Soil (16 page)

“An army of nanorobots, really? Have you been watching cartoons with Jacob? You sound insane, do you know that?”

Her dad laughed and shook his head.

“The technology is real!” Jay insisted. “Do you deny that there are dictators and terrorists crazy enough to use it? What about our own government?”

“And a tree could fall on the house and kill us before dessert! A flock of chemically enraged flamingos could descend and peck us all to death.”

Her father was laughing, for Jacob's sake, and the boy watched with excited eyes. But this squabble had lost all humor for Sandy.

“Jay, I cannot believe that I'm arguing with you about the end of the world. I cannot live this way, thinking like this. Every day that you harp on this gloom and doom is another day you miss the blessed life you have here, right now, this instant.”

“Sandy, I agree with you completely. It sounds preposterous. But these are hypothetical examples. The point is—trouble is coming. I'm just reading the signs and trying to prepare so we can go on living.”

She was near tears and made her point with violent jabs at the tabletop. “Who wants to go on living like this? Don't drag us down this road, Jay. Tragedy is self-fulfilling. I don't believe that you're thinking of us. I think that you believe your life will only have purpose if the world is falling down around you, so you're writing our life toward that end. If you want conflict so desperately, why don't you sign up for military service and go overseas? Let us have our peace and quiet.”

Looking back, she realized that was the moment she decided to leave. She remembered the bitter rationalization—
I cannot wait for things to go back to normal, I cannot accept the direction my life has taken, I cannot stay with you even though I swore before my family and my friends and my God that I would.
And no matter how she justified it—she must protect the boy from poverty, from his father's emotional abandonment—in the end it was purely selfish. Because people can endure almost anything. But why do it when you don't have to? If a better life could be made, why not make it?

Now she despaired that she hadn't made a better life, that even the days
of compost and paranoia were healthier for Jacob than this. She wondered if it was harder to leave someone you loved or to watch someone you love die.

A mandolin ringtone sounded from inside her purse and broke her concentration. Sandy thought it might be the hospital or the church. An emergency was always a strum away these days. She consulted the caller ID. It was Jay's mother, who had called the night before as they were preparing to leave the hospital. Sandy had put off returning her call. They hadn't spoken in months, since after the funeral, when Mrs. Mize called in a weepy daze to tell her how awfully Jay had behaved toward the lawyer and funeral director. Sandy had no idea if mother and son had been in communication but doubted it, since Jay's cell-phone account had been suspended, and so it would be left to her to dispense all the sad news. Either that or continue to reinforce the polite lies behind which the family maintained its constant façade.

“Hello,” she answered before the final ring.

“Oh, Sandy!” Mrs. Mize greeted her with a familiar high-pitched, trumped-up excitement. “I was afraid I'd missed you again!”

They made small talk before Sandy asked, in a tone that expressed the unpleasantness that could be neither spoken nor ignored, “How are you doing?”

“It's been a trial since the accident, honey, I won't deny it. But Samson is helping me through. We had Miss Emma stay with us a couple of days. We tried to replicate Dotty Purifoy's pudding cake recipe, you know. Herbie's been here to fix the washer and get my medicine. We're staying busy.”

Sandy had no idea who these people were, but Mrs. Mize went on this way for a while, reciting a litany of minutiae that made no sense out of context. “I'm sorry,” Sandy interjected, “do I know Miss Emma?”

“Emma Paschall from Jackson, Tennessee. We were old friends separated over the years, but she heard about Murray passing and we've reconnected. She lost her husband, James, last year. I'm so thankful to have found my old friend again.”

“Oh, that's wonderful to hear. And who's Herbie?”

“Herbie!” Mrs. Mize cried, as if everyone knew Herbie. “He's my youngest nephew. He's been away in the wars overseas and got hurt. He's a little slow now, but he's been such a dear help to me. It's funny who comes out of nowhere to help you in times of trouble.”

Mrs. Mize was riding a medicated wave of enthusiasm, or maybe it was genuine gratitude. Whatever the case, it was reassuring to hear her so upbeat again.

“I couldn't reach Jay on his phone,” said Mrs. Mize. “I hope everything is all right.”

“He's fine,” Sandy lied. “He just let his phone contract lapse.”

“Is he available to speak?”

Sandy wanted to admit the truth but couldn't bring herself to disappoint his grief-stricken mother. “He and Jacob are at church.”

“Oh, good!”

“I was just straightening up around the house.”

“Well, I figured I'd hear from him after Herbie dropped off the bike,” said Mrs. Mize. “Did he like it?”

“The bike?”

“The motor scooter or four-wheeler, whatever they call it. Murray left it to him in the will. He only bought it a few months before he passed.”

“Oh yes, yes, of course,” Sandy played along. She hadn't a clue what Mrs. Mize was talking about.

“Herbie said y'all weren't at home, so he left it in the driveway,” she went on. “I hope he liked it, I really do.”

“He did, yes, thank you.”

“It's Murray, God rest his soul. You can thank Murray someday, dear. Someday we'll all be reunited.”

Sandy assumed she meant they'd all be together in heaven. She thought of the old Sunday school lesson, how suicides don't make it to heaven, floating interminably in hell or limbo along with the Buddhists and gays and other non-Christians. It made her think of Jacob in a room full of strangers, where dubious answers were applied to life's most difficult questions.

She felt a catch in her chest. “Oh, my, I've let the time get away. Jay's truck is out of gas and I was supposed to pick them up from church.”

“Okay, hon, please tell them I called. And how's your father?”

Sandy said he'd been a little under the weather and left it at that. The widow had heard enough about lost fathers and husbands. Any more bad news might break the poor woman's spirit.

Mrs. Mize began to plead for them to visit. She wanted to see Jacob. And Jay, of course. Family must cleave together in times of trouble and all of that. Sandy heard something disingenuous there, or else she'd lost herself to frustration, and before she realized what she was saying, she interrupted. “Mrs. Mize”—for in all the years they'd known each other, Jay's mother had never invited her to call her anything different—“can I ask you something?”

“Why, of course, dear.”

“How did you do it? How did you work around that terrible family history that we've both married into? It's neither of our husbands' fault, but they carry it like their own burden.”

Mrs. Mize paused for a long moment as if parsing the questions, separating accusation from advice and memory from fantasy. She replied, in a voice tightly bitter or possibly sad, “We just never speak to that. We lived through it, and it's nothing worth revisiting. It's the little bit we can do to leave it be.”

“But I wonder if that's healthy. Why hide it and keep it for your own instead of getting it out in the open and accepting it?”

“Honey, the Lord is directing us. What need is there to understand everything that happens along the way?”

This was her usual stone-wall defense. Sandy felt the need to apologize. She didn't mean to dredge up bad feelings. Mrs. Mize returned easily to her script, and Sandy echoed her heightened good-byes and hung up. Something about the widow's sadness, her inability to share herself, and her insistence on projecting a simplistic and deluded understanding of the world broke Sandy's heart. She had to stuff her face with pasta to keep from going to pieces.

In a matter of bites she felt a crushing desire to see her son. She checked
her watch: fifteen minutes until Sunday school let out. Maybe they'd skip chapel this morning, get donuts and chocolate milk instead.

When she stood up from the table, she was horrified to discover that she'd eaten the entire tray of pasta. A meal for a family of four, gone in ten minutes. She replaced the tinfoil covering on the dish and pushed the evidence to the dark bottom of the garbage can. Then she probed the kitchen for a piece of nice stationery and a pen, something upon which to transcribe her gratitude. All she found was a yellow legal pad and a red ballpoint pen. She took them to the table and sat down and composed her thoughts. The letter began:

Dear Jay . . .

21

Jay woke up Tuesday morning and walked out back, where he thought he saw a man bathing in the cistern. He wore a silver chain and a cavalry hat that resembled his father's. The man's back was turned, and he seemed to be slurping a cold bottle of soda until Jay recognized it was a shotgun barrel tilted up to his face. He ran into the yard and pushed the cistern over, and they tumbled together through the puddles. When he sat up at last, Jay saw the buzzard scampering off, flapping its wings dry.

The vision scared him, and he began seeking answers in unlikely places. He reached out to the unknown Creator, whom he'd always held in frustrated, one-sided reproach. But now it was time to bow down, to beg for answers and even forgiveness. He didn't trust himself alone anymore. It was one thing to reflect on his father's suicide, another to witness it replayed in his backyard.
Is this how it begins?
he wondered.
Does the mind trick the body into performing its bidding this way? Is this Your plan for me?
It only made sense that God would send someone, whether a buzzard or a dead man, to solicit his repentance.
Have I contributed to an act of evil by aiding its concealment? Can an otherwise decent man be damned unwittingly?

In the face of these great inquiries, Jay was met with only silence.

He couldn't stand to hang around the house any longer, so he spent the rest of the morning walking the field, searching for the disembodied hand. The ground was still soft and glistening. Chipper dashed straight across, kicking up holes and slinging mud. Jay followed, slop-stepping right over to the spot where the corpse had lain. He found no sign of anything—no hand, no
scraps of clothing, no indentations or footprints of any kind. The water had made its final authentication on this piece of damnable ground.

Chipper flitted from scent to scent, unearthing no clues, and after he'd walked the field twice over, Jay went and shuffled the compost with his yard fork. There were no visible signs of the charcoal when he inspected a handful, but when he put it to his nose or touched it to his tongue, he imbibed the smoky essence. Still a nip of man in there. It hadn't cured long enough. A good rain, another two weeks in the sun.

He couldn't imagine anything left to cover, only nature's quiet rendering to finish his deeds. But there was still the nagging sense of something undone. His mind retraced the events of the last two weeks, constantly accounting for what had set them in motion—
Who was this man? Why did he die? How did he end up here on my property?

Suddenly Chipper bayed and shot up the hill and over the yard in a sustained howl. Jay jerked around and just noticed the car with flashing yellow lights pull to the top of the drive and disappear behind the house. He spread flat across the ground, his heart slamming against the wet earth. He heard two distinct car horn blasts, followed soon by three more, along with the continued yowling.

Jay stood and darted up the hill toward the house, coming around the far side with his pistol ready. He scaled the porch and peered around the corner. Whose battered maroon hatchback was this? It announced itself with another series of aggravated honks. Chipper had gone quiet, nowhere to be seen. Jay slipped up behind the driver's side with the pistol braced, but there was no one at the wheel.

“Where the hell have you been?” called someone from the passenger seat. It was Purnell, the rural mail carrier. “Yours aint the only certified letter I still got to deliver.”

Jay tucked the gun away and leaned in the open driver's-side window. The portly mailman drove from the passenger seat, giving him convenient reach to the roadside mailboxes. In uniform shorts, his wide hairy leg was draped
over the gearshift to operate the brakes and gas. A bucket of mail and catalogs rode in the driver's seat, and at his feet a box of fried chicken. Chipper was up on all fours, licking the mailman's slick fingers.

“Here,” growled Purnell, a nub of cold cigar clenched in his teeth and a letter in his hand. “Need you to sign for that.”

Jay took the grease-stained letter. It was from Sandy, postmarked yesterday. He scrawled an alias on Purnell's form and turned away.

“Hold on now, hold on,” Purnell called. “Don't forget your chicken papers. Five-dollar liver and thigh dinner all week at Flash-in-the-Pans. Take your dog along.”

Jay snatched a sheath of circulars and advertisements and watched Purnell perform a treacherous speeding reverse all the way down the driveway. He sat down on the Bronco bumper and opened the letter, scared of what he might find inside. It wasn't like Sandy to send something this official.

Dear Jay,

Sorry I couldn't call you or come to see you in person, but my dad is seriously ill. The doctors believe he's contracted West Nile, and they are not sure at all about his chances. He's in a coma. They're concerned about his mind if he comes back at all. Memory and vision, even speech, are vulnerable as the fever persists. He can't even get out of the bed to visit the bathroom.

It's a serious time, as you can imagine, and I need your help with Jacob. His fall break starts next Thursday, and he'll be out of school until the following Monday. I have to be in meetings, and I don't have anyone to watch him while I'm at work. I'll have to be with my dad the rest of the time. Will you pick him up from school Wednesday at 3:00 and keep him with you until the following Sunday afternoon? I can drop by to get him then.

I know it's hard for you right now, but I have nowhere else to turn. The unknown is so terrifying. I'm very scared and out of options.

Sincerely,

Sandy

He read the letter again, folded the yellow paper, returned it to the envelope, and stuffed it in his pocket.

He was fairly stunned by this announcement. The professor in a coma? Was there a West Nile outbreak he hadn't heard about, an epidemic brought on by the flood? He'd need to score plenty of mosquito repellent in town if the stocks hadn't already been raided. And that was just the first of the provisions he'd have to buy. There was nothing to eat in the house, no heat. The nights were getting cooler. No lights or TV. And it would cost money to get Jacob's room set up. The bed was gone, no dresser or playthings.

Of course, his first instinct was to see Sandy's dad about the money, but obviously that was off the table. Jay had always found him a quiet supporter of their endeavors, gracious with advice, easy with charity. They'd gone to him a time or two for a financial boost, and he'd always given it gladly, explaining to them why he was giving it and how it should be spent without scolding and never checking up on his investment. In hindsight, he should have gone straight to Sandy's father during the summer to seek arbitration in their marital battle. He wouldn't have chosen sides, only sat them both down and sorted their differences, made them roll it back and forth themselves until they'd settled it. It would be a terrible blow to lose him, especially for Sandy.

But then, Jay considered, maybe this was his answered prayer. Sandy needed him. He was no longer a total waste and a burden. She'd want him back in the fold.

If only he'd received this letter last week, he could have worked a deal with the raceway guys. If only he hadn't dismantled the four-wheeler, he might have scored a few hundred bucks selling that. Now what?

He resolved not to ask Sandy for money. She was under too much stress to stop and consider a grant request. It was enough that she'd made this overture. He could go into town and sit with Jacob at their shitty little rental. They could come up with plenty of things to do. He would watch the boy as long as she needed and would come back to the farm every night if she'd float him some more gas money. But maybe she would need him to stay. A shoulder to cry on, a bedmate after sleeping alone for so long. People need each other for electricity in the night.

Perhaps these terrible circumstances were paving the way for a great reconciliation. Maybe the professor, in his usual selfless way, was giving Jay an opportunity to prove his readiness to be a husband and father again. He'd clean up and go to them, take a break from this country panic.

He went inside and studied himself in the bathroom mirror. Looking into his sunken eyes was like staring at a stranger, the sallow face with cheekbones jutting out, thin lips, the wiry and filthy beard and bird's-nest hair, sick and crazed. Would Jacob recognize him?

He toted in water from the rain barrels to bathe, brought a jug in for shaving, and decided how to fix his appearance. There was not only the boy to consider when going into town. There was also the legion of security cameras and nosy watchers. A culture of surveillance thrived in town, and he wasn't keen on playing into their hands. He snipped down his hair and beard, left himself a big mustache and chin scruff, and rummaged through cabinets to find a bottle of white novelty hair dye left over from Halloween. He sprayed it thick into his hair and goatee, aging himself thirty years.

He brushed his teeth and found a clean white collar shirt and a pair of ill-fitting khakis he hadn't worn in years, an old pair of wraparound aviator shades. He put on his hat and looked like a different fellow, someone clean and fresh if still not altogether sane.

At last he retrieved the twenty-dollar bill Sandy had given him, wedged between two books on the hallway shelf, and the shotgun and .22 rifle, which he stashed in the backseat of the Bronco. The little .38 found a comfortable
home in the small of his back. He locked the house door and opened the truck to let Chipper ride.

The Bronco gave him a fit to start, but it finally came alive and bellowed. He eased out from the carport and pointed toward town for the first time in months. He said good-bye to the ghosts. He was going to his family now.