Wade eased the Lincoln
to a stop along the dark, country road, its gravel popping beneath the tires as
if it were paved with tiny bones. Like that spring after the all rains when his
father had brought him down to fish and driven through a plague of baby frogs
marching up from the river. Wade had begged him to stop the car then covered
his ears and cried until his father had threatened him with the belt. “If I’d
wanted to hear that, I would’ve brought your sister.”
As he waited, Wade killed the engine which soon began to
click and ping in a language he’d never quite understood as it cooled in the autumn
air. He’d been running without headlights so his eyes needed no time to adjust.
Through the tree-lined tunnel ahead, the night sky stood out against the
wavering shadow of the trees, midnight blue against black, marking the descent
to the river. A blood red moon stained the horizon as it rose up to confront
the approaching wedge of clouds. Less than ideal, but it didn’t matter. By morning,
no one would find the old man’s body without diving gear.
A spotlight stabbed out from the darkness a few dozen yards
away. Wade shielded his eyes with the hand that had been resting on the Lincoln’s
side mirror. His heart pounding, he lifted his other hand from the steering
wheel to wave.
The spotlight winked out, plunging Wade back into darkness,
except where a purple afterimage danced across his vision and the low, orange
candle of its filament slowly faded. A car door creaked open and slammed shut.
Boots crunched across the gravel as if crushing cicada carcasses in late summer,
each footfall an approaching dread. They halted a few feet back from his door.
A flashlight beam nearly as harsh as the spotlight roamed across
Wade’s face then settled on the fishing gear in the passenger seat. He was glad he’d
stowed all the tools in the trunk.
“Road’s closed.” Wade sighed with relief as he recognized
Clint’s voice. “You couldn’t have missed the sign, Wade. You had to drive
around it.”
“Going down to the river,” Wade said as he turned the key
halfway to create a bubble of light for them to share. “I hear the catfish are
biting.”
“This stretch of river’s off limits until the lake fills.
You know that. They close the spillways tonight.”
“It’s not like I’m going into Canaan,
Clint. Just down to the shore. You know that spot dad and me used to fish.”
“Yeah, I was sorry to hear about that.” Clint leaned on the
door, resting his other hand on his gun by instinct. “Where you going to bury
him?”
“He always wanted to be buried in Canaan,
right beside my mom. But she’s already dug up and resting in that new graveyard
up on the ridge. I expect I’ll try to get him in there.”
“Old Claude would like that, I think.” Clint nodded his
approval. “Six weeks and everyone in the hills will be lakeside. Who’d of
thought your folks would have made it up that far.”
Wade laughed. His parents were bottomlanders. These days,
only rich people from other states could afford houses on the ridge.
“I see you’re driving
his Town Car,” Clint continued, giving the car a long once over. “Guess it’s
yours now.”
“Just testing it out to see how it fits. I think it’s too
big for me, too quiet. I just can’t shake the Jeep after all these years. Not
sure what I’ll do with it.”
“I sure wish Amelia would see sense and take her half.”
Clint ran a hand along its hood.
“Dad was pretty hurt when she didn’t show up for my mom,
though he’d never say. But she wants something, it’s hers by my reckoning. Or
yours,” Wade added speculatively.
Clint gave him a sidelong look. “Did Claude ever let you in
on where your granddad buried the family fortune in the Depression?”
“That old yarn?” Wade shook his head slowly, still smiling.
“Trust me, Clint, if there was ever any money in this family, the old man
would’ve spent it all buying drinks at the VFW long before now. Or diced it all
away down in Biloxi.”
“I guess you’re right. Claude was never stingy with his
drinks. Or his cars.”
Just his kids, Wade thought as Clint sighted another
approving gaze down the Lincoln’s
hood.
“Tell you what,” Wade said, “Come by in the afternoon, and
I’ll sign it over. This ark is more Amelia’s taste than mine. She deserves
something. About the only thing worth much that’s left.”
“That’s mighty generous of you, Wade. I just might do that.”
Clint paused as if to separate his thoughts. “Guess there’s no harm in you
fishing some to honor old Claude’s memory. Give me about five minutes and you
can have the river to yourself. ”
“Don’t come by the house too early,” Wade said. “If they’re
hitting on nightcrawlers, it could be a late night.”
“Not too late,” Clint warned. “They’re bringing in a chopper
after midnight. Army night vision gear. Remember, they catch you and we ain’t
kin, or near enough. The Guard’s got orders that looters get shot on sight.”
“Thanks for the heads up. I’ll just be sitting on the bank
for a while seeing what strikes. Give my love to my sister.”
“Will do.” Clint waved over his head as he strode back toward
his patrol car. “See you tomorrow.”
***
Wade sighed as the patrol car pulled away. Clint
wasn’t always the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was blood, at least by
marriage. Even he had to know something was up. He’d taken the bribe easily
enough. Wade had hoped access to the river wouldn’t cost quite so much. The
Town Car still listed for five or six grand. Most of the other cops on the
force would’ve have let him slip through the cordon for a cooler full of catfish
filets. Leave it to Clint to remember the old man’s stories. He was always
looking for a piece of something that wasn’t his.
After glancing at his watch, Wade dug through the glove box
for the papers and a pen. Using the glove box door to write on, he signed over
the car to Amelia, just in case. All she had to do was countersign it to accept
it. If she would. Wade tried to shrug it off as part of the promise he’d made
his mother. His life was a series of conflicting promises now, his night a
journey to fulfill them.
Once he was certain Clint would not return, Wade restarted
the Town Car and crept it toward the river. Unlike his Jeep, the luxury sedan
didn’t want to stick to the steep, unpaved road. Twice, it slid downhill where
the muddy track decided to take it. The third time Wade felt the tires break
free, he jerked the Lincoln to a
stop and slammed it into park as soon as he felt the wheels grip gravel. Close
enough. He could walk from here.
He set the emergency brake and popped the inside latch to
the trunk. The dashboard ding-ding-dinged a polite warning when he left the
keys in the ignition. He didn’t lock the doors. Not that anyone local would
dare steal the old man’s car. It was only one within fifty miles.
Around the back of the car, Wade began to unload the trunk.
He hoped he was still far enough off the river that no one would see his little
light. First, he set the red, child’s wagon on the ground. It was the rugged
version with slatted side railings and oversized tires. When he and Amelia had
outgrown it, his mother had claimed it for the garden. He’d found it in the
shed behind the house, rusty and unused. Next, he removed the shovel, the pickaxe
and the crowbar. He retrieved the fluorescent fishing lantern from the floor of
the front seat.
That only left the body. Ninety pounds of emaciated deadweight,
wrapped in a clean, white sheet, curled up just as he’d passed over, in the
fetal position. Stiff and unyielding, like the man had always been, yet
vulnerable, if only for first time in Wade’s life. At least he would fit in the
wagon. Almost as though the old man had planned ahead. That would be just like
him.
Wade lifted his father out of the trunk like an infant and
gently set him in the cradle of the wagon’s bed. He eased the trunk lid down
until the mechanism caught and it whispered shut as the light within winked
out. He tucked the tools along the wagon’s high railing.
He shrugged deeper into his fatigue jacket, checking the
pockets for his gloves and the .45. His father’s jacket and his father’s
pistol, both refugees from Vietnam.
Neither were combat souvenirs, despite all the old man’s stories. Hanging
around the VFW as a kid, Wade had learned that his father had been a company
clerk in Saigon, though even that had left its scars.
Some cut through the entire family.
Wade knew he’d need the jacket before the night was over.
His breath already emerged in thin, white puffs as if he were a smoker like the
old man. The pistol was a precaution. The Guard had pulled out of Canaan
ahead of the impending flood. That left only squatters and looters. The final inhabitants
of Canaan promised to be clever and mean, people he
didn’t want to tangle with without protection. Not that he planned to use it if
he didn’t have to. Better to remain unseen than right. Another lesson the old
man had taught him if only inadvertently.
He clutched the wagon’s handle and dragged his burden down
the muddy road. With each step closer to his destination, Wade smelled mud,
silt, rot and decay. The scent of the river in the fall.
Along the shore, a fog had begun to form. Faint wisps of
mist trailed up to the sky. Wade leaned the handle back against the wagon and settled
onto a fallen log by the water. He flicked the lantern on and off three times, its
glass screened red by cellophane. A few minutes later, he spotted a red hunting
light panning the muddy, tree-lined bank. That would be John B, Wade’s ride into
Canaan.
Wade didn’t know John B’s full name or whether that was
really his name at all. It was the name on the iron-on patch of the work shirt
the man had worn when they’d met at the VFW. Names weren’t crucial to the deal
they struck over a couple long-necks in the back. Cash was the agreed on currency,
paid upon roundtrip delivery. A time and place for pickup the only other
whispered questions asked and answered.
John B haloed Wade in red then doused the spotlight. A
dripping paddle replaced the hum of the electric trolling motor, followed by
the metallic rasp of a johnboat being grounded. John B splashed out into the
mud. Wade grabbed hold of the gunwale and together they hauled it ashore.
John B eyed the wagon. “You didn’t say nothing about a body.”
“No questions was the agreement,” Wade said, stuffing his
hands in his jacket pockets.
“Sure. No questions. But accessory to murder doubles the
price. Half up front.”
Wade shook his head. “Deal’s a deal. I pay you now, you’ll
just light out and leave me stranded.”
John B shrugged then reached for the boat. “Maybe you can
find another ride.”
Wade withdrew his hand from his pocket and tapped the .45
against the johnboat, metal against metal. “You got nothing to worry about from
the old man. No one’s coming looking. I’ll pay you what we agreed, plus a cut
of whatever I can fit in the wagon while I’m there. As soon as we get back.”
John B eyed the pistol then Wade. He shrugged. “You’re the boss.”
A long, smoldering look of “for now” hung between them. Wade didn’t care.
Making his way back across the river without a boat would be cold but not impossible.
He had promises to keep that could not wait.
“Grab the front end and help me get him in,” Wade said, sliding
the pistol back into his pocket. Together they lifted the wagon over the side and
set it astride the center bench.
“Get settled,” Wade said. “I’ll shove us off.”
Frigid, muddy water overtopped Wade’s boots as he pushed the
johnboat free. As Wade settled on the front bench facing him, John B sparked
the trolling motor back to life. Reluctantly, the boat turned away from shore
and slowly drifted toward the tree line silhouetted across the water. On the
bluffs behind the boat, more trees like the skeletal hands of long dead men clutched
their final flame-colored leaves in a candle vigil, like a promise or a hope.
Moonlight dimmed as its mistress hid her face behind the
clouds. The far bank, normally winking with warm, yellow lights, disappeared
completely. The last Guard unit had retreated that morning ahead of the weather,
dropping the only bridge behind them. The river was mirror smooth, but swollen
just below flood stage. No current distracted the low-slung boat away from its
destination. The Corps of Engineers would have sealed off the spillways by now.
John B said nothing throughout the journey, just
surreptitiously studied Wade’s face as he steered them toward a point over his left
shoulder. Threads of mist wove themselves into a stillborn fog. All the noises
of the river died away, cars sighing down a nearby highway, the mournful
whistle of a distant train, night birds, frogs and peepers, leaving only each
accidental clank and thunk against the metal hull echoing like gunshots in
Wade’s ears.
The fog and the hum of the electric motor became their
world. Time lapsed until the johnboat ground ashore with the sound of sand
scouring aluminum. Wade hopped out and dragged the boat secure. He and John B
lifted the old man’s cradle to shore. John B clamored back into the boat as
Wade held it steady.
Before pushing it off, Wade reminded him, “Give me a couple
hours then pick me up here. I’ll have your payment.” He patted his jacket
pocket and added, “Don’t forget, I’m a man long memory.”
John B said nothing, his face masked by night and fog. Gray
obscurity slowly swallowed the receding johnboat without a sound.
***
Wade dragged his burden up to a nearby road. The fog thinned
to almost nonexistent within a hundred yards of the river. Overhead, thick
clouds congealed into a low, dark line that loomed to the north.
He had just pulled the wagon’s oversized wheels onto the
pavement when the dogs emerged from the shadows of deserted houses. A pack of
three that moved as one, long accustomed to hunting together. Abandoned and
feral, all were dark and massive with low, squat heads that marked the favored
aggressive breeds.
The trio edged forward, spreading left and right to flank
him. Flicking his gaze between them, Wade reached beside the road and scooped
up a handful of small, flat river rocks. He whistled a smooth stone at the
center dog. It skipped off the pavement near the leader’s paws, evoking a low
growl through a hedgerow of yellow teeth.
The other two continued to circle, undeterred. Wade chucked
stones at one then the other, hissing at them. He wanted to yell but didn’t
dare attract attention from looters or lingering patrols. The first river rock sailed
wide, the second struck dead on, ricocheting off the dog’s brow with a hollow
thunk. Surprised by his unexpected accuracy, Wade allowed his gaze to linger an
instant too long, until two snarling shadows flashed across the corner of his
eye.
Wade dropped the stones and fumbled in his pocket for the
pistol, ripping it free as the hammer caught on the lining. The closer dog
leapt. Wade flinched behind the shield of his left arm, turning his eyes away.
Pain shot threw his forearm as the dog’s weight bore him to the ground. He descended
into a purgatory of angry, growling pain that shook his body left and right. He
tried to beat back the agony with the cold metal clutched in his right hand. Darkness
nearly claimed him before a single thought surfaced from that black, intruding
pool. His primitive tool was still a weapon.
A second later, his world exploded with a fiery shockwave of
relief. White hot anguish cooled to a dull, numb ache. Wade sat up, trying to
locate the shadows whose receding footfalls remained constantly to his left no
matter which way he turned his head. The right side of his world was mired in ringing
darkness no matter how hard he blinked. A long moment later, sulfurous residue burned
comprehension into his brain as the gun’s report continued to echo through the
bottomland.
Half deaf and blind, Wade staggered to his feet clutching
the smoking pistol, unsteadily seeking a target. Like apparitions, the pack had
merged back into the empty shadows. Only pain grounded them as real.
He returned the pistol to his jacket pocket. He tested his
left forearm with probing fingers. No sharp or grinding pain, nothing broken.
Dark, damp stains surrounded the tears in his sleeve but he wasn’t bleeding too
badly. He flexed the fingers of his left hand tentatively. Stiff, sore and
slightly swollen, but moving for the moment. At some point soon, he’d have to
find fresh water to cleanse the wound.
As if sensing his need, giant plops of rain slapped against
the pavement, then quickly petered out. Higher now, the moon re-emerged as an
orange lantern to guide him, even as it played hide and seek among the advancing
clouds.
Scraped and bruised, Wade took up the wagon handle and
trudged higher into the abandoned city whose streets he knew like childhood
memories. He crossed the rusted tracks of the forsaken rail line that ran beside
the river. Past the grid work of houses with their wide, black eyes and peeling
white paint. Past the cinderblock foundations of the lucky handful that had
been removed. Past the bar, the barbeque shack and the four-corner, brick-lined
businesses of Canaan’s abortive downtown. Past the single-room
church that now stared back at him with a windowless soul where its stained
glass had been gouged out. Past the vacant park with its gazebo and the empty base
where the bronze, Civil War hero had once brandished his sword to rally
Memorial Day politicians. Past the lifeless moat of a parking lot and the
wooden drawbridge of the wheelchair ramp that once led to the government
stronghold of the Post Office trailer.
Shadows moved among the ghost town silhouettes, flashing
across the empty eyes of abandoned buildings and the vacant looks between. When
the moon peeked out, some coalesced into the shapes of trees disguised as men,
hungry and threatening. During the long night of his childhood, Wade had been
haunted by their sylvan fingers scratching at his window. Other shades moved from
bush to bush, hunched men or beasts, drawn to his unwanted presence or the
scent of decaying meat, cautiously awaiting their opportunity as they
paralleled his course as he climbed.
On the hill of the graveyard, beneath the spreading,
hundred-year oaks cloaked in moss-draped mourning, government backhoes had unearthed
all the graves and left the holes like open wounds. Missing headstones formed
the empty sockets of extracted teeth.
Wade knew the path in light or darkness. Twice before, he’d
stood watch as his father had started a digging a small, fresh hole for the plastic
box holding one or the other of his grandparents’ ashes, the only burial he
could afford. Both times, the old man hadn’t been fit enough to finish what
he’d started, forcing Wade to take over while he criticized and watched. Twice
more Wade had smuggled in bronze grave markers, engraved with names and dates as
if they were official. His father had bought them up in Cairo
one of the few times he’d been flush. One he’d had Wade dig back up and repair
when vandals had broken off his grandmother’s angel, leaving only her ragged
ankles and slippered feet. “Honor your parents, boy. A man’s kin shouldn’t be
left unmarked.”
Somewhere in the Great Depression, the deed to the family
plot had been sold or lost. Wade wondered if the deception had been uncovered
when the government had moved the graves up to the ridge. But what could they
do but rebury them? In Canaan containers of ashes were
as sacred as silk-lined coffins.
“Government’s got no right to say where a man can bury his
kin,” the old man carped. “We settled on this land long before they came to
tell us what to do.”
For all his vehemence, the old man never once visited. On
the anniversary of each of their deaths, he sent Wade down to inspect the
graves while he waited behind a beer bottle in the VWF for a report. If Wade
complained, the old man would cuff him. “Don’t begrudge your family, boy.”
When Amelia bowed
out, the old man left it to Wade to find a spot for his mother. “Dump her in
the river for all I care. She ain’t no real bottomlander.” Wade had purchased a
plot nearby for both of them. Half of his mother’s dying wish, to be buried
with his father one day by her side. She knew he’d never leave the land on
which he’d been raised even though his family had lost it all.
Wade dared not light the fluorescent lantern in the open.
He’d have to work by dappled moonlight. He cradled the sheet-shrouded body and
lifted it from the wagon. He was glad the cold kept the worst of the smell at
bay. Thankfully, the old man remained stiff and easy to handle. In a few hours,
he’d be limp and less cooperative.
Wade laid the bundle beside the open hole where his mother’s
coffin had, until recently, rested. He puzzled out how best to get the old man
down there. As much as he would have liked to, rolling the body down a six foot
drop just didn’t seem right. So he hooked the knotted sheet with the pickaxe and
lowered the old man, careful not to overbalance and follow him in.
In a nearby oak with long, bushy tendrils of moss that
swayed like the beard of an Old Testament prophet, a pair of ravens settled to
argue their derision or delight. Wade glared up at them. It wasn’t like he’d
planned to leave the old man uncovered. He donned his gloves, took up the
shovel from the wagon and began to move earth. As the graveside mound
diminished, his shirt clung to his arm with stinging, sticky dampness. His
wound throbbed from the exertion. When Wade patted the last shovelful into
place, the ravens took flight in mocking laughter. From the surrounding
shadows, a tri-note canine chorus howled their frustration at being thwarted
from their prey.
He hadn’t brought a stone or even a simple cross to mark the
grave. He didn’t want to risk it. When he finished, he didn’t utter so much as
a prayer. He just removed his gloves, wiped his brow with the bandana from his back
pocket and whispered, “Ok, old man. I kept my side of the bargain. Now let’s
see if you’ve kept yours.”
An icy wind drove sheets of rain racing down the ridge toward
the city. Wade reloaded the tools into the wagon and descended from the graveyard
toward his father’s childhood home. As he passed through the fieldstone pillars
that had once held the wrought iron gates marking the border of the cemetery,
Wade was engulfed in a stinging swarm of rain. Mud quickly appeared throughout
the bottomland, in roads and yards alike. Within minutes the wagon bed had
become a shallow, sloshing sea.
Wade hunched against the driving rain and the weight of his
sodden jacket. His left arm began to ache more deeply in the seeping cold. He
navigated suddenly unfamiliar streets by snapshots of lightning. Thunder chased
him through the valley like divine displeasure.
As the first wave eased from inundation to mere torrents,
Wade arrived at his final destination, his grandparent’s ancient frontier
farmhouse long since crowded by a suburban congregation. He deposited the
rattle of tools onto the front porch then dumped the wagon and lifted it up the
steps. His head jerked toward the front windows. Had a light just flickered
out?
He peered in the paneless windows. Like all the other homes
and businesses in Canaan, this one had been scavenged and
ransacked soon after the government had declared eminent domain. Silhouetted
dark against windowed dim, shadows shuffled within. The rain pounding against
the tin of the porch roof drowned out any noise. Bereft of sound, gray figures floated
through the rooms like ghosts desperately seeking some memento they’d left
behind. Looters.
Wade scooped up the crowbar in his left hand and retrieved
the pistol with his right. Pressed beside the door, he rapped the crowbar
against it. With the knob as another salvage victim, the door swung inward
without a sound above the rain.
“You’re on private property,” he called inside. “Clear out.
I’ve got a gun.”
He began a slow, patient count, just like he’d had to use
not to react to the old man’s constant criticism ever since he’d first been diagnosed.
When he hit a whispered ten, Wade took a deep breath and peeked around the doorframe.
Nothing stirred within the darkness.
He ducked his head back out. He had to risk the lantern. No
one would see it through the curtain of water pouring off the roof. He tucked
the crowbar through belt loop, flicked the red light on and stepped inside,
lantern in his left hand, pistol in his right.
Motion blurred across the corner of Wade’s eye. His left arm
shot up instinctively to greet it and collapsed when lightning radiated from his
fingers to his shoulder as his wound met the blow which then glanced across his
ear like thunder. When the back of his head struck the hardwood floor, his
world descended into the darkness of a tomb to the drumbeat of running feet.
***
Wade awoke to a throbbing headache. Each pulse exploded inside
his skull, screamed down his neck and shoulder, then died in agony in his arm. A
fraction of the pounding resolved into the rumble of thunder. A dim grayness greeted
his eyes. Rain still pounded the porch roof like a tin drum.
His cheek was chilled by standing water. Life and breath
escaped him as small packets of steam. Yet he was numb to the cold as if warmed
by a fire banked deep within.
Slowly, painfully, Wade pushed himself to his feet with one
good arm, nearly falling back when the crowbar clattered against the floor like
the clapper of a cracked bell. Dizzy, he leaned heavily against the doorframe. His
fishing lantern lay smashed just inside the door. There was no sign of the
pistol, or the looters.
Behind him the wagon was overturned, his tools scattered. Beyond
the porch, the water lapped at the tread of the first step. Wade winced as he
bent his left arm to read his watch. Tonight had become tomorrow, two hours
after dawn. John B would have ceded the river long ago, had he ever come back.
Would he risk a second crossing? Wade would have to wait for nightfall to find
out. He just hoped the Town Car was far enough up from the river.
He stooped slowly and deliberately, like the old man near
the end, to retrieve the crowbar, securing it back in his belt before wobbling
inside. In the front parlor, the thieves had pried open the walls and
floorboards, searching for anything that could be stripped for sale, copper
wiring, metal pipes or other hidden treasure.
Wade stumbled through the front hall into the kitchen.
Missing appliances left unfilled vacancies in the cabinetry. The cast-iron sink
and its plumbing had fled with them. He rifled the windowsill, counter and
cabinets with his good right hand searching for even a sliver or drop of soap.
Squalls through the missing window had washed any lingering residue away. The
backyard had become a rain-rippled sea. He needed soap not more dirty water.
As his vision doubled on his way back to the stairs, Wade
faltered in the front hall. Then, he spotted her crouching in the corner of the
parlor, clad only in a stained, dishwater gray housedress, watching him like a
cat.
“Mom?” He leaned against the wall. Its plaster had already
begun to crumble and peel in the damp air. His grandfather never had been much
for routine maintenance even before he’d lost the place to debts.
“You’re hurt,” she said, her voice as pure as resonating
crystal and just as clear. She flowed to her feet and padded across the room,
splashing though the puddles on the floor, barefoot like when he and Amelia
were kids.
“What are you doing here?” His eyes refused to fully focus. She
was haloed in soft blurriness as if Wade had been swimming too long in a backyard
pool. Her hair kept shifting from gold to raven black.
“I saw what they did to you,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you’d
wake up.” She ran a finger down his sleeve, tracing the stain around his wound.
He pushed away. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“I need to find some soap.” He stumbled toward the stairs.
“There’s nothing up there for you.” She restrained him with
the lightest touch upon his arm. “Let me take a look.” She eased him out of his
sodden jacket. Her touch was gentle but his shoulder was numb to it. Until she
unbuttoned his shirt cuff and peeled his sleeve away like a match along a
striker, revealing angry red tendrils climbing up and down his arm.
“Sit.” Her hand upon his shoulder pressed him easily to the
floor, his back against the wall. Then she left. She came back with a small,
disposable aluminum loaf pan, the cheapest kind you’d find in a grocery store, filled
with water. “Don’t worry. I collected it from the sky. I’m afraid the river’s rising
up to meet us.” She dabbed his bandana and began to softly wipe the dried blood
from around his wound. She soaked the four ragged punctures before caressing
their scabs away.
“You shouldn’t stay,” she said, tying the bandana like a
bandage then camouflaging it with his sleeve.
Still groggy, he tried to sit forward and failed. “Did you
see what happened to my pistol?”
She pointed to skid mark in the sheen of mud across the
porch that ended at the edge beneath the railing.
Wade slumped deeper against the wall, too tired to retrieve
it. Not that he would need it anyway with her watching over him. His eyes began
to flutter shut.
“You should never have come here,” she said, the chime of
her voice awakening him again like a tug upon his wrist.
“I came for Amelia,” he said, the darkness retreating just a
step. “Dad told me where to find it.”
She shook her head gently with the patience of a mother then
looked away. “He was wrong to draw you back to this place. Amelia doesn’t need
anything from him.”
“I have to take care of her.” Darkness crept closer with
each heavy blink. “You made me promise.”
“Promises are for the living,” she smiled wistfully, “Not
the dead.”
As the notes of her voice faded like a dulcet echo, so did
the light that kept his darkness at bay.
***
When the thump, thump, thump of retreating rotors awakened
him, Wade was alone. The light had dimmed to some unknown evening hour. His
watch, like his jacket, was gone. Only the crowbar remained, digging into his
hip.
His vision stayed sharp this time, his mind icy clear. The
edges of the world glinted in as if stropped like an antique razor. He heaved
himself up and away from the wall. His feet felt heavy and claylike as if
sealed against the floor.
Outside, the rain continued. The front porch was now awash.
The overturned wagon formed a little red island just inside the railing. A few
more inches and water would overtop the threshold. The farmstead sat in the floodplain
by the river. Most of Canaan had been raised on a set of
low, ancient mounds. While that earth remained, he might still have time to escape.
First, he needed to retrieve what he had come for, the
secret the old man had almost taken to his soon to be submerged grave. John B
would demand what Wade had promised if he came back at all. Wade took up the
crowbar and turned toward staircase.
Cursing the darkness in the stairwell, he ascended each
tread, stolid and deliberate. The quilted flannel of his shirt rested soft and
warm against his arm. Damp air pricked his lungs then sank its teeth in deep.
Wade knew the cold would gnaw ravenously come nightfall. An icy wind whistled
and moaned through the narrow space, giving voice to his family ghosts.
He wended his way through the master bedroom with its
upstairs fireplace, soot-stained yet stone cold, then down the back hall to the
sloped-ceiling addition overhanging the kitchen and back porch, its overhead
slats darkly ringed by ancient water. Standing in the doorway, Wade could
almost hear the old man’s voice grumbling how his bedroom had been cold and
drafty, and the roof had always leaked, at least when he’d been in a tolerant
mood. More often, he’d just reminded Wade and Amelia how lucky they were with his
belt. The old man’s father had used a strap.
A raven, perhaps one of the pair from the graveyard, landed
on the empty window sill, an inky, iridescent rainbow of feathers in the wan,
gray light. It eyed Wade sidelong, tilting its head curiously as it considered
him in silence. Wade ignored the bird, concentrating on the oblong door tucked
in the far back corner that led to a makeshift closet. In a lucid moment near
the end, the old man had relived a memory of Wade’s grandfather tucking away their
family legacy decades before the bank had finally claimed the note. The old man
had always threatened to redeem it but never seemed to find the luck.
The light outside was failing, though the rain remained
vibrant, still beating against the roof and occasionally swirling in on a gust to
slicken the hardwood floor. Wade pulled the inset handle to closet, wondering
if the looters had noticed it at all. To the casual eye, the door blended in
with the remainder of the wall.
The door stuck, swollen with moisture. As Wade pulled it
free, something slapped against the peeling white paint, sending the raven hopping
back and forth along the sill, cawing its surprise. A moldy leather razor strop
swayed on a blackened, wrought iron hook like a cast-off memory. The opening
smelled as musty as a rat infested tomb.
Once his eyes adjusted, Wade started in on the floorboards with
the crowbar. They were wide, rough-cut pine rather than the narrow oak strips throughout
the rest of the house that had darkened and been polished smooth beneath
decades of shuffled feet.
He wedged the crowbar in a gap between the boards at the
back of the closet and leaned his good shoulder into it. With an unexpected
tearing sound the first board sprang up suddenly and sent him sprawling. Out in
the bedroom, the raven laughed along with Wade’s curses. A chunk of joist clung
to one of the rusty nails.
The closet floor came up quickly. Half the beams beneath
were rotted by a century of unseen rain seeping though the wall then running
along them to find an exit. Wet rot turned dry perhaps going back generations.
Patched over from the outside but never quite repaired, the hallmark of his
family.
Wade popped the boards up quickly even with only one good
arm. His left hung almost useless, unable to bear any pressure without erupting
in shooting pain. The work became a ritual, the squeal of nails pulling from
sometimes solid wood a mantra. He re-awoke as if from a dream when a strong,
musty scent greeted him from the floor space. Only when he peered deeper did
the fading light reveal a rectangular shadow resting in the hollow beneath the
floor.
Worming his right hand beneath it, Wade lifted out a green
velvet bag, the hard contours of a flat box concealed inside. Balancing it on
his hand, he carried it to the center of the bedroom. The rain had eased. As he
wriggled his hand free, gray-green dust rose in a cloud that sent him into a
fit of coughing. Closer to daylight, the bag was black and covered in a moldy
skin.
The raven cocked its head to peer closer as if intrigued by what
might lay inside.
The bag was similar to the one his mother sent him to
retrieve from her closet each Thanksgiving so she could polish her
grandmother’s silverware before dinner. That was before it, the china and all
the other family heirlooms had disappeared in a string of unsolved thefts.
Careful to stir as little more mold as possible, Wade pulled
open the drawstrings and inserted his hand to retrieve the box. As it emerged,
he saw the lid was warped, a bottom corner swollen and sprung, the brass hinges
twisted and green with corruption. He set it softly on top of the bag.
Slowly, gently, he drew the lid back by its handle until,
without realizing, it came away completely in his hand. He set it aside. Inside
laid curling sheaves of paper, half covered in the remains of the box lining.
Peeling away the velvet, he found a warped, black cover. Not money, a book.
He dared not lift it from its decaying cradle. It might
still have value. In the dim light from the window, he caught the barest echo of
flaking gold embossing. As he turned it open to the first page, the cover snapped
free, sending tiny flecks of paper dancing like confetti throughout the room.
Wade’s chin fell against his chest. A deflated sigh sent another
gnat-like swarm of paper adrift. There was no family fortune to share with Amelia.
Nothing to pay John B. His father had tricked him, perhaps embraced by his own
delusion. The hidden treasure was an ancient family Bible, fragile and rotted
to where even a whisper of God’s breath might scatter the confused, commingled fragments
of His word to the four corners of the wind.
The raven bobbed up and down on the window sill as if
delighted by the off-white cloud of Genesis drifting throughout the room. With
a roar and a wave, Wade sprang to his feet, sending the screeching, corvine
bird flapping for the hickory tree just outside the window. Perched safely on a
narrow branch beside a stubborn orange leaf, perhaps the last to survive the
rain, the raven cast a baleful eye upon him.
Wade stumbled toward the window to drive the bird from his
sight. The raven skittered cautiously up the branch, still mocking him with its
caws. The lone leaf broke free and began drifting downward like a candle flame fluttering
toward darkness. It never reached the ground.
In the dying light, Wade first heard then saw the gurgling floodwater
swirl and eddy up the trunk of the hickory, claiming inches in mere moments. Collapsing
across the rain-slick sill, he watched that leaf spiral down until it was
extinguished by the rising water. The deluge had spawned a full fledged flood whose
wrath would quickly consume the valley, sending the river racing up its banks to
where he’d abandoned the old man’s car. The last of his family’s legacy.
The raven squawked a final curse then took to the air in
search of dry land. As the black bird faded into darkness, Wade slumped into
the standing water pooled beneath the window knowing he would never again see
that distant shore.
© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III
