They were married for seven years before her death, and during that time she bore three children and grew increasingly quiet, seeming content to offer formalities and then retreat within herself. She was well known in Fayette County but yet not really known at all.
On that early November evening, when they brought her to the Wagner house just as the burst of warmth from earlier in the day was disappearing with darkness, Joy Main was a week past her twenty-fifth birthday and dead of a fractured skull.
Edwin came with her, tears in his eyes and the sheriff at his side. He explained that Joy came out to the stable to see him and a horse had bucked and thrown a sudden high kick and a rear hoof caught her square in the head.
He’d shot the horse, Edwin explained in a choked voice, and then sent for the sheriff. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do, shooting that horse, but he couldn’t help it. There needed to be blood for blood.
Arlen had heard it all from inside the house, the men standing on the porch with the body at their feet, wrapped in blankets. When Edwin told the story, Isaac Wagner said, “You had the mind to shoot the horse while your wife lay dying?”
The sheriff stepped in then, told Isaac that Edwin was a grieving man, damn it, and there’d be no such questions, who cared a whit about the horse at a time such as this? Isaac had said nothing else, but Edwin Main had watched him with dark eyes, and Arlen, standing at the window, felt the coldness pass through the glass just like the wind that had returned out of the northern hills.
Isaac gathered the body in his arms and prepared to carry Joy Main back to his shop. Edwin spoke up again and told him to make it the finest coffin he’d ever constructed; anything less would be a sin, and how much the box might cost mattered not, he’d pay any price.
Isaac told him that every coffin he made was a fine one.
It wasn’t long after they’d left that Arlen heard the dreaded phrase from his father’s shop: Tell me.
This time he’d crept to the door. Usually he tried to clear himself away from the sound, but there’d been such tension in the air tonight, with his father asking that question about the horse and Edwin Main staring at him ominously.
Not her, Arlen thought, of all the ones in town for you to speak with, not his wife. We’ll be run out of this place if anyone knows.
The talking persisted, though, and it horrified. Isaac Wagner was pretending to hear an explanation of murder.
“He laid hands on the servant? That girl’s no more than fifteen, is she? He intended to violate her? Did she see what happened after? What did he strike you with? Had he beaten you before? Did the children see? Did anyone see?”
Arlen stood at the door and heard it all and felt a trembling deep in his chest that intensified when Isaac said, “I’ll see that it’s dealt with. I’ll see that he has a reckoning. I promise you that; I swear it to you.”
Arlen opened the door and went into the room then and shouted at him to stop, and what he saw was more terrible than he’d imagined. Isaac had lifted the dead woman and placed her hands on his shoulders and was looking into her face. There was still blood in her hair, and her eyelids sagged halfway down, but the hint of blue irises remained and seemed to stare over Isaac’s shoulder and into Arlen’s own eyes.
“She’s telling me what happened,” Isaac said. “Don’t be afraid, son. She’s telling me the truth.”
“She’s not,” Arlen screamed. “She can’t speak, can’t tell you a thing, she’s dead! She’s gone!”
“No,” Isaac said, “the body is gone. She is not.”
Arlen stood at the door and shook his head, tears brimming in his eyes. Isaac lowered the body slowly and very gently, then turned to face his son.
“I have to touch them to hear,” he said. “There are those who don’t, those who can conjure without needing a touch, but I’m not one of them. Maybe in time. It took me many a year to reach them at all.”
“Stop,” Arlen said. “Stop, stop, stop.”
“You don’t believe,” Isaac said. “Those who don’t believe can’t hear. But you’ve got a touch of the gift yourself, boy. I’m sure of it. I see it in you.”
“No more,” Arlen said, backing away through the door. “Don’t say any more.”
“Look past your fear,” Isaac said. “It’s about doing what’s right. This woman was murdered, beaten with an ax handle and killed, Arlen! That demands justice. I’ll see that it’s delivered. I’ve promised her that. And if there’s anything I hold sacred, it’s a promise to the dead.”
Arlen turned and ran.
He spent close to two hours in the wooded hills, stumbling through the underbrush with hot tears in his eyes and terror in his heart. He wondered if his father was still down there with Joy Main or if he’d gone off in search of the promised reckoning. The longer Arlen walked, the more certain he became that he could not allow such a thing to take place.
You’ve got a touch of the gift yourself, boy. I’m sure of it. I see it in you.
It was that statement more than any of the others that drove him out of the woods and back into town. His father was insane-the dead could not speak to the living; they were gone and nothing lingered in their stead-but Arlen was not insane. He was not and he wouldn’t ever be.
Let Isaac Wagner bear his own shame, then, and not put it on his son as well. If Isaac would show the world that he was mad, his son would show himself to be sane.
The sheriff was home, and when Arlen told him the story, he stared with astonished eyes. When it was through, he gathered himself and thanked Arlen for coming down and told him to go on home and wait.
“I’ll come for him shortly,” he said. “And you did the right thing, son. Know that. You did the right thing.”
Arlen went home. He waited. Isaac was back in his shop, silent.
Thirty minutes passed before the sheriff came, and then he wasn’t alone. Edwin Main was with him, wearing a long duster to fight the chill night wind. When Arlen saw them approaching, he felt sick. Why had the sheriff told him anything?
They came through the door without knocking and saw Arlen standing there and asked where his father was. He pointed an unsteady hand at the closed door of the shop.
They went in for him. Arlen stayed outside, heard the exchange, Edwin Main shouting and swearing and Isaac speaking in deep, measured tones. When they emerged again, Isaac was handcuffed.
Isaac looked over and locked eyes with Arlen, and his face was so gentle, so kind.
He said, “You’re going to need to believe. And something you need to know, son? Love lingers.”
They shoved him out the front door then and off the porch and down into the dark dusty street. Arlen trailed behind. Edwin Main was still shouting and offering threats. They’d gone a few hundred feet before Isaac spoke to him.
“You killed her,” he said, “and it will be proved in time. We’ll talk to your house girl and to your children and they’ll tell me what Joy already did.”
Edwin Main went for him then, and the sheriff stepped between them. Edwin was a big man, but Isaac was bigger, and he stood calmly and looked down at the screaming widower and didn’t seem troubled by him.
“You struck her with the ax handle,” he said. “She’d run out of the house to get away from you, and you chased her into the yard and killed her there. Then you dragged her into the stable so there’d be blood in it, and you shot the horse because you believed it would add credence to your tale. That’s what happened. That’s the truth of it.”
Edwin Main shook free of the sheriff’s grasp. The sheriff stumbled and fell to his hands and knees in the road as Edwin reached under his duster and drew a pistol. Arlen cried out and ran for them, and Edwin Main cocked the pistol and pointed it at Isaac’s head from no more than two feet away.