The Risen (13 page)

“She got on a bus and that's it,” he said, still gripping my shoulder. “Never ask me about her again.
Never
.”

At Christmas break, I ran into Bennie Mosely at the Shell station. I asked if his parents had heard from Ligeia.

“No, and that's fine by me,” Bennie said. “Mom and Dad took her in and she left without a word of thanks. They even blame themselves for her running off, even though they were as good to her as could be. I hope I never see her again.”

“What about her parents?” I'd asked. “Have they heard from her?”

“No,” Bennie said, “and they're probably just as glad to be shed of her as everyone else. Aunt Ruth said that if she shows up in Daytona she'll not take her in. Aunt Ruth says she's eighteen, and for the rest of her life she's on her own.”

I
t is after six when Bill comes in. He's clearly exhausted and doesn't speak as we go to his office. He sags back in his leather armchair and closes his eyes. I study the face of a man who's spent his afternoon cutting and probing the body of a child. For the best of reasons, of course, and yet . . .

“Another surgeon is going to join us in a minute,” my brother says as his eyes open.

“Why?”

“Because you need to hear what he has to say.”

“Not unless he was with you and Ligeia at Panther Creek that morning,” I answer, “and if he comes in here
with some bullshit that drugs caused her to cut her own throat, I'm going straight to Robbie Loudermilk.”

“He's not going to do that,” Bill says.

When a knocking comes at the front door, I shake my head.

“Tell him to go away,” I say. “All we need to talk about is what happened, all of it.”

Bill gets up and returns with a large, red-faced man.
Florid.
That's the best word to describe him. He's large, but a broad-shouldered large, perhaps a linebacker in high school, even college, though the hand he offers is soft. I guess him to be in his late fifties.

“Carl Bassinger,” he says and sits down beside me. “I understand that you're skeptical about your brother's abilities as a neurosurgeon.”

“I never said that.”

“Oh?” Bassinger says, turning to Bill.

“Let's just say that my brother needs to know that what I do saves lives, or makes a life worth living,” Bill says. “He needs to know how well I do my job.”

“I'm on call tonight so I'll give the short version, Mr. Matney,” Bassinger says. “I've been working at my profession for three decades and at four hospitals and your brother is the best neurosurgeon I've ever worked
with. He's brilliant and he keeps up with the literature, even contributes to it, but that isn't what makes your brother truly special. Bill can do two things most of us can't. The first is that he can stay completely focused for hours. He doesn't start thinking about his golf game or some nurse's ass or his kid's soccer match. But what sets him apart most is the hand-eye coordination. That's something a surgeon can't learn; you're just born with it. Probably why he was a good baseball player,” Bassinger adds, nodding at the photo of Bill in his uniform. “Same kind of thing. When you see Bill's surgery, his signature might as well be on it, because no one else's work is that clean
.”

Bassinger turns to Bill.

“What, eighteen years we've been together?”

“About that,” Bill answers.

“Here's the thing laymen, or siblings, don't know, Mr. Matney,” Bassinger says, giving me a wry smile, “and it's probably better that you don't. At every hospital there's usually one surgeon so ham-fisted you wouldn't want them cutting off a hangnail, much less poking around your spinal cord. And they don't care if they lock you in a wheelchair or not. They really don't, unless it results in a lawsuit.
Then
they care. As for the
rest of us, we're competent and conscientious, but there's always one alpha surgeon. The nurses and anesthesiologists know who it is. Hell, the orderlies who wipe up the blood know. Bill's good enough to go anywhere, Mayo, Hopkins, but you mountain boys can't seem to leave home.”

“Okay,” I say. “I get that he's good.”

“
Good
,” Bassinger says. “Shit,
I'm
good. I've personally seen a dozen situations where paralysis or death were inevitable had Bill not done the cutting. Some surgeons wouldn't have dared make the attempt. Every surgeon makes mistakes, but Bill makes fewer. What your brother took on today, probably a fifty percent chance one of us would have botched it, but because he did it, that girl will walk again. You were damn lucky that when the orthopedist operated on your daughter—the one Bill got to fly back early from her vacation—he was in there with her. He made sure she did that surgery exactly right. Here's the thing. I've got three kids and five grandchildren. If one of them were rolled in with a spinal injury, I wouldn't do it. The scalpel would be in your brother's hand.”

“How many good years do you think I have left?” Bill asks Bassinger.

“You're sixty-seven now, right?”

“Yes.”

“Two or three more years for sure,” Bassinger answers. “You'll be losing some coordination and vision, but the experience will balance that out for a while yet. When it doesn't, knowing you, you'll switch to pre-op and post-op care.”

Bassinger nods at the picture of Bill and the Red Cross workers.

“I haven't mentioned how many people he's helped overseas. I don't know of a surgeon in this state who's gone on more foreign trips. You go every other September, right, Bill?”

“Yes,” my brother answers.

“How many have you been on total, Bill?”

“Sixteen.”

“Sixteen,” Bassinger says, shaking his head. “I've been on two. Most surgeons go once and then for a week, if they ever go at all.”

Bassinger checks his watch.

“Anything else you need confirmed, Mr. Matney?”

“Not from you,” I answer.

“Okay then,” Bassinger says, and stands.

“Thanks, Carl,” Bill says.

“No problem,” Bassinger answers. “You've had a hell of a long day, Bill. You ought to be home having a drink.”

“Soon, I hope,” Bill says, and they go out front together. They talk briefly, then the front door shuts.

“What does that have to do with anything?” I ask when Bill returns.

“Perspective on what occurred forty-six years ago at Panther Creek, and what has happened since, and can continue to happen.”

“Something that occurred,” I say. “That's a nice euphemism for a seventeen-year-old being murdered and then put in a hole and forgotten. God, Bill, you murdered her. You cut her throat.”

“No, I didn't, but I bear responsibility.”

“What in the hell does that mean? You killed her or you didn't. What happened, Bill, the truth. This time I'm not leaving.”

“And you'll go to Loudermilk if I don't tell you?”

“Yes,” I say, trying to sound more certain than I am.

“And if I tell you?”

“I can't know that until you do.”

“Okay,” Bill sighs. He pushes himself deeper in the chair and settles his hands on the armrest. “That afternoon when I went to the bank for the money, it almost
emptied my account. Mr. Ashbrook didn't say anything to me but while his teller was getting the money from the vault, he called Grandfather, who told him not to give me a penny, so Ashbrook didn't. When I went outside, Nebo was waiting for me. He took me straight to the old man. Patients were there, but Grandfather took me to his office and shut the door. I made something up about moving my account to Wake Forest but he could tell I was lying. Then I said it was my money and I could do what I wanted to with it. You know how that went over. I finally told him the truth and of course he knew the scuttlebutt on Ligeia, and not just from her uncle. You know how Grandfather was. He knew about everything and everyone in town. He asked if Ligeia's uncle and aunt knew and I told him no, that she had promised not to tell anyone and I believed her. Then he came around the table and slapped me in the face, hard, and sat back down. For a while he just glared at me. Then he said hadn't I the sense to wear a condom and I told him I had, every time. Grandfather asked how I knew she was really pregnant, and I said she had gone to the clinic in Asheville. Then he told me he'd be the one paying Ligeia, and with his own money. The money in the bank was still mine but I'd better spend it wisely, he said,
because I'd never get a penny more from him. Taking care of this mess was my inheritance,” he said.

Bill pauses. An ambulance approaches the hospital, getting steadily louder. A wash of red light crosses Bill's window and then the siren shuts off. Bill closes his eyes a moment. The furrows in my brother's forehead deepen, as if the light and siren have triggered a migraine.

“Go on,” I say.

“The next morning Grandfather told me to go out to Panther Creek first and park the truck where he'd see it. When he showed up, Nebo was with him. Maybe I should have realized something then, but you know he sometimes drove the old man places. When Ligeia asked for the money, Grandfather told her he'd called the women's clinic and said he was sending over a medical chart for Ligeia Mosely, but they told him they had no patient with that name. Ligeia claimed she'd used a fake name but Nebo grabbed her arms and jerked them behind her. Grandfather pulled up her T-shirt and prodded her stomach, then pushed his hand under her jeans and felt there too. He told me that I'd fallen for the oldest trick a bitch had.” Bill's voice softens. “Maybe that would have been the end of it, but Ligeia said that even if she wasn't pregnant, she'd sold drugs his own
grandson took from his office. If he didn't give her the money, she'd go to an SBI agent who'd been hassling her and her friends. She said she had empty sample packets to prove it. Grandfather looked at me and knew it was true. If Ligeia hadn't said that. If she just hadn't . . .”

“Nebo killed her?”

“Yes.”

“While you just stood there and let it happen?”

“No. Grandfather sent me to get the money. He said it was in the Cadillac's front seat, but there was no money. I turned just as Nebo's right hand came around and brushed across her neck. It was so fast, like he was wiping off a bit of dirt. Then Nebo grabbed her by the hair and jerked her neck back and I saw the razor.”

“Ligeia died right in front of you?”

“Yes.”

“And you did nothing?”

“She'd fallen, so I kneeled beside her,” Bill says. “I pressed my palm on her throat, trying to stanch the bleeding as I screamed at Grandfather to help me. I could stop it for a few moments, but there was so much blood. My hand, it kept slipping . . .”

Bill presses a palm over his eyes, leans forward so his elbow settles on the table.

“Then you and Nebo buried her and you all left?”

“Close enough to that.”

“I don't want close enough, Bill.”

“Nebo drove back to town to get two shovels.”

“Grandfather didn't leave with Nebo?”

“No,” Bill says, and looks up. “Nebo came back and wrapped her in a piece of tarp. We dug the grave and filled it, then covered the ground with leaves.”

“You stripped off her clothes and her beads.”

My brother nods.

“What did you do with them?”

“Nebo put them and the suitcase in the Cadillac's trunk.”

“What did Nebo do with them?”

“Hell, I don't know, Eugene. All I know is that he put them in the trunk.”

For a few moments, all is quiet. No words, no sirens in the distance, then a deeper quiet as the air-conditioning unit switches off.
Silence can be a place
. Those words come to me now. And it is where so much of my life has been lived, meaningless hours passed with the loudest sound the clink of ice cubes in a glass.

“Grandfather, he was a monster, wasn't he?”

“Yes,” my brother answers. “He was.”

“And you let him be one. You could have turned him in.”

“When Nebo left to get the shovels, I told Grandfather I was going to the law, not Sheriff Lunsford but the sheriff in Asheville. He answered that it wouldn't matter because Nebo would take all the blame. He said Nebo couldn't speak but he could damn well nod his head and that was enough.”

Please let me be dreaming this,
I think,
or hallucinating in a hospital detox ward.
Another splash of red washes over the window, mute at first, then wailing as it leaves the hospital and heads downtown.

“You still could have told what really happened.”

“Grandfather told me something else,” Bill says. “He said he'd cut off every bit of money to Mom and you. He'd kick you out of the house.”

And it's only now that I realize.

“You didn't tell him, did you?”

“Tell him what?”

“That I stole the drugs,” I answer. “You didn't even tell him I'd ever been with Ligeia.”

Bill shakes his head.

Why?
I could ask, but I know the answer.

“How could Grandfather be so certain Ligeia wasn't
pregnant?” I ask instead. “It was so early, and she could have used a fake name for the test.”

“She wasn't pregnant,” Bill says. “I'm positive about that.”

I hesitate, then speak.

“There's something I never told you. One time I didn't use a condom. It could have happened then.”

“I am telling you she was not pregnant,” Bill says harshly, each word more emphatic than the last. “What's wrong with you, Eugene? Why are you wanting it to be worse than it already is? Isn't it terrible enough for you? You've read what the news said. She was desperate, she owed people money, dangerous people, and she'd have claimed or said anything to get it.”

“No more dangerous than Nebo,” I answer. “But even Nebo, how could he do that? He'd probably never even seen her before.”

“Did you ever know him not to do what Grandfather asked?” Bill answers. “Can you remember
anyone
who didn't do what that bastard demanded?”

“You,” I say, “when you married Leslie.”

“What else could he do to me, Eugene? He'd already cut me out of his will. The last time I ever saw him, that Christmas when I told him to his face we were get
ting married, I lied to him. I said if he cut off your and Mom's money that Leslie's parents had money, a lot of money, and that they'd help Leslie and me but also you and Mom. I told him then everyone in Sylva would see that for all of his big talk about ‘responsibility,' strangers had to take care of his own son's widow and child. That was the only lie I ever got past him. Over the years, I've thought about why he believed me. I think it was because he didn't care if people knew he was a murderer or a sadist or a blackmailer, but being viewed as irresponsible, that was the one thing he couldn't bear.