The Grove (16 page)

I had a dream someone was in the house…

I open my eyes. The room is bright.

Liz is sitting in a red plastic chair at the foot of the bed. She has a book on her lap, and when she looks up and sees me, she smiles.

Her eyes are red and swollen.

I try to speak, but my mouth won’t open.

Liz closes her book and comes to the side of the bed. She leans close and takes my hand. “Hi, Dexter,” she says.

I try to say something, anything, but she shakes her head and says, “Don’t talk, OK?”

She stares at me for a moment longer, then slides her hand away from mine. “I’ll find the doctor.”

She turns toward the door, and I try to call for her. What comes out sounds thin and weak.

Liz turns and touches her fingers to her lips and begins to cry.

The doctor tells me I got lucky.

He says the bullet passed through the soft spot under my chin and came out my left eye socket along with most of my left eye. On the way, it tore away part of my tongue and jawbone and shredded my sinus.

He tells me that if the bullet had entered my skull, it wouldn’t have had the velocity to pass through the bone and would’ve wound up spinning inside my head like a marble in a bowl.

“People live through things like that all the time,” he says. “More often than not, in a vegetative state.” He pauses, and then adds, “A .22 is a very dangerous gun, in that regard.”

I try to speak, forgetting the wires in my jaw.

The doctor hands me a notepad and a pencil.

I use it to ask about Greg.

He tells me it was touch and go for a while, but the surgery went well and Greg will be fine in a few weeks.

He says I fired eight shots but only hit Greg with two. The first in the bicep, not too serious. The second in the chest, very serious. The second bullet clipped a section of his heart before embedding itself in his lung and collapsing it.

“If it hadn’t been for your wife thinking fast and calling for help, he certainly would’ve died.” The doctor smiles.

“Both of you, more than likely.”

Liz is a hero.

She’s been by my side the entire time. At first, all she did was cry, but now she’s better.

Most of the time, I sit in bed and scribble questions on the notepad, asking about Greg, how he’s doing. She keeps me updated.

I tried to explain things to her one time, but she held up a hand and wouldn’t look at my notes.

“He knows,” she said. “And he understands.”

I asked her if she felt the same way, but she didn’t answer, just looked toward the window and the bright day passing outside.

Silent.

It’s nice when she’s around.

No one came to question me about Jessica. When I asked Liz, she told me not to bring it up.

I did anyway.

Finally, she told me that after the news came out, Megan from the café stepped forward and admitted to being out in the grove with Jessica and her boyfriend. She said they’d all taken some pills they’d found in her mother’s cabinet, and that Jessica had just collapsed and stopped breathing.

“They panicked,” Liz said. “Panicked and ran.”

She looked away and was silent. I knew what she was thinking. I was thinking it, too.

When Liz spoke again, she said, “Jessica had some kind of heart condition. No one knew about it, and it didn’t mix with the medicine. That was all.”

I had more questions, but Liz stopped me.

“We can’t talk about this,” she said. “Not yet.”

I asked her when.

“Soon.”

We were both quiet for a while. Then I asked about the fire at the Tollivers’ trailer.

Liz looked confused, and I wrote the story out for her, handing her page after page.

“I don’t know anything about this,” she said. “But I’ll ask if you’d like.”

I told her I would.

There are no mirrors in my room. The nurses say I can’t see anything but bandages anyway, but if I really want to know, I looked just like Claude Raines in the old
Invisible Man
movie.

I tell them I’ve never seen it.

Earlier, the doctor came by to tell me I’m being transferred to Archway in a couple days, as soon as the bandages are off. I didn’t take the news very well, but he assured me there would be no shock treatments.

“They stopped doing those years ago,” he said. “These days, it’s just medication and therapy and rest.”

That sounded fine.

Liz talked to one of the deputies in Greg’s office and they told her they’d arrested Ezra Hays for the fire that killed Frank and Dorothy Tolliver and their two boys.

“He just walked in and confessed,” she said. “Hard to believe a nice man like Ezra would do something like that.”

She was right. It was hard to believe.

I took out the notepad and asked her if the deputy was sure no one else started the fire.

She said he was positive.

I wrote that Ezra could be lying.

“Why would he lie about this?” She shook her head. “No, he’s telling the truth. Apparently he was so upset because the wife and the kids were home that he decided to come forward.”

I nodded and wrote that they were supposed to be out of town.

“How do you know that?”

I told her about my conversation with Ezra.

“Did he tell you they were stealing from him?”

I nodded.

“Did he tell you Frank Tolliver beat him up and threatened to kill him after Ezra confronted him?”

I shook my head. If that was true, Ezra’s pride wouldn’t have allowed him to admit that to anyone. Old or not, the man was once a war hero.

“Ezra’s in his eighties. I don’t blame him a bit for going after that man. Most people feel the same way. Frank Tolliver made a lot of enemies.” Liz turned toward the window and shook her head. “It’s too bad, though. Everyone is just devastated over those kids, especially Ezra.”

I looked down.

“There’s even been talk about bringing in a lawyer from Chicago who thinks he can get him out of the whole thing.”

I asked her again if they were sure it was him.

Liz stared at me for a while, then said, “Do you think you started that fire?”

I closed the notebook, didn’t answer.

“Dexter.” She leaned close. “You didn’t kill Frank Tolliver. Do you understand?”

I thought about it, nodded, then looked away.

The doctor is taking the bandages off this afternoon, and I’ve been warned about how it’ll look.

“It might be a shock,” he said. “So be prepared.”

I’m not scared. If anything, I’m excited. I don’t think I’ll like what I see, but I’m not going to be shocked, either.

When we were kids, Greg’s father had a series of books on World War I, and inside were all kinds of pictures of injured soldiers. Greg and I would sit on the floor and go over the photos, looking for the most gruesome ones.

Many of the soldiers were missing noses and eyes and jaws. Some had their lips melted away by mustard gas or entire sections of their faces blown off after being shot while peeking out of trenches.

I figure I’ll look something like that.

If Greg still has those books, maybe I’ll ask him to bring them by sometime so we can compare.

Maybe not.

I’d like to talk to Greg before they move me, but I doubt I’ll get the chance. Hopefully he’ll come see me at Archway so I can tell him I’m sorry.

Liz says he understands, but I need to be sure.

He’s always been like family to me, almost as much as Liz or Clara, and that’s something you keep close for as long as you can.

Liz won’t talk to me about our future together, and I’m not going to push her. I don’t feel a big need to know what’s going to happen. I suppose a part of me already knows, and that’s fine.

We had a lot of good years together, more than most marriages, and I hate to see them end, but the truth is they ended a while ago, when Clara died.

It just took us some time to notice.

Still, for a while things were good, and I can walk away knowing that no matter what else happened, and no matter what other people thought, we were happy.

All three of us.

And when you have that, no matter how long it lasts, you’ve been blessed.

I won’t look in a mirror. I’ve had enough of them.

The nurse tried to hold one up for me when the doctor took the bandages off, but I looked away.

“It’s OK,” the doctor said, touching the nurse’s arm. “There’s no rush.”

It didn’t matter. I didn’t need a mirror. All I had to do was look at Liz’s face.

She didn’t even have to say a word.

The van arrives to take me to Archway, and I change into a set of clothes Liz brought from home.

I can’t take anything else except what I’m wearing, and when I get there, they’ll take those things, too.

I don’t mind losing my clothes, but I don’t want them to take Clara’s bracelet. Liz said she’d hold onto it for me, but I’m going to keep it for as long as I can.

I want it close.

Liz wheels me out to the parking lot then leans over and kisses my cheek. She tells me she’ll be up in a couple days, once I get settled.

She doesn’t cry, and I don’t blame her. I can only imagine what people are saying about me in town, what she has had to go through.

I’m helped into the van, and when we pull away I don’t look back. Once we are on the highway and out of town, I lean my head against the window and stare out at the blur of trees passing along the road.

Eventually, the trees fall away to fields and hills and the occasional empty house.

All of it passes.

I watch the scenery for a while. Then my vision shifts and I see myself reflected in the glass, my face as thin as a daytime moon. It makes me smile, and I can’t look away.

It’s like seeing a ghost.

John Rector is a prize-winning short story writer and the author of the novel
The Cold Kiss
, optioned for a feature film now in development. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska.