Falling to Earth (21 page)

 

A car passing the burn site slows, reverses a ways and then stops. The driver gets out slowly, and as he walks toward the solitary man he'd seen from the car who had seemed to be jumping up and down beside the fire there, he sees that what the man is doing is stomping on a board, breaking it with the heel of his boot. The board broken, the pieces thrown on the fire, the man stands silently now watching it smoke. The driver of the car does little more at first than stand there, too. He puts his hands into his pockets and cocks his head a little to signal that he is at ease, that he'd stopped because the plume of smoke had been interesting and nothing more.

What's burning today?

Graves's lumber.

You gotta be joking. New lumber? Paid for?

Yeah.

Well, then why the hell burn it?

Don't want it. Don't want to use it. Figured I'd drive over to Johnsboro and buy my lumber there. Truck it back myself.

Well now, that's a curious thing.

Think so?

Yes, I do. I guess a man'd have to have a pretty good reason to do such a thing.

I guess you'd be right.

 

Word gets around and triggers something in the town. Some of the men are roused to action; to what they can do now, if they choose it. They are few at first, the ones who broadcast the slanders, telling anyone who will listen that Graves Lumber is profiting from their misfortunes. Is, has, and will continue to profit so long as anything in town needs rebuilding. These men feel a twinge of misgiving when they first issue their calumnies, a twist in the belly that comes as they say the words
Paul Graves himself figured it this way,
but their words spread like a blight, and in other people's mouths begin to sound like truth.

Didn't want to see people using scavenged lumber, is what he said. Folks should rebuild with new lumber.

I heard that. Said he didn't think it was safe.

Scavenged? Hell, we called it used in my day. My daddy gave me a hammer and taught me to straighten bent nails when I was five years old. We didn't throw out a thing then if it still had some use in it.

I thought he said folks might as well buy new, seeing as how the money was coming from the insurance or the Red Cross.

Sounded like an okay idea at the time. Now every time I see those goddamn new boards stacked up at home I think of everything I carted off to burn.

I did it, too, and I sure wasn't brought up to waste. I guess it seemed like too much trouble to sort through it all then. Seemed easier to just haul it all off and start fresh.

Graves said that, too. Start fresh.

Like he'd know a thing about that.

 

The evening the men make their pyre is unusually fine; clear and unseasonably balmy. These are the men who labored together side by side to burn the wreckage after the storm. But this fire is a different sort of fire and the expressions on the faces ringing it have changed. And unlike those nights last spring, there are no women or children present here. Only men with their fixed, stony faces; only men bent on doing a kind of murder.

S
ay that again, Ellis,” Lavinia says slowly. “Tell your daddy exactly what you told me.”
“They said their daddies burned it, every scrap.”

Lavinia looks to Paul, unable to keep an impassive expression on her face. “Why ever would they say such a thing?”

“Because it's probably true,” Paul says. He's holding Ellis's arm, though he'd take him on his lap if he thought the boy would let him. “Did they say anything else?”

“Willie Starks said his daddy said he wished he could take his frame down and burn that, too.”

Paul stands and takes Ellis by the shoulders. “You tell me if they say anything else like that to you. You hear?” Ellis nods. “Don't tell Ruby or Homer about this.”

“They already know, Daddy. They were standing right there with me.”

Paul squeezes Ellis's shoulders, gives him a nod to say that they are done, and then catches him by the hand as he's turning to run upstairs and says in a low voice, “Don't tell your mama.”

Once Ellis has gone, Paul sits on the davenport looking at his hands. He'll have to say something in a minute to reassure his mother. It's a mistake, she'll want him to say. Children can be so cruel, but it will certainly all blow over. She'll make him promise to find out about it somehow, wait for him to report that it was just a misunderstanding, and all this without letting Mae know that something might be wrong. And then there's his gut that knows it's true, his gut that has gone cold and is waiting for him to simply look up at his mother and say, “They did it.”

There's no one left he could possibly ask, although he reckons there are those who would relish telling him the truth of it. He'll have to say something about it down at the lumberyard of course, and then he'll have to stand there and see in their faces that they knew about it before he told them, that they weren't a bit surprised, even that they'd seen it coming. In truth, Paul can't imagine anyone being shocked by it, anyone except his mother, of course, who, agitated as she is, would go on dismissing the story as malicious nonsense until he forced a piece of the charred lumber into her hand.

It's confounding, the completeness of the transformation in the town. Just six months have passed since the storm; half of one year and two seasons behind them and every last thing has been made unrecognizable. Paul sees now that it was foolish of him to have thought that anything would stay the same, although a person could be forgiven for having wished it could be true. There were things that had only wanted washing, after all. Washing or changing, nothing more. A person who was left unhurt by the storm could clean off the mud and look just as he had before. A person whose home was still standing could wash the windows and look through the glass just the same and sit in the same chair on the same patch of floor as he had only the day before. A person could be forgiven for never having dreamed that the storm would leave other men willing to maim.

 

There's a knock at the back door after dinner. Paul knows somehow that it's for him and he shoos the children out of the kitchen before he opens the door.

“Scoot,” he says. “Go find your mama.” He opens the door to a man at the bottom of the stoop standing half turned around and looking at the street behind him.

“Hello, Ben,” Paul says.

“I have to talk to you. In private,” Ben Eavers says, looking over Paul's shoulder into the house.

Paul closes the door softly behind him and follows Ben into the dark yard. The children are telling Mae and his mother now that Mr. Eavers has come to the back door to talk to Daddy. They will know better, all of them, than to come back into the bright kitchen where they can be seen from outside, but likely enough that will only drive them upstairs to one of the back bedrooms to listen there, instead. Paul glances up and wonders which bedroom they're all standing in now. It could be either the boys' room or Lavinia's; the windows are raised in both.

“You heard what's been happening?” Ben asks him.

“Yes,” Paul frowns at him. He can see that Ben is standing there like a child who has just admitted to some misdeed, his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his eyes flitting about.

“Well, it's not over yet.”

“What do you mean? What else can they burn?”

Ben shakes his head. “They've burned all they're gonna burn.”

“What then?”

“Folks aren't gonna buy from you anymore. They're planning to buy in Johnsboro from now on. They mean to put you out of business.”

Paul wonders whether his mother is the one listening to this upstairs through an open window, or if it's Mae. He could easily force Ben to speak to him in a whisper or make him walk further away from the house into the yard, but he feels rooted to the spot he's standing on, determined to speak in a normal voice.

“I figured that much out for myself already,” Paul says. “What I can't figure out is why.”

Ben looks up into the branches of the mulberry tree above them. His arms are folded across his stomach. Paul watches him pulling at the hairs on his forearm like he's plucking a chicken.

“If you know what they're doing, you know why,” Paul says.

“I can't answer for all of them.”

“But you could make a pretty good guess.”

“Have you tried to see this thing from the other side?” Ben whispers harshly.

“You know me better than that. That's just about all I've done!”

“Then you should know it's just too much. You can't expect folks to come dancing into your store, hand you their money, and thank you for the privilege. You're the only one who didn't get hit, Paul. The only one.”

“I can't help that! I can't do a damn thing about it!”

“They know that, they just can't stand being reminded of it every day. They're saying you fixed things this way, so people would have to buy from you.”

Paul's eyes narrow in warning. “I know you don't mean to say folks think I arranged the storm.”

“Did you or did you not tell people that they shouldn't rebuild with anything from the wreckage?”

Paul stares at Ben, silent and breathless. “I did,” he finally says.

“They're saying you set out to make a better profit that way, that you knew you'd sell more if you told folks it was only safe to build with new lumber.”

“I told them that because it is safer! Because there was hardly anything left in the wreckage they could have built with, anyway! I was all over town, Ben. I saw it for myself.”

“That's what they're saying. I don't necessarily think it's what everyone believes. It's just got to where folks can hardly stand to look at you.”

“What about you?” Paul says, surprised by his own composure. “What do you see when you look at me?”

Paul sees a flicker of something in Ben's face. Was it shame, he wonders, or regret? It doesn't matter; he's losing another friend and being made to watch it this time.

Ben answers, “I see my old friend, Paul Graves.”

“Is that so.”

Ben's eyes are pleading. “That's why I'm here. That's why I wanted to warn you.”

“Then can't you tell them? Can't you say I never wanted this?”

“They wouldn't listen.”

Paul sees that his old friend is agitated and itching to leave. “Does Frances know you're here?” he asks.

Ben looks back at Paul hard, without flinching. “No.”

“And you're not planning on telling her.” Paul exhales and gives him a rueful smile. “I expect she'll want you to drive to Johnsboro from now on,” he says, and Ben nods. “Tell me, Ben, did Frances tell you to burn your lumber, or did you decide that all by yourself?”

“Please, Paul, she's my wife—”

Paul looks up at the row of bedroom windows. “I understand,” he says. “Loyalty should be an abiding thing.” He turns his eyes toward the ground, unable to look back at Ben who is waiting now for Paul to be the one to walk away as a last courtesy to an old friend.

“I wonder where that bit about the scapegoat is,” Paul says. “Maybe Genesis.”

“What?”

Paul smiles and his eyes flick up at Ben's before he turns to go inside. “Never mind,” he says. “Mother will know.”

 

He finds them upstairs sitting in the dark on the boy's beds, all of them there together by the open window, just as he'd worried. Now, suddenly, he wants to shout and kick the dresser and punch his fist right through the wall, but he leans against the door jamb instead and manages to say in a calm voice, “Bedtime. Please go brush your teeth.” He touches each of the children's heads as they pass him in the doorway, then says, “I'll be downstairs,” to Mae and Lavinia, and turns out of the dark bedroom into the light of the hall.

He can hear them from the kitchen. Bare feet thumping on floorboards, the toilet flushed, then flushed again, the medicine cabinet opened and slammed shut. The voices are hushed, though, and he can guess at what they're whispering. He should go upstairs again, he knows it. He should tuck the children in, let them see his face, but he tells himself it's their mother they'll want now, not him, and he stays where he is at the kitchen table, searching in his mother's Bible.

Lavinia comes into the kitchen first, rubbing her palms on her dress and avoiding his eye.

“Before you start, Paul, we had no idea of what Ben would say.”

“Didn't you?”

“No! How could we? You didn't know, either.”

“I knew he wasn't here to ask me what I'd like for my birthday.”

“Don't you sass me. You know what I mean.”

“Mother, Ben Eavers and I have been friends since high school. He just came to my back door after dark. He didn't want anyone to see him. He didn't even tell his wife where he was going.”

Paul continues to leaf blindly, flipping pages back and forth, no longer able to read the words. He shoves the Bible across the table to Lavinia. “Help me find it, Mother. The part about the scapegoat.”

Lavinia takes hold of the Bible slowly. “Whatever for?”

“I'll never find it. Please, just help me.”

Lavinia smoothes her palms out across the pages. “It's in Leviticus,” she says and places her thumb on the gold tab that reads “Lev”. She looks up when she has found it and Paul says, “Read it.”

She reads in a quiet steady voice, even though Paul's insistence has made her afraid of the words.

“‘But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.'”