When Venus Fell (11 page)

Mom. Pop. I want to see where you were married. I want
to see where you were happy together. I hope you know I’m here. I hope you know I came
.

I ran forward.

I rounded the lip of the path and halted, feet spread, lips parted—open and vulnerable and awed. My gaze rose up stone steps—the steps from the photograph,
exactly
as I knew them, only in living color finally, speckled with moss and the tiniest blue wildflowers that grew from cracks in the stones.

Up. Up, in slow, hypnotized motion, my childhood fantasy becoming as true as it ever could, and I knew exactly where Gib had sat on the top step, because I had memorized every detail over the years.

And there he was.

He was sprawled in a thronelike chair on the chapel’s small, whitewashed porch. Piles of shabby planks were strewn on the narrow apron of earth around the porch, and I noticed a toolbelt lying haphazardly at his feet. He needed a good shave. He was dressed in a white ribbed tank top, dirty khaki trousers, laced muddy boots, and suspenders. He balanced a half-empty bottle of bourbon on one updrawn knee.

He didn’t move, he didn’t speak. His face was shadowed by a battered brown fedora; I couldn’t see his eyes or read his expression, but from the tilt of his head there was no doubt in my mind he was looking straight down at me. Given the clothes and the fedora, he presented a picture straight out of every bad Hollywood version of southern manhood. Central casting, circa 1950. Sex, sweat, liquor, and attitude.

He touched the forefinger of his good hand to the hat’s brim in greeting, then propped his chin on the hand. His slightest movements made sawdust drift from the chair’s plush red upholstery. A golden tabby cat sat beside his chair. It reared on its hind legs, then rubbed its jowls on armrests that knuckled under into exquisitely detailed ram’s heads.
Then the cat curled along Gib’s lower leg and nuzzled his knee. A large butterfly landed on his bare shoulder.

A man couldn’t look too sinister with a cat nuzzling him and a butterfly poised on his arm. I began to notice other details. His shoulders were rusty with dirt and fresh sunburn. His face was more haggard than I remembered in Chicago. The gouged scars on his forearm, laced with pinpoint white suture marks, were uglier in the sun.

I walked to the bottom of the steps. “I thought—” I stopped, cleared my throat, and started again, loudly and firmly. “I heard your family had all gone to Knoxville today. Why aren’t you with them?”

“I had something to do,” he said. “Privately.”

I climbed the steps, keeping an eye on him. He slowly raised the liquor to his mouth and drank deeply. The bottle wobbled in the incomplete grip of his mangled hand. He perched it on his thigh again. “Couldn’t resist your favorite government SOB, hmmm?”

“I’ve been insulted by meaner drunks than
you.”
I frowned at the bottle.

“You’re not a bourbon drinker,” he said.

“I prefer blood.” The truth was, drunkenness and other out-of-control behavior frightened me. Discipline was security.

I walked past him without another word. The chapel was as delicate as the inside of a Fabergé egg. The interior posts and beams were elaborately carved light wood, and the arched windows on either side were stained glass. The plank walls were painted in intricate, lovely but unsettling murals. I gaped at them as I realized what made them odd.

Saints. This was a Catholic chapel.

The oh-so-familiar saints were going about their instantly recognizable business here in the middle of the mostly Protestant mountains of Tennessee. Some of them were bearded mountain men draped in buckskin robes, and there was Saint Agnes in calico with a sunbonnet, and Saint Francis was
distinctly Indian—Cherokee, I assumed—bare-chested and wearing a colorful blanket, a loincloth, leggings, and moccasins, with his hair plucked to a single long black lock at the crown of his head, and a raccoon and a possum sitting at his feet.

As I continued to wander around I saw the chapel was in disarray. Its heavy, carved pews were stacked in precarious formations at the back of the chapel, and long, rotten-edged sections of the plank flooring were jumbled in dusty piles along the walls. The floor had been patched with large sheets of bare plywood that sagged and creaked as I walked across them. A small but intricately carved altar—it looked out of place, it was so formal and European—fronted a tiny choir alcove where a small, simple, obviously antique organ called me with the siren promise of music. I sighed and touched a reverent hand to the organ’s enameled backstop and yellowed ivory keys.

“You’re disturbing the ghosts,” Gib said behind me, and I pivoted sharply. The floor creaked and sent goosebumps down my spine. Gib staggered to a stack of rotten boards and put down the bourbon bottle. He lifted a plank and carried it to me like a baby held gently in his arms. Beneath a pallor of age and dust the wood was golden. The plank was at least two feet wide. “My brother never threw anything away. He was even going to save these. Build cabinets with the pieces. I was going to help him. That’s what I promised him, anyway. I was never home much. Always traveling. Lived in Washington. Busy. Important man. That was me. Simon kept telling me he needed more help around here. I never took him seriously.”

“I expect Simon was very proud of you—”

“Always busy. That was me. World traveler. Make an appointment to get me home. Give me a list of family chores. Be efficient. But Simon”—Gib patted the board—“he took time. He knew the wood. He loved every board and every stone of this chapel and the Hall and he remembered every person who ever set foot here.”

He pointed to the exposed beams of the roof and walls. “Chestnut. Tough as iron. Last forever.” He nodded at the section of plank in his arms. “Pine. Softer wood. Easier to work with. But it doesn’t last like chestnut.”

“Well, when was the last time the floor was replaced?”

“Never.”

“What?”

“This was the original. Floor was … the only thing not built to last. Termites got it last year.”

I stared at him. The chapel was built
before 1750
. But apparently a floor that only lasted a quarter of a millennium wasn’t good enough by Cameron standards. I smiled uneasily. “You’re going to put in a new floor and by gum, this time it better last at least four hundred years, right?”

He didn’t blink. “That’s my plan.” He paused. “That was Simon’s plan.”

“I see.”

“Replace the pine with chestnut boards. Hard wood. Toughest wood around. Termites—no way. Guarantee—Simon’s floor will be here a thousand years from now.”

“Chestnut? I thought all the chestnut trees were gone.”

“No more like ’em. Gone. Giants of the earth. Extinct. The blight got ’em in the thirties. Disease.” He wavered, then steadied himself. “It’s a waste of your time to listen to this. No reason you should give a damn. Right?”

“I don’t waste my time. You’re mistaken if you think I listen just to be polite. I’m rarely polite for
any
reason. Surely you’ve noticed. But let’s talk about
wood
. Where are you getting the chestnut boards from?”

“Logs my granddad put aside, sixty years ago, when the blight hit. In a storage barn.”

“Camerons
really
plan ahead, don’t they?”

Gib abruptly walked to the center of the chapel. He dropped the board he was carrying. It clattered on the plywood floor. He raised his fists and looked around angrily. “Termites. It’s always the little hidden bastards. The little
mistakes you think you’ll catch before everything falls apart. You turn your back on the smallest detail and it’s the one that ruins you. You watch everything you believed in die right in front of your eyes.” His voice rose. “No place is safe. And there’s nothing you can do about it.” He faced me, breathing hard, his fists clenched. “Tell me I’m wrong,” he asked hoarsely.

I shook my head. “But I don’t think termites qualify as
the wrath of God.”

“You’re right. The wrath of God came later. Do you believe in accidents?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t. Accidents are the consequence of deliberate choices.”

“Oh, I
see
. You choose to get out of bed every morning and one morning you slip on the rug and sprain your ankle. But it’s no accident because it wouldn’t have happened if you’d stayed in bed for the rest of your life? No—sometimes accidents just happen. We just have to deal with that fact. All right?”

“How do we deal with it? You tell me how you’ve gotten through what happened to your family. That’s what I want to know from you.”

“My sister needed me. I had a purpose.”

“Good. All right. But there had to be more to it than that. No one wants to feel useless.” He hesitated. “I speak from experience.”

“Oh? I didn’t come all the way here to visit a
useless
man. I have better judgment than that. Tell me about your brother. Tell me what happened to him—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He pointed to the organ. “Play something.”

I sighed, but he had asked me to do the one thing I secretly wanted to do. I walked to the front of the chapel and sat down on a claw-footed organ stool. I fiddled experimentally with the pull stops on the antique organ’s enameled backboard.
I pumped the foot pedals and played a chord. Dust wheezed from the pipes, but the sound was pure.

I played a simple recital warmup I’d learned as a child. Gib pulled his hat off and tossed it atop a stack of pews. Then he sat down unsteadily beside the organ and propped his arms on his updrawn knees. He bent his head and shut his eyes. I glanced furtively at the rigid slant of his cheekbones, the gaunt slopes beneath his eyes—his hair was mink-brown with that fleck of gray at the top of his forehead.

When I finished I pulled my hands into my lap primly. “I don’t usually play requests.” He continued to sit with his eyes closed. For all I knew he’d fallen asleep. “But I’ll make an exception if there’s anything you want to hear. Or if I’m just babbling out loud to myself while you’re taking a nap, I guess I’ll play whatever I want. Are you asleep?”

He pushed himself up to his feet with effort. “Good God, you’re talented. You can’t go on throwing yourself away on the jobs you take.” I bristled with humiliation—the truth always hurts. Before I could do more than stare at him open-mouthed, he turned and walked outside.

I hurried after him. “Where are you going?” He lifted a hand, let it fall, then eased down the steps at the front of the chapel mound, placing each booted foot carefully.

He’s out of his mind. He’s drunk
.

I followed him but kept several yards behind.
He can’t walk far in his condition
. “Are any of your family home yet? Back from Knoxville?”

He halted at the base of the steps and faced me. He towered over me, large hazel eyes scowling under dark brows frosted with wood dust. The dogs gathered around him, licking his pants legs and his hands, which hung loosely by his sides. “Are you planning to walk to the house?” I persisted.

His left hand lashed out. In an instant that showed how quick he was despite the bourbon, he folded his fingers under the cusp of my chin, and smoothed his thumb across my cheek. “You have green eyes like a cat,” he said. Appreciation
softened his face for a second. “Cocked up at the outside corners. The sharpest
cat eyes
. What do you see when you look at me?”

“A man who needs to sit down somewhere shady and let the bourbon wear off. A man who might be worth talking to if he’d
just sit the hell down.”

He turned and walked down the footpath toward the main dirt road. He walked with the tired, lazy grace that liquor endows on some hard-assed men. I followed him to the road and around a curve. A long flatbed truck was parked there. Tall, thick stanchions jutted from its scarred wooden bed. The truck was obviously meant for rugged hauling. Gib swung a door open and climbed into the cab.

“Where are you going?” I called. He didn’t answer or even seem to notice. The man needed someone, something; he needed help. I felt frightened and exhilarated, conscious of the light again—moonlight lingering in the sunlight—a certain thinning of the fabric between choice and fate. I owed him for our childhood whimsies. I owed him for caring enough to find me, and for the undercover cop he’d sent in Chicago. I told myself I couldn’t let him drive off a ledge or wrap this ancient truck around a tree. And certainly not until I’d gotten my money from him.

I went to the back of the truck, latched both hands around a post, and climbed onto the bed. I faced forward so I could watch him through the cab’s dusty rear window. Most of the dogs jumped up beside me, eager to go for a ride.

The truck was old and the engine made noises like a dyspeptic elephant when Gib cranked it. Smoke belched from the exhaust pipe. We began to roll up the road. I held on tightly. I was ready to jump out if his driving got too wild. One of the blue-eyed dogs sat down beside me and whined.

I put my arm around him. We both turned around and watched Gib. “This is more than I bargained for,” I muttered.

The first time a boy caused trouble for me I was only eight. While the nuns were drilling us for our confirmation, Barret Walker III kept whispering inanely, “The Lard cooks in mysterious ways,” and because I had a small crush on him, with his cocky attitude and smart-guy stance when the sisters punished him, which was often, I was too attentive to his jokes.

So during confirmation, when the bishop asked me to name the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, I named every gift perfectly until the very last one, when I glanced at Barret Walker III, who mouthed
lard
, and without thinking I told the bishop solemnly that the seventh gift of the Holy Ghost was “fear of the
Lard.”

Afterward, Sister Mary Catherine insisted the faux pas indicated a rebellious nature and was no accident, no matter how much I protested my innocence. Maybe she was right. As I rode into the forest with Gib that day I thought of Barret Walker III and wondered if there was any way I could really excuse my own choices.