A Land More Kind Than Home (15 page)

“Well, that don't matter now, does it?” Miss Lyle said. “It don't matter one bit what y'all heard in there this morning. All that matters is what happened tonight, and I can tell you that you'd better be ready to talk about it once the sheriff gets here.” It got quiet after that, and I pictured Miss Lyle with her hands on her hips staring at those old women and those two old men until they looked away from her. I could hear somebody running the water in the kitchen sink, and then it sounded like somebody's footsteps were coming across the floor toward the living room.

I turned and crept back into the dining room and walked to the other side of the table and stopped at the bedroom door where those men had laid Stump on the bed. Nobody had opened the kitchen door yet, and from that far away I could just barely hear them talking in there, and I could hear the curtains stirring in the dining room from the little bit of breeze that came in the open windows now. I put my hand on the knob, and I turned it real slow and hoped the door wouldn't make any noise, and then I walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind me just as quiet as I'd opened it.

It was dark and hot in there with the windows closed and the curtains pulled shut. When my eyes adjusted to all that dark, I found where just a little bit of moonlight was trying to get through the windows over the bed, and in that light I could make out where Stump laid in the middle of the bed with his arms by his sides. His face was turned away from me like he was asleep or just lying there and staring at the wall. I couldn't see him as good as I wanted to, so I walked closer to the bed until I stood right beside him. The bedspread was a white quilt, and with him laying on it his face looked pale blue in the light coming through the curtains. Some buttons were tore off his shirt and it was pulled open and I could see his chest. I just stood there and stared at him, and then I crawled up onto the bed so I could look at his face. There was a speck of dried blood on his lip like he might've bit it by accident, and his eyes were closed like he hadn't woke up yet, and I thought about waking up in the night and looking over at him and watching his mouth puff out air while he slept. At night the house used to be so quiet that I could hear him breathing soft beside me. Sometimes I'd lay there and listen to him for what seemed like forever, and before I knew it I'd be asleep again. But I didn't want him to be asleep like this on Miss Lyle's bed with the moonlight outside shining on the curtains of this hot room and Mama crying on the sofa with Daddy on his way. I wanted to tell him, “Wake up, Stump,” but I didn't say nothing because I was afraid to see that he wouldn't hear me.

I got up on my knees on the bed beside him, and I pulled back the curtains behind the bed and pushed the window open to let some air in. I looked outside. The moon shone bright, and I saw our truck and the other cars parked in the driveway in front of the house. I left the curtains pulled open, and then I looked down at Stump where the moonlight spread across his face. I lay down beside him and stared up at the ceiling while the breeze moved through the curtains over the bed. I thought about how it felt just like sleeping in our bed at home, and for a minute I imagined that Mama hadn't come into our bedroom to wake us up yet.

I closed my eyes and thought about me and Stump lying out in the ferns down by the creek where the sun that came through the trees was still bright on his face. There was an old green frog croaking somewhere along the creek, and his voice sounded like a loose banjo string, and I knew if I didn't keep an eye on Stump he'd take to looking around for that frog until I'd have to get up and go hunting after him. I tried my best to keep my eyes open, but sometimes the water gurgling in the creek can sound like people talking, and I listened to them talk until I drifted off to sleep in all that warm sun, and when I woke up I saw that Stump had fallen asleep too, and it could be late now with the light out of the trees and the air turned nice and cool. I looked at his face until he blinked his eyes and looked up to where the sunlight faded in the treetops and smiled.

“We better get on home,” I whispered.

There was a noise like an old car driving fast down the road, and I laid there with my eyes closed and listened. I heard footsteps running through loose gravel and a screen door slamming shut and the sound of my daddy's voice come through the walls in a room far away from us. The knob turned on the bedroom door, and I wished it was Mama coming to wake us up even though neither one of us was asleep, and I opened my eyes into that soft moonlight with Stump still laying right there beside me.

“Jess,” somebody said. I looked up and saw Daddy standing in the doorway holding out his hand to me. I couldn't see his face because he was looking away into the other room where the lights were on. I wanted to tell him about what I'd seen, about how they'd carried him out of the church, that he was in here on the bed with me, but the way Daddy stood there made it seem like it was too dark and quiet for me to say anything at all.

I climbed down from the bed and walked over to Daddy where he stood in the doorway still looking into the other room, and he took my hand in his and it was rough and dry and he led me into the dining room, and then he was in there with the door closed and I heard him dragging a chair across the floor toward the bed.

I walked over to the window in the dining room and pulled the curtains back a little and looked outside. It was completely dark out there, but I could make out the shapes of the cars in the driveway and the little trees and the bushes around in the yard. Something caught my eye out by the road, and I looked and saw somebody standing there smoking a cigarette. I watched that glowing orange tip move from their mouth down to their side, and then back up to their mouth again. I couldn't tell who it was out there, so I walked over to the switch and turned the lights out on the chandelier over the table and the dining room went dark. I walked back to the window and pulled the curtains back again and saw an old, beat-up truck parked out by the road in front of the house where a man stood smoking a cigarette and leaning up against the hood. I knew he must be the man Mama wanted me to call Grandpa. He had his cap pulled low and he looked at the ground, and even though I couldn't see his face good he still didn't look one bit like I thought he would. He tossed his cigarette into the gravel and rubbed it out with his boot. Then he folded his arms across his chest like he was waiting for something to happen, and he turned his head and looked in the direction of the ridge on the other side of the road.

The house had just about gone quiet now, and I could barely hear Daddy through the bedroom door where he was sitting in that chair by the bed and whispering something to Stump. I stared out the window and tried hard to hear what Daddy said, but he was whispering too quiet. But then I heard Mama stirring on the sofa like she was turning over, and I heard Miss Lyle scoot her chair a little closer. I imagined Mama's face as she opened her eyes and blinked at Miss Lyle like she'd been sleeping and she'd just woke up from a dream. Outside the man Mama said to call Grandpa turned his face away from the ridge and looked down the road and coughed and spit something into the gravel.

I let the curtain close, and I sat down on the floor and put my back against the wall. I folded my arms over my knees and I rested my head to hide my face, and then I sat there and thought about what Daddy might be whispering to Stump in the next room, and I cried and cried and I just couldn't get myself to stop.

T
HE BEDROOM DOOR OPENED, AND FROM WHERE
I
SAT ON THE FLOOR
I could look under the table and see my daddy's boots walk across the floor. He walked around the room past the chairs until he stood right in front of where I was sitting. I didn't look up at him, so Daddy squatted down and put his hand on my head.

“Hey, buddy,” he said. “Hey, Jess.”

I finally looked up at him, and I figured my eyes looked good and swollen with all the crying I'd done that day. Daddy looked at me, and then he pulled me to him and I put my face in his shirt. I could smell him now, and he smelled like he always does, like the barn and his own sweat from the collar of the shirt he's worn while he worked in the field, and for just a minute I felt better because he smelled like him and that meant he was finally there with me. He put his arms around me and hugged me tight. He stood up straight and picked me up and kept on hugging me, and I figured if somebody was watching us it would look funny with my legs hanging so close to the ground, but I didn't say nothing because right then I liked the way it felt for him to hold me. I kept my face pressed up against his shirt collar, and he carried me through the dining room past the table and into the front room.

Mama was sitting up on the sofa now with both her feet on the floor. Miss Lyle had gotten up out of her chair, and she sat on the sofa right beside Mama. When Daddy carried me in, they were both already looking up at us like they'd been expecting us to walk in and it had taken us too long to do it. Mama and Daddy just looked at each other.

“I called the sheriff, Julie,” Daddy finally said to her. “Why hadn't nobody called him yet?”

Mama and Miss Lyle just sat there and looked up at him, but they didn't say nothing. Daddy waited for Mama to answer him.

“Chambliss tell you not to call?” Daddy asked her.

“Ben,” Miss Lyle said, “why don't we just wait until—”

“Chambliss tell you not to call him?” Daddy asked Mama again.

“Yes,” Mama whispered.

There was the sound of another car coming down the road, and Daddy carried me over to the screen door and we both looked out. The moon wasn't giving off enough light, and Daddy felt around on the wall right inside the door until he found a light switch, and when he flipped it the floodlights came on in the front yard. An old red truck pulled into the driveway behind ours; I could see three men sitting in it. When I looked close, I saw that one of them was Mr. Gene Thompson, and the other two were the men I'd seen smoking out by the road that morning who'd had all that Brylcreem in their hair. The man Mama had told me to call Grandpa had already lit up another cigarette, and he was leaning up against the front of his truck. He didn't even turn around to see who'd pulled up in the driveway. Mr. Thompson and those men sat in the truck for a minute like they were trying to decide if they should get out or not, but Mr. Thompson finally opened the door and then the driver opened his and they all got out and started walking up the gravel driveway toward the house. The two men I didn't know were about as old as Daddy, and they still had on their church clothes. Mr. Thompson was walking behind them. His lip had a little bloody scab on it from where Mama had busted it that morning when she was fighting with him and trying to get him to turn her loose.

Daddy put me down and pushed me toward the sofa where Mama sat. He looked at Mama and Miss Lyle.

“Y'all lock this door behind me,” he said. “They ain't coming in here.” He went to step outside, and Miss Lyle stood up and walked toward the door.

“Ben,” she said.

Daddy turned around and looked at her, and through the screen I could see Mr. Thompson and those men coming up the driveway.

“You lock this door,” he said.

Daddy turned and pushed the screen door open and walked down the porch steps into the yard. The door slammed behind him. Mama hollered out his name and stood up from the sofa and reached for me, but I was too far away for her to catch me and she didn't even hardly try. Miss Lyle watched, and then she closed the front door and turned the lock. I couldn't see nothing then, so I went over to the open window on the right-hand side of the door and pulled back the curtains.

“Jess,” Mama said, “come here and sit down.” I acted like I didn't hear her. “Jess,” she said again. Miss Lyle stood behind me, and we watched Daddy walk up to Mr. Thompson and those two men. Mama sat back down on the sofa behind us, and I heard her whisper something under her breath, and I knew she was talking to herself and maybe she was even praying.

Those two men I didn't know stood in between Daddy and Mr. Thompson, and I could tell they wanted to get by Daddy and go up the porch steps and into the house, but Daddy wouldn't let them.

“Y'all ain't going in there,” I heard him say. “Ain't no reason to be out here in the first place. I've already called the sheriff, and he should be here any minute.”

One of the men tried to go right around Daddy anyway, and Daddy put his hand on the man's chest and stopped him. The man looked down at where Daddy had put his hand on him, and he slapped it away and kept on walking toward the house. When he did that, Daddy hauled back and punched him right smack in the face and the man's hands went up to his nose and he stumbled backward into the gravel and fell down right in front of our truck. Before he even hit the ground that other man had ahold of Daddy and they were down on the ground in the yard and wrestling and kicking up grass. Daddy finally got on top of the man, and when he did he started punching him in the face. Mr. Thompson stood behind Daddy and yanked on Daddy's shirt and tried to pull him off. I could hear him hollering for Daddy to stop, but Daddy just kept on punching that man like he couldn't even hear Mr. Thompson.

The man Daddy punched first was on his knees in the gravel, and his nose was busted and bleeding and the blood ran down his face and neck and onto his button-down shirt. He tried to wipe the blood off his face with the back of his hands, but it just kept on pouring out of his nose. He looked over to the yard where Mr. Thompson was trying to pull Daddy off the other man, and he put his hand down on the ground like he was about to stand up. I heard somebody hollering my daddy's name, and I looked up at the road and saw my grandpa running down through the grass toward the house. The man on his knees looked up too, and when he did my grandpa swung his leg and kicked the man right in the face just like he was kicking a ball. The man's nose made a sound like a tree limb snapping in two, and his head whipped around like it had come loose from his neck. He fell onto his back in the gravel, and he just laid there and I could see his chest puffing air like he'd just finished running as fast as he could and he couldn't catch his breath. His arms and legs moved around through the gravel like he was trying to make a snow angel right there in the driveway, but he didn't try to get up again.