The Year the Lights Came On

  An owl celebrated its confusion of sleep and rest and Wesley lifted his face toward the sound, straining to recognize Freeman’s playful imitation. The owl called again and Wesley relaxed. Unlike Laron Crook, Wesley knew the difference between Freeman and a bird. The owl was real, and would cry again and again, until Wesley slipped away and tied knots in the four corners of his bedsheet and then the owl would stop crying and bury its head underneath its wings. I did not know why owls obeyed Wesley’s strong superstition, but they always did and we would silently marvel at this great power Wesley had. It was a spell not even Freeman could explain, though he declared that an owl, like the vampire, was Satan’s creature and tying knots in bedsheets strangled owls much in the same manner as flashing a cross in the face of a vampire stifled the gruesome urge for human blood. “It’s all the same,” Freeman had told us. “For every evil spell, there’s a good one. Ol’ Wesley just accidentally discovered one about owls.”

  *

  We were half listening to a radio comedy show when Dover arrived with Freeman’s parents.

  “Go to the kitchen,” Mother told us, “and be quiet.” The grownups sat in the living room and talked in voices we could hear only as distortions. Occasionally, the low, grave tones of the men would be countered by the painful choking cough of Rachel Boyd. She had tuberculosis and her lungs had shriveled into small tender sores that bled a sickening red mucus when she could not control her coughing. Her illness had isolated Freeman, who could not wholly accept the wheezing, emaciated woman as his mother. To Freeman, his mother was someone vigorous, someone who had been warm to touch, whose skin had been flushed red with the vitality of Irish blood. He still loved this once-upon-a-time mother, this weakened substitute, but he was quietly horrified by the coolness of her gray coloring and the nauseating mucus odor of her breath. He had watched her suffer her incredible pain, watched as she lay motionless in bed fighting to conquer the spasms that were squeezing her lungs, and he had heard her mumbled, bewildered prayers for relief, incoherent prayers of half-promises and a beggar’s pleading. Freeman had listened to the women of Emery speak of “poor Rachel Boyd,” and he knew what they meant: his mother had a terminal illness. In a vision that had eased into his dreams many times, Freeman knew she would die in early life, her lungs drowning in their own phlegm. Her lungs would die first and then the spillway of her throat would die, and then her brain and then her heart. Her heart would die last, wanting to live against terrible, predictable odds. Her heart would die of suffocation, pumping frantically, unreasonably, until it could no longer pump.

  Freeman’s vision of his mother’s fate had been transferred to us, not by description, but by some mystic union we shared, and as we listened to Rachel Boyd choking in our home, I believed she longed for death, wished for death with selfish yearning.

  “Louise, you hear her?” I asked, whispering.

  Louise nodded. She moved to the side table where Mother kept drinking water in an enamel bucket, and she poured a dipper of water into a clean glass. “I better take this in there,” she said. “She’ll be needing it.”

  Louise put the glass of water on a mahogany serving tray that Amy had given Mother for Christmas, and then carried it into the living room. Louise was the oldest daughter still living at home and she understood her responsibilities; she was part girl and part woman, part sister and part mother, and she had a gift for separating the roles.

  “Is she dyin’?” asked Lynn when Louise returned.

  “Hush,” commanded Louise. “She might hear.”

  We sat and listened. We could hear the men talking and I knew Dover had become angry. His voice was tense and high-pitched, and I thought he must have been pacing because his voice changed positions through the sheetrock wall. Occasionally, Dover would pause and there would be a deeper bass reply from my father or Freeman’s father.

  “Dover’s all worked up,” I said to Wesley.

  “Yeah,” Wesley replied.

  “Wonder why he’s so mad?” Lynn whispered.

  “Ssssssssssh,” Wesley said suddenly, whirling in his chair. Outside, Short Leg and Bullet barked. Wesley moved to the back door and opened it.

  “What’s the matter?” Louise asked.

  “Sssssssssh.”

  Wesley stepped onto the back porch. He looked into the heavy, blank darkness. He whistled sharply and Short Leg and Bullet stopped barking.

  “What’s the matter?” Louise repeated. “You hear somethin’?”

  “Freeman,” Wesley said quietly. “It’s Freeman.”

  At first I did not hear it. There was nothing but a low wind and the brushing sound of wet leaves against wet leaves.

  “I don’t hear nothin’,” I said.

  “Listen,” Wesley warned.

  And then I heard it: a shrill, long whistle folding into the wind, riding an invisible sound wave and carrying the eerie message that Freeman was safe.

  “It is,” I exclaimed. “That’s Freeman.”

  “That’s nothing but the wind,” Louise said. “Nobody can whistle like that.”

  “He’s got a cane flute,” Wesley explained. “That’s his cane flute.”

  The flute whistle floated in again, clear and strong. Wesley stepped outside and returned the call of the whippoorwill. There was a long silence and then a whippoorwill replied from somewhere in Black Pool Swamp.

  “Maybe he knows his mama and daddy’s over here,” Lynn said.

  “He knows,” Wesley replied. “We better tell them.”

  We followed Wesley into the living room and Wesley told of Freeman’s cane-flute signal. Rachel Boyd wept quietly, burying her face in a large handkerchief. Dover asked Wesley if he was sure the whistle had been Freeman and Wesley said, “It was.”

  “I’d guess so, too,” Dover agreed. “Freeman used to keep that cane stick with him all the time.”

  Odell Boyd nodded and sucked on a hand-rolled Prince Albert cigarette. “The boy’s got them things everywhere,” he said. “I showed him how to cut one out, oh, couple of years ago. It’s Freeman, I’d guess.”

  “You know where he is, son?” my father asked Wesley.

  “No, sir. He could be anywhere. Freeman’s got lots of places in the swamp.”

  “That’s the truth,” added Dover. “Lots of places.”

  “Places we’ve never even seen, Daddy,” I explained.

  “He knows more about them woods then anybody,” Odell Boyd muttered. “More’n me, even.”

  “Wesley said he’d be fine down in the woods, Rachel,” Mother said quickly. “You said that, didn’t you, Wesley?” Mother’s voice betrayed her. She was thinking of Freeman being Wesley or me.

  Wesley hesitated. He looked at Mother and then at Rachel Boyd. “You don’t need to worry about Freeman, Mrs. Boyd,” he said softly. “He’ll be out in a couple of days, soon as he gets some time to think about it.”

  Rachel Boyd did not answer. She closed her sunken eyes and struggled with a convulsion trembling in her throat.

  “We’ll go down in the morning and see if we can find him,” Wesley continued. “Me and Colin. Maybe he won’t run from us.”

  “Good idea, Wesley,” Dover said. “He’s close to you boys, and that’s for sure. Maybe I’ll take off from the REA crew and go with you. Reckon it’ll be too wet to do much work, anyhow.”

  “But the sheriff’s comin’ back with his deputies,” Lynn said. “They’ll be all over the place and…”

  My father’s gaze stopped Lynn in mid-sentence. “They’ll start up by Rakestraw’s Bridge,” he corrected. “It’ll take all day to get down here.”

  “Well, they’ll bring in bloodhounds and I guarantee it,” Dover said gravely.

  My father walked to the living room window and looked out into the gray-black sheet of fog. “They been to your place, Odell?” he asked.

  Odell Boyd shook his head. “Not directly. They’s been a sheriff’s car over that way. Saw it as we was leavin’ the house. Guess they must be expecting Fre
eman to come home.”

  “Freeman’s not about to do that,” Dover declared. “That boy’s got better sense than that. They sure don’t do him credit, they think that.”

  “They’ll be watching,” my father replied. “They’ll be wanting somethin’ of Freeman’s to get the scent if they bring in hounds.”

  The room suddenly became quiet. Funeral quiet. No one moved. I could see gaunt, restless bloodhounds straining against their leashes, gouging clean, sharp furrows out of the ground with their claws, yelping at the scent of Freeman lingering in an old shirt or jacket. I could hear the primitive Ho’s and Yo’s of the bloodhound master urging his trained killer dogs to sniff out the unseen vapor trail of Freeman’s escape, and I had a grotesque vision of Freeman cowering in the arm of a high limb on a water oak as triumphant men circled their fourteen-year-old prey and laughed at his fear of drooling, hungry dogs with white, flashing teeth.

  Odell Boyd flipped open the lid of his tobacco tin. “Maybe them dogs couldn’t find no scent if we’d scrub all the boy’s clothes,” he said.

  “Makes no difference,” Dover answered. “They’d just take the whole pack of ’em in where Freeman’s bed is and they’d get it. Don’t make no difference, Odell.”

  Odell Boyd nodded. He licked his cigarette into a roll.

  “Not much a man can do in a case like this, not much at all,” Dover added.

  Odell Boyd nodded again.

  “Best thing to do is post bond for the boy and get Old Man Hixon to take a settlement,” Dover continued. “I worked for the man a long time and I’d guess he’d talk about it. Anyway, I’m not so sure he believes Dupree anymore’n I do,” Dover declared.

  “He sure didn’t sound that way this afternoon,” argued Mother. “You’d have thought Freeman robbed Fort Knox, the way he was carryin’ on.”

  “Yes’m. He sure sounds that way sometimes,” agreed Dover. “I seen him lots of times, mad like that. He gets over it, though.”

  Rachel Boyd moved forward in her chair and reached for Mother’s hand. Her body heaved with a deep gurgling in her lungs.

  “He’s my boy,” she said hoarsely, sadly. “He didn’t steal nothin’ from nobody. He wouldn’t do that.” She turned to Wesley. “Wesley, he wouldn’t do that, would he? You know him. He wouldn’t do that.”

  Wesley stepped forward and handed Rachel Boyd the glass of water from the mahogany tray. “No m’am,” he said gently. “Freeman wouldn’t do nothin’ like that. There’s a truth to it. It’ll come out.”

  “It will, won’t it?” Freeman’s mother whispered. “Pray God there’s a truth and it’ll be told. It’s not Freeman’s doing. I know it’s not.” She searched Wesley’s face for its magic.

  “No, m’am,” Wesley said. “It’s not his doin’.”

  “It’ll be like the boys said, Rachel,” Mother added softly.

  Odell Boyd cupped the thin cigarette in his hand and stared at the burning tip. “I’ll see Hixon. First thing in the mornin’. Maybe I can work it off.”

  Dover stood. “Best I take y’all on home,” he suggested. “Maybe me’n the boys can get us a early start in the mornin’.”

  *

  Wesley tugged me from sleep before dawn, motioning silence. Garry still breathed his warm, even rhythm of dreams. We dressed quickly in the umbrella of orange kerosene light in the middle room, and I could smell the spice of morning coffee and oatmeal from the kitchen.

  “Now, I mean it,” Mother instructed as we ate. “Both of you stay together and don’t go driftin’ away from Dover. I don’t trust boys bein’ out in the woods this early.”

  Mother worried about us. She did not consider that we had often been in the woods before dawn, checking rabbit boxes. But this was a particular day, with a particular mission, and she sensed an unseen danger. She filled our bowls a second time with bubbling oatmeal and spooned rich butter on top. “Eat it up,” she said firmly. “It’s stopped raining, but it’ll be chilly by the creek.”

  Wesley poured a second cup of coffee. “Does Daddy think Freeman stole that money, Mama?”

  “I guess not. Your daddy’s had his own trouble with Mr. Hixon. Two or three times, he’s tried to double-charge your daddy for fertilizer.”

  “I remember,” Wesley said.

  The white light of morning stretched its fingers over the rim of Black Pool Swamp and froze the horizon with its dull, aluminum color. Dover’s truck stuttered to a halt outside and we heard several voices.

  “Dover’s got people with him,” I said.

  “Why?” asked Mother. “He didn’t say anything about bringing anybody with him.”

  Wesley and I went outside. Dover was removing a cardboard box from the cab of his truck. Alvin and R. J. and Otis stood sleepily, moving their balance from foot to foot, yawning, stretching. They said listless hellos. Otis leaned against the back fender and stuck his hands in his pockets.

  “Why’s everybody here, Dover?” asked Wesley.

  “Because, ol’ buddy, I have figured out what we’re gonna do to keep Freeman outa the strong right hand of the law. Yessir, got the plan when I was feedin’ Bark last night, so I stopped by and got the boys this mornin’.”

  “What’re you talkin’ about, Dover? There’s nothin’ we can do,” I said. “Nothin’ except look for Freeman.”

  “Sure there is,” Dover exclaimed. “Absolutely. Now, me and you and Wesley and the boys here know that nobody’s gonna find Freeman in that swamp if Freeman don’t want them to find him. Is that right?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess,” I said.

  “Except for one thing,” Dover added. “One thing, and one thing only.” Dover was becoming excited.

  We waited for him to continue. He looked at Wesley and motioned slightly with his hands, begging Wesley to ask about the one thing that would trap Freeman. Wesley did not respond. Dover turned to R. J. and Alvin. Alvin blinked and yawned.

  “One thing,” Dover repeated. “Any of you got any idea of what the sheriff’s plannin’ on doin’?”

  “Bringing in deputies,” I answered eagerly.

  Dover was disgusted. “So what?” he said. “A truckload of deputies couldn’t find Freeman in a month of Sundays. What else?”

  “Bloodhounds,” Alvin said, suddenly awake. “Gonna bring in bloodhounds. That’s what they was sayin’ at the store last night.”

  Dover laughed. “You got it, Alvin. You have put your finger slap-dab on it, boy. Bloodhounds. But we got the answer to that right here.” He raised the cardboard box he was holding, then placed it on the lowered tailgate of his truck and pulled open the folded-in top and removed a handful of wadded shirts and pants.

  “What’s that?” asked Wesley. “Whose clothes you got, Dover?”

  “Freeman’s, Wesley. These are Freeman’s clothes. His mama gave ’em to me early this morning. Them bloodhounds want to smell Freeman, well, by granny, they’re gonna smell Freeman.”

  Wesley picked up a shirt and examined it. “All right, Dover. You want to tell us what it is you got in mind?”

  “Well, Wes, every one of us is gonna take one of these pieces of Freeman’s clothes and we’re gonna drag them through Black Pool Swamp, goin’ in all different directions. That way, when them bloodhounds get in there, they’ll be goin’ crazy, trying to find which smell to follow.”

  Dover made his announcement like a politician at a chicken barbecue. His plan was remarkable. It was a plan that would have baffled Sherlock Holmes, and Dover was drunk with the giddiness of his brilliance. He turned slowly on one heel, prying into each of our faces, begging our awed approvals. A wide, open-mouthed smile covered his face like a half-moon and there were very small sounds of “Yeah? Yeah? Yeah?” clicking on his tongue.

  “I swear, Dover,” exclaimed Alvin. “I’m not believing it. You make that up? All by yourself?”

  “I did. I sure did, Alvin. Well, almost by myself,” Dover answered proudly. “I heard this radio show where Sam Spade or Mr. Keene, Tracer of Lost Person
s, or Boston Blackie, or somebody, stopped a crook from killin’ somebody by doing almost the same thing. And, boys, if it can work for Sam Spade, it can work for us.”

  Wesley smiled, nodded, separated Freeman’s clothes. “It’s a good idea, Dover. I’m not sure it’s something we can do, but it’s one good idea.”

  “What’d you mean, we can’t do it?”

  “Daddy may not like it,” answered Wesley. “Maybe it’s against the law.”

  “Against the law? What’s against the law, Wes? Sam Spade done it. It’s not against the law to go draggin’ clothes in the woods. Alvin, you ever hear it was against the law to drag some old clothes in the woods?”

  Alvin grinned. “Not me, Dover.”

  “I’m not talking about that,” Wesley said quietly. “I’m talking about interferin’ with a lawman’s duty, or something like that.”

  “Wesley, you beat all, you know that?” argued Dover. “We’re talkin’ about Freeman. Freeman. If you was in there in place of him, he’d be doin’ the same thing, and more. No telling what Freeman would do if the shoe was on his other foot. I got to tell you, Wes, you can be some kind of stubborn at times. You not right all the time, you know.”

  Wesley did not answer. R. J. spat through the slit of his front teeth. Alvin picked up a rock and threw it at a fence post, hitting it dead center. Dover kicked at the ground and pulled at his pants.

  “All right,” Dover finally said. “I’ll go ask your daddy. He says it’s all right, you and Colin can come along. Don’t make no difference what he says about me’n the others. We’re gonna do it, and we not afraid to take the chance.”

  Dover had leveled Wesley and Wesley knew it. “Aw, that’s all right,” Wesley said. “No need to ask Daddy. We’ll help out.” There was a right and a wrong to the matter, but Wesley was not certain right and wrong was important. Helping Freeman was part of it, and belonging to Dover’s inspired production of a radio drama was part of it. Wesley also knew his leadership had limits. He knew there was a difference between leading and demanding, even if he had reason for making demands. There was a thing, a rare click, in Wesley; it tempered his logic, balanced it with impulse, and as predictable as he seemed, no one ever knew what Wesley would do.