Neely cleared his throat.
“We don’t think he’s Charlene’s son, either,” Chief said.
It felt like a hammer to the spine, to the throat, to the chest, everywhere, my whole body beaten. “What?” And my voice didn’t sound like my own, it sounded like an old man’s.
Neely slapped a newspaper story down on the table in front of me. It was the Amarillo Globe-News, dated seventeen years back, July, the week or so after we’d left there to move here.
I scanned it, heart beating beating beating.
DEAD BABY SWAPPED
Parents in a Panic to Find their Missing Newborn AMARILLO, TX-Police are investigating a possible kidnapping at Amarillo General Hospital. On June 13, Rachel Smith, 26, gave birth to a healthy baby boy that appeared to have died during the night. In the course of a routine autopsy, hospital officials discovered that the dead baby was not related to Smith. Police are currently searching for both the Smith baby and for the parents of the dead baby.
I looked at the two men who stood before me. “What are you saying?”
“You know what we’re saying,” Neely replied.
“Sammy is my son,” I whispered.
“Correction: Sammy is Rachel Smith’s son.” Chief smirked. “Your son was buried by the city of Amarillo.”
My knees buckled and I had to sit.
“You gonna make it?” Neely asked.
“I don’t know how to make any sense of this,” I said.
“You really didn’t know?” he asked.
“Know what?”
“Your wife was alone when she went into labor,” Neely said, “and the baby was born dead. She went to the hospital where she worked and switched the dead baby with the Smith baby.”
There was a picture in my head, a picture of Charlene, alone, holding the dead body of our son close to her chest, weeping and cursing God for taking her miracle away.
“Charlene told you this?” I asked. “She’s talking about it?”
“Oh, she’s talking,” Chief said. He shook his head. “She won’t shut up. It seems she started feeling guilty about what she’d done after all these years. Apparently, a few months ago she told your son-excuse me, Rachel Smith’s son-the truth.”
A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “‘What is truth?’” I quoted Pontius Pilate, unsure who I expected to answer that question, the fallen men standing before me or the God I’ve served all my life. It felt like I’d been robbed of my very life. Something evil had slept right next to me for years, and I’d never known how close it was to me, how I’d loved it, how I’d nurtured it, how I’d been blind to it.
“When we found Sammy, he was in Amarillo looking for his real parents,” Neely said.
“We’ve contacted Amarillo police,” said Chief. “They’re trying to locate the Smith family. Once they have all the samples, it’s just a matter of waiting for the DNA results to confirm what we already suspect.”
“How long will that take?” I asked, throat dry.
“It depends on how long the forensics lab is backed up,” Chief said. “A few weeks. Possibly a month.”
I swallowed. Then I swallowed again. It could take a month to find out if my boy was really my boy? Because suddenly, that was all that mattered to me. Although deep down, I already knew. Maybe I always had.
“Can I bring you some water?” Neely asked.
“Sure.” I was parched, thirstier than I’d been all my life. If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.
Chief opened the door to let Neely through. I looked out at the busy police department. It wasn’t a big place, so I could see everything there was to see. Sammy was just outside, leaning his head against the wall, eyes closed, like he was tired beyond belief, a tired that went beyond the body, a tired that bit its sharp teeth into a soul and wouldn’t let go. And I wanted so badly to say to him, Come. Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
But I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to speak to him, not yet, maybe not for a long time, maybe not ever. Perhaps he would never want to talk to me, and with a clarity that comes with revelation, I realized I had no right to ask him to.
I had lost my boy.
The door to the interrogation room opened and for just a few seconds, I could see Charlene inside, talking to somebody, a police officer. She was talking to him the way one might talk to a pastor, I saw. She was saying everything, leaving nothing aside, confessing her sin, hoping for forgiveness, for salvation.
But police are not in the salvation business. That would be me, picking up the pieces after the trial. I didn’t want to lose her too.
Like Sammy, I closed my eyes and leaned my head back until it touched the wall. Images of the boy and the wife flooded the black space between my eyes and my eyelids. There was Sammy, just a boy, hefty and athletic, running down the sidewalk in front of our home after a football. There was Charlene, standing at the door, calling after him not to go too far, calling after him to come home. There they were, sitting in a church pew while I preached a sermon, Sammy fiddling until Charlene handed him a piece of paper and a crayon, her expression serene as she turned her face back toward mine. I saw her in her nurse’s uniform, kissing Sammy goodbye at the door as she headed out to work the night shift at the hospital, headed out to heal the bodies of sick babies and their mothers.
And I could not-I could not-believe he was somebody else’s boy.
I turned my thoughts toward the flatland surrounding the small town of Andrews, where I’d been a preacher of the Word for the past seventeen years.
I’d always said that land was like God, endless and encompassing everything.
I thought about how a man could just walk out into that land and keep going for miles.
I thought about how a man might never come to the end of it.
SIX-FINGER JACK by JOE R. LANSDALE
Gladewater
Jack had six fingers. That’s how Big O, the big, fat, white, straw-hatted son of a bitch, was supposed to know he was dead. Maybe by some real weird luck a guy could kill some other black man with six fingers, cut off his hand, and bring it in and claim it belonged to Jack, but not likely. So he put the word out that whoever killed Jack and cut off his paw and brought it back was gonna get $100,000 and a lot of goodwill.
I went out there after Jack just like a lot of other fellas, plus one woman I knew of, Lean Mama Tootin’, who was known for shotgun shootin’ and ice-pick work.
But the thing I had on them was I was screwing Jack’s old lady. Jack didn’t know it, of course. Jack was a bad dude, and it wouldn’t have been smart to let him know my bucket was in his well. Nope. Wouldn’t have been smart for me, or for Jack’s old lady. If he’d known that before he had to make a run for it, might have been good to not sleep, ’cause he might show up and be most unpleasant. I can be unpleasant too, but I prefer when I’m on the stalk, not when I’m being stalked. It sets the dynamics all different.
You see, I’m a philosophical kind of guy.
Thing was, though, I’d been laying the pipeline to his lady for about six weeks, because Jack had been on the run ever since he’d tried to muscle in on Big O’s whores and take over that business, found out he couldn’t. That wasn’t enough, he took up with Big O’s old lady like it didn’t matter none, but it did. Rumor was Big O put the old lady under about three feet of concrete out by his lake-boat stalls, buried her in the hole while she was alive, hands tied behind her back, staring up at that concrete mixer truck dripping out the goo, right on top of her naked self.
Jack hears this little tidbit of information, he quit fooling around and made with the jackrabbit, took off lickety-split, so fast he almost left a vapor trail. It’s one thing to fight one man, or two, but to fight a whole organization, not so easy. Especially if that organization belongs to Big O.