Almost Heaven (6 page)

“Yes, it is, because I let go. They were just as scared as pups and they were screaming to go back with their mama.”

“But everybody in that house died, Daddy. Except for you. Leaving them with their mama wouldn't have helped. You were their best chance.”

“I was a poor excuse for a chance to those girls. Every night when I go to sleep, I can hear them screaming. And then the sound of their voices in the sludge.” He looked away and shook his head. “There are some things a man can't ever leave behind, Billy. I hope to God you'll never have anything like that happen to you.”

I stared at his shoes. There was a leaf stuck to the underside of one of them. His shoes were like new, only a few sizes bigger than mine. I would wear those shoes on my first day at a real job.

“There comes a time in a man's life when he knows he's been beat. When he knows the world just came up and smacked him across the face. And you can either get up and go on or just lay there and watch everything roll right on by. I think I've come to that point.”

“Daddy, you don't have to worry. Mama's got a job, and pretty soon I'll be old enough to maybe work at the feed store. I'll bet I can make enough money to buy this hillside and a few more.”

He patted me on the head like I was a dog on a chain that wants to run. “I hope you do that, Son. With the talent you have with that mandolin and the way you can rig electronics, I wouldn't doubt that you'll make it big someday.”

“I'm going to be on the Grand Ole Opry,” I said.

“I don't doubt that'll happen. Probably up there playing with Bill Monroe.”

“I want to play gospel music. Songs that will lead people to Jesus.”

He nodded. “That's what I was hoping you'd say. You can get fame and fortune and then you have your reward. But leading people to Jesus is what will bring you the most satisfaction. You remember that.”

He pulled out his lighter and opened the top with a
kerthunk
. Then he lit the cigarette and pulled in a few drags of the killing smoke. “You know what I think we ought to do?”

“What's that?”

“We ought to get up one day when your mother has to work a full day and have the neighbors call you in sick to school. Then you and I can go hunting. Get us a rabbit or a squirrel and surprise her by having it cooking when she gets home. Wouldn't that be something?”

“You mean it?” I said. That sounded about the most wonderful thing I could think of, particularly because it meant my daddy was feeling stronger. To think of him going hunting with me was almost too good of an answer to prayer.

“Tell you what. You go over to Elvis's house and see if you can borrow his .410 and some shells.”

“Now?”

“No, after we're finished with the walk. But don't tell your mother. She'd have my hide if she knew I was going to keep you home from school.”

We made it all the way to the top of the ridge, where you could look out and see the town and the hills in the distance. It was like having your own private box on God's handiwork.

He put his hand on my neck and held it there. “You see all the beauty out there?” When I nodded, he said, “That's nothing compared to the beauty of a heart that wants to know God and follow him. And you have that kind of heart, Billy. I know you do. So don't you let anything or anyone take that from you. You understand?”

I nodded, but I didn't understand. If I had, I would never have gotten the gun and hid it under my bed that night. I got him alone later at the house and told him Elvis only had five shells, and he said, “That's plenty.”

“For squirrel hunting?” I said.

He laughed. “Five shells, five squirrels. You just wait.”

* * *

The next day Daddy made a special effort to get up before I went to school. He kissed me on the head and his eyes got all watery. When I left, he had his arm around Mama, hugging her close as he watched me walk to the bus.

Mama went into the shop in the afternoon, so she wasn't there when I reached home. I ran all the way from the bus and threw my books down before the screen door slammed. Some of our best times together came right after the bus let me off and I'd sit there and talk with him or I'd turn on the radio in his room and play the mandolin to those songs. This time, I knew something was wrong. There was a stillness to it I can't explain. Like somebody had broken in and stolen something, though at the time I didn't know what.

I walked into his room and thought he was fooling with me. He had pillows up over his head and his arms were down by his side. I noticed Elvis's gun lying on his chest.

“You can't hide from me,” I said, bumping into the bed. “Let's go out and get a few squirrels.”

He didn't move, so I pulled the pillows away. He had three towels from the bathroom wrapped around his head. I took hold of his arm and he was cold. Then I noticed the red on the towels and the stains on the wall. The towels had flowers all over them, and my heart started pounding when I pulled them away from his face. I can't describe what that looked like, but I can still see it.

I turned away and noticed two envelopes at the foot of his bed. One had
Billy
written on it and the other one said,
Mama
. That's what he called her when he was tender toward her. I opened the one to me.

Dear Billy,

I'm sorry. You have to believe me when I say that. I don't ask you to understand what I've done, but I hope one day you will find it in your heart to forgive me.

I know this is a lot to take in, but I need your help. Go get Ruthie Bowles and tell her to come quick before Mama comes home. She'll know what to do. I don't want your mama to see me like this. I hate it that you will, but I have come to the end of what I can take.

I love you with all my heart, and you and your mama have been the only reasons for me to stay awhile. I just want to go to Jesus now. I'm hoping to see Harless when I get there and those little girls from Buffalo Creek and tell them how sorry I am. I never should have made it, and they should have.

It makes me sick of heart not to be able to see you grow up and make something of yourself. I know you're going to do that. I'll be watching every step of the way and cheering you on.

I know I don't have to ask you to take care of your mother. She's going to need you now more than ever. You will both bounce back from this. I just ask you to forgive me because I can't take it anymore.

Love,

Daddy

I sat on the bed reading his words over and over. It was the only letter he ever wrote me other than a birthday card he would just sign. And then I looked at the gun. No wonder he had told me not to tell Mama. He used me. I found out later that Mama had taken away all the sharp knives and locked up the medicine, but I guess a man who is determined can find a way to do what he wants.

I cried as I ran to Mrs. Bowles's house. Like some of our neighbors, we didn't have a phone, and there was nobody I would have called faster than her. She was known in the community as someone you could turn to if you were in trouble. I'd been there a few times with my parents, so I knew where she lived, but I didn't know her well. When Mama and Daddy got into some disagreement and couldn't work it out, Mrs. Bowles was the one they went to. She'd had her own trouble, I guess, and when people go through hard times, it helps them know how to help others. I remember her sitting and listening, just crying with them about the house and Harless and all our changes.

Mrs. Bowles opened the door and right away took me by the shoulders, looking me in the eyes and asking what was wrong. I couldn't stop sobbing, and when I told her, she hugged me and held on like a grandmother. She called the police, and then we both hopped in her car and drove back to the house.

She told me to stay in the front room while she went back to the bedroom. The police came and I let them in. Then an ambulance came and some men carried my daddy out. He still had his black shoes on, and they stuck out from underneath the sheet. Ruthie called Mama, and by the time she got home, Mrs. Bowles had the room cleaned with the bed made; she'd wrapped up all the bloody pillows and sheets and put them in the back of her car, and she'd found a little vase full of fake daisies and put them on Mama's dresser with the envelope Daddy left propped up in front of it.

Mama started to bawling as soon as she came in the door and just fell into my arms. Mrs. Bowles patted her shoulder and wrung her hands.

“How did he get the gun, Ruthie? I did everything I could. I knew he was depressed and I hated leaving him, but I had to go to work.”

Mrs. Bowles held on until she quieted down and then took her into the bedroom, where she talked in a low voice and then Mama would scream and cry. That was the worst day of my life, and I thought it couldn't get any worse than that.

Something happens when your daddy dies and you feel like it's your fault. A piece of you goes missing. From that day on, I felt there was a hole in my own heart that wasn't ever going to be filled.

I stood in the front room looking outside through the screen on the door. There were all kinds of people looking at the ambulance and the police. Asking questions. Wondering what happened. A rumor went around that my daddy had shot someone, and a kid told me later they thought I was dead. There were kids on bikes and men in their coveralls with their arms folded, shaking their heads and looking off. They finally left, but from then on, it felt like our house was marked.

4

I went back to school the next week, and I swear walking down the aisle of that bus was harder than the funeral. Kids staring at me and then whispering to each other. My teacher had put a little bag of candy in my desk with a note that said, “With Sympathy.” Inside she wrote that she was sorry for the “trial” I was going through and that she was available if I needed to talk. And she'd write real encouraging notes on all my tests and papers and sometimes didn't count my answers wrong even though I'd gotten them wrong, which I thought wasn't fair to the other kids but was also nice of her.

Kids pretty much stayed away from me, as if suicide was something you could catch. I wondered how many moms had told their kids to leave me alone, that there was something wrong with me. I was already a lonely kid without many friends, but that sealed the deal. At lunch you would have thought that I had the plague because nobody would sit nearby, so I took my lunch outside even if it was raining or snowing.

There was only one other student who gave me the time of day. Heather Blanch sat toward the front of the bus and smelled like flowers in the spring. Every morning I just moved past her because she lived in a big brick house and always had nice clothes and looked like she didn't belong in West Virginia. She looked destined for big things, a blue-ribbon pick of the litter compared to me.

“Sit down,” she said one morning as I paused, looking for a seat. When I just stared at her, she blew a bubble and patted the seat with a thin hand. “Sit.”

I sat about as far away from her as I could get because it scared me sitting next to someone so pretty and smart. She brushed her hair every day and it looked like silk, just as shiny and soft. And she was always carrying these thick books to read. I could tell by the way the bookmark moved every day that she could read fast.

“You want some gum?” she said, handing me her pack of Fruit Stripe.

“No thanks.”

“You're Billy, right?”

I nodded.

“My cousin lives near you. Says she hears you playing the mandolin. You're pretty good.”

I shrugged. “I try.”

Kids talked around us as I sat there, trying to think of something else to say. “I'm in Mrs. Faulkner's class,” I said, my voice cracking. “In the new building.” They had constructed an exterior building next to the school that had been built in the 1930s.

She shook her head. “I wish I'd have gotten moved out there. I'm stuck inside with the Barn Owl.”

Her teacher was twice the age of mine, and she was right, the lady did look like an owl. She wore thick glasses, and the way her hair framed her face made you think she would eat mice at night.

“So you can,” she said.

“Can what?”

“Smile. I've always wondered if there was one in there. Now I can tell everybody the truth.”

I stared out the window on the other side, my heart feeling something akin to a mixture of indigestion and a sudden, life-threatening illness. When the bus got to the school, I was the first on my feet.

“You're welcome,” she said behind me.

I tried to stay as unseen as possible through the day, and I made it to the bus first and sat way in the back. The next day I caught her eye as I passed the seat. I paused and she looked out the window.

“If you're not going to talk to me, you're not going to sit,” she said. “I don't appreciate the silent treatment.”

I backed up. “I'm not trying to give you the silent treatment. I just don't do well around . . .”