The Year of the Storm (15 page)

Yet.

At some point, the door above me creaked open, and when it did, I was lying huddled in the corner, still gripping my switchblade tightly. My eyes were closed, but I opened them just enough to watch as Seth's father came down, first a heavy boot and then another, until his whole body was inside.

I watched him, so smug as he stepped off the ladder and swung his lantern around, just missing me, against the far wall. He had a knife in his hand, and I knew I'd only get one chance.

It was hard—no, impossible—for me to square the man who stood next to me with the crying boy that I'd spent the last several hours with. They were two different people, and that, I think, is all you need to know about growing old.

He swung the lantern light out again, this time in a wider arc. I felt the light moving over my body, and I wondered what I must have looked like lying there, half-starved, unmoving. I hoped I looked dead.

That's when I heard him gasp.

I stayed still, barely opening one eye to see. He'd moved past me and was examining the blood spots on the back wall. Was it possible he wasn't aware that the girls were gone? And if this was true, who had taken them, and why?

He swung back around violently. “Where are they?”

I continued to play dead or at least passed out, holding the knife under my shirt, the cold casing next to my empty belly. He drew back with his foot and kicked me hard in the ribs.

“I asked you a question, boy.”

I bit my lip, holding it all in. I wanted to scream. Damn, did I ever. His boots were steel-toed, and my ribs felt like they'd been knocked right into my lungs.

I heard his boots creak and he knelt next to me. I opened my eyes just enough to see his outline, blurry in the lantern light. He was holding the knife out, ready to prod my face with it.

Slowly—while his attention was focused on my face—I slid the switchblade out of my shirt. His blade touched my face. He used the tip to pry at my right eyelid, trying to force it open.

Without a sound, I put the switchblade inches away from his midsection. His blade was so near my eye now, and that was when I realized what he meant to do.

With a shriek, I popped the blade and thrust it into his midsection. His hand jerked and slashed my eye good. Instantly, I felt blood running down my cheek like tears. I released the switchblade, leaving it in his stomach, and grabbed his arm with both of my hands. I shoved him off me, and his knife fell onto the cellar floor.

I touched my eye, sure that I'd find only an empty socket. But it was still there. For now.

Half-blinded, I fought him, tumbling on the ground. He cursed me, beating at me with his big fists. I absorbed the pain because none of it hurt as bad as the knife in my eye. Somehow, I managed to work my way onto his back. He stood up, trying to spin around and fling me off. My hands clawed at his face, his eyes.

He kicked over his lantern and there was a sudden explosion of flame as the oil caught. I didn't let go. Madness had come over me and I only wanted to claw out his eyes, to pay him back twofold for the one he'd taken of mine.

I rode him like a bucking bronco around the cellar. He pummeled me against the walls and tried to toss me off into the fire, but I held on to him with everything I had. I worked a hand inside his mouth and ripped his right cheek hard and then harder, screaming for all I was worth. He flailed back at me with his fists, striking the spot he'd kicked.

He twisted his body around, so that my head collided with the ladder, knocking it loose from its moorings and making me momentarily woozy. Still, I held on.

He staggered into the darkness, tossing me like a bull flings a cowboy, but I wouldn't let go. My eye had gone numb and blind from where he'd cut me, but I continued to twist at his cheek, stretching it until it bled over my fingers. He must have spun himself dizzy because eventually, he fell. He was still spinning on the way down, which explains how I ended up landing on the knife. It sliced into my leg. The puncture was deep and hurt like nothing I'd ever felt before, but when I reached for the knife, it slid out of me as easy as pulling a toothpick through melted butter.

Then he was on top of me.

I slammed the knife into his side and twisted. He moaned and cursed. He told me he'd see me in hell.

I kept twisting and he kept talking. I was surprised he knew who I was. Had he gotten a look at me at all? I didn't think so. He just knew.

Then the thing that haunts my dreams still: He spoke of the swamp. “I see it,” he said. “I see the swamp. I see them.”

Believe me, I've lain awake so many nights debating what he saw, who he saw. Despite all those sleepless nights, I don't have answers. Just a bushel full of doubts and bad lungs from all the cigarettes I smoked sitting upright in my bed beside the open window.

Finally, he stopped talking and went still. I let go of the knife and tried to push him off. Unfortunately, my energy was running out of my leg. I settled for sliding out from under his weight. When I stood, I felt light-headed. I couldn't think. The pain wasn't so bad. It was more that I felt different, not all there, woozy. I was covered with blood, slick and warm. My stomach lurched, but nothing came up other than bile. I coughed it out, there on the floor. My hand fell back to my thigh, and I plugged the bleeding by pressing my fingers into the cut. I stood, took a faltering step, still keeping my hand on the cut, and began to stumble toward the ladder.

There was pain, but I ignored it. Somehow, I worked my bleeding body up the ladder and into the cabin. It was daylight, and I had to fight the overwhelming urge to just lie down and fall asleep in the sunlight shining through the cracked windows. If I'd done that, I'm certain I would have died right there. So I forced myself to ignore what my body wanted and I dragged myself through the woods, trailing blood along the way to my house. Mama was in the bathroom. We didn't have a phone in those days, so I would need her to drive me to the hospital or go get help or something. I collapsed against the door, and I didn't remember anything else until the next day.

I
woke in a room and saw both my parents sitting next to me. My good eye fell on my father first. He held my gaze long enough for me to know that he was sober or as close as he would ever get to it. This small sacrifice touched me. Maybe he cared about me. It's still a debate I have in my head to this day.

Mama's eyes were more vacant, but when she saw me awake, she leaned in and hugged me. “Thank God,” she whispered. “Thank Jesus.”

Dad stood. “The sheriff is wanting to talk to you.” He was fidgeting with his collar, pacing now. He was ready to go have a drink, and I knew his encounter with sobriety was about to end. I nodded at him.

He started to leave and stopped. “You all right?”

I didn't have a clue. I knew that something was wrong with my eye. It still felt numb all around the socket, and no matter how hard I tried to open that eyelid, it refused to budge. I told him I was fine.

He considered leaving again but stopped short. His mouth opened to say something else. He was about to speak, and God only knows what he might have said. I think about that all the time, far too often for an old man whose daddy's been gone for nearly twenty years. He opened his mouth to speak, but then thought better of it. He shook his head and left.

I like to imagine he was about to say something encouraging. Something that might have gone a long way toward erasing some of the hate I had for him. Maybe he thought it, and maybe that's enough. I go back and forth about that too.

—

S
heriff Branch came into the room and asked my mother if she would give him some time alone with me.

When she left, he sat down heavily in her chair. He didn't ask how I was feeling or anything like that. Instead, he just looked at me for a long moment. I looked back, meeting his eyes.

“We followed your blood to the hunting cabin.”

“There was someone down there. The girls, I think. Are they—?”

He shook his head. “Easy. Don't get all excited. The doctors say they'll kick me out if I rile you up.” He took a deep breath. “You know something about the missing girls?”

“I think he kept them down there. There were shackles on the wall. I—”

“We found the shackles, but we figured those were for you.”

“No, sir. I went there looking for the girls. The cabin was empty when I got there—”

“Hold it. You telling me he didn't kidnap you? That you went there under your own will?”

“Yes, I was looking for the girls. Seth told me that his father killed them.”

“Back up. To what you said before about going there on your own. One more time. I want to be clear,” he said. I couldn't be sure, but I believed I saw pleasure on his face.

“I went to find the girls. More than your dumb ass has been able to do.” I realized the instant I'd said it that it was a mistake; everything I'd said had been a mistake. Branch didn't like me, and before he'd talked to me, he'd believed that I'd been right. That Sykes had kidnapped me and therefore had probably done the same to the girls and Seth too. It had seemed pretty clear. Now, I'd managed to give him an out.

He took a deep breath and barely hid a smile. “Did you find them, boy? 'Cause if you did, I'd like to know about it.”

“No,” I said. “I didn't find them.”

“You didn't find them, huh? But you did manage to trespass on a man's private property and kill him? That about right, dumbass?”

“What about the shackles?” I said, sure that there would be nothing he could come up with to explain that away.

“What about them? Ain't no crime to hang shackles on his wall. For all I know, he used them to discipline his boy.” Branch nodded thoughtfully. “Can't say it helped much.”

“You're an idiot,” I said.

He patted my knee, smiling. “How old are you?”

I was silent.

“I'm going to guess fourteen, maybe fifteen. Either way, old enough for a jury to convict you as an adult for trespassing on another man's property and killing him in cold blood. Now, I may be an idiot, but you're a damn fool if you think you're getting out of this one, son.”

“Look at me,” I said, on the verge of tears. “He tried to kill me.”

“A man's got to defend himself. Especially when somebody comes trespassing on his property.” He stood up. “Get better soon. I'll be checking on you.”

—

A
few days later I left the hospital. I waited until the place was dead quiet, and I just got up out of my bed and walked out. I hiked home and, without waking my parents, packed a bag of clothes. Then I left again, walking out to the highway, where I cocked my thumb in the air and waited for no more than thirty minutes before a grizzled old coot in a Ford picked me up. He asked me where I was going (he didn't ask about the patch on my eye, and I took this as a good sign). I told him anywhere. He nodded as if he understood and began to drive. He let me off somewhere in Tennessee.

I spent the next four months living hand to mouth in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. I rummaged for food. I begged for it. I stole. Sometimes I found work, but I never found a place to call home until I met a man who hired me to clean out his barn. After it was apparent I had no place to go, he allowed me to live there in exchange for keeping up the place and helping out with his cows and horses.

I was pretty happy there, but there was something growing inside me. Call it a darkness or doubt, or maybe it was just confusion, but I felt like I needed to move on to something . . . I don't know . . . more dangerous. I suppose if I was honest, I'd tell you I never quite got over my death wish, but I think that was only part of it. I also had a desire to go back to the slip, to find a way back to that magic, to prove to myself that it had really happened, that there was something more to this life.

A
fter I got back from the war, a time came when I had convinced myself I was nothing more than a crazy drunk. That the things I remembered from my boyhood were hallucinations brought on by the alcohol, or maybe I was shell-shocked. If I had any real sense, I'd let them go and get on with life, but my life was a wreck. Three failed marriages, two addictions, and the inability to tell anybody—including the three wives—what was bothering me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't let go of the past. So eventually, I came back home.

At first I camped for several months near the storm shelter. For a while, I was afraid to go inside. I'm not sure why. Probably had to do with finding something there that might actually prove my crazy fantasies true, because as much as I obsessed over Seth and the slipping and the swamp, I wasn't actually convinced I wanted any of it to be real. But eventually, I had to go in. I had to see.

Nothing happened. I sat there for days waiting for some vision, some flash of the swamp, but there was nothing.

I was almost ready to move on, to forget that part of my life altogether, when I made a last stop by the ruins of Seth's old house. Like I said, the place had burned down sometime while I was away, but picking through the rubble I found a couple of things that made me realize I couldn't take the easy way out. I couldn't forget.

I found them in a large metal box near the back. Someone had put them there, almost as if he was expecting the house to burn down. Inside the box, I found the canvas of Seth's painting, the one I showed you earlier. But more important than that, I found the photos we took. I looked at them just like you did. Wasn't there some explanation? Sure seemed like there had to be, but the more I thought about it, the less I could convince myself that anything besides slipping could explain those photographs. Before I went to Tennessee, I'd never been out of the county, yet there I was standing knee-deep in a swamp.

The next day, I put five of the photos in the box that you saw and buried it in the meadow, being sure to count off the paces, so that one day when I doubted again, I could come out and dig it back up. I kept the painting for myself.

Nearly ten years passed. During that time, I lived off the grid, so to speak. Sometimes I came back here, but mostly I roamed the Southeast, working odd jobs for cash. I stopped paying taxes, receiving mail. I didn't even have an address. Most days I wondered if I had a purpose, but I held on anyway. Now that I've met you, Danny, I see that after all these years I was meant to do something.