Fat Lightning (20 page)

Ten feet behind him and he still hasn't heard nothing. He's breathing hard, and I think for a minute how he smoked them cigarettes all the time, and how if he had of been in better shape, he might of not been so out of breath and might of heard me.

He's dug it up, I can see that. And he's opened it. One of 'em must of got the combination, or picked the lock. I can hear him cussing, the bad words coming out every time he catches his breath. “God damn black whore. Fucking cunt.” Just terrible language. And he's a-crying. I near-bout felt sorry for him, because it's right clear to me already that she's fooled us both. But then I think about what all was in that box, and what's not in it now.

Daddy said not never to trust banks.

He said he'd of been a rich man now if he'd of just dug him a hole in the back yard and buried all he saved in the '20s. When Monacan Trust closed the doors in 1932, it like to of wiped Momma and Daddy out. And Daddy would always point out the bank president to me when I was with him in town, how he didn't look like he'd lost a thing, just kept on wearing them fine suits and driving a new car.

Hell, Daddy said, he probably buried his money in a sock in the back yard. He had more sense than to put it in any damn bank.

After the bank lost all Daddy's money, they had the nerve to repossess his John Deere 'cause he couldn't keep up the payments. We plowed with a mule for six years after that.

I let Sebara talk me into putting the Jesus money in an account, but it didn't set right with me. She told me it was OK, that we'd just be putting it there for a little spell 'til we got enough to break ground on the shrine we was going to build.

Should of put it right out here under the grapevine with all the rest of it. But now that's gone, too.

If Daddy got a little money for his tobacco or his beans or for clearing some land, he'd give Momma some and he'd bury the rest, right out here by the grapevine. He dug up some for Holly's wedding, and he give some to Carter and Aileen and Grace for their young'uns' education, not that any of 'em appreciated it. I reckon a lot of folks took to keeping what money they could save in jars and socks and such after the Depression hit, but Daddy didn't never stop doing it, not 'til he died in 1946.

The day after we buried him, Momma had me take a shovel and dig up the strong box. We counted near-bout $25,000, some of it in tens and twenties, some of it in silver dollars. Momma told me to take the silver dollars.

“You got it coming to you,” she said. “He didn't dig up none of it for you.”

There was 87 of 'em. I never did spend them, just give some away.

When we went through the plunder room after Momma died, we found hundreds of dollars that she must of hid in mattresses and such up there. It was like a damn Easter egg hunt, me and Carter and the girls trying to see who could find the most.

But I been putting money into that old strong box for 25 years since Daddy died, and, Lord, there must of been $50,000 in there if there was a cent.

Oh Lord! There's always somebody coming around to mess things up! I didn't want none of this. All I wanted was for to be left alone. I didn't ask for no vision on my barn, and I sure didn't ask for anybody to steal everything I ever saved, leaving me here looking like a fool.

The hoe shakes in my hand, not 'cause I'm scared, but because I'm fighting the urge to start smashing down on that boy's skull right now. But I got to get closer. Little closer
…

I can't get the hoe much higher than my head, can't bring it all the way back like I want to, because of the grapevine up above me. But the first lick hits him clean in the back of his head. It seems like he must of heard the hoe whistling through the cold night air, because he made just a twitch before it hit him. The hoe sinks in a little bit, and I have to yank hard to pull it out, like when you hit a green piece of wood with the axe and it just closes in around the blade. He screams a little, like a pig at hog-killing, and he rolls over.

I keep on hitting him, and you can't hardly tell he's got a face no more after a while. I reckon I must of kind of blanked out, and this goes on for what must of been a right good while, because when I stop, my arms ache from bringing it down so many times. So many times.

I look at the hoe handle, and there's yellow hairs all caught up in it, stuck with all the blood. The boy, you don't want to look at him. There's part of a hand that don't even touch anything else, and the ground is soaked.

I go back to the house and turn on the outside faucet. I wash all the blood and hair off the hoe. Then I put it back where I picked it up.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The strange thing to Nancy, now that Marilou and Buddy are dating, is that he and Pat act as if they can't get enough of each other. They go to Richmond Braves baseball games, have a beer afterward at Chiocca's and seem like long-lost friends united at last. It's hard for Nancy to believe that Pat withheld money for her college education because she married Buddy out of high school.

She mentions this to Pat in a quiet moment when Suzanne is clearing the dishes and father and daughter are sitting on chaise lounges on the back porch, Wade leaning contentedly against his grandfather.

“Well,” Pat says, cutting his eyes toward his daughter as he takes the Miller tall-neck from his lips, “he's grown up a lot. He's not the same shithead used to take you parking out by the airport.

“Besides,” he says, as a prelude to taking another sip, “you were the oldest.”

The silence in the O'Neils' back yard is broken only by the sound of televisions leaking through look-alike brick ranchers up and down the street. It is a pleasant squawk to Nancy, reminiscent of her loud, happy childhood here, promising a Monopoly game soon with both parents and all children old enough to roll the dice eligible to play.

The last sunlight is hitting high in the oaks, which always turn more quickly in the city, Nancy has noticed. It's sweater weather, and they'll have to go in soon, but she feels more relaxed than she has in days. She makes a note to get a chaise lounge for their back porch in Monacan. Assuming, she quickly corrects herself, that she will have a back porch in Monacan much longer.

She was out on the highway, headed for Richmond, half an hour after Sam left. Nancy tries to plan her “home visits” on nights and weekends when Sam's gone, as much as possible. Her family wants to like Sam, she honestly believes, but his silences just make them louder and more outrageous than usual. Quiet is not something with which the O'Neils are comfortable.

Nobody asks about Sam, but nobody asks about Buddy either, despite the fact that Suzanne and Pat obviously know something's not quite right. Nancy appreciates the rare deference shown by her parents, whose invasions of her privacy kept her blushing for most of her adolescent years. She almost envied friends who complained that their parents never told them anything about sex. Suzanne and Pat were shameless, laughing uproariously at each other's dirty jokes and inviting their children to do the same.

“Nancy, honey,” Suzanne told her when she was only 13, just introduced to spin-the-bottle at birthday parties, “boys can be real nice, but you've got to remember: A stiff dick has no conscience.”

She and Marilou used to howl in their shared double bed at night over the directness of Suzanne's and Pat's advice. Nancy gives an involuntary snort of a laugh now, remembering her mother's earnest look on that long-ago day.

Pat gives a start.

“Almost time for the game,” he says.

It's the night of the third game of the World Series. Suzanne tells Nancy that Candy is bringing a boyfriend, and Robbie said he and his date might stop by later.

“You know,” Nancy says to her mother, who's popping popcorn, “you can invite Marilou and Buddy. It doesn't matter.”

“Hell,” Suzanne says, “I did invite them. Marilou said they might come over later, just to watch you throw up in the rose bushes.”

Nothing, Nancy thinks to herself, is sacred around here.

Eventually, 15 people are squeezed into the O'Neils' 15×14 living room. Nancy puts Wade to bed in the third inning, and she squeezes into an opening along the floor, between Robbie and Candy's date. She wonders, not for the first time, why some people's houses seem to have neon welcome signs out front. There were plenty of living rooms, plenty of houses, larger than her parents' when she was growing up, but anyone in the neighborhood missing a kid always checked at the O'Neils' place first.

Marilou and Buddy do make it, and Nancy and Buddy nod in passing a couple of times. During the seventh-inning stretch, they run into each other in the hallway leading to the guest bathroom.

“Have you forgiven me?” he asks her.

“Nothing to forgive you for.”

“Can we be friends, even if I marry Marilou?”

“It depends on what you call friends,” Nancy says.

Buddy backs away a step, palms upraised. “No. No. I mean, friends-friends. I just don't want you to hate me.”

Nancy gives him a hug. “Not frigging likely,” she says.

“You and Sam getting along?” he asks her.

“Yeah. Great,” she lies, “as long as he doesn't find out about you. Why do you ask?”

Buddy puts his hands in his pockets and leans against the wall.

“Well,” he says, “I don't think what happened would have happened if everything was great.”

“It's OK,” she tells him. “I think it's going to be OK.”

Saturday, Nancy and Suzanne go shopping and then to a movie. They and Pat and Robbie and his date go to a Chinese restaurant for dinner Saturday night. Nancy's fortune reads: “Love will return and grow.” She hopes it's an optimistic sign. Pat tells a joke about a great Dane with long toenails.

She leaves Richmond at 2 Sunday afternoon because she's promised Sam's parents that she and Wade will come by. Marie's brother from Ohio, an old widower who has never seen either of them, is in town.

Nancy thought she had become accustomed to the silences of Sam's family. After a weekend with Pat and Suzanne, though, the ticking of the clock between terse sentences weighs on her. She gets up every 10 minutes to check on Wade, playing in the back yard with toys his grandparents have bought just for his visits.

“Do you remember Ansel Wagram?” Marie asks her brother.

He looks puzzled. Finally, he says, “I was in school with a Wagram.”

“That's the one,” Marie says.

Silence.

Finally, “Well, I guess I don't remember him too well.”

“He died.”

Silence.

Nancy finds herself blending into her environment.

When she first met Sam's parents, Carter or Marie would ask her a question about her family, and she would launch into a five-minute story about something insane that Suzanne or Pat or one of her siblings had done. She soon realized, though, that the Chastains weren't so much listening politely to her as sitting open-mouthed at such an eruption of words. She wondered if they weren't turning to each other, the moment the front door closed behind their son and his date, and shaking their heads in unison.

They don't even seem to be able to work up a good head of steam about Lot and Jesus-on-the-barn. Like the rest of the Chastains, Carter and Marie seem embarrassed by the circus-like atmosphere the vision has created at Old Monacan. Last night was the final service until the sundown light will hit the back of the structure again in the spring, and Carter says he heard that there were several hundred people there, cars backed all the way to the state highway.

“Good riddance,” Marie sniffs.

“I knew a man once,” says her brother from Ohio, “that said he saw the image of Christ on the wall of the men's room at his service station. Couldn't nobody else see it, though.”

“Said they raised almost $10,000 last night,” Carter offers.

Marie shakes her head.

Silence.

Nancy endures it until half past five. Then, 30 seconds into another chasm of unbroken silence, she stands abruptly.

“I guess we'd better be running along,” she says.

“Take the car; it'll be quicker,” says Carter. He winks at her.

Nancy tells them that she wants to go out to Old Monacan for a few minutes. They know that she likes to write, although they don't quite understand why, and they know that whatever she is writing has something to do with Lot and the barn, so no one thinks this is an unusual thing to do, given who is doing it. She asks them if they'll look after Wade for a while.

She soothes her son, who screams and wails his desire to go with her. Nancy is tempted to take him, just for the comfort of having someone, even a 2-year-old, to talk to on the darkening road to Lot's barn. But she plans for this to be a short visit. She needs to see the old barn one more time, without all the pilgrims there and, she hopes, without Lot or Sebara or the Basset boy there either. The story she's writing has been on her mind over the weekend, a mental barrier, she supposes, to keep her from thinking about Sam any more than necessary, and she wants to just sit there, undisturbed, staring at the back of Lot's barn as the sun sets. The protagonist of her novel does just this as the book ends, and Nancy wants to feel what her creation feels.

Nancy is on the second step from the bottom, heading for the car, when she hears Marie calling her.

“Wait up, Nancy. Let me give you something for Lot. We had a plenty of roast beef left over.”

Nancy curses under her breath. The last thing she wants to do, if she can help it, is have one of those awkward meetings with Sam's uncle. He reminds her of the old television show she used to watch on re-runs, where Groucho Marx would interview and humiliate people from Nebraska or Texas or wherever. If one of the guests said the magic word, a duck would come down from the ceiling and the guest would win a prize. With Lot, Nancy feels that the duck is never very far away. And she never knows what the magic word might be.