It was past noon when Caleb Wolfe woke with the image of the red sun burning a hole in his skull. He was groggy from the heat and stiff from sleeping in the chair. When he looked out the window, the sun was high and white, but he still had the distinct feeling something was wrong. He splashed water on his face and fumbled down the hall to see if Myron wanted something to eat.
Myron Evans wasn’t ever going to be hungry again. Myron Evans wasn’t going to peep in any windows or sing out any Glory hallelujah’s. Myron Evans was hanging in his cell, strangled by his own shirt.
At 12:17, Dr. Ben pronounced him dead; and by 12:45, Arlen was at our door saying it could have been Daddy if we’d left him there all night by himself, as if something in the cell made Myron do it, as if it had nothing to do with the man himself. Myron left a note for his mother: I try to be good, but sometimes I can’t help myself.
Every time I closed my eyes that night I saw Myron’s thin white chest, his skin stretched so tight I could count his ribs. His face bulged above the knotted sleeve of his shirt. His eyes never closed. The last thing he’d done on this earth was kick the chair out from under his feet. When I could make every other picture disappear, I still saw his feet dangling, those heavy shoes, black and thick-soled, those neat bows, tied for the last time.
The next morning I went looking for Freda Graves. I needed her to lay hands on me so I could say the right things when I talked to God. When I thought of Him on my own, I wanted to curse Him for letting Myron hang himself. I could understand Caleb Wolfe falling asleep on the job, but God, why were His eyes closed the night Elliot Foot set the town on fire? What kept His hands so busy that morning as Myron Evans took off his shirt? All He had to do was give Caleb Wolfe a little nudge, jolt him awake, let the chair fall with a clatter. That wasn’t much to ask of God.
Freda’s blinds were pulled shut, just as they always were. I pounded on her door; the sound was so hollow I thought the house must be completely empty, that even the furniture and carpet had disappeared. I went back three times that day. As the last smoky light of dusk gave way to a starless night, a neighbor poked his head out his window and said, “Just missed her. She had a bag and was headed toward Main. Good riddance. Nothing but trouble that woman.” I didn’t wait to hear the rest; I tore after her. I ran almost a mile before I caught sight of her heading west. Her steps were slow and steady, as if she meant to walk to Idaho. A black shawl draped her head, and she plodded along, a stooped old woman trying to sneak out of town in a quiet way, moving slow so no one would see she was running.
I got close enough to touch her and almost put my hand on her bony back, but something stopped me. I kicked gravel at the heels of her shoes; she didn’t turn. I said her name and still she kept on shuffling, deaf and dumb. Finally I ran ahead of her to stare her in the eye, but even that was impossible. As night filled up the valley, Freda Graves hobbled down the highway wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses.
I said, “Myron’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“Where’re you going?”
“Away from this valley.” Her voice was a scatter of stones falling on the road.
“Take off those glasses.”
“I cannot.”
“They’re not glued to your face. Let me look at you,” I said. I wasn’t afraid of her anymore. Nothing mattered. Not after what Myron had done.
“I’ve put out my eyes.”
I reached out to tear the glasses off her face, but she dodged my hand. “You’re not blind,” I said. “You saw me.”
“I felt the air move.”
I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t try again. Blind or not, Freda Graves couldn’t help me. She had lifted us toward God in her mighty arms, but she was a coward in the end and we were farther from the Lord than we ever imagined. Freda Graves didn’t care what happened to us. She wasn’t going to stick around and take the blame for Myron and Elliot; she was going to let us fall alone, one by one.
I watched her for a long time, until she became a dot on the road. I thought of the bag she carried, and I wondered what she chose to take. I imagined all her little Christs jostling against one another: the smooth soapstone Jesus she would fondle when she stopped to rest; the frail, twisted man, arching off the Cross; the Jesus with the burning eyes who blamed us for our sins, who said, I must die so that you may live, who shouted, Murderers, sinners, who cried out, Bring me water. And if she spoke the truth, if she had blinded herself, she would run her fingers over the cool pages of her Bible, waiting for the words to rise off the paper and speak to her.
I remembered Freda Graves saying we had to watch out for ourselves because God wasn’t looking down on us every second. He had the universe in His charge. Our lives were small, rags on sticks in the wind. She said that when Job cursed God, God answered from the whirlwind: Does the rain have a father? It made sense to me then but not now. I said, yes, yes, you are that father, you who demand so much. But God said, Who has given to me, that I should repay him? And I knew this was His final answer. In the end, even Jesus asked, “Father, why have you forsaken me?”
22
DADDY MADE himself sicker by the day. “He’ll be fine by the time that scratch heals,” said Dr. Ben, chuckling. “In a week or so people should have something else to talk about.” The doctor laughed again, but Mother was not amused.
Father stayed home from work, lying on his bed like a man who expected to die. Half the people in town had seen him go after the big Indian, and the other half claimed they were there. He was a sooty-faced madman. His followers conveniently forgot how they’d cheered him on. Dean Macon was a lone fool.
Besides that, Arlen had put it in his head that he could have been the one hanging from his own shirt in that cell, and my father believed it in a way. I think Myron’s death made him afraid of what could happen to a man who exposed himself to Miriam Deets. Father could never do what Myron had done, but he’d laid himself bare all the same, and the things he wanted from that girl took on a new meaning. He figured he’d better lie low and stay out of fate’s path.
Mother didn’t leave the house for days in a row. She sent me to the store for groceries. “Don’t answer any questions,” she said, “even if you think you know the answer.”
As I wheeled the cart down the aisles I heard whispers, my father’s name and my own. I kept my head down. If someone tried to speak to me, I gave the cart a push and jumped on the back for a quick ride.
Mom kept her hands busy that week. She defrosted the refrigerator and vacuumed every rug in the house. On Tuesday she started washing windows in the living room, and by Thursday she’d reached my bedroom in the attic.
The day of Myron’s funeral I rode my bike to the cemetery and stood on the hill above the gravesite as they lowered his mahogany coffin into the ground. Mrs. Evans had spared no expense. I heard the coffin was lined with white satin, and the handles were solid brass. She was sorry now. She should have gone to see Myron that day, though she was disgusted by what he’d done. “I wouldn’t have left him there all night,” she’d said to Sheriff Wolfe the day Myron died. “Didn’t he know? Didn’t he know his mama would forgive him?”
Reverend Piggott’s speech was brief. I suppose he didn’t have much to say for a man who had committed the final sin of taking his own life. Less than a dozen mourners saw Myron buried. Caleb Wolfe peered over the very edge of the hole, holding his hat in his hand, watching the box shudder as it hit bottom. Bo Effinger wept like the overgrown child he was. Tiny Mrs. Evans wore a netted veil to hide her bloodshot eyes. When she threw the first clod of dirt, I saw her fury: she heaved it with all her pitiful strength, then turned and walked away, letting the men with shovels finish their job.