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Authors: Diane Munier

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BOOK: Deep in the Heart of Me
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Chapter 64

 

Joseph comes over to Uncle John's that first night.

Sobe has not stayed on our farm but has returned to Miss Rivers' house.

She'd been upset when I didn't come home, Joseph said.

"Maman was worried, and Miss Rivers spoke of taking Sobe to the hospital. She thought you were in jail again," my brother says.

"That is where I was headed, but it turned out differently," I say.

I look away from him. He is like I used to be, just a boy who farms and can hit a baseball, catch one too. Just a boy who doesn't think much past the end of his nose. Just wide-eyed and happy.

"She said she wanted to go back to town to be by you," he says.

I do look at him now. These are grown things to be saying. I don't know as he's ever thought about such a thing as love.

"Miss Rivers took her home, well Dad did, in the truck."

I think about that Luger under the front seat unless Dad took it from under there. Hard telling what he'd do with it.

"I got to follow with Miss Rivers and ride the bean!" he says all joyous.

"That all you care about, time like this?" I say.

It takes the starch out of him some.

Maybe I'm jealous, I don't know. I pretty much ruined his happy story, and it felt mean and kind of good even though I'd been planning to do better by him.

Next day he found out they had shipped Sheriff's body up north to be buried beside his murdered wife. Miss Rivers claimed she would travel there with Sobe when she was better if that's what she wanted.

Now that bothered me a whole lot, Miss Rivers planning to take Sobe off to do that. I couldn't imagine Sobe standing at those two graves without me there to help her. I am sorry all over that I've had anything to do with one of them. Then really quickly I am not sorry she is free of Sheriff. But Miss Rivers, who does she think she is anyway?

I write Sobe another letter for Joseph to deliver. I admit I am tempted to deliver it myself, but I am thinking twice about my spur-of-the-moment inclinations.

Joseph said Sobe had been worried she would keep me from my own home if she'd stayed on. What she didn't know is, I have been known to live part time at Uncle John's, particularly when Pat runs dogs or we harvest. Or sometimes when Aunt Christah makes sausage or puts up peaches or makes jam. Then there's chess. I've broken through two feet of snow in the black of night to finish a game against Uncle John when Pat or Mike wouldn't play him.

And baseball. There are no small children there to spoil the game as it comes over the radio. I've listened to many innings in Aunt Christah's parlor, not that I paid much attention this past October, even though the Gashouse Gang took the series.

So she's no need of Miss Rivers. Doesn't that woman have school to teach? Anyway, she should of stayed on the farm. I want Sobe to come back.

'Be near me,' I write. I write that. Not the Miss Rivers part, but, 'be near me.'

Well, I send that by Joseph's hand and lo and behold if he does not return with a letter but a box. Inside is a big lock of Sobe's hair tied in a red ribbon. And a note reading, "I am always near you."

At first, I am taken by the note. 'Always near me.' It's a comfort to know her feelings are that way.

But I can't believe she would give this to me—her hair! I worry that it's too much. I mean—too much! It's thick! It is so thick I fear she's gone bald. Can worry cause someone to lose all of their beautiful hair?

I question Joseph. "Was she bald?" I say.

"She wore a scarf. Like a gypsy," he says. He's chewing gum, and that's making me mad. I don't know why. I think I want to be mad.

I have no idea if she's cut her beautiful hair like a boy. I asked her not to touch it. Why would she ruin her beautiful hair?

Whatever it means, I go to sleep that night holding onto that ponytail. I wouldn't admit this in daylight, but I hold it against my face, over my eyes and it's damp after.

I am a worried man.

Next day I write again thanking her for those words about being near and her hair and hoping she didn't ruin it cause I do love it so much. I tell her that. If any is left, maybe she will think twice before hacking it off too.

Once again she writes but does not mention her hair. But she is the one to tell me we have a date to be heard in judge's chambers in Springfield one week away.

As soon as I get hopeful we can have that long trip together, Sobe writes that Miss Rivers will be driving her in her father's Ford a day early so she can rest before seeing the judge.

I am not easily defeated. But Miss Rivers is about twanging my nerves like a banjo. I say to myself, okay, you are not traveling to Springfield with Sobe, but I let my dread over testifying lighten considerably by the hope I have of seeing my one true love in Springfield. And I don't miss the fact that she must rest like she is Maman or something but in this world, I have to be patient when I can't get to this girl I love because only God can fly around and be at two places same time.

And one thing's for sure. I am not God.

And neither is Miss Pat Rivers.

 

Dad and me have left in the dark the night before court. He is quiet. I wonder if he's got conscience over killing Belly like maybe it will change him, whiten his hair or make his hands shake, but he is just Dad, driving quiet and eating a bacon sandwich.

He looks at the cold turned land all the way to Springfield. He even pulls over a few times to study someone's ground like he sees a new something he hasn't seen before.

White birds flock over the dark earth picking it clean. The sky is two shades darker like the sun can't penetrate this gray world. I think maybe people who write poems write them on days like these and they are not the happy ones, but the ones that make you hate poetry.

So we get to the city around nine in the morning, and we are to meet with the judge at ten. Maman wanted us to take the train but Dad said no we would take the truck, and he could bring home parts for the tractor and some things from the store there as he is always killing a whole flock of birds with one stone if possible. Even the day his son goes before the judge he is thinking of the farm and the family. It's just like that. And maybe it makes this normal almost.

I am all eager to see Sobe. Here I've been living a mile from her and not a sight of her so now I am starving to see her.

After this, I can see her all I want, and I haven't asked Dad, but I plan to ride home with her. That's my idea anyway, and I am pretty determined on it.

But we buy a breakfast I can barely eat at a place selling pancakes big as the plate, and then we get to the courthouse, and it is a big imposing place all right. Well, I am a fish out of water, anyway, even in these Sunday clothes and Pat's outgrown overcoat.

The buildings here strike God's fear in me some. I think about Sobe and she knows these places. I don't know why I ever thought I had a chance with her. But I did. And I do think that.

So I am pacing in the hall with the shiny floor and the pictures of important men who I admire and do not trust if such a thing can be done. So I am touching her picture for it rarely leaves me and I know it's getting wear, but until I have her, it fills in.

And a door opens and a slight girl and Miss Pat Rivers. I didn't even know Sobe was here, and she's already been in to see the old man, and here I was the whole time watching the top of the stairs.

First off, she's cut her hair. Clean off. She's wearing a hat, and it's tight on her head, and I can see the chopped ends.

Second, she is blue under her eyes, and she is tiny and pale. Sobe is suffering.

"What…," I say going right to her, my hand on her thin arm, thin under her coat even.

"Oh Tonio," she says as if I've been sent to God's left hand.

"It's all right," I say, but there is a pit in my stomach.

The lady in the doorway, not Miss Rivers, is calling me, and it sounds bonkers, but I'm kind of surprised they know my name here, in this big place.

I want to kiss Sobe's forehead at least, give her some encouragement. But Miss Rivers is right there, and Dad and I have to go. Dad is on his feet, his hat in his hand. I grab my cap off my head and look back at Sobe. I smile, but this is a fix, and I know it.

So we get in there, and it's an office, and the lady is wearing perfume, and it's a flower garden, sickly so like someone died, but I don't have time to think it before she opens a bigger door, and it's cigars then, also disgusting, so in we go, and the judge is behind a big desk, and he motions us to the two chairs in front of the big block of wood.

Before Dad sits, he leans over the desk and introduces himself and then me. He puts out a hand to shake and the judge waves he should sit, and Dad looks at me like, 'get your ass in the chair,' and so I do. And I've got a bad feeling before we speak a word.

Chapter 65

 

My eyes keep moving to the American flag standing tall to the side and behind Judge's desk. It drapes in several long pleats from its golden stand. We learned in school there is no official meaning for the colors, but that's not how we've been taught at home—red for the blood men like my father have spilled to make us free, white for the purity of those ideals we protect, blue for valor and courage and never giving up the cause of freedom.

I am always moved at how much the flag seems to mean to my dad. "Don't let it touch the ground boyos," he says to us on the Fourth of July.

He followed our flag into war. And anytime we sing God Bless America, my dad puts his hat over his heart and has taught my brothers and me to do the same, and my dad sings out, 'Land that I love,' and all the rest like his heart will break.

For me, loving this country is loving our land and town, the home of my family. And that flag stands for all of it.

But here I know it a new way. It's like that flag isn't just mine but belongs to the government and it's listening to the judge tell me how serious a matter it is to be so connected to the death of an officer of the law in these United States.

That has settled on me long before. The day of Sheriff's death I went from struggling on the floor with him to looking in the eyes of Sobe. If Judge Moeller thinks I don't know it was something terrible to feel that gun go off and drive another bullet into Sheriff, then he and his soft looking hands with the trimmed white nails and his sweaty temples and upper lip and cold colorless eyes are sadly mistaken.

My father has schooled me well. "Every picture has a frame, boyo, and here is how you will frame what happened with Sheriff."

Ned did not officially link Dad's gun to Shaun's death. Otto Smith gave statement that Shaun was hit during the night of mischief. It was moving toward Shaun's death being accidental. And it was.

I think Dad killed Belly as much for Ned as for me. Belly got out of line and meant to be his own boss is what I think, and Otto was only allowed to run numbers and all the rest cause he kissed the law's ring. Belly didn't have that sense of neighborliness.

I think that's how it worked. When I asked Dad if he killed Belly for Ned, he said, "Never say such a thing again long as you live." But that don't keep me from thinking it.

So I tell my story to the judge, and he asks questions and questions and questions like why I had a gun in the first place.

I tell him me and Sobe were going to the city, and I wanted to protect her, and Dad says, "Country boys. You know Judge," and Judge tells Dad to keep still, or he'll have to wait in the lobby.

So as it stands and true as I'm being in telling it, it doesn't sound so good, especially when it fans out to include the business with Shaun. It's not a good story is what I mean. And he has statements from so many people, Ned, Jim and his dad, Pat, Sobe. Bottom line, I was running off with a girl and a man protected his daughter and who could blame him, that's kind of what it comes out like.

Appears there are problems all the way through. It's a story of a boy who doesn't think, who sets things in motion that get people hurt and ultimately killed.

I get people killed is what he's saying.

My dad tries to protest, and he has to sit against the wall, and next step is out the door.

I know then, right then I'm going away. I'm going somewhere because he's not going to let a boy like me loose on peaceful society.

So when he says a year at The State Industrial School for Boys and my dad starts to yell about me having a father, and that's a place for boys without a dad, I don't even want to fight at all. I just sit and watch the two men pull dad out, and I don't even feel like I'm really in the room.

The judge is still talking, and the red, white and blue stands there like we've never met, or maybe we have, just now.

I am escorted to another room, a windowless office where I sit alone and a lady brings me a glass of water, but she doesn't smile. After a spell, my dad comes in, and he looks like he ran through a tornado, but he's got his hat, and he's twirling it some. "Look, boyo, we made a big mistake not going to trial with a jury of common folks who can see you aren't some wandering bum without a family…," and it jars me some when he chokes up and puts his head down, and it's quiet, but there's a shake in his shoulders.

When he lifts his head, he's swallowed it, and he looks me in the eye, "I'll get a solicitor," there's a steely set in his voice, "and we'll fight the daylights out of this, Tonio. I can't go home without my boy," he says again his voice choking as his head goes down once more, "your mother…."

Then he lifts quick and shouts, "What did I fight for this damn country for if I have to see my own son locked up…."

"Dad," I say standing. "It will be all right. You have to tell Maman it will be fine. Otherwise…."

He's nodding, and I'm thrown to see he's listening to me for once.

"It's only a year," I say, and the room swims and I sit back down and feel sick, those big pancakes I'd forced down from breakfast are crawling up my throat.

A whole year.

BOOK: Deep in the Heart of Me
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