Close to the Broken Hearted (14 page)

She shined the light around a bit more. “There's nothin' here. It's clear.”

“I still ain't ever goin' in there.”

Leah stood up. “Nobody's askin' you to.”

“Well, somebody went in there,” Sylvie said.

Leah let out a long breath. “If there ain't nothin' in your crawl space, then why would someone want to go in there? It don't look like the most comfortable place in the world to me. I wouldn't go outta my way to be crawlin' round underneath your house in the muck.” The dirt Leah could see from where she stood did show what could be scuff marks, but they really weren't indicative of anything positive, so Leah just wrote them off. They could've been made anytime. Orwin could have stored things under the house back before he left and they could still be from then.

“I think it was Preacher Eli,” Sylvie said. “He's probably tryin' to figure out some way to kill me. Maybe he's gonna put a bomb under there.”

Leah closed her eyes and thought happy thoughts. This was going to take all the patience she could muster. “Now, Sylvie, I went and saw Eli Brown just like I promised I would.”

This got the girl's attention. Her eyes went wide and she moved closer to Leah. “What did he say? What happened? Did you mention me?”

“Slow down there, girl. Yes, I mentioned you. He told me in no uncertain terms that it would be a cold day in hell before he stepped anywhere near you. He said he deeply regrets what he done and that he can't possibly make amends to you so there's no point in even tryin' to apologize. So he won't be botherin' you. And he certainly ain't puttin' no bombs under your house.”

Sylvie looked disappointed and dubious at the same time.

“Sylvie,” Leah said, “the man is old. He's not the same as he used to be. He's done his time. He just wants to make peace with himself.”

“He's foolin' you.”

“No, he's foolin'
you,
” Leah said. “And that's sad, cuz he ain't even doin' anythin', and you're lettin' him control your life. He's harmless.”

“Then who opened my cellar door?”

“Nobody opened your goddamn door. The wind blew it open!” Leah stopped. She couldn't let herself get angry. “Listen,” she said, much more quietly and calmly, “I'm sorry, but I can't let you go on thinkin' Eli Brown's out to get you. It ain't healthy for anybody. It definitely ain't helpin' you get on with your life. Now I went and talked to the man. I don't know what else I can possibly do to make you believe me.”

“You honestly think the wind blew this door open? Even though it ain't ever blown open before?”

“I do,” Leah said, although she wasn't quite certain she really did. “And there's no real discernable footprints or scuff marks that I can make out anywhere around here in the dirt.”

“The dirt's hard packed here.”

“You'd still think I'd see somethin'. All I see is your shoe prints goin' back and forth toward this area from the back door. They've made a track. Even if there had been footprints, they're lost now. I really think it was the wind, Sylvie.”

“It hasn't been
that
windy. We've had windier times. It didn't blow open then.”

Leah shrugged. “I can't explain that. All I can say is that it makes no sense that someone would come and open your cellar door. Ask yourself why would they do it, Sylvie? To go into your crawl space and get all dirty? And why would they leave it open? Why not close it if they're gonna do something sneaky? Why leave evidence?”

This one seemed to stump Sylvie. She looked deep in thought.

“You really have to start askin' yourself questions like these,” Leah said. “Or you'll drive yourself crazy.”

“What if someone's tryin' to
make
me crazy?”

Leah didn't think that would be much of a challenge. But then she chided herself for having a thought like that gallop around her mind. “Nobody's trying to make you crazy, Sylvie. Again, ask yourself: Why? Why would someone want to make you crazy?”

Again Sylvie looked deep in thought.

“Exactly,” Leah said after a few seconds of silence. “There is no reason.”

Sylvie let out a deep breath. “I guess . . .”

“You gonna be okay?”

“I guess so.”

“How's the baby?”

“She's fine. Sleeps a lot.”

“I noticed she was sleepin' when I came in. That's better than cryin', ain't it?”

Sylvie shrugged. “I dunno. I like it when she's awake. I like the company.”

At that, Leah felt a twinge of pain in her heart for the girl. “Well, you just wait. Before you know it, she'll be fifteen and you'll wish she just kept quiet all the time. Trust me, I know.” Leah smiled.

Sylvie smiled back, but it was a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

“Well, speakin' of which, I best be goin'. I have to get home and make sure my kids don't starve themselves.”

Sylvie looked at the door still open where Leah had left it. “Okay.”

“You want me to close that 'fore I go?”

“No, I can do it.”

“Okay.” Leah took one more look around the yard. Then, right before heading toward the back door, she turned and asked Sylvie, “By the way, have you ever had a problem with rats?”

Sylvie looked confused. “Rats? What do you mean?”

“You know, rats. Have you ever had them in your house or anythin' and had to get rid of 'em somehow?”

“No, why?”

Leah shook her head. “Just wonderin'. I'll talk to you soon. In the meantime, you take care of yourself and that baby. And find her a name, goddamn it.”

Sylvie gave her a hint of a grin. “I'm tryin'.”

“Well, try harder.”

“Bye,” Sylvie said. “Thanks for comin' out.”

Leah walked into Sylvie's kitchen, hearing Sylvie swing the cellar door closed outside. Along with everything else, Leah now had a new unsettling feeling in her stomach because she really didn't like how tightly that wooden lock clasped between those two doors. Sylvie was right. It
was
very unlikely that the wind blew that door open.

J
ust like when she found Snowflake dead on her back doorstep, Sylvie couldn't get to sleep after finding the cellar door open outside. She hated the fact that the police wouldn't believe her. She didn't blame Officer Leah. If she was honest with herself, Sylvie doubted she'd believe her stories either. And she had called the police so
much,
she was almost like that boy in that story about the wolf.

But she felt so vulnerable, especially it just being her and the baby way up here all by themselves out amid all the woods like they were. But then, Sylvie never really had felt like she had anyone. Not since Caleb died, anyway. It always felt like people could just be taken out of her life so easily. And they had been. First Caleb, then Mother, then Pa. One by one, they was gone.

That's partly why she jumped at dating Orwin Thomas when she had the chance. He was the first boy to show interest in her. Sylvie had a difficult time with relationships of any sort. She had no friends at school. So when Orwin Thomas, the number-one tight end for the Satsuma Westland Eagles, asked her out, she felt compelled to say yes.

Unfortunately, it was only a month after they started dating that Orwin tore out his anterior cruciate ligament.

It was during a rivalry game between Satsuma Westland High and Mobile Evercrest High. At the half, the score was tied at seventeen. It was right at the top of the third quarter that it happened. The Mobile Evercrest Panthers kicked off to the Westland Eagles.

Terrance Williams caught the ball on the fifteen-yard line and managed to run it to the thirty-five. The offensive team took the field, led by quarterback Barrett Mosley. Orwin Thomas had played tight end for Mosley for a year and a half and Mosley trusted him as much or more than any other player on the team. That's how good Orwin Thomas was. He would tell Sylvie all the time about how much he had
college
written all over him. There was even talk that he'd be able to write his own ticket, that he could go wherever he wanted after he graduated: Ole Miss, LSU, or Alabama. Football was the one thing in this whole big world that Orwin Thomas was good at.

Then came the next huddle. The call was a pass to Orwin, who would run out and down the edge of the field ten yards before cutting back in to make the catch. Mosley made the count and Orwin started his run. In the stands, as she pretty near always was, Sylvie sat watching her man. She was damn proud of him.

Orwin made his run down the field and cut in behind the Panthers' defenders just as the football was sailing straight into his open hands. The throw was slightly high, so he had to jump for it.

That's when it happened.

Two hits at near on the exact same time.

One came from the front, the other from the side. Both came low, both caught his knee. The side hit may have come slightly ahead of the one from the front. They tore his ACL completely to shreds, ripping apart his knee.

Remarkably, Orwin made the catch. But it would be the last catch he'd ever make. The doctors told him he'd never play organized football again. Certainly, all thoughts of college flew out the window with that catch, because a football scholarship was the only way Orwin was going to college. He didn't have the smarts to do it any other way.

It turned out, other than football, he didn't have much ambition either. He dropped out of twelfth grade fewer than two months later. Sylvie knew then that things were taking a turn for the worse, but in the back of her mind she wanted to stay hopeful. After all, Orwin was all she had.

Even though he had been in the twelfth grade, she was only in the eleventh. Yet, she was two years older than him on account of her missing school due to what had happened to her when she was younger. She had been set back three years of schooling. After her pa died, Sylvie had spent a couple of years in foster care, but was on her own when she met Orwin. She reckoned now that was half the attraction for him: that she lived on her own and was pretty easy pickings—something she now hated herself for.

Orwin Thomas was eighteen when Sylvie let him move into her place in Alvin. Everything about their relationship was like fireworks. When the romance clicked, it went off like hand grenades. Except, usually, it wasn't so much the romance but Orwin's temper going off like firecrackers on the Fourth of July.

“Where's the goddamn beer?” Orwin liked to yell when he came home from work. He did a lot of odd jobs around town, but mostly he pulled late-night shifts at Emmett's garage. One particular evening he seemed downright ornery.

“Maybe you drank it?” Sylvie offered.

“I didn't goddamn drink it! Have you been drinking my beer, bitch?”

Sylvie tried to laugh off his anger. “No. I don't like beer.”

“Well, there was beer here last night, damn it!” He slammed the refrigerator door.

“Maybe we can go get some more?” Sylvie asked softly. She was always trying to keep his temper in check.

“With what? You think I'm goddamn made of money? I work and work and work my ass off and come home to this goddamn house and it's always a fucking pigsty.”

Sylvie looked around the house. She had spent the day cleaning it because she knew Orwin liked it clean. There was nothing she could do when he was like this. But she did feel bad for him. She knew he was hurting about losing his football scholarship and he
was
the one bringing home the money.

“Is dinner at least ready?” he asked.

“It will be in ten minutes.”

“What are we having?”

“Pork chops.”

She knew he wouldn't argue with that. Orwin loved pork chops.

“How 'bout I go get you some more beer?” Sylvie asked.

This is the way it usually went. She tried to keep him appeased because, many nights, neighbors would call the police after hearing him yelling at her through the thin-paned glass of their small house, calling her all sorts of things before sometimes stomping out into the dead of night, occasionally not to be heard from for a day or two.

Even with all this, if truth be told, Sylvie was still upset when he disappeared that night, especially with him leaving her three months pregnant and all when it happened. She didn't much like being yelled at, but she took it. It was part of her lot in life. And she
did
love him. When he wasn't yelling and things were good, she was almost happy. As happy as she could be, given all that was going on inside that head of hers. She knew, deep in his heart, Orwin Thomas was a good man. He may have yelled a lot, but he did treat her well. In her heart back then, she figured he'd never hit her. And if any man ever had, she would pity him, for Orwin Thomas would hunt that man down and kill him to his last breath.

That, Sylvie Carson was certain of.

She suffered through these thoughts late into the night until the light outside her window began to grow to a light pink. Then she managed to fall asleep for a little bit until the baby woke her up just a short while later, wanting to be fed.

M
y memory of visiting Preacher Eli that day with my mother continued to dig a great big hole in my stomach through the days that followed. I did not trust that man, nor did I like him living in my town. I decided something had to be done about it and, if my mother wasn't going to do anything, it was up to me and Dewey to.

I called Dewey on the phone and told him all about the meeting we had on the preacher man's doorstep and how he was crying those crocodile tears and all.

“I ain't never seen no croc cry,” Dewey said.

“That's what I mean,” I said. “I mean they wasn't real tears. He was just makin' 'em up to make my mom think he was sorry for everythin' he done.”

“Then why don't you just say that?”

“It's an expression.”

“I ain't never heard it before.”

“You ain't never heard a lot of stuff before,” I said.

“So you think he's up to no good?”

“No, I
know
he's up to no good.”

There was silence for a second or two and then Dewey said something dumb. “You know, this reminds me of somethin'.”

“What's that?”

“Your neighbor. Remember? You was sure he was up to no good. Turned out he wasn't.”

“Dewey, you was sure too, remember? And this is completely different. Preacher Eli was in prison for near on twenty years for killin' a little kid. Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow is just a carpenter.”

“Still, parts of it feel the same to me.”

“Well, it's different enough to me.” I was getting frustrated, wrapping the telephone cord around my finger, wishing he'd let me get to the part where I told him my plan.

“So, what do you want to do?” he asked finally.

“I say we go watch his house.”

“Again—” Dewey started, “this is soundin' like—”

“Dewey. The man was in
prison
.”

“So you want to go spy on a man who killed a kid? What if he catches us?”

“He ain't gonna catch us,” I said, now wrapping the telephone cord the other way.

“Why's that?”

“Cuz I'll have you with me.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you're the great inventor,” I said. “You're gonna invent a way for us not to be seen.”

There was another pause on the other end of the phone until Dewey came back with, “Okay, give me a few minutes to think of somethin'. Then I'll ride my bike over to your place.”

 

Dewey showed up about twenty minutes later on his bike with his inventor's notebook tucked in his pocket and a pair of garden shears and a roll of kite string in a small box in his carrier. “What are them for?” I asked. He had his rope scabbard tied around his waist and his wooden sword hung down his side from the wire tie.

He flipped open the notebook. “My brilliant design for hiding out. You told me there ain't nothin' but woods round where Preacher Eli lives.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So, we're gonna become part of the woods.”

In the notebook he'd drawn pictures of people with what looked like wings. Actually, to call them people were giving them far too much credit. They looked more like stick figures. “I don't get it. Are they angels?”

“No, they ain't angels. Those are branches of leaves tied to their arms. And down their bodies.”

“What's that on this one's head?”

“A branch.”

I stared at him, my eyes wide with disbelief. “You really are brilliant,” I said flatly.

He closed the book proudly and stuck out his chin. “I know. Let's go.”

We took our bikes and rode the route down Cottonwood Lane, which was the road we both lived on. Then we turned up Hunter Road, which was the road Preacher Eli lived on. Cottonwood Lane is a nice ride. Before we left, I decided to bring my sword along, too. You never knew when a weapon might come in handy on a job like this, and we'd basically started taking our swords with us everywhere we went. Dewey's design actually worked out really well—it didn't even interfere with bike riding.

Cottonwood Lane was fairly flat, and on either side, pretty little houses were nestled among gardens and a wide assortment of trees that were planted on purpose, so they looked good. We rode past cherry trees, tulip trees, and magnolias Near the end of the road, we even passed an orange tree in the front yard of a small blue house.

The ride up Hunter Road was a different story completely. There were very few houses along the way, and the ones we did pass were spaced very far apart and surrounded by thick, quiet forest that seemed to close in on the road the farther up we went. Most of the ride was uphill, which was exhausting. There were a few flowering trees in the front of the woods that I didn't know the names of, but mostly the trees were tall and dense, filling the edges of the street with oak, fir, birch, and pine. It seemed the higher we got, the darker the forest appeared, until we finally made the wooden bridge that passed over Blackberry Springs.

We pulled our bikes to a stop on the bridge. The water gurgled and sputtered beneath us. It ran a curved path splashing over and around rocks and stones, some of which looked almost as big as me. The smell of the water filled the air where I stood, leaning over the bridge. It tasted like nickels and pennies in my mouth.

“Preacher Eli's place is only another block up,” I told Dewey. “It's a shotgun shack on the left. There's no other houses around it.”

“Then we'll have to be extra careful when we get close. We can dump our bikes in there right before we reach it.” He indicated the deep ditch running along the right side of the road. “Then we'll dip into the woods and make the rest of the way on foot just behind the tree line.”

Looking at the blackness of the forest made me swallow hard. The woods appeared ancient to me, like some evil thing out of a storybook filled with monstrous trees of every shape and size. I didn't really want to go traipsing through those towering giants.

But I followed Dewey's lead and, just before coming in sight of Preacher Eli's house, we threw our bikes into the ditch as he suggested (but not before he removed the kite string and shears from his carrier), and began our trek into the woods. At first, I jumped at every creak and crack of leaf and branch breaking beneath my or Dewey's feet, but soon I relaxed a little. After a while, it became not so bad. It really was just another forest, although this one hadn't been walked through in some time, if ever. We had to cut our own path through vines, strangler fig, brambles, and briar as we went. It took quite a while to make the short distance from our bikes to where we could see Preacher Eli's house peeking through the space between the massive tree trunks.

“Okay,” Dewey said. “Now you have to climb one of the fir trees and start cutting off branches.”

“I ain't climbin' no tree,” I said. I was a terrible tree climber, for one thing. Even though I wasn't about to admit that.

“You have to. We need the branches.”

“
You
climb the tree. I'll hold the string.”

With a deep exhale, Dewey gave into the inevitable. “Fine. I'll need you to help me up to the first branch.”

It took us a while to get him into the tree, but once he was there, Dewey turned out to be not a bad tree climber at all. Over the years I had noticed this about Dewey. He had strange abilities at some things and then at other, normal things, a complete lack of ability.

At any rate, he was doing a fine job of scaling the tree and shearing off big branches of fir with lots of leaves along the way. Up he went, his sword dangling from his side with its tip pointing straight down at me. As each bough fell, it brought with it the fresh smell of sap. I collected them as they came down, inhaling the deep aroma of the leaves. All my senses were alive to the woods. Now that my eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, things no longer seemed so bleak and black. It all just looked very green. I placed all the boughs into a pile. Some did look like wings, much like the picture Dewey drew in his notebook. I wasn't about to tell
him
that, though.

“I think that's enough,” he whispered.

“Okay.”

He looked around beneath his feet. I immediately saw his problem. He'd cut off most of the branches he'd used to climb up the tree and now didn't have them to use to get down with. “Um, I'm kinda stuck.”

“Can you slide down?” I asked.

He looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Somewhere off in the distance the sound of a woodpecker echoed through the trees. It sounded like someone knocking two blocks of wood together.

“No,” he said. “Have you ever climbed a tree?”

“Not a lot. But I doubt if I did that I'd cut off my only way down as I went up. I think you'll have to jump.”

“I'm way too high up to jump.” I had to agree, he was quite high up.

“There are knots in the trunk sticking out along the way for a while below you. Can you use those to step on?”

Dewey kept looking around below him, as if some magical branches were about to appear. His lower lip twisted between his teeth. “You know, I have an invention in my book for just this very thing, but we don't have none of the stuff to build it.”

“Ain't that always the way,” I said.

Finally, he gave into the inevitable and used my idea. Slowly and deliberately, he came down, putting his feet on the knobs extending from the trunk. A few times his foot slipped off and my breath caught in my throat. I thought for sure he was going to fall and wind up stabbing himself in the side with his own sword, but somehow he managed to hang on. Then he got low enough that it wasn't so scary anymore.

“Okay, I think I can jump now. Can you catch me?”

“No.”

“You have to.”

“Okay,” I lied.

He jumped and I stepped back out of the way. He landed on the soft forest floor, right on his rear end. Looking up at me, he asked, “What happened to catching me?”

“I told you I wasn't going to.”

“Then you said you would.”

“The second one's always a lie,” I said.

He shook his head, wiping dirt from his shorts and his legs. “Whatever. Let's just get these branches tied on so we can start our stakeout. I'll tie yours on, then you tie mine.”

It took another twenty minutes or so to dress up as fir trees. When we were done, Dewey looked remarkably like the stick man he'd drawn and I kind of felt bad about laughing at his sketches earlier. We both had big branches of fir leaves on our arms like wings, one coming down the front of our body, and one drooping over our head like some weird bird. I had to say, we did blend in much better with the green of the tree leaves and bushes around us than we had before we tied all the branches on.

Quietly, we crept to the front of the tree line right along the roadside that looked directly across at Preacher Eli's house. Both of us lay on the ground and propped up our heads with our hands on our elbows. We knew we were going to be here a long time, so we might as well get comfortable.

Well, as comfortable as we could be covered in itchy tree branches.

 

Leah felt odd pulling the Brown/Carson file from the archive drawer. She figured she must've been the first person to touch it since her pa put it there seventeen years or so ago. It made her remember her original days on the force, joining not because she wanted to, but because she
had
to. It was a year before she became pregnant with Abe and, with Billy's work being so sporadic, they needed the extra income.

She had been at her pa's house when he talked her into coming on board. It was right before his cancer got so bad. They had only gotten to spend barely two months working together before he had to quit.

“You'll come work for the department,” he had said, but she'd only laughed.

“I ain't no cop,” she'd said. “Remember that time you took me huntin'? It was the one and only time I ever shot a gun.” She was sitting on the flowered sofa that was more the size of a loveseat. Like everything in her folks' home, it looked and felt brand-new. It was the way her ma had kept things, back while she was still here.

“You were bound to hit something. You were shakin' so bad you were aimin' at the entire forest,” he said, and smiled. “But bein' a cop is different. We'll train you. This ain't a question, by the way.” Pa sat at an angle across the small coffee table from her in the Queen Anne chair. He had his large elbows resting on the curled armrests, but they barely stayed there. He was a man who liked to conduct while he spoke.

“What makes you think Chief Montgomery would even
want
me?” she asked. “It would be complete favoritism.”

“He's big on favoritism.”

She rolled her eyes.

Her pa pointed at her. “I'll tell you one thing. He's big on you. And you can say this 'bout that man. If ever there was anyone whose heart was bigger than his brains, he's the one.”

She threw a tasseled pillow at him. “You're not very nice. I happen to like Chief Montgomery.”

“You won't. He's a son of a bitch when you work for him.”

“I'm
not
comin' to work for the department. I ain't no cop.”

Pa suddenly grew all concerned. He leaned forward, but before he could talk, Caroline went toddling down the hallway chasing her pa's Irish setter, Putter, with a squeal. Leah's pa waited for the noise to die down. “Leah, you have to start thinkin' 'bout your next move. You can't feed that kid on dreams, wishes, and stardust. I wish you could. Please. Take my offer.”

“Don't you need to discuss this with Chief Montgomery?”

“Hang on.”

Picking up the phone beside him, he made a call into the station and right then and there told (not asked) Ethan Montgomery that his daughter was coming on board to work as an officer at the Alvin Police Department. The call barely lasted a moment.