Chasing Forgiveness (11 page)

“The district attorney,” said Mr. Hendricks the other day, “will question you after I do—almost the same questions, but he'll try to confuse you and frighten you. Remember to stick to
what you know, and don't let him rattle you.” But that's only if Mr. Hendricks ever finishes questioning me, and he seems to be taking forever. Finally he begins to wind down.

“One more question,” says Mr. Hendricks before he backs away. He hesitates and looks me straight in the eye.

“Do you want your father back, Preston?”

He keeps looking right into my eyes. The judge waits for me to answer. He didn't tell me he'd ask this one! He didn't warn me! My eyes start to fill with tears.
No fair!
I want to yell.
No fair!

Do I want my father back? Dad did something horrible. Something that no father should ever do for any reason. He shot my mom in the back of the head. That should matter—it has to matter, but somehow it doesn't. He's my dad. My only dad. And even if Mom hates me for it, I can't lie, I just can't. Do I want my father back?

“Yes,” I say, losing control. “I want him back. I want him to come home.” Sobbing, I turn my eyes away from Mr. Hendricks and the judge. He tricked me! He wasn't supposed to make me do this. He wasn't!

I close my eyes tight and try to stop the tears, but they don't stop. Grandma squeezes my hand tightly.

“Your witness,” says Mr. Hendricks to the mean-looking district attorney, who stands there waiting for me to stop crying.

Twenty-four pictures that Grandpa took sit on my desk. I look at each one of them. Me running down the field. Me catching a pass. Me being lifted up by my teammates. One of Tyler, quietly watching on the sidelines with Grandma.

Football season's been over for months now, but the pictures have been on a shelf all this time.

And Dad's in prison.

I grab a piece of paper from the drawer and begin writing.

Dear Dad,

And then I stop. What do you say to your dad in a letter? When he was in jail, we visited him almost every Sunday, so I never had to write, but now he's farther away. We only get to visit once a month or so.

Dear Dad,

Hi. How are you?

He's looking much better these days. He's finally putting back on some of the weight he lost. His eyes aren't so sunken in. He smiles every once in a while, and sometimes it even seems like he's not forcing it. “His countenance is pleasant,” as my grandmother would say. Prison's a lot better for him than jail was. It's better for us, too. It's bigger—there's more open space. There's a big yard there, with a high fence, and guard towers, but you can walk in there, and run and exercise.

Most important, there's no glass between us. When we visit, I get to hug my dad now.

We're all fine. Well, actually Tyler has a cold and I caught it from him but don't worry, it's not too bad. Grandma gives us soup and tea all the time. I'm sick of soup and tea.

Dad was never convicted. The jury found him innocent of both first-degree murder and second-degree murder, and they were hung on the manslaughter charge. They just couldn't make up their minds.

The district attorney could have charged him again for manslaughter, and Dad would have gone to trial again, with a new jury, but instead he cut a deal with Dad's lawyer. Dad
goes to prison for five years. That's a lot better than life. It's a lot better than death row.

Bet you're already counting the days till you get out. I know I am. Anyway, five years isn't that long.

But it is long. It's sixty months. It's 1,825 days—26 if you count leap year. It's 43,824 hours. I know all this because I figured it out. I know it down to the seconds. Five years means we'll have a new president. It means I'll be graduating high school. It means a whole lifetime, to me. Even if they count the time he's already spent in jail, which I think they might, it will still seem like forever.

You're probably better off anyway—most kids hate their parents when they're like fourteen and fifteen, right? But you won't be around for me to hate, so you'll miss all that bad stuff.

Grandma keeps reminding me that there are lots of people who do fine without their parents, and aren't I lucky that so many people love me? There are lots of people who aren't loved at all. Street people. Abandoned kids. There are babies in Ethiopia covered with flies and starving to death. There was World War II. Whole families were wiped out because of what they believed. There was
Vietnam. Boys just a few years older than me got blown away, halfway around the world in a war they didn't even want to fight.

On the one-to-ten scale of lousiness, I would say what happened to me ranks only about a five. I shouldn't complain, but I do.

Maybe you can get out early for good behavior. So you'd better behave!

Uncle Steve complains more than I do. He doesn't say it very loud, but he says it. He feels it. We don't see him much anymore, and I don't know whether that's our fault or his. We all know that he would have testified against my dad if he had something to say and if he didn't respect my grandparents so much. He thinks we're all crazy for even talking to Dad after what he did.

Take good care of yourself, Dad. Don't get into prison riots or anything . . . and remember to eat all of your vegetables (ha-ha).

Maybe we
are
crazy, but I don't care.

We all miss you. We all can't wait to see you again.

Love, your son, Preston

One thing gets stuck in my head, though. It was what the district attorney said. The D.A. was an evil little man, filled with hate, and when the verdict came down “not guilty,” he pulled my grandmother aside and looked her in the eye.

“I hope you know that because of what you've done,” he said to her, “your daughter is rolling over in her grave.”

Grandma's face must have become hard and cold. Grandpa should have slugged him, but he didn't.

“You didn't even know our daughter,” Grandpa said, returning the evil man's evil gaze. “You don't know Danny, either.” And he led Grandma out of the courthouse.

Rolling over in her grave.

When I heard about it I got nightmares again. The closet. Other ones I'm too afraid to remember. Maybe ones I'm not supposed to remember.

“Grandma,” I asked the next day, “if we forgive Dad, do you think Mom has forgiven Dad, too?”

She stopped playing the piano for a moment and looked at me as if she were amazed that such a thought could come from me.

“Yes, Preston,” she finally said. “Of course she forgives him.” Then she returned to playing.

The answer made me mad. It was the only time I can remember being mad at Grandma Lorraine. Not because of what she said, but because of the way she said it. As if she talked with Mom regularly by phone.

“But how do you
know
?” I asked her.

Still playing the piano, she answered calmly. “Because she's with God, Preston, and God
is
forgiveness. Forgiveness and love.”

“But how can you be
sure
about it?”

She missed a note and pounded her hands on the keys in frustration. The grand piano let out a groan that lingered in the air.

“Stop asking that, Preston,” she said, her infinite patience suddenly not as infinite as I'd thought. “Just stop asking that. There's no reason to. No reason at all!”

She rearranged her fingers on the piano and began to play again. Something soothing. Something beautiful and sacred. The slight redness in her face quickly faded away. As I watched her, I could imagine her playing the organ at her old church, many years ago. How beautiful her music is. How many other lost souls—kids and grown-ups—have heard her music in the street, walked into her church, and been saved through her music, the way she was saved through someone else's?

When you're sitting at the organ like that, so close to the pulpit and the preacher, your heart must be so filled with the Lord, there simply isn't any room left in there for questions you can't answer.

You don't know everything,
Tyler once reminded me. And now I know that in spite of her music and the power of the Lord . . . neither does Grandma.

I ride home from school alone on my bike today. But when you ride home from school, you're never alone. You're always surrounded by a hundred other kids, racing to get home. Rush-hour traffic.

Kids at school are beginning to guess things are funny about my parents. Some kids even know what happened—or at least they
think
they know what happened. The newspapers barely said anything about it, but tragedies just have a way of making themselves known, even though nobody talks about them. Things just come out.

And people can be cruel.

The cruelness at my new school began with rumors. Nobody says them right to my face, of course, but I hear them all the same. The rumors go like this:

“I hear Preston Scott's mom was gonna marry Warren Sharp, and his dad shot her and tried to shoot Preston.”

or

“Hey, I hear Preston Scott's dad shot Preston's mom right in front of Preston's eyes!”

or

“Preston Scott's dad is a psycho killer!”

I hear the lies and pretend I don't. I can handle them. I know that now. I'm older, and what happened—well, that's over. It's been more than a year since Mom died; Dad's trial has been over for months. I can just let stupid people's stupid words roll off their stupid tongues and then off my back like it was nothing.

I'm calm. I'm in control.

People who spread rumors,
says Jason,
are wastes of life. They're like the people who read the
National Enquirer.
They've got such boring lives, they have to make up stuff about other people to get their kicks.

As I ride home today, Jimmy Sanders—a kid in my English class—accidentally rams me on his bike.

“Oops,” he says. “Watch where you're going, Scott.”

He's only kidding—we both know that.

“Oh yeah?” I pick up speed and ram him.

“Ooh!” he says, laughing. “You
die
, Scott!”

He chases after me, but my legs are strong from football and track. I race up the bridge that crosses over the railroad
tracks, leaving Jimmy far behind. I wonder if Jimmy is one of the people who's been spreading rumors. It wouldn't bother me if he is; I'm calm and under control.

People who spread rumors,
says Jason,
probably have parents who believe Elvis is still alive.

Jimmy catches up to me on the other side of the bridge. He rams me in our annoying little game of bumper tag.

“You're
slow
, Scott,” he says. “That bike's a piece of
crap
!”

He speeds past me, and I change gears, pedaling hard in a high-speed pursuit. Nobody calls me slow. Nobody calls my bike crap. I rocket past a group of kids—a couple of them are girls I'd really like to go out with, now that I've broken up with Angela.

Angela and I weren't really right for each other. She talked a lot and complained that I didn't talk much at all, which isn't true; I talked all the time, just not to her. So we broke up, and it doesn't bother me. I'm never going to let breaking up with a girl bother me, I've decided.

Angela never knew about my parents. Actually, though, I think she did but just didn't say anything, and I never asked her.

“That's Preston Scott,” says one of the girls we pass, and they start whispering secretly to each other as I speed out of view. I wonder what it is they're whispering. Are they saying good things about me? Do they like the way I look? The way I run? The way I play ball? Or are they whispering about other things?

People who spread rumors,
Jason says,
like lies better than they like the truth. Don't trust anyone who spreads rumors.

The girls disappear behind me as my bike speeds toward Jimmy. I don't care what the girls talk about. It doesn't bother me at all if it's rumors they're spreading. I'm better about that now that the trial's over.

I come up on Jimmy, ready to nail his tire, but he turns his wheel unexpectedly. I broadside him, our wheels lock, and we both eat it. I fly into a prickly hedge, and Jimmy lands hard on the asphalt. Our bikes clatter into a fireplug and stop. This is not fun anymore, and now I realize that it never really was.

Other kids stop to watch, figuring a fight is on its way. But they're wrong. They don't know me; they only think they do.

“You're an
asshole
, Scott,” says Jimmy, meaning it with every fiber of his angry, bruised body.

“You didn't have to turn your wheel like that, moron,” I say. “It was your fault.”

Jimmy gets up and brushes dirt from his scraped knees. I ease my way out of the bushes.

“Like
hell
it was my fault,” says Jimmy. “You can't ride a bike for your
life
!”

“Yeah?” I say, “Well, you have your brains up your butt!” Some of the other kids laugh.

Jimmy turns to pry his bike from the fireplug but then turns back with the last word.

“Maybe so,” he says with his hands dangling by his side like a gunfighter waiting for the draw, “but at least
my
dad didn't kill my mom.”

My ears hear it, and my brain gets it a moment later.

I can take that. It doesn't bother me at all.

And yet I'm all over Jimmy like a pit bull.