That was our complete story. Reverend Joy didn’t come up again, and neither did Gene or Constable Sy. It didn’t seem to bother Captain Burke at all. None of the story we told would have been worth a damn for any solid law enforcement, even if it was mostly true, but Captain Burke seemed satisfied with it. I reckon when it comes to police matters, law is pretty much where and how you find it. And how much work there is to it for them, and how much money there is or isn’t in it.
In our case, there was too much work and no real money for Captain Burke, and at the bottom of it all, like lots of people in those kinds of positions, he didn’t really give a damn.
“I’ll cut him loose, then,” he said in a big way, spreading his hands. “We’ll call him killing that Cletus fella self-defense. Hell, we’ll just call everything even and not hurt our heads too much over it.”
“Sure,” Mama said, like any of it made sense.
Captain Burke told Mama he wouldn’t mind taking her to the café for dinner tomorrow if she was agreeable, and she said, “Maybe.”
Don was let loose, given his truck keys, wallet, and his greasy cap.
“Your truck is behind here,” Captain Burke said. “I think they buried that Cletus fella in the pauper’s section of the graveyard, if you or anyone cares. I guess being the shooter, you might not want to give him any prayers.”
Don looked in his wallet. It was empty. He said, “I had five dollars in there.”
“No, you didn’t,” Captain Burke said.
Don decided it was best to take the loss. He went outside, carrying his cap. When we went out he was waiting on us.
“I appreciate the way you helped me out in there, Helen,” he said to Mama. “I wouldn’t mind if you came home now.”
“You and I are divorced.”
“We wasn’t really never married by a preacher,” he said.
“That’s why we are divorced. Because I say so.”
“You wasn’t married?” I said.
“No,” Mama said.
“We just sort of took up together,” Don said.
“Mama,” I said. “What else ain’t you told me?”
But I didn’t say it like I really wanted to hear any kind of answer.
Don tried to sweet-talk her some, but Mama told him it was done, and she better not see him no more, or she would press charges with Captain Burke.
Don grinned at her. “I got a bottle of cure-all in the glove box of my truck, if Captain Burke didn’t drink it up. I know you must have been missing it. I’ll buy you another case soon as we get home and the trader comes around.”
“No more cure-all for me,” she said. “That’s what made me foolish. The river made me strong.”
“The river?” he said.
“Yes, the river. And these kids. And another one that isn’t here right now.”
“I saved your life,” he said. “I killed Cletus.”
“Cletus couldn’t find his elbow with a map,” she said. “You didn’t do anything to stop Skunk. Sue Ellen did that.”
“That’s right,” I said. “And that Sight you’re supposed to have hasn’t helped you much, has it? I don’t think you got any kind of future sight. I think you’re just a big donkey’s ass.”
I had been wanting to say something like that for a long time, and now it felt good to have done it.
Don glared at me.
“So you go on, now,” Mama said. “I won’t cry for Cletus, but Don, I won’t cry for you, neither. All I can say is I’m surprised you left the house and come this far. I’ll give you that.”
“I could take you home,” he said, acting a little bit tough. “I could make you.”
“I don’t think you can,” Helen said. “I’ll yell out for Captain Burke.”
“He ain’t going to be around all the time,” Don said.
“No, but he’s nearby right now,” she said. “And I am not afraid of you. You go get in your truck and you do what you want with your life, but I am done with you. I didn’t protect Sue Ellen like I should have, up there in that bedroom in my stupor. I’m protecting her now. I’d die before I’d let you touch her.”
“I didn’t mean nothing by that,” Don said. “I was just trying to compliment her.”
“You meant everything by it, and I should have stopped you,” Mama said. “If I see you around, I swear I’ll tell Captain Burke and say how I protected you with some lies but have changed my mind, and that you were in with Cletus to kill us and get the money.”
“Even though there ain’t no money,” I said.
“Yeah,” Mama said, picking up on what I was doing. “Even though there isn’t any money.”
“Cletus made that up on account of Jinx hitting him upside his head with a stick,” I said. “He wanted revenge.” Damn if I wasn’t getting to be a natural liar.
“And you did agree to have Sue Ellen hunted down and killed for seventy-five dollars,” Mama said. “I heard you agree to it.”
“I didn’t mean nothing by that,” he said. “Had I, I wouldn’t have killed Cletus. That’s just my way to talk like that. I wouldn’t have let nobody hurt Sue Ellen.”
“It’s your way that annoys me, Don,” Mama said. “You want me back so you can get me on the cure-all, keep me upstairs in that rotting house like a china-head doll. You won’t change. Never. You’ll hit me when you’re mad, then you’ll tell me how you didn’t mean it and you’ll change, but you won’t change. For all I know, one day you’ll do me like you did Cletus.”
Don studied Mama carefully to see if he could spot any weakness in her position, but there wasn’t any. He looked at me and Jinx. I stayed steadfast, and so did Jinx.
“You’ll regret it,” Don said. “You’ll miss me.”
“Haven’t so far,” Mama said. “I only helped you out here because you killed Cletus. That’s a murder you’re going to get away with. Now we’re all even, you and me, and we’re all done.”
Don put his greasy cap on, turned around, and walked away.
“That’s that,” Mama said.
27
Actually, that was almost that. We did see Don around town a couple more times, driving by us when we was walking on the street, following us. Captain Burke got word of it, and the last time we seen Don he was driving by us on his way out of town, his face all puffed up and bruised. He didn’t even turn and look our way.
Captain Burke set it so the town of Gladewater put us up for a few days at the boardinghouse and paid for our meals. It was a courtesy he gave to us because he said we had had such an ordeal, but the real reason was because he was interested in Mama. She even went to eat with him at the café several times, but one day, late morning, she come to us and said, “Sue Ellen, I want you to go with me. You two can come, too, if you want.”
Mama had got up and gone out early that morning. When she found me, I was sitting with Jinx in Terry’s room, which he had to himself. Me and Mama and Jinx had a room we shared. Missing an arm has its benefits, Terry said.
We all ended up going. It was the first time Terry had been out of the boardinghouse, having been up to that point ashamed of his missing arm. He didn’t say he was, but it was a thing you could tell by the way he had quit looking us directly in the eye. But that day he seemed stronger. I think it was because the night before, Mama and Jinx and me and him had been talking about going to get the money and May Lynn, then buying some bus tickets and lighting out for California so he could spread her ashes, a mission of his I now better understood.
So we followed Mama out of the boardinghouse and walked with her toward the town square. When we got to the center of the square, she walked us to where there was a bench and a smattering of trees, one of them a big oak. The bench faced the courthouse. We all sat on the bench in the shade of the oak.
Mama said, “Now you just sit and watch the door to the courthouse there.”
We sat there not talking, because we could tell Mama didn’t want that. There was a clock built into the top of the courthous
e, and it showed us it was almost high noon. We sat there watching it click to twelve, and when it did the noon whistle was set off, and it blew loud enough I put my hands over my ears.
People started coming out of buildings along the square, including the courthouse. After a moment, Mama said, “See that man there?”
“The fat one?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s Brian. That’s your daddy.”
Now, I hadn’t thought about the fact that he had gotten older, since Mama had aged so well. But there he was; a tall man with thinning hair and a big belly. As I looked at him I tried to see my face in him, but the truth was he was too far away for me to tell much of anything.
He stood outside the door of the courthouse and put one foot behind him, so that the sole of his shoe rested on the bricks.
“Have you spoken with him?” I said.
“No,” she said. “He’s not quite the Adonis I remember.”
“It’s still him, though,” I said.
“Yes. Watch.”
After a moment a nice-looking woman who was a little thick in the waist came down the walk with two girls trailing her. I figure they were a year apart, nine and ten was my guess, but I’m no good at guessing ages.
The woman smiled and my real daddy smiled. The woman touched his arm, and he let her slip it into the crook of his as he moved away from the wall. The little girls jumped up at him, so as to look him in the face, and I could hear him laugh even from where we sat. It was a happy laugh. The laugh of a man whose life had gone right and was good.
“He’s going to the café with them,” Mama said. “He was in there the first time I had lunch with Captain Burke. I didn’t know it was him, but I remember looking at him and thinking he looked familiar, and the next time I was in there with Captain Burke, Brian came over and spoke to him, and Captain Burke introduced me as Helen Wilson. Then he introduced me to Brian. Course, I knew who he was by then, but he never figured out who I was. He didn’t recognize me at all. I haven’t aged that much, have I?”
“No, Mama,” I said. “You look fine.”
“I thought so…well, I think I look pretty good.”
“You look real good,” Jinx said. Terry nudged her with his shoulder, letting her know to butt out; this was just me and Mama talking.
“He didn’t know me from nothing. I found out where he had his law office, in the courthouse there, and I knew he came to the café for lunch, so I came here to watch for him. And the first time I did his wife and daughters met him, right there. They hadn’t gone to the café with him those other times, for whatever reason, but there they were, and that’s where they went two days in a row.”
“How do you know?” I said.
“I followed them. And when I did, it came to me that his life is made. It’s all wrapped up neat in a bow, and I ought to leave it that way. I let him go back then, when I had a chance to keep him, and I have to let him go now, even if he would want something to do with me—and I doubt he would. Frankly, I wouldn’t want him to. We’re different now, and he’s happy, and I’m going to leave him that way. But because I have to let him go, it doesn’t mean you have to, Sue Ellen. He is your father.”
I looked at Brian and his family walking toward the café.
I said, “Funny thing is, I don’t feel nothing. Not a thing.”
“I’m sort of disappointed,” Mama said. “But I don’t feel anything, either.”
“Does this mean we’re going to get the money and bus tickets and go away?” Jinx said.
Mama smiled at Jinx. “It does. And Sue Ellen, wherever we go, it might be nice if we got you some education.”
We didn’t actually leave right away. Me and Jinx walked out of town the next day, back down the road, and made our path across the stretch that led to the old woman’s house. We knew our way now and made very quick time and didn’t have to spend the night in the woods. We had some bread and cheese to eat, and a little water in a jar.
When we got to the old woman’s house, it was mostly burned down. We walked around it and looked to see if there was anything to see, but there was just charred wood and the chimney standing up. There wasn’t any way we could figure what happened for sure, but our guess was folks traveling down the river had used it to hole up in at night, and someone had been careless with the fireplace. If that was the case, they looked to have escaped. Wasn’t any bodies in the burned wreck that we could see.
The shovel was still there where it had been under the house, though now the house had fell down on it and burned the handle off. We took the blade out of the ashes and went to where we had buried the cans and dug them up. They looked fine.
Walking down to the river, we carried the cans and eased along to where Skunk had been buried. We didn’t discuss it, we just done it like it was in our heads all along, and it might well have been.
The side of the bank where Skunk had been buried was busted open, and there wasn’t any sign of his body.
“Shit,” Jinx said.
“I think he just got washed away,” I said.
“Ain’t been no serious rains since we left here,” she said.
“That don’t mean the body might not have fallen out, and there could have been enough water to carry it off.”
“Can’t be sure,” she said. “And I don’t see how there’d be any more water than there is now without there being any more rain.”
“You’re the one that don’t believe in miracles,” I said. “He didn’t walk away. His head was torn off.”
“I don’t believe in miracles,” she said, “but that damn Skunk might change my mind.”
I supposed the body could actually have been dug out by someone who was curious, saw part of it poking out, though I couldn’t figure the reason anyone would want him. Maybe wild animals dragged him off, or an alligator. That made some sense. But to tell you true, I don’t know what really happened and never did figure it.
Bottom line to all this is, we walked out with the money and May Lynn, and back to Gladewater. We got there early night, and later that night in the boardinghouse, we counted out the money. There wasn’t no way to divide it up right, cause there were a number of large bills. Mama wasn’t in on the divide, but I promised her half of my third. Next day we took some of the money and bought bus tickets to ride out the next morning to California, with what Mama called some scenic stops along the way.
We talked about how we would take May Lynn’s ashes and toss them at some famous Hollywood spot. We had talked about it many times, but for the first time, at least as far as I was concerned, it finally seemed real. While we talked, I peeked at Terry. He had tears in his eyes. I think maybe he had decided he wasn’t a murderer, but that hadn’t changed his feelings of responsibility. I decided then and there that I forgave him, and that he was going to punish himself plenty enough. I was also mad at May Lynn, even if she was dead; she shouldn’t have treated him that way. But I forgave her, same as Terry.
Terry didn’t tell Mama what he had done, and me and Jinx didn’t want him to. We figured that at this point it was just best to let that dog lie.
Before bed that night, me and Mama had a private moment out on the porch of the boardinghouse. We was sitting in rocking chairs, taking in the breeze. After a while, I said, “Mama, you still dream about that black horse?”
“You know, after you killed Skunk, that dream mostly stopped, just now and again I’d have it. But when I told Don good-bye, next night I dreamed I caught that white winged horse and it took me away. What was odd, Sue Ellen, was that I was naked as the day I was born, riding on that horse up into a night sky, riding right up at the moon. I looked down, and behind me that black horse was coming, flying without wings, and then it come undone, like it was made of dry shadows, and those shadows were swallowed up by the night and were gone. Me and that white horse, we just kept on flying, flying fast to the moon. Next night, I didn’t dream anything about it at all.”
“I guess that’s good,” I said.
“Yes,” Mama said. “It certainly is.”
We slept with our tickets on an end table, the lard can with May Lynn’s ashes holding them down, the bucket of money nearby.
During the night I woke up in my little bed thinking I was on the raft again, and that I was floating downriver. I looked around the room; it took me some time to realize that not only was I not on the raft, but that Skunk was no longer after us; wasn’t nobody after us anymore. I got out of my bed and got dressed in my shirt, overalls, and shoes, and slipped outside.
I strolled down the street toward where the river was. It was a pretty good walk, but the night was nice and I enjoyed it. I could smell the river and hear it before I got to it. Where I ended up was the spot where Captain Burke had loaded me and Jinx in the motorboat and taken us back upriver.
I sat on a smooth part of the ground, in a spot where I could see the water. The river wasn’t too far away from me. I could have spit from where I sat and hit the edge of that dark water without any trouble. It was not a bright night. All there was of the moon was a thin slice of silver, like a curved knife blade. Still, it was bright enough on the brown water I could see it good. The river flowed along like nothing had ever happened on it, to us or anyone else. It was just the river. I had the sudden idea it was like life, that river. You just flowed on it, and if there came a big rain, a flood or some such, and some of it was washed out, in time it would all wash back together. Oh, it might look some different, but it would be the same, really. It didn’t change, but the people on that river did. I knew I had. And Mama had, and so had Terry, and maybe Jinx—but with her, it was hard to tell.
But that old brown snake of a river, it pretty much stayed the way it was, running from one end to the other, out to the great big sea.
I got up and brushed myself off and walked back to the boardinghouse. I went in the room and quietly lifted the lard bucket with May Lynn in it, held it for a moment, and silently thanked her, because in her own way, even if I was a little mad at her, she had put us all together, made a family of us, sent us downriver to find out who we was and where we was going.