rifle and slapped at him. He ran a few feet and stopped.

I moved the barrel back beneath my chin. Grady came again, whining and pawing. I moved the gun. It was my intention to hit and run him off, but things got mixed up. Instead, I pulled him to my lap and buried my face in his fur. Grady lay in my arms, his nose against my neck. After a while, we went back to the house and the bed. Grady slipped under the covers, and I slept without dreaming for the first time in months.