Whisper Hollow (34 page)

“You bring Gabriel here with you anytime. I’ll be happy to watch him for you. It’s nice weather now, we can even walk down to the creek.” She turned to Gabriel. “You like playing with stones, do you?” She pointed to the stone he held. “You know how to skip them?”

Gabriel shook his head.

“Next time your mother comes to celebrate penance and reconciliation, we can go skip stones.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Gabriel,” Lidia whispered. “Be polite.”

He looked up at Myrthen, who stared back down at him. “Okay,” he said. Then without dropping his gaze, he let go of the rock he was holding and it landed with a dusty thud on the ground. “But you have to go first.”

Lidia paced the length of her small kitchen, dinner already simmering on the stove even before Gabriel had woken up, and listened to the AM radio station out of Charleston. They were playing “Good Lovin’ ” by the Rascals, which seemed too fast and happy for the day, so she switched it off. A peal of thunder rattled the windowpanes. She hoped it would rouse Gabriel. She could use the company.

Three years ago today Eagan had died.

She always thought about her brother with a confusion of detachment and anger, longing and regret. He’d hurt her, yes, but he couldn’t be blamed for the meningitis that had damaged his four-year-old brain and demoted him forever from older brother to younger. And Gabriel, now nearly the same age Eagan had been when he’d fallen sick. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to watch her son’s precocious mind melt from fever into something altogether unfamiliar.

Abruptly she stopped her movement and sank down into the kitchen chair to cry, for the first time in years. She wept for the brother she lost once when he was rendered a permanent child, and again when he turned into a monster in the bathroom, and
then forever after a mosquito in the Nine Dragon river delta in southwestern Vietnam infected him with parasites during a blood meal.

And she wept for her son, a brilliant, perfect lie.

Her crying, not the storm, finally woke him up. She didn’t even realize it until she felt his tiny hand on her arm. He held out his tattered yellow blanket. “You can use this,” he said.

She gathered him into her lap and held him tightly for a long moment. Finally, after the sadness abated, she whispered in his ear, “Hungry?” He nodded. “I’ll make you some eggs, then when Daddy wakes up maybe he’ll take you fishing, okay?”

After she fed them a Saturday banquet of fried eggs and fatty bacon and biscuits, and the rain stopped, they all trudged off together — the boys to go fishing and she to see Alta. She never needed an invitation or even a reason to cross the creek and hike the half mile up through Whisper Hollow to Alta’s cabin, but today, she had one. She took a fresh-baked loaf of bread to go with it.

Alta could tell from the quiet footfalls on the damp earth a hundred yards out that Lidia was alone. She knew her well enough to recognize the slow, even steps, picking carefully around the fallen branches, an indication that something preyed on Lidia’s mind. When she came to visit without Gabriel, it meant something was awry. Alta met her at the door with a smile tilted toward understanding, brought her into the cabin, and settled her on the couch. They sat across from one another in the stillness, each of them blowing the steam off her tea.

“Tell me,” Alta said after a while.

“Oh, I’m fine. It’s just — ” She hesitated. “I’ve been thinking about my brother.”

Alta nodded. It was a small town. She already knew the story. The public story, anyway, that Eagan Kielar had died in the war, his daddy, Stanley, so stricken with grief and guilt he didn’t even want to hold a memorial service.

“I never really got to say goodbye,” Lidia said. “After Gabriel was born, Eagan went to war and … and he didn’t come back. There were … things … I never told him. And now I never can.

“It was my fault.” Lidia looked down at her lap, tears coming again. “I couldn’t take care of him, not once Gabe came along, and Daddy couldn’t either. Daddy took him to Charleston and helped him sign up. Eagan was only over there a few months … then we got the telegram from the Pentagon saying he was dead. They circled the word ‘son’ on a form. ‘We regret to inform you that your son was killed in action in Vietnam on April 3, 1966.’ Daddy came to the house and he handed me the piece of paper and just stood there looking like he did when Mama died, and I knew I was supposed to break down and cry right there on the linoleum, that’s what I should’ve done, but I didn’t. I just sat down at the kitchen table and let out my breath that I felt like I’d been holding for more than a year. Daddy touched me on the shoulder and said, ‘I’m sorry, Liddie,’ and he left. We didn’t even find out until later that he wasn’t killed in action. He died of malaria. But the worst part is …” She closed her eyes and knitted her brow and shook her head gently. “I felt relieved.”

Alta only nodded. She wasn’t one to shush someone out of her pain.

“And Gabriel …” Lidia pressed her hand over her mouth and shook her head again. “Eagan never knew … I’m so ashamed. Alta, I’m so ashamed to tell you this … There were things I had to do …”

But here, Alta interrupted. She crossed the room and sat down next to her and took her hand. “Stop, now. Whatever it is,
if it shames you to tell it, then just stop. You don’t need to tell me anything.”

“I’ve never told anybody.”

“Then no need to start now.”

“But it’s awful! I tried to tell Father Timothy over at St. Michael’s but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t make the words come out. But I just keep thinking: Shouldn’t I tell somebody the truth?”

Alta held Lidia away from her with both hands and looked at her, this young girl, and thought of her own set of long-entombed truths, her own coal-covered burden of shame. They were as much a part of Alta now as anything else. To excavate them would do nothing but spread disgrace and cause discomfort. She doubted her burden would be lightened after that. Her voice came out soft. “What purpose would it serve?”

“What?” Lidia pulled back.

Alta sighed and dropped her hands into her lap. “Whatever truth it is you’re talking about, what good would it do anyone to know it? You’re a good girl. A good mother, wife. A good friend. Your family loves you.” She smiled. “I love you. What’s past is past. You start telling people things they don’t really need to know, you’ll just end up giving them fodder for gossip.”

“But what if what happened was the truth?”

“People learn to live with their own versions of the truth,” Alta said. “You have to ask yourself if what you say is going to help people, or hurt them.”

Lidia’s eyes were pleading. “But shouldn’t we always be honest? Isn’t that the right thing to do?”

Alta interlaced her fingers and met Lidia’s eyes with a sad smile, then lifted one shoulder, just barely, a gesture that was not quite a question, but not quite an answer either.

“I heard he sees visions.”

“Susan told me he can read minds.”

“You think he sees ghosts? Marian said he can talk to ghosts.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“Sure there is, you damn old fool.”

“Then I wonder if he can tell me where Daddy buried the money.”

“Some say he’s a prophet.”

“More like the Devil. Ain’t nobody supposed to be able to see into the future.”

“Stop it now, all of you. What if he really is a prophet? Bible says ‘I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him.’ What if it’s the Lord’s words coming out of that little boy’s mouth?”

“I ain’t never heard him say anything like outright prophesy.”

“How do you know what’s prophesy and what ain’t? Modern-day prophets, like what’s in the Bible, tell the truth about what’s happening in morality and religion. They’re truth-tellers,
you’d say. Anybody heard that boy saying anything but what’s truthful?”

“It just ain’t natural, him knowing things. And the way he looks at folks, all plain-eyed and … calm, like he’s grown.”

“He’s a beautiful child.”

“That child ain’t a child.”

“Come on now, hear? He is a child. He’s a sweet little baby. His mama goes over to the Catholic church least once a week. They’s good people. Everybody knows her daddy, Stanley, since the earth cooled. Somebody just got their imagination all fired up and started all this fool talk. Ain’t nothing to it.”

“I don’t know about all that. I know Stanley fine. He’s an honorable man and a good worker. Took on the job of running the mine after the explosion in ’fifty. Lord knows that man’s got ghosts aplenty without having to think about his own grandson seeing any. His son was touched and then he lost his wife. Then his boy died in ’Nam. Now people’s talking about his grandbaby like he’s the Devil and what’s anybody supposed to think about that? People just need to mind their own, you ask me.”

“Nobody asked you.”

Danny could hear the phone ringing all the way from the backyard, where he was repairing part of the fence that had gone to rot with all the spring rains. According to the guys over at the lumberyard, it was over seven inches last month alone. Gabriel helped by handing him nails while Lidia pulled weeds from the vegetable garden. The late-afternoon sun lit everything in a sultry, lambent gold. The cucumbers demanded attention, taking over the less aggressive tomatoes and bell peppers. Lidia had suggested installing a trellis so they could go up instead of out, which Danny promised to do as soon as he’d finished and repainted the fence. There would be plenty of time for such small repairs. The house was sound, the garden flourished, they were happy.

He tossed his hammer aside and wiped his forehead as he trotted into the kitchen, where he picked up the phone and stretched the cord to get a glass of water. “Hello?”

“Danny. Stanley here.”

Danny put down his glass and wiped his mouth. He straightened his back without even realizing it. “Afternoon, Mr. Kielar. Hold the phone, I’ll get Lidia for you.”

“Wait. I’m not calling for Lidia. I’m calling … I’m wondering if you’d be able to come down to the the Shelter for a spell. I got something I need to talk to you about. Thinking maybe it’s best said over a beer or two.”

Danny shifted his weight, glanced out the window at his wife, her strong back bent over a thatch of green. “I guess that’d be all right. What time you thinking of going down?”

“Time is it now?”

Danny peered into the living room at the grandfather clock. “Not quite five.”

“I suppose Lidia still feeds everybody early. You’ll be done with supper by six-thirty, tops. See you down the Shelter around seven.”

Danny heard the line click and return to that empty, low-frequency tone that sounded like a desperately lost insect. “See you then,” he said into the hum.

An old Scot named Goudie ran the Shelter, a dark place with a long bar and a row of booth seats along the west wall. Some old chessboards that had belonged to somebody in Goudie’s family got some fair play in the early evenings.

“Danny,” Stanley said, nodding, when Danny slid into the bench seat across from him.

“Mr. Kielar.”

“Stanley.”

“Stanley.”

“What’ll you have?”

“Beer, I s’pose.”

Stanley reached up to signal Goudie, who returned a moment later with a couple of Pabst Blue Ribbons and set them down on cardboard coasters.

After at least three long slugs, Danny finally broke the silence. “You wanted to talk to me about something?”

“I guess you know there’s been some talk.” He looked, eyebrows up, expectant. “About your boy.”

Danny leaned back into the buttoned vinyl seat. “Yeah, I’ve heard things.”

“What’ve you heard?”

“Small talk. Petty talk. About the way he speaks sometimes.” He shrugged. “I don’t give it a thought.”

Patting his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, Stanley took a moment to tap one out and light it, drawing on the smoke as if he was waiting for something to happen.

“It’s not nothing,” Stanley said. “What people are thinking.”

“It is nothing. Just small-town gossip. When we moved here from New Jersey, my mama warned me that small towns are like that. Everybody makes everything their own business. Mountains out of molehills, she always said.”

“It’s gone past gossip, Danny. Gossip’s just idle talk. Women’s talk. What folks are saying now has fear behind it. It’s got some impact.”

“I’ve heard it, Mr. Kielar. Stanley. People saying things about him being able to tell futures and such. That he knows certain things. He can see ghosts and tell things people don’t want told.”

“That’s right. Like I said, that’s not nothing.”

“But it
is
nothing, hear? Because Gabe can’t do any of that. He’s just a little kid. He just says what’s on his mind is all. Nothing more to it than that.”

“I’m not saying what my grandson can do and what he can’t. I’m just repeating what other folks been saying.”

“He’s three years old.”

“Going on four.”

“No difference, he’s a baby. He doesn’t know tomorrow from yesterday.”

“Not according to a lot of townsfolk. They’re talking about him like he’s some kind of prophet. Or the Devil, depending on who’s speaking. Lidia ain’t told you about any of this? People coming by the house during the day, wanting their futures told, asking questions?”

“She told me. She hasn’t let anybody talk to him, of course. If I’d been home I’d have seen to it they never came back. I told her, anybody ever comes by again like that, send for me and I’ll break shift.”

“It’s not just people coming by the house.” Stanley looked at him level and unflinching for several seconds, then blinked before taking a long draw on his cigarette. His fingers trembled enough to send ash floating to the table.

“What is it, then?” Danny crossed his arms and leaned back into his seat.

“Old Pops Larsen said he was going to see if Gabe could tell him what ever happened to Liam Magee,” Stanley said, lowering his voice. “Said if he could find him, he’d want to string him up by the toenails and beat him until he told the truth about the mine accident in ’fifty. Lot of guys died in that explosion, you know. Everybody thinks it was Liam who did it, but since they never found him after, there’s still plenty of folks who’d like to know exactly what happened. Even more who’d like to see him hang.”