Slow Way Home (21 page)

Beau shifted his weight and stammered just for a second. “We went fishing. That’s all.”

“My fishing hole’s filled with nothing but gators. Fact of the matter, I’m surprised they didn’t track y’all down for stepping foot on my property.” Alvin leaned down so that he was eye to eye with us. A flake of dead skin clung to his eyebrow and it raised upward with his words. “You boys snooping for trouble?”

“Uhh, no sir. We just wanted to fish someplace different. That’s all.”

“I take a man on his word, Beau. But I got no use for liars. You best remember that.” Alvin turned to me, and the lines in his eyes were as red as the drink machine. He tried to smile, but his lips would only pull sideways. “Boy, Beau took you in like a brother. Family sticks together and fights for one another. They say you ain’t got no mama and daddy. We look at you just like you was one of us. You’re just the same as us.”

Pressing harder into the machine, I nodded until Alvin had stood back up.

“Good, I’m glad we understand one another. With Josh in there on the operating table, now’s the time we gotta stick together.”

His hand reached closer until I could see dirt on the side of a bloody scab. Just when I braced for him to slap me, he pushed me to the side and slipped coins into the machine. “Now go on and pick out a drink to take back to the waiting room.”

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By the time Josh was able to be pushed in a wheelchair, Beau never left his side for a minute. Not even when Mama Rose came to visit with a plastic Snoopy that was missing one ear.

Josh pointed towards the concrete patio outside, off of the hospital lobby.

“That nurse said for you to stay inside,” Beau said.

Josh whipped his finger in the direction of the sliding glass door.

“Outside!”

We sat on the concrete table with a yellow umbrella big enough to cover Texas.

I used the black marker to sign my name at the top of Josh’s knee, right below a patch of freckles. At the bottom of the cast I saw the scratchy name that looked like it might have belonged to one of Josh’s first-grade friends. Alvin. My stomach deadened as I moved my attention back to the clean place on the cast. “When you think he’ll go home?”

“If you want to say anything, you say it to me,” Josh said.

“Well, when then?”

“Next Saturday. Sister Delores is letting me pull that string that’s covering up the new steeple.”

I looked at Alvin’s name once again and then up at Beau. His eyes darted faster than a moth on a porch light. “Hey, we gotta go back inside before that nurse finds out we’re out here,” Beau said. He never looked back as they turned the corner and disappeared down the hallway.

The church dedication had become a hot topic in Abbeville. Not only did the paper have a front-page article, but the townspeople got into a buzz again when the Tallahassee TV station came back for a follow-up story. We stood pressed together on the steps of the restored God’s Hospital. The tin roof reflected the morning sun like a premier spotlight. Against the freshly painted walls Sister Delores’s bright pink dress resembled an oversized azalea bloom.

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Her voice boomed at us in a way that reminded me of how policemen use bullhorns to talk down potential suicides. “He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world. Come on, somebody. They tried to scandalize us, then burn us out, but let me tell you something.

God showed up and then He showed out. He said it’s time to rebuild, and y’all got busy answering that call.”

As if on cue, the singing cowboys got up on the porch steps and started harmonizing about a new day. Growing bored with the oldest one who kept his ear cupped and kept leaning down towards the green welcome mat by the door, I turned to watch the crowd.

Bonita, Parker, and Beau stood up front next to Mr. Livingston, who owned the marina. Two reporters from Tallahassee scribbled into their palm-sized pads and ignored Josh’s glances. He sat in the wheelchair with his graffiti-covered cast standing out at attention towards the cord that snaked up to the steeple. The soft sounds of the sheet flapping against the steeple tempted me to look up, but I kept a gaze on those scattered across the churchyard.

I saw the top of the motor home’s TV antenna before I heard the screeching brakes. It was right when the singing cowboys were finishing their highest note, so nobody turned to see the new load of guests being transported to God’s Hospital. Nana was still clapping when I slipped away.

The motor home made the van from the Tallahassee TV station seem toylike. The end of the motor home had a steel ladder, and soon a man with long sideburns got out and climbed to the top.

Jagged antennas popped up all over until the motor home looked more like a flying saucer. When I saw the red stripe down the side and the shape of the United States on the front door, I froze. Songs from the church steps faded as another man wearing a red checkered shirt and signature safari hat stepped out of the door. He looked right at me and smiled. As he moved forward, others followed behind, and my jaw flinched.

“Hello, there. Seems like quite a party you all have going on.”

The man lifted his chin and rubbed his stomach all at the same time.

In person he didn’t seem as tall as he did on TV.

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“It’s . . . they . . . I mean we’re having a church dedication.”

“So I hear. Did you help rebuild the church like the others?”

Scrubbing those steps had to count for something, so I nodded my head and looked down at the freshly shined boots. His hand reached down and broke the stare.

“I’m Hoyt Franklin. Hoyt Franklin with
Navigating the Nation
.”

“Brandon. Brandon . . . um, Brandon Davidson.”

“Well, Brandon, do you mind if we move up front and meet some of the other people at your church?”

Leading them towards the group, I felt an inch taller with each step we made. I could sense Hoyt’s eyes burning the back of my head as strong as the summer sun had burned the grass we were crunching.

At first, no one seemed to notice the man who traveled the country seeking stories that were shared on his TV program. But when the man who owned the bait shop turned and spat tobacco inches away from Hoyt Franklin’s boots, the nudges began and continued rippling until finally even Sister Delores was peering over the heads.

“Please, please. Don’t mind us. We didn’t come to interrupt anything,” Hoyt said.

“That’s the man off TV,” I heard Harvey say to Sister Delores.

She shadowed her eyes with a pink handkerchief. “Well, praise Jesus. Don’t stand back there and be bashful. Come on up here so we can get a good look at you.”

The crowd divided faster than the sea that Moses crossed. Mumbling grew in a beehive fashion. I followed behind the camera crew until a jerk of my shirt collar pulled me into the thick of the others.

“Stand over here and behave yourself,” Nana whispered. She and Poppy kept slipping farther from the porch steps where the only TV

star I had ever seen was standing. The cameraman leaned down on one knee and focused his attention on Sister Delores.

“Through the affiliate we heard of all of the great things you people have done.”

“Things that God did,” Sister Delores said with a point to the sky.

“Well, in any case this town used adversity to form a partnership.

I, for one, think America wants to hear about it.”

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A thunder of mumbles rolled through the crowd, and now even those who had been stone-faced were smiling.

“If you wouldn’t mind, Reverend, I would like to stand back and let your crusade continue. And folks, don’t be shy of Bart, our cameraman. Just act as if that little black machine on his shoulder wasn’t even here.”

While the cameraman squatted down in all sorts of positions and pointed the small black lens up at the porch, Sister Delores stiffened and pronounced each word in a way that made me think of Nairobi.

The edge of her notes twitched as her words grew louder and more exact with each syllable.

“The Lord did not always promise sunshine and cloudless days.

But in Him we have a comfort that not even Mr. Daniel Webster himself could define. Peace that surpasses all understanding. Yes, I am talking about peace.”

A hush fell over the crowd, and the humming of the camera began to blend in like a chirping bird that would not fly away. No matter what Sister Delores said about peace, the words were lost on Nana and Poppy. They kept moving farther outside of the crowd until only the top of Hoyt Franklin’s safari hat was visible from where we stood. Nana kept a steady grasp of my shoulder, pressing me away from the man with the black camera as if he had a water moccasin strapped to his shoulder.

Weaving in and out of the cars and trucks that filled the churchyard, I kept looking back at my last chance for fame. The chance to look into the little eye of the black machine and tell the whole world the real story behind the church burning. I pictured the sheriff circling around Alvin’s house and talking him out with a bullhorn. He’d cry and beg them not to take him to jail, and the handcuffs would keep him from reaching for my tongue. I’d stand with Hoyt Franklin while his crew recorded every detail. They would pat my back and offer me a guest spot on his show. We’d move to New York and live in a big apartment, the kind that Jody and Buffy lived in on
A Family Affair.

Except instead of Mr. French, Nana would see after the place. She’d
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have thick sheets on the bed and a hot batch of cornbread to welcome me home from my many travels. I’d even talk Hoyt Franklin into giving Mama a job doing hair for everybody on the show, and she’d travel with us from each end of America.

Climbing into the truck, I heard the applause just before the door closed. Through the rear window, I watched Josh pull twice on the rope. The sheet glided away with the grace of a dove. A walnut-colored cross rose up above the top of the magnolia tree and closer to the sky.

The sheet landed on the edge of the roof, and its ends dangled in the breeze. As we drove away, the crowd grew smaller, but the tip of the cross reached over the treetops. Even from the highway, the marker that stood guard over God’s Hospital could be seen. Pressing my head against the back window, I watched it grow smaller until finally the limb of a live oak tree had clipped the celebration away for good.

When we pulled into the campground, the man and woman with Missouri license plates waved. Poppy lifted his finger in a half salute, but Nana turned her head towards the trailer office.

Heat from the long afternoon had not yet escaped through the front door before Nana started closing the blinds. Poppy fanned himself with his cap and managed to turn on the air conditioner with the free hand. Rays of sunlight illuminated the plastic blinds the way a flashlight exposes fragile bones on a hand.

“That woman from Missouri looked at me twice. Twice.” Nana opened the cabinet and ran her hand down the pickle jar stuffed with wads of cash.

“Nobody’s looking at nothing. You need to sit down and rest your nerves.”

Instead, Nana peeped outside of the back window. “I knew this would happen. I knew it. Only a matter of time.”

“Woman, please. The only thing that will get people curious is the way you’re carrying on.” There was an edge to Poppy’s voice. The same shrillness that I had heard the night Nana grabbed the butcher 152

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knife and cut her hair. A panicked warning that she was heading down a dangerous path and didn’t know the way home.

She played with the buttons on the shirt Bonita had given her for Christmas, the one reserved for special occasions. Her green eyes held Poppy’s gaze and then softened as they drifted down towards me.

Poppy switched on the TV just like always. The glow from the screen filled the room and comforted the same as a campfire.

“All this mess today has worn me slam out,” Nana said stumbling to the back bed.

A diving contest in Acapulco played on the TV screen, and I wondered if Hoyt Franklin had ever made it that far south. Poppy’s chin pointed straight up to the air conditioner, and each time he snored his Adam’s apple disappeared under the skin.

Looking at the screen, I pictured the next episode of
Navigating the
Nation
. Josh’s smile would be so wide the gap from his missing tooth would be a black pit. He’d nod to the camera and then pull the sheet from the new steeple that his uncle had sought to destroy. Beau would stand behind him with one hand propped on the handle of the wheelchair, while Sister Delores led the group in praise songs. They would be stars and life in New York City would be theirs for the asking. All because Nana had acted in a way fit for the Mama Roses of this world we missed it. Turning away from the TV, I flipped through a book that I decided was too young for me. The walls began to feel like iron bars, and the air conditioner overhead seemed more like a surveil-lance camera.

Keeping the door from squeaking was not as hard as preventing the natural sunlight from waking Poppy. Sun spread across his pasty face as the Adam’s apple sunk deeper inside his throat. To be safe, I stood outside of the camper and heard the heat pop against the tin walls. The manager’s cat paused to look at me before trotting away.

At the entrance of the campground, I fought the desire to turn left and join Hoyt in a cup of homemade ice cream as I outlined the details of our search of Alvin’s cabin. As mad as I might be, I understood the fear that Nana had felt. The only difference was I had swat-Slow Way Home

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ted it away as easy as a pestering gnat. So I turned right and tried to convince myself that Poppy would explain to Nana that a man needed time by himself.

Stacks of new crates were propped against the oak at Mama Rose’s place. Pedaling faster, I looked straight down at the white line that separated the paved road from the ditch. “Beau Riley, is that you?”