Tyson knew what his father planned to say next.
“Now it’s a good thing that you ain’t told nobody how your little brother pulled through. ’Cause we got to say now that he died. We got ourselves a lot of mouths to feed on this sorry little farm, and his is one mouth too many, ’specially considerin’ that Wink ain’t gonna do nothin’ from here to the end of his days that’ll be of help to this family. Why, you take Tie here. He was collectin’ them chicken eggs ever morning when he was scarce older than Wink!”
“And droppin’ a goodly number of ’em,” responded Tyson in an underbreath.
Ignoring the commentary, Tyson’s father pressed on. “It’s a hard thing we gotta do, but it’s what’s done in nature when a runt comes along without a fighting chance. And our little Wink is worse than a runt. He’s a runt with the mind of a frog or a turtle, and ever bite of food what goes into his little turtle mouth is a bite that don’t go to fillin’ the empty bellies of all you other young ’uns. Now I ain’t lookin’ for your say-so; I brung you all together this evenin’ just to let you know what’s what. And to tell you that tomorry mornin’, my brother Henry, he’s a-comin’ to take Wink down to Dead Indian Lake and drown the boy and then bring his little body back here and we gonna put him on the sickbed and tell the doctor he was taken with the fever.
“I tell it to you, children, because you got to keep the little ones away, both when Henry, he comes, and then when the deed is done and Henry bring him back. Do you hear what your pa is a-tellin’ you?”
There were nods in the midst of all the tears now flowing from the eyes of the three females upon the porch, while the eyes of the paterfamilias and his eighteen- and seventeen-year-old sons were similarly glistening.
The word of Tyson’s pa was law and there was no arguing against the course he’d chosen. And Tyson’s bachelor uncle was the man for the job. He had an empty place inside him that allowed him to come to his brother’s farm and do all the killing without compunction. Henry Tyson was a valuable asset at hog slaughter time.
The next morning, after a sleepless night for all those who had gathered upon that porch, a night spent by Tyson’s mother whispering sad valedictions to her baby boy, the oldest four of the Tyson brood rose early to take all but the youngest of their siblings on a turkey hunt in the grassland.
It wasn’t long into the turkey hunt — a hunt that at best would offer only a distant sighting or the sound of faraway gobbles for all their efforts with slingshot and rude bow and arrow — that Tyson made known to his older brother and two older sisters that there was a sickness in his stomach and an urgent need within him to return to the house. And no, he would not be talked out of it, even under the hard looks of disbelief, and all the dread and fear that came from thoughts of their father’s wrath when Tyson came home sooner than expected.
But, as it turned out, Tyson had no intention of returning to the house. Once out of sight of his brothers and sisters, he ran all the way to Dead Indian Lake, praying that he wouldn’t arrive too late to stop his uncle from the murderous act that his own conscience, regardless of the consequences, simply could not abide. Yet, as Tyson put it to his friend Ames, “the hand of fate had swooped down too soon. The boy was dead, his tiny body being carried limply in the arms of my uncle — a man who felt no pity for the boy a’tall. It was like he was carryin’ the carcass of some animal he’d slain for the table that night.”
At this point, Tyson could no longer continue with his story.
Ames didn’t ask for the end of the story through any of the days and nights that followed. In fact, he wondered if this was a memory that should have been kept locked away forever. Perhaps Tyson had only shared it to cement the bond of close friendship that existed between the two inmates. For that, Ames thanked Tyson in his heart, and the two quiet men never went to such a dark place again.
Four years later Ames was released from prison. Upon the day on which he was to become a free man, the two friends shook hands and the sadness of their parting wrung each of their hearts.
“Still goin’ up to Tulsa?” asked Tyson, once he had regained his voice.
Ames nodded. “My brother-in-law has a good job working in the oil field. He thinks he can get me on there. Now you take care of yourself, Tyson. And I aim to write to you, and you sure as hell better find somebody to read them damn letters to you, ’cause I ain’t gonna waste my time writin’ ’em otherwise.”
Tyson nodded.
“And I’ll see you on the outside when you get out.”
Ames didn’t get a job with his brother-in-law. But he did get a job — a lot of jobs, in fact. All those years of incarceration had delivered unto Gordie Ames a wanderlust even stronger than that which enspirited all the other young men of Ames’s age, many of them veterans of the Great War. Ames hitchhiked all over Oklahoma and Kansas and northern Texas and took most of the jobs that were offered to him before finally settling down in Alva, Oklahoma, and marrying one of the daughters of a cook at the Northwestern Oklahoma Teachers’ College and getting himself hired on as building custodian for the school’s ornately Moorish “Castle on the Hill.”
Ames continued to write to his quondam cellmate for the next several years, just as he had promised, though only once did he get a letter in return. It was a letter that told a thing or two more about the story that Tyson had been unable to finish — the one about Wink. It had been dictated to the warden’s comely secretary, who’d taken a decided liking to Broderain Tyson.
The reason for the original letter was this: Ames had met a young man in Elk City whom Tyson had every reason to know. The man worked as a busboy in a diner there — Crutchen’s Diner. Though diminished in his intellectual capacity, he performed his job well, was marginally communicative, always in good spirits, and beloved by both his fellow workers and by the diner’s regular customers. Ames had overheard the man being called by the name “Wink.” Racked with curiosity, Ames had asked a waitress if there was more to the man’s name than that simple nickname.
“Always known him just as Wink,” she said, “but I’ll try to find out.” The waitress returned to Ames’s table shortly thereafter. “Nobody knows. When Mr. Crutchen brought him here all them years ago, Wink was just a toddler.”
“Where’d Mr. Crutchen find him?”
“Ain’t you one with all the questions?” asked the waitress with a grin. “His brother, a sheriff up in Dewey County, brung him down. He was a foundling — left by the roadside, as it was told. They called him Moses for a while. Like Moses and the bulrushes. Mr. and Mrs. Crutchen, they sort of adopted him — didn’t have no trouble with the fact that he was slow. Why do you wanna know so much about Wink?”
Ames had no answer for the waitress, but Tyson had one for Ames. The answer was this: that he had lied about what happened that day at Dead Indian Lake. That he had lied because of the shame of that day. Tyson had gone to save his little brother Wink even if it meant tucking him under his arm and hopping a freight train with him. His father and mother hadn’t looked for a special place for the boy when he was born; the looking would have been hard in western Oklahoma at any rate, there being no orphanages or asylums around for children like Wink. But Tyson was determined to find a home for the little boy, no matter how long it took — once he had rescued him from their homicidal uncle.
Of course Tyson didn’t have the chance. He reached the lake, thankfully, before his uncle had done the deadly deed: before he had forced the boy below the surface of the water, had held him down until all the oxygen had fled his tiny lungs. Tyson reached the lake at a time that worked to his baby brother’s benefit. Yet the uncle would have none of Tyson’s appeal on behalf of Wink. He was there to do the job assigned to him. According to the incensed uncle, Tyson was a kid who was listening to his heart at the expense of his whole family.