Promises of Home (35 page)

THE JANUARY WIND BLEW COLD AS I STOOD ON the porch, staring out across the pasture and down to the river. Hart’s family had really planned right all those years ago, turning the house just the right angle so that on a gloriously clear day you had a panorama of shapeless woods and squared meadows and a ribbon of river. I leaned against the cold wood of the porch. The wind, gusting, moved the dry grass in the fields and carried the lonesome cry of a migrating bird far in the sky. They were familiar sounds, and I could nearly imagine that the wind also sustained the whinnying of excited horses, the thunder of hooves, the laughter of a young Trey Slocum and Jordan Poteet as they rode across the pastures of Hart’s farm.

Mark’s farm, I corrected myself. The words sounded odd to me. I turned back to the door to see just what was taking the young squire so long.

Through the door I could see him talking quietly on the cordless phone. I tapped and he held up a finger, just a minute.

I turned back and watched the bare branches of the tree’s sway in the wind. That night six weeks ago seemed horribly close, the cutting wind feeling like death’s finger
on my face. The ambulance and police cars roared up the road—I’d sent Bradley to open the gate for them. But for Hart, it was minutes too late. The bullet had been too cruel.

Scott had surrendered without struggle. He was in a nearby juvenile detention facility since he was only fourteen. Scott would be tried as a juvenile, since he was under fifteen and obviously a child who’d suffered terribly due to a lack of role models. I spat in the grass. He’d killed two men and nearly killed a third. Scott seemed hardly childlike to me. I’d gotten to where I could hardly stand to watch his grandstanding attorneys on the nightly news.

Other adjustments weren’t easy either. Thomasina Clifton finally learned the truth about Rennie’s death. I’d sat with her while Junebug and I relayed Hart’s confession. Her eyes slowly had filled with tears and I wondered if it was the first time in many years that she’d wept for her lost daughter. Her other children had closed around Thomasina like human armor, and I’d stayed away, leaving her to her rediscovered grief. Knowing that her daughter didn’t have to die, that Rennie’s toying with Louis and Hart’s life had gotten her murdered, was a fresh agony. It’s a hard thing to hear that about your child.

It was much worse telling Truda Shivers about her son. Davis, Ed, Junebug, and I had talked about it and we went over together to tell her what would come out at the inquest of Hart’s death. Junebug did most of the talking, and it was possibly the most horrible conversation I’d ever heard in my life as he detailed the moral and legal crimes of her son.

“You aren’t talking about my boy,” Truda had finally said, her voice a faint whisper. “My boy wouldn’t do such things.”

Her denial of Clevey’s rottenness was thickly impenetrable. After a while we gave up. She’s a woman I still care about, but I know better than to bang my head against a wall. In her mind, Truda’s constructed a heroic end for her boy as the dedicated reporter and none of us are allowed to edit it.

I felt bad for both those mothers, losing their children. We sometimes forget that everyone was once somebody’s little baby, cooing up at a smiling parent from the warmth of a crib.

One person not cooing at me, at least for a week, was Candace. She didn’t appreciate me runmng off to confront Hart or my face-off with Scott. After she chewed me out thoroughly, I got a long hug where she made sure I was okay. I’m forgiven for the moment—and we’re heading out on a Caribbean cruise to patch up any existing wounds in our relationship. Part of my penance is letting her pay the way.

Mark came out onto the porch, carrying one of the wreaths. “Sony, that was Bradley. He wants me to come over for dinner this week.”

“How’s he doing?” Davis and Bradley had finally moved back into their home. Cayla was deep in treatment for her anger over Bradley’s condition and her tendency to beat the stuffing out of her husband. Davis claimed he wanted to make the marriage work, but I thought the statement rang hollow. A few weeks not walking on tiptoes around his wife had been nirvana. He’d seen there was a life outside of abuse.

“Bradley’s fine,” Mark shrugged. “He says he’s supposed to go talk with Steven Teague this afternoon. He’s embarrassed, though. Some kid was teasing him about seeing a shrink.”

Male pride never ends. It had kept Hart a slave to blackmail and turned him killer; made Clevey an avaricious criminal who fumblingly attempted to make amends for his own self-esteem; driven Trey away from a family that loved him; kept Davis in bondage to a sick woman; and made Scott believe murder was a solution. I didn’t have much male pride left, but I’d vowed not to let it shape my life.

“I’m sure Steven will be able to make him feel better.” I pointed at the wreath. “I got the others here. Let’s go.”

Mark followed me off the porch and I saw that, as always,
he had to turn and look back at the house, “I still can’t believe it. That this is mine.”

It had been the final shock after several days of catastrophes. Hart’s will was short and to the point: all his worldly possessions were left solely to Mark Slocum, grandson of his longtime friend Louis Slocum. Despite Hart’s claims that Clevey Shivers had bled him dry, Quadlander pockets still went deep. The land, the house, the horses, the equipment, stocks and bonds, and enough cash squirreled away in a Houston bank to make you choke. Mark was now, quite possibly, the wealthiest boy in Bonaparte County. Of course, my name was in Hart’s will as well. He named Sister and me cotrustees for Mark’s money, until Mark attained the age of twenty-one, when good sense would allegedly prevail.

The next seven years might be long ones, I considered.

“Well, it is yours, Mark, and it’s a responsibility. The horse farm’s not just a home, it’s a business. A business that’s expensive to run.”

“I know. But there’s money to run it, isn’t there? To hire people to run it for us. I—I don’t want to sell it. I’d feel funny about selling the land that Daddy and Hart and Pa-paw Slocum are buried on.”

“Okay.” We hadn’t talked so frankly about his inheritance since Mark learned he was an unexpected legatee. “We don’t have to sell it.”

“Then let’s talk about the house.” He stopped for a moment, getting a better grip on the wreath he carried, and brushed his dark hair out of his eyes. For a second he was the image of his daddy, walking these fields and woods twenty years back. I didn’t want him to sell the land, either.

“We could live out here,” Mark suggested slowly. I didn’t answer for several seconds.

“Mama’s house is ours, too, Mark. Sister and I grew up there. I don’t know how I’d feel about moving here.”

“Couldn’t we give it a try? Mamaw might like it out here. And it’s nice in the country. We could ride whenever
we want to. And Hart’s house—I mean my house—is bigger than our house.”

As I’ve mentioned before, I hate when teenagers are right. And wouldn’t it be a special challenge to live in a house that a teenager owned?

We stopped our discussion; our walk had taken us to the three graves that lay in the woods, a healthy distance above the creek. Louis in the middle, Trey on one side, and Hart on the other. Today would have been Hart’s birthday, and Sister had quietly suggested getting his grave a nice wreath. (Women always remember such kindnesses; men generally don’t.) Mark had pointed out that a wreath just on Hart’s marker would look odd, so we got big wreaths for his daddy and papaw as well.

Mark carefully placed a wreath on Hart’s tombstone, securing it into the ground so the gusty winds wouldn’t topple it. He helped me put the laurels on the other two graves. The stone markers felt icy cold against our fingers.

We stood together for several silent moments. Only the wind spoke: a low, gentle lament. Finally Mark asked, “Why’d Hart do it, Uncle Jordy? Why’d he the to save me? Why’d he leave me everything?”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “Well, Hart cared about your granddaddy and your father, very much. And he cared about you, too. I think he felt bad for you that you didn’t have them around when you were growing up. And he didn’t have family to leave this to. So he left it to you.”

“But to die for me—”

I turned Mark to face me. “He wanted you to live very badly. That’s all that matters. I’ll… forever be grateful to him.” I turned my face into the cooling wind. Why did Hart live the way he did, in secretiveness and sadness? Why had he never given the town—or at least the people who cared about him—a chance to accept him as he was? I wondered how very, very different events might have been if Hart had thought his friends more generous-hearted. Or had we given him reason to fear our rejection, with unthinking jokes or comments or slurs?

Mark leaned down and gently touched the turned soil on
the grave. It was a gesture of timid tenderness I’d seen him make on top of Mama’s head. “Happy birthday, Hart. Thank you for my life.” His voice broke and he stood, turning his face against my jacket. I watched the top of his dark head, then stared at Trey’s grave, my teeth clenching together.

We stood for a few more minutes, till the dropping temperatures ushered us toward the house. We walked back, my arm around Mark’s shoulders. The sun shone brightly as we went up the porch steps. Mark held the door for me as I went into his new house.

“Kind of funny,” Mark said, “never to have lived here.” He glanced back across the land and the big empty sky. “Because it feels like coming home.”