The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter (93 page)

“B.J.!” My hans wild. “Please come back tomarra! Please come back see me!” Nothin. “
Ernest!
Ernest, your granpaw don't hear me, turn him roun! I'm beggin he come back, turn him roun so he can see me, see I'm talkin to him. Please! I need to tell him Come back tomarra!”

“He's lookin right atcha,” says Ernest. Then their footsteppin away.

**

I place the freshly printed photos neatly into the album: Dawit and Safiya preparing the Ethiopian meal; Eloise on Rett's lap, both beaming. I don't touch computers of any kind, which is just as well given the arthritis in my hands, but Lem went picture-crazy after acquiring that digital camera. Christmases and birthdays and Pride Weekends and of course our world tour. We'd been saving and last year, after Dawit graduated from college and moved out, and with Lem retired, my husband and I spent six months traveling the globe. The first order of business had been to get me a passport. Eighty years old and I'd never been out of the country.

Rett left this morning, his usual Friday-to-Sunday visitation with his daughter adjusted to Thursday-to-Saturday so he could be here for my homecoming. I'm tired, an old man recovering from surgery, and thus my adieus to Eliot's son and granddaughter aroused in me mixed feelings of melancholy and relief. Lem just left on a few shopping errands, which means for an hour I have the quiet apartment to myself. It's nearly two and, as the Saturday postman should have come by now, for a little exercise I walk down the steps to retrieve the mail.

Three handwritten envelopes addressed to me. I've received so many well-wishes, Lem must've called everyone in my address book! The first is a card from the household of my old San Francisco sponsor Miguel. We stayed in communication twenty-two years until his death in '03, and I'm touched that his widow still sends an annual Christmas card, and now this.

After all the time and distance, it takes me only a moment to recognize the name in the return address of the second item. My cousin Liddie! A get-well card, and slipped inside an old black-and-white, she and Eliot standing next to each other, grinning, he holding Parker the Cat. On the back: “August 1942.” It must've been their visit for Ramonlee's funeral, shortly before Parker's death. It's a copy, a scan, but clean and clear. I stare at it a very long time before realizing the tissue paper beneath was separating it from another photo from the same time: me at thirteen and a half, a touch of the pubescent complications I was going through afflicting my expression, standing next to seven-and-a-half-year-old Eliot, my baby brother's smile brighter than the sun. When at last I can turn my eyes away, to see through my blurred vision, I pick up the Hallmark, reading the note beneath the store-bought sentiment.

 

I need a rest, a glass of water, and then I remember the third envelope. I don't recognize the return though it's local, uptown Manhattan, postmarked yesterday. I can tell it's a letter rather than a card, and I take it out. The printing is very neat.

 

The note is crackling old and yellow. I unfold it gingerly.

 

Steady. Yes, now I remember the visitor. But the two words I keep staring at, what has me closing my eyes:
before today.
Because that would mean.
That
would mean my
roommate,
my breath coming deep, fast, fast.

A shriveled-up old man, nothing of his former self, unlike his brother who still carried something of his youth, enough for me to find him familiar. And yet:
How could I not have known?
Why hadn't I
sensed
it? Smelled the stench of him? the
monster

The particulars of Eliot's gruesome and torturous demise as repeatedly detailed by the prosecutor to the jurors (the latter eventually crossing their arms and frowning in their determined desensitization) began to play out in a loop in my head, and after the verdict my former dreams of legal justice had metamorphosed into visions of fierce revenge: inflicting every pain Eliot had suffered onto Randall Evans Francis Veter, those four words incessant in my head Randall Evans Francis Veter. I'm a bull, murder now in
my
heart, I vow to destroy Randall Evans Francis Veter I would consider the fate of Veter's nephews later
plans
. I visualize their dying breaths their mutilated corpses and dare not speak which might dilute my rage, I strategize and tell no one. I go through the motions of caring for my grieving father, staying with him at the house but my head elsewhere
plans,
if Eliot no longer walked this earth then neither do Randall Evans Francis Veter I am methodical. Days after returning to Humble that lump of wrath in me growing, hardening I call the Prayer Ridge phone company. I inform the woman I've just moved, all my family and friends still there, it would be useful to have a phone book to stay in touch, I make sure my voice is white white. She's politely efficient, writing my address on the directory herself, she might have recognized
Humble, Maryland
from the newspaper but
Lewis, West Virginia
would mean nothing to her, I change my name but I'll take care of that when the package arrives, I'm a goddamn mailman after all. “Oh Mr. Perkins, I went to school with Lenora Perkins, she relation to you?” “Distant.” I receive the directory five days later, the street addresses I need, then a week goes by. Three. This is good, I think, all this time since the trial they'll never suspect me I purchase a gun I purchase a dagger, I
will
do to them everything that was done to Eliot
no mercy.

I've plotted everything but the when, like Nat Turner I wait for a sign from God and it comes. Dad tells me Aunt Beck called. She'd like to stay with him through the Christmas holidays. I'd just gone back to Lewis but still phoning my father every day, seeing him every other day I tell him Aunt Beck's visit has come at a good time as I have some out-of-town business with the post office. I'd never had any business trips before and in his right mind my father would have questioned this, but he'd lost much of himself after my mother's death and what happened to Eliot left him barely the shell of a man, nodding, agreeing.

So two days after Christmas, five weeks to the day that Randall Evans Francis Veter are pronounced not guilty I'm crossing into Alabama, the revolver within easy reach in the glove compartment in case there's trouble early on. I'd debated, pistol versus the shotgun, the latter being more precise eye-for-an-eye. But I could be tempted then to shoot from afar. A pistol is up close and personal and would provide many options for maiming, then torturing,
then
killing. I'm careful not to take unnecessary risks, to die before my mission is complete. I devise a two-day journey, staying overnight on the way in a North Carolina colored hotel, paying cash so there will be no record of my stay should it come up in a court of law later. This is how I cover my tracks, even while knowing I'll never get out of this alive. How my father will survive the third and last family member gone all in the course of two and a half months I selfishly don't think about I'm focused Randall Evans Francis Veter

Half-moon. Light, but Francis Veter's house is in a wooded area, I'm concealed by the trees. Voices. I'm shaking and this catches me unawares. I never once reconsidered, why tremble now? Bunch of kids running around. They're out late, I think, carrying little guns and shooting at small animals. Well why should I be surprised that piece of trash lets his offspring run wild? His wife comes out, yells for them, bedtime. They groan and she yells more and they come in. I circle the house, nearly fall in a trench, my mind thinks my grave's already dug for me. Then see the ditch is dug for an outdoor pool, though seems the workmen gave up halfway through the job. The window. Him and her in the living room, eating something, watching the news. Finally they turn in, lights out. A long dead quiet. I pick up a pebble. Throw it at the wall near the bedroom window. Nothing. Another. She wakes first, saying something to him. He clutches the pillow, waves her off. I hurl a bunch of stones and he snaps up, comes to the glass, looks out, the pitch-black. Must've woken up one of their brats, I hear crying from another room. Puts on his pants, snatches his rifle. I cock my pistol. He moves toward the back door and so do I. Francis Veter comes out of his house. I stand ten yards in front of him. This would be the moment for a clean, accurate shot, but unless I just want to kill him and run, if I want to follow through with the plan to make him know me, feel me, beg for the mercy he won't get, then I can't kill just yet. I have to get him into the woods. How? I could shoot to wound but I don't have a silencer, his wife would get on the phone to the police and the gig would be up fast. I can't die yet, not until I get to Randall Evans's to also make him beg for his life in vain. I study Francis Veter. Well. If I'm meant to die now, I'll take him with me. And he
will
see me, he's not going to think I'm just some damn burglar. I want to say my name. And who my brother was, there will be no confusion. I'm just about to step into his line of vision when a blond child comes running out of the house and into her father's arms. She's crying, and he speaks to her softly, comforting. She's a baby, no more than three. Why's she
out
here? Why didn't she just go to her mother? Francis Veter holds that shotgun in his right hand, moderately vigilant to any sign of an intruder, his left arm around his clinging daughter, her back to me, arms clamped around his neck. Eventually he'll send her back to bed, I'm patient, patient.

Wait. Francis Veter's asleep! Out in the chill December night holding his girl, dozing. Both of them still, dreaming.

I creep closer. When I look back on it, I guess this was the moment I was most pleading for suicide, for Francis Veter to help me to it, end the hurt. I get right up on Francis Veter. He doesn't budge, his mouth slightly open. And I smell it. Goddamn whiskey, the piece of trash bastard passed out! I could slice his throat. I could rip open his white neck while his child sleeps on his chest and no one would know till morning.

And then she lifts her head and looks at me. Oh my God! she wasn't asleep at all. Might she scream? Oh sweet Jesus I did
not
plan on killing a child!

But she doesn't scream. She smiles and speaks, all Alabama rural. “You Birdy's brother?”

I wait for her father to stir awake now but Francis Veter hasn't batted an eyelash. Who the hell's Birdy? The
maid?
I shake my head.

“You know Birdy?”

I shake my head.

“What's your name?”

If I speak Francis Veter's subconscious may register the voice he doesn't recognize and he would wake. If I don't answer she might get louder. I could kill them both now and run, save myself.

But I can't. Him, yes. But a child. If only she hadn't come out! if only