The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

  His heart was exploding. He wasn’t finding her.

  He came back out of the house, and stood in the yard, and his eyes searched the edge of the woods, where nothing was moving. He looked back over to where Ras Ballenger was combing out the mare’s mane, not paying him any attention. And then he looked the only place that was left to look. He looked up.

  “Godddddddddddddd!” he shouted. “Goddddddddddddd?”

  He shot his arms up into the air, with his hands reaching, like he was pulling Heaven down, and he let loose roaring from his deepest depths.

  “Are you listening, God? Its Samuel! Sam Lake! You know me, Lord! You—know—me!”

  Ras Ballenger whirled around and stared at him. He’d heard it around that the preacher had lost his grip, but this was proof positive. “He can’t hearrrrrrr you” was what he wanted to sing out to the crazy man.

  Inside the shed, someone could hear. Swan heard everything. She heard when her father started calling on God, and she heard it when God answered.

  God’s answer started quick but quiet, with the softest little scuttling sound that multiplied by the hundreds. Pretty soon that sound was all she heard, but it was all she needed. All she needed on this earth. It was the sweetest sound imaginable. She felt as if she were wrapped in rustling velvet. Velvet brushing against her skin, soothing and caressing, maybe even healing.

  You wouldn’t dream that mice could make you feel such jubilation.

  Chapter 39

  Out in the yard, Samuel was still waving his arms at God and telling it like it was.

  “I’m Yours! Yours, Lord! But that means you’re mine, too! You made a lot of big promises, and I’ve believed every one of them! Now I’m calling on you to keep them!”

  Ras came out of the holding pen again and hollered across to Samuel. Hollered across the considerable distance that lay between them. “Go home, Preacher! Go home and see if she hasn’t turned up by now. I bet you good money she’s turned up by now.”

  But Samuel wasn’t listening.

  “I’m standing on the promises, Lord! Standing right here! Me! Sam Lake! Still standing! I’m standing here, and I’m holding on, and I’m not letting go until you answer!”

  Then he heard the cowbell. The cowbell! Ringing and jangling to wake the dead. And on top of that sound was the throaty quackquackquack of a duck call.

  Samuel froze in place. And so did Ras Ballenger. Samuel, knowing what that sound meant. Ras Ballenger, confused as the devil.

  “Swan?” Samuel shouted, starting toward the sounds. Those glorious sounds.

  For a fraction of a second, Ras was too much in shock to move. Then he started after Samuel, snagging his bullwhip off the fence. Samuel heard the hiss of the whip as it unfurled, and he snapped around, just as quick. Just as quick. A man can’t move that fast, but Sam Lake did. He threw himself through the air—through the air, over all that distance. Flying. A man can’t do that, either, but he flew. Later on, he remembered the flying. The whip never touched him, because Ras turned to run, and Samuel leveled him. They landed on the ground, Ras scrabbling and squirming, facedown, with Samuel on his back, pinning him.

  “You best lemme up, Preacher,” Ras warned him. Not so sure of himself now, but still trying to act like it.

  Samuel looked around, wild-eyed, trying to get his bearings, and what he saw was a peaceful farm, where hungry animals waited, some in one holding pen, some in another—waited impatiently, stamping their feet, demanding to be turned in to the feedlot.

  His glance took in the contrast of brown and green, where the barren, hard-packed dirt inside the lot butted up against the vegetation outside the fence, and then, in one heartbeat, every blade of grass became crisply visible—especially the darker, denser grass that stood out starkly from the rest, leading in a telltale line from the feedlot fence off toward the woods.

  The grass that grew over the septic tank field line.

  Samuel blinked, the whole picture falling into place. He heard the horses stamping their feet, the sound getting louder and louder, until it was like thunder in his ears, and suddenly he understood everything. The preparations Ras had made. The plans he had for killing Swan and making it so no one would ever find the body. Making it so there wouldn’t be anything to find.

  He didn’t even know it when his right hand streaked down and hooked beneath Ras Ballenger’s chin, and yanked the man’s head sideways in one savage movement. Or when his left hand planted itself at the base of Ras Ballenger’s neck.

  “What are you doing?” Ras squawked, sounding quivery. He clawed at Samuel’s hands.

  “God’s sake, Preacher,” Ras whimpered. “You can’t do a thing like this. You’re God’s man, you just said so.”

  Samuel jerked up with the hand that was holding Ras Ballenger’s chin, and he bore down with the hand that was planted at the base of Ras Ballenger’s neck, and he didn’t stop until he heard the cracking, popping sounds that told him it was finished. If Ras Ballenger screamed, Sam Lake didn’t hear.

  It took him a while to find the room. The room that didn’t seem to be there. Didn’t seem to exist. It was built into the barn between the feed room and the tack room, like dead space. There didn’t seem to be a way in. If you walked into the feed room and looked around, you saw sacks of feed. Stacks of sacks of feed. So you thought the wall behind the feed had nothing on the other side except that tack room.

  But that was where the sounds were coming from. That cowbell ringing and that duck call bleating. And now Swan, calling out to him, answering him when he shouted her name. Samuel tore through those stacks of fifty-pound sacks, picking them up and slinging them aside until he found what he was looking for.

  It wasn’t a door. It was just part of the wall. A panel that was almost impossible to see, but easy to remove once he discovered it. All he needed was a crowbar, and he found one of those in the tack room, stuck back with some other tools, barely noticeable.

  Samuel pried the panel off and went into that wretched space to claim his daughter. It was dark as a tomb in there, so he couldn’t see the pieces of rope or the strips of cloth or the gunnysack. All those things that lay shredded on the floor. He couldn’t even see Swan, but they found each other in the blackness.

  She was crying. He was bawling.

  “There were mice,” she told him, again and again, as he gathered her up and took her out of there. “There were mice everywhere. They turned me loose.”

  His family met him in the yard. All except Toy, who’d gone off in the truck, and had passed him on the road, and had turned around and followed him home. The boys—all three of them—hung on the edge of the porch, afraid to look. Calla and Willadee ran to the car and cried out at what they saw, and what they understood.

  Samuel carried Swan into the house, and laid her on the couch, and stepped back, giving her over to the women. He couldn’t talk at all. Willadee knelt beside the couch and kissed Swan’s face over and over, her tears making tracks through the dirt that was there. Calla went to the phone and called Doc Bismark. Then she went into the kitchen and brought back a basin of water and some tea towels that were old enough to be soft as down. She bathed that little girl’s face and arms, and started to bathe her hands—and then she saw what Swan was holding. What she was holding on to for dear life. A cowbell and a duck call.

  “What’s this?” she asked, although she knew.

  And Samuel found his voice.

  “Swan’s miracle,” he said.

  It wasn’t until Doc Bismark came and was tending Swan that Samuel took Willadee into the kitchen and told her what had happened. By then, Calla and Toy had taken the boys upstairs to get them away from everything. Doing their best for them. Those boys needed help right now, too.

  Sometime during Samuel’s telling, there were footsteps in another room, but the sounds didn’t register on either of them. Samuel just kept pouring out the story. Later, there were more footsteps, and a door closing, but that didn’t register, either. There were
cars and trucks outside—people arriving and finding out that, for the first time ever, Never Closes wasn’t open. All the sounds of people coming and leaving ran together, without touching Samuel and Willadee.

  “I killed him, Willadee,” he told her. “After standing right there, and calling on God for help—and getting it. Knowing that He’d sent a miracle. I killed that devil man, and I don’t know how to begin to be sorry.”

  “I’ll never be sorry,” Willadee said, with a voice like steel. Then she said the other part. “Unless it takes you away from us.”

  Samuel put his arms around her, and drew her close, and rested his head on top of hers, and for a while, all they did was breathe together.

  “We’ll just have to trust God for the outcome,” Samuel said. “I’ll have to go into town pretty soon. To turn myself in.”

  Willadee said, “I know. But not yet. Stay here just a little bit. For Swan.”

  Toy Moses had come downstairs to get the boys something to drink but had stopped outside the kitchen door when he heard what Sam Lake was saying. He’d gone outside after that and found Bootsie Phillips leaning against his logging truck, waiting expectantly for the bar to open. Toy didn’t explain what was going on, but he told Bootsie that Never Closes was shutting down for a while and put him in charge of heading customers off as soon as they arrived.

  Bootsie didn’t have to ask if there was trouble. Anything that could keep Never Closes from opening had to be serious. He told Toy Moses not to worry about a thing.

  Toy went to Ballenger’s first. When he drove up, he saw the cur dogs fighting over something on the ground, and he knew what it was. Knew and thought that nothing on earth could be more appropriate. He took a flashlight from the truck and went to find the place that he’d heard Samuel telling Willadee about.

  When he found the room Samuel had described, he went inside that dark, dead space. He almost could not believe what he saw there.

  “Dear God,” he said. And meant it.

  It was getting toward ten o’clock when Samuel rolled into Magnolia. He had stayed at home longer than he’d intended, first sitting beside Swan for a while, just sitting. The doctor had given her something to make her sleep, so she may not have known he was there. After that, he’d gone up and talked to the boys, and explained things the best he could without destroying them. They all sat in stunned silence, Blade and Bienville weeping silently. Noble wept only on the inside. Calla sat like a rock, looking on, knowing full well that, if she reached out to comfort them, they’d break in ways she couldn’t mend.

  There was a light on in the sheriff’s office. Not just in the building itself. That was always lit. But Samuel was surprised to see Early’s light on. He had figured that one of the deputies would be taking his statement.

  Early took Samuel into his office and listened to every word. When Samuel got to the part about how he had flown through the air at Ras Ballenger, Early took a book of paper matches off his desk, and started tearing the matches out, and tossing them at the open-mouthed moccasin—at the ashtray that was centered in the coil.

  Samuel finished his story and waited to see what Early would say. For a second or two, the man didn’t say anything. Then he drew a deep breath and got to his feet.

  “Well, thank you for coming, Samuel.”

  Samuel stood up, too, not knowing what to do next.

  “What happens now?” he asked.

  Early said, “Now you go home to your family.”

  Samuel stared at him. Going home to his family was what he wanted most in the world, but he hadn’t thought it would happen this easily. He hadn’t been at all confident that it would ever happen. Or at least not for a number of years.

  Samuel told Early that he appreciated the show of trust, and he appreciated the time to be with his wife and children. This was all going to be hard on everybody, and he was glad he’d have more time to prepare them for what was coming, before he got locked up.

  “Nobody’s locking you up, Samuel,” Early said. “I can’t hardly charge two men for the same crime. And Toy’s story sounds a lot more realistic.”

  Samuel reached out and took hold of the edge of Early’s desk to steady himself. He was that close to falling over.

  While he was still too stunned to say a word, Early added, “And you don’t need to be telling it around what all happened to Swan. She’s got enough to deal with without feeling like the whole world’s looking at her.”

  A few minutes later, Samuel was standing face-to-face with his brother-in-law—Early having instructed Bobby Spikes, who was on duty that night, to take him back there for a visit. Toy was standing inside his cell, lounging with his elbows hooked through the bars, looking more relaxed than he had in quite a while. Samuel was in the hallway, tensed like a spring and sick in his soul.

  “You can’t do this,” Samuel said.

  And Toy said, “It’s already done.”

  It was a little dark back there, not much light on in that part of the building at this time of night. Toy’s face was in shadow, and the effect was a softening of all the lines and creases that he’d earned the hard way.

  “But you’re not guilty,” Samuel argued. “I am.”

  Toy cut his eyes over toward Bobby Spikes, who probably wasn’t supposed to be listening but was. That deputy wasn’t looking at them, but he had an ear tuned in their direction.

  “You’re mixed up, Samuel.” Toy kept his eyes on Bobby, hoping that Samuel would catch on and go along. Not expecting it to happen but hoping. “When I brought Swan home, beat up like that, it must’ve thrown you plumb off-kilter.”

  Beat up like that. Not raped. Not mauled. Beat up.

  Samuel stared at Toy, understanding why he was doing this. Why he was taking the blame, and doing his best to hide what had really happened to Swan. It was for Swan. All of it. So that she’d have her daddy while she was growing up, and so that she wouldn’t forever have people pointing at her and talking behind their hands. But still, to Samuel, it was all lies, and no good could come of it.

  “You can’t do this,” he said again.

  “Nothing else I can do,” Toy said. “I’m a cold-blooded killer, and I have to pay the price. Ain’t that right, Bobby?”

  Bobby gave him a look that said he couldn’t wait to see Toy fry and said, “Well, I reckon it’s true what they say around here. A Moses never lies.”

  Chapter 40

  Calla grieved.

  She grieved for Swan—for all she’d lost, and for all she’d found out about life that nobody should ever have to find out about, because it shouldn’t ever be. She grieved for Blade—because he was losing, too. He wouldn’t be able to feel that he belonged here now. Might not ever feel that he belonged anywhere. She grieved for the other boys, because their world was in shambles. She grieved for Samuel and Willadee, because it would be their job to build it all back, and she couldn’t see how anything could be simple ever again.

  And she grieved for Toy.

  When Samuel had come back from town—when he’d unfolded the story for her (hating it, she knew he hated it), she had sat down hard in a chair, and clasped her hands together, and started twisting her wedding ring back and forth, back and forth, on her finger.

  “I’m going back again tomorrow,” Samuel promised. “I’ll keep going back until somebody listens to me.”

  And she knew that he would. And that it wouldn’t matter. Nobody on God’s green earth was going to believe that Samuel Lake had killed a man. Not if they had to choose between believing it was him who did it and believing it was Toy Moses. Once she’d had a chance for the shock to wear off, she wasn’t surprised about Toy taking the blame. That was just what she’d have expected if her mind could have stretched out that far, to probe into possibilities. But still she grieved.

  She sat that night in her room with a box of old pictures that she spread out over her bed. All those pictures of her children, when they were young and coming up. Four boys and a girl. One boy taken, years a
go, and now another one going away. After a while, she put the pictures up, except for one of Toy, the day he left home to join the Army. That one she held on to, while she sat up in her chair and asked God for another miracle.

  She wanted to believe that she’d get it. That she’d wake up in the morning, and Toy would be home, and Early Meeks would be in the kitchen drinking coffee and saying that they weren’t bringing any charges after all, since Ras Ballenger needed killing so much it didn’t even matter who did it.

  She knew better, though. They’d already gotten one miracle that day. A big one. Now here she was asking for another. The way she had it figured, miracles of that magnitude were probably one per customer.

  Calla was right about Blade. He didn’t feel that he belonged there anymore, and he was gone when they all got up the next morning. Samuel and Willadee both worried about him, and wished they could know that he was all right, but Samuel knew it was out of the question for him to drive over to the Ballenger place to check on the boy, and he wouldn’t have let Willadee go, even if she had been willing to leave Swan’s side—which she wasn’t. Noble and Bienville both offered to go, but neither Samuel nor Willadee would consider that.

  Calla went, though. There wasn’t a soul in this world who could tell that woman what she could and couldn’t do. She wouldn’t let anybody drive her, either. She’d called the sheriff’s office and found out she couldn’t see Toy until after his arraignment, which wouldn’t be over until around noon, so she took off walking shortly after breakfast. Out the front door and down the road. One foot in front of the other.

  When she got to the Ballengers’, there were cars in the yard. Not law cars. Those and the ambulance had come and gone in the night. Calla Moses had heard all the sirens. The people who were here were Geraldine’s family and Ras’s family, mainly. They were a rough-looking bunch. One of them, a man who looked to be about Toy’s age, stepped out in front of Calla as she walked across the yard and told her she wasn’t welcome here.