Sweet Hush

  “I left you a message,” I said. “And I’ve called Logan. He’ll be here soon. With Puppy. We have to find some way to tell her what’s happening.”

  Smooch dropped her coat on the floor, leaned heavily on a kitchen chair, then sat down slowly as I grabbed her by the arm and helped her. She never took her eyes off me. “Are you saying—Hush, are you telling me that what that man says about Davy, that it’s true?”

  I sat down beside her and tried to hug her. “I’m sorry.”

  She turned away from me, burrowed her head on her arms atop the harvest table she had given Davy and me as our tenth anniversary present, and sobbed. “Y’all were my role models. All these years I’ve been looking for a man to marry who met the standards you and Davy set. Do you know how many men I’ve turned down because I wanted the perfect marriage, like you and my brother?”

  “I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry I am.”

  “It was all a fairy tale!”

  “I wish,” I said, “life was that simple.”

  An hour later, I had Puppy crying, too. And Logan. And me. And Smooch, again, who hovered around us like a churchyard wraith, wringing her hands and moaning. Logan sat there at a loss for words so deep he could only let tears run down his face. “Baby,” he said hoarsely, watching Puppy huddle in my arms. “It’s okay.”

  “But I don’t want a new daddy,” Puppy sobbed. “And how can I have a mama named Abbie when my mama is supposed to be in heaven in Germany?” She raced upstairs with Smooch close behind, heading for the small, pink, pretty bedroom I’d made for her so lovingly in her father’s house. Logan and I heard the door slam. His big shoulders slumped. Dressed in his sheriff’s uniform, with his hat laying in the floor between his big, solid feet, he bent his head and said nothing, wiping his eyes. I sat down beside him, crying so hard I couldn’t speak, either. I draped an arm around his shoulders. “Bubba Logan,” I said finally. “Bubba Logan. I’m so sorry.”

  “Before—” he struggled for a moment—“before Lucille left with Eddie, she said it’ll be more than a one-man job to get Puppy through this. What do you think she meant by that, Sis?”

  I stared at him. “She means she loves you and Puppy and she wants to come back here and take care of you both. All you have to do is ask her.”

  He pondered this revelation for a good minute. “Thank God,” he finally said.

  I had done a little good, at least.

  But then, there were the rest of my family to deal with. Strange and wondrous people, those McGillens and Thackerys. Except for Aaron and his crowd, my relatives showed up without calling, without asking, without judgment. Over forty of them gathered around me in my kitchen, packed in like seeds, waiting. I stood at the head of my table. “I used to tell myself that what kind of marriage Davy and I had behind closed doors was nobody’s business but ours. I used to think we were doing our son – and our family – a favor by putting on a big show of happiness. Y’all came to depend on that image of us so much. This farm depended on it, too. The business. Every time I set up a deal with a fruit wholesaler or grocery chain buyer—especially in the early years, when everyone outside Chocinaw County said I’d never make the Hollow’s orchards pay, again—I’d think, ‘If they smell any weakness on me, these business men will say, ‘She’s just a gal who can’t even hold up her own household,’ and turn their backs. I couldn’t let those men, or anybody else, suspect that Davy and I weren’t really a team.

  “So I put on a show. And Davy did, too. He wanted you all to think we were a perfect couple. Your respect was important to him. Our son’s respect was important to him. He lived for that. I want you to know that . . . he always tried his best to do the right thing by me and by Davis, and when he found out he was going to be a father to another woman’s child, he . . . did the right thing then, too.”

  All right, I lied on that count, unless you took it to mean that by killing himself, Davy had been honorable. A good story. A gift to Davy. And to Davis. And to Puppy. “He did the right thing for his baby girl. Puppy is Davy’s daughter by default, yes she is, but that doesn’t matter. She’s part of this family, and he intended to honor that. And I know he’d tell you to honor that, too, in his memory.”

  I paused, working hard not to cry. They’d seen me cry so rarely over the years it might scare them. Then, “Look, I’ll understand if some of you don’t want to work for me, anymore. I can’t abide a liar; can’t abide myself, right now. There’ll be no hard feelings toward any one of you who doesn’t want to be associated with me.”

  Gruncle squinted at me with eyes like dark, cool marbles burrowed in crinkled paper. “Oh, hold off the pity talk. We know the score. Davy was a show-off and a big talker and a lady’s man and a race track hero. Yes, he was a good daddy and a strong friend and a good enough husband to play-act with you, for your sake and the sake of his son. But if you think we-all didn’t know you were holding up his reputation without much help from him, then you must think we-all were just blind.”

  “You knew . . . what?”

  “God love him, we knew he was weak to the core. That’s what we knew. He decided when he was a kid that he was mad at the whole world and could charm the whole world and the world owed him a free pass. I watched him struggle with his own nature over the years. I always knew you and Davis were the glue holding that effort together for him, and I figured any time he wasn’t here in this Hollow with you and Davis, well, that he let the worst side of his nature get the best of him.”

  Everyone nodded. But deep in the crowd, Smooch covered her face and cried, while several Thackerys and McGillens hugged her or patted her. The truth settled in me. I could feel the weight of it shift from my head down to my heart, making me light enough to sway but too heavy to fall. Balanced, maybe. I had my family’s sympathy, but it came at the price of my pride. All those years I’d thought Davy and I had everyone fooled. No.

  Sad and empty and lost without that armor of assumptions around me, I said, “Well, there’s not much else to discuss, then. I appreciate y’all’s support. Excuse me, now, I have to go see if I can get Davis on the phone. Try to talk some of the anger out of him.”

  Gruncle frowned. “You gonna try to get him and Eddie back here fulltime?”

  “I don’t expect to, no.”

  “Then what about Jakobek? We got used to him.”

  “He was here for Eddie’s sake. I don’t know.” I sagged a little. “I don’t expect him back.”

  “At least you could depend on my brother to always come back,” Smooch said loudly. Angry, flushed, she looked around at our relatives as if betrayed. “Maybe he wasn’t all that we wanted him to be. But he kept trying. That’s what marriage is really about—partners who stick around and keep trying to make it work. I threw away chances at happiness because you sold me a fantasy, Hush.” She looked at me with more sorrow than anything else. “I’m leaving this place. I quit.”

  People moaned and said things like, Now, that’s just talk, and shook their heads, but I didn’t doubt her. “Smoochie, your job will be waiting if you change your mind, and please do.”

  “I’m sorry, but I won’t.”

  She burrowed her way through the crowd and disappeared. The sound of the front door slamming behind her made my bones crack together. Everyone sighed and made small, crying sounds, but spoke not one word. It was one of those moments when no one wants to say anything else; they just want get as far away as they can from the sadness. I sat down at the table, staring at my hands on the heavy, polished wood, while the whole crowd eased out of my house.

  When I finally looked up, I was all alone.

  CHRISTMAS CAME in Washington. I called Hush with a daily report; brief, five minutes, nothing personal. She was hanging on by her fingertips and didn’t want sentimentality to gum up her effort. I understood but still had to fight an urge to call her every hour—and talk for an
hour. Strange urge for a man who had never been a talker, before. Soldiers with no war to fight are speechless; soldiers, put in tame times, armed only with words, are silent and invisible. Wanting to talk was my punishment for all the shut-up years I’d lived. I was doomed to be a soldier, a loner, an unspeaking human eyeglass looking into the dark, waiting.

  She might not know it, but she was waiting, with me.

  CHRISTMAS. I sat in the living room all day before a cold fireplace, listening to the answering machine pick up. My relatives kept calling, asking how I was. They wanted to visit. We usually held big Christmases at the Hollow, but not that year. Finally, I put a message on the phone.

  Nothing to report. I just need to think. Merry Christmas.

  I waited for Jakobek’s daily call. When it came, I wrapped one arm around my head and burrowed on a corner of the couch with my legs drawn up and the phone tight against my ear. Jakobek’s plain and deep voice, penetrating far down inside the baby-curl I made of myself, kept me going. He admitted Davis hadn’t softened but said he, Jakobek, would not give up. He was at my service. He was with me in spirit.

  I wanted him to talk to me forever.

  “EDDIE? LT. COLONEL? I just resigned from the Service. I’ve come to say goodbye.” The day after Christmas, Lucille stood in a hallway of the family quarters, carrying a flowered luggage bag. Flowered. “I’m going back to Georgia. I’ve got an interview with the GBI. As a field agent, maybe. Sheriff McGillen put in a word with the bureau for me.”

  Eddie looked from her to me with shock. “Nicky, did you know about this?” I nodded. Eddie turned to Lucille. “Why are you quitting? Whatever the problem is, I’ll talk to your bosses on your behalf. You can’t leave me. I think of you as . . . Lucille, why?”

  “Let me ask you first—why are you happy to be here, instead of at the Hollow? After all you went through to get there and prove a point about how you intend to live your life?”

  “I proved that point. Now I have to take responsibility for the damage I’ve done. I don’t belong at the Hollow—not as a person just hiding out there. I only brought the wrong kind of attention to it. I realize that, now. Davis and I are partners. We can live anywhere. Be safe, anywhere. We’re . . . we’re turtles. And we listen to the apple trees for advice.” She paused. “Don’t try to understand. I’m quoting Hush’s philosophy.”

  Lucille smiled. “Good. You’ve got so many dedicated people looking out for your well-being. And you’ve got a husband who loves you, looking out for you. I’m convinced of that, now. So, there’s a . . . a time when it’s time to move on.” She paused, then said gruffly. “Sheriff McGillen needs me. His daughter needs me.” Her voice became gentle. “I have another girl to look after, you see?”

  “Oh, Lucille.” Eddie hugged the tall, brawny blonde. “What I started to say was this. I think of you as a sister.”

  Lucille made a gruff sound. “Then I’ve served your purpose and mine, too.” She backed away, clearing her throat, sniffing away tears. “I need a moment to speak to the Lt. Colonel, please.”

  Eddie nodded and left us alone. Lucille held out a hand. We shook warmly, before she laid her message on the line: “Lt. Colonel, people like you and me need to find a good purpose and a good home, or we’ll just wander in the dark all our lives. We need to understand where we’re needed most—and who we need the most.” She stared at me pointedly. “And then we need to have the guts to say so. I’ve done it. You can, too.”

  “Saying it is one thing. Being afraid it won’t be said back, is another.” I shook her hand and let it go at that.

  COURAGE AND CHOICES and lost chances. I thought about all three when I took a walk in the city that afternoon. “No, thanks,” I said to the Secret Service agents who dutifully offered to trail me, then ducked out through a guard gate. I was tall and obvious in some ways, but just another man alone, in others—old khakis, a heavy shirt, my apple-red Sweet Hush Farms employee lapel pin tacked inside the lapel of a long gray overcoat, my secret. I shoved my hands in the overcoat’s pockets and, head down, tried to walk off the past, the present, the future.

  I think I covered most of the city on that bright, cold December afternoon. I walked in the shadows of the monuments and the Capitol building, glimpsed my own frown in the windows of small shops, jaywalked through the city’s dangerous, spokes-on-a-wheel intersections, filled myself with the scent of the cold scent of the Potomac, flowing to the Atlantic.

  A chant began to cycle through my mind.

  God, country, apple pie.

  Hush.

  Late in the day I looked up from tracking the rhythm of my own shoes on the sidewalks, and I halted, surprised. I’d made my way back where I started. The White House made its famous cameo behind the famous fences that fronted the famous lawn and the famous avenue with its huge concrete planters and other security blockades disguised as ornaments, its lanes shut down to vehicle traffic, its sidewalks barely hospitable to visitors, under the eyes of guards and cameras. Al had a grim habit of telling historical anecdotes about the White House; how in the early 1900’s the public came to picnic on the lawns every week.

  “What will it take to return the world to that state of grace?” he liked to ask.

  “A time machine,” I liked to answer.

  I never told him the barricades and fences and armed guards at the gates bothered me, too. I was a soldier—a hard-ass, hard-line guards-and-barricade-loving, take-no-prisoners American samurai. I wasn’t supposed to be bothered by the symbols of protection—or the fear that inspired them. But I was.

  I nodded to the guards at the gatehouse. They nodded back and prepared to let me through. But I lingered on the sidewalk, frowning at a crowd of tourists milling in front of the high, ornate fences to snap pictures. They gazed lovingly at the country’s symbolic home, behind bars.

  “We should plant some more public lawns around here,” I said to the guards. “And I think it would be nice to put some apple trees in those big planters.”

  “Lt. Colonel?”

  “Apple trees. Apples. The All-American fruit. Apples are welcoming. Apples mean home and family. People would appreciate the idea of them.”

  They traded cautious looks. “Is everything all right, Sir?”

  No, nothing was all right.

  The thing in the dark, looking back at me, had finally arrived.

  The hair rose on the back of my neck one second before I spotted him. He was a huge, sloppy man, maybe four-hundred pounds, and a good six inches taller than me—a hulk in baggy camo pants and an old army jacket he’d cut apart and spliced with brown material to make it several sizes too big, even for him. Dark, dirty hair straggled over his shoulders. Greasy black beard stubble didn’t help his look. His expression was angry, hurt, confused. His eyes had the kind of sweaty stare no one wants to face.

  Maybe a veteran, I thought. Not old enough to claim Vietnam, but could be the Gulf War. Or maybe he was just a miserable, fucked-up bastard who’d been through wars in his own mind. He waved his arms suddenly, scattering a flock of startled tourists. Then he threw back his head and yelled at the sky.

  “I’m going to blow up this goddamned fence. I’m going to walk onto my property and go into my house and see the President! I have a right! I have the power! I don’t want to hurt anybody! Everybody get away! Look.” He opened the jacket and turned in a circle. His belly was wrapped in packets that could be high-tech explosives or a few pounds of harmless potter’s clay stuffed into sandwich bags.

  The tourists screamed and ran.

  “Stay away,” he yelled at the guards. “I’ve got this, too!”

  He shook his right arm. A long butcher knife slid out of the army jacket’s dirty, patched sleeve. He caught the handle in a hand the size of a dinner saucer, then held the long knife up. His hand trembled. “Stay away, and you won’t get hurt,” he bellowed to
ward the guards and me. Our eyes met. His filled with tears. “Stay away,” he moaned.

  He’s not threatening us, I thought, as my skin slowly tightened with his pain. The poor fucker is trying to protect us from himself.

  Behind me, the guards pulled their guns and began radioing for assistance. I knew what was about to happen. They’d tell him to drop the knife, and when he didn’t, they’d wound him with a bullet to the legs. If he was too drugged, too psychotic, or just too stubborn to go down for his own good, they’d shoot him again. And they’d kill him.

  No.

  I slowly walked towards him. The guards went ape-shit. “Lt. Colonel, Sir, Sir! Come back, Sir! Sir!” I held up a hand for quiet as I stepped over the boundary between the light and the dark, into the shadows that had swallowed the huge, desperate human soul staring back at me. “What do you think you’re doing, man?” he yelled. His voice broke.

  “You talk. I’ll listen.”

  He stared at me for a good minute, then waved the knife wearily and began to tell me stories. Slowly at first, then faster. Words gushed out of him. Part of my brain tuned into the sirens in the distance, the tense conversations of the guards behind me, the scuffle of feet as both uniformed and plains clothes Secret Service agents took up places on the street with the soft stealth of hunters. If he made one wrong move, he’d die.

  No. I wouldn’t let him.

  Not much of what he said made sense—he offered no profound ideas or hints of genius, no clues to who he was or what had brought him there to commit public suicide. Just misery and confusion and bitterness and fear. The faceless things that lived in the darkness with him, with me, with us all. He was the soul behind every human being I’d killed in battle, right or wrong. He was the stalker in Chicago. He was the father I’d never know, the brothers I might have, somewhere. Part of him was Davy Thackery, and part of him was me.

  He was death. And he was redemption.

  Finally his voice dropped off in a groan, and he began to sob. “How are we supposed to know what to do, man? I came here to ask the President. He knows. He’s got to know.”