A Land More Kind Than Home (16 page)

My grandpa pushed Mr. Thompson up against the side of our truck, and Mr. Thompson stayed there and watched my grandpa try to get Daddy up off the man he was hitting.

“Ben,” I heard my grandpa say. “That's enough.” My daddy's fist was covered in blood, and his shirt was turned red from the man's bloody face. “Stop it, Ben,” my grandpa said. He got Daddy up on his feet, and my daddy shook loose like he was going after Mr. Thompson now. “Goddamn it, that's enough,” my grandpa said. He wrapped his arms around Daddy and tried to keep him from getting away. Daddy got free and turned around and pushed my grandpa in the chest.

“Get off me!” he screamed. “Don't you
ever
touch me! Ever!” Daddy pushed my grandpa again, and then he turned around and faced the house and when he did I could see that he was crying. He put his hands over his eyes, and I saw they had blood all over them. He walked out toward the road where my grandpa's truck was parked. My grandpa just stood there and watched him, and then he turned and looked at Mr. Thompson.

“Y'all need to go,” he said. “There wasn't no reason for you to have come out here to start with.”

Miss Lyle stepped away from the window and unlocked the door and opened it and looked outside.

“Wait, Gene,” she told Mr. Thompson. “Let me get something to clean them boys up. After that y'all need to leave. Ben called the sheriff, and he'll be here real soon. He don't need to see any of this. It's just going to make it worse than it already is.”

Miss Lyle closed the door and turned around and walked across the front room toward the kitchen. I could hear her in there opening and closing drawers and running water in the sink. She must've told them old people what had happened outside because I could hear them fussing and I could hear the sound of their chairs being pushed back from the table. Mama still sat on the sofa. When I looked at her, she stood up and walked over to me at the window. She pulled me to her, and I hugged her around the waist. We stood there and looked out at the yard where Mr. Thompson helped those men stand up and checked to see how bad they'd been hurt. Daddy was almost out of the reach of the floodlights at the top of the road, but I could see him leaning his head down on the hood of my grandpa's truck, and his shoulders were shaking like he was crying. My grandpa stood in the center of the yard. His back was to us, but I saw him reach into his shirt pocket and pull out a pack of cigarettes. He shook one out and lit it and looked out at the road like he was watching Daddy too.

D
ADDY WAS STILL OUT THERE WHEN THE SHERIFF PULLED UP WITH
the red and blue police lights spinning on top of his car. He parked behind my grandpa's truck and turned off the lights and got out and left his door open, and then he leaned in and picked up a cowboy hat where it had been sitting on the seat beside him. He put it on. I could see him good with the light coming from inside his car. He was about as old as my grandpa; his cowboy hat was white, and his brown button-down shirt was wet where his armpits were sweating. The little silver star on his chest shone when the light caught it. He left his arm propped up on the car door, and he just stood there and looked out at the yard.

Miss Lyle and two of those old women were out there with wet washcloths wiping the blood off those men's faces. Somebody had given one of those men a sandwich bag full of ice, and he was holding it up to his nose.

“I think it's broke,” I heard one of those old women tell him.

My grandpa sat on the porch steps smoking and watching Daddy out at the road. When Mama saw the sheriff, she walked through the dining room to the bedroom where Stump was still laying on the bed and she closed the door behind her. Before she left she told me to stay inside. I asked her if Daddy was crying, but she just told me to leave him alone and not bother him. I figured she'd never seen him cry either and it had probably scared her too.

I heard the sheriff walking through the gravel, and then I could just barely see him moving like a shadow until he stepped into the grass and the floodlights hit him and made that little star on his chest shine. While he walked he looked over his left shoulder out at the road, where I knew my daddy was standing.

“What in the hell happened here?” the sheriff asked. He said it like anybody who wanted to could try and give him an answer. Mr. Thompson looked up at him and pointed out to the road where Daddy stood by my grandpa's truck.

“We just came out to extend the sympathy of the church,” Mr. Thompson said. “We came out in the spirit of faith and fellowship, Sheriff, and that man attacked us.”

The sheriff looked at Mr. Thompson, but he didn't say anything to him, and then he walked over to the man who held that bag of ice on his nose. The sheriff reached out and picked up the hand that held the bag and he looked close at that man's face where it was busted. He squinted his eyes like he was concentrating on what he was looking at, and then he looked over at Miss Lyle where she was trying to get the other man's face to stop bleeding. The man Miss Lyle was working on had his eyes almost swollen shut, and there was a big, bloody cut under one of them. The sheriff let go of the man's hand and the bag of ice dropped back on his nose. He let out a groan like he'd just been punched again.

“Well, I'm sorry if y'all came all the way out here and got your feelings hurt,” the sheriff said. “But that man's just found out that he's lost his son, so I ain't planning on doing nothing about this little disagreement tonight.” He looked at Mr. Thompson. “But if you three want to give me a statement about what happened up at y'all's church tonight then I'll be glad to take it.” Mr. Thompson looked over at those two men he'd brought with him, and then he looked back at the sheriff.

“We don't know nothing about it,” Mr. Thompson said.

“You knew enough to come out here and bring these two boys with you,” the sheriff said. “And I find it funny that you don't know nothing now. Maybe after you saw the law you forgot what drove you to come out here, and that's fine. There's nothing I can do about that tonight. But I'd suggest you head back to Marshall and tell Chambliss and anybody who'll listen that I expect them to be ready to talk as soon as I get things settled tonight.” He stood there like he was waiting for Mr. Thompson to say something, and then he turned away and started walking toward the house.

“I suppose Pastor will talk if the Lord leads him,” Mr. Thompson said. The sheriff stopped and turned around in the yard and looked at him.

“Then you'd better pray to God he's led,” the sheriff said.

“I can't rightly say what Pastor will do, Sheriff. I'm sure you've heard the good Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“So does the law,” the sheriff said. “You tell Chambliss and the rest of your people that I'll be around to see them.”

The sheriff turned to walk up the porch steps, and when he did my grandpa looked up at him. The sheriff stopped and held up his hand to block out the glare from the floodlights, and then he stared hard at my grandpa. My grandpa stared right back at him. It was quiet except for the sound of the slow footsteps crunching in the gravel where Mr. Thompson and those two men were walking out to their truck.

“So you're back in town,” the sheriff said to my grandpa. He lowered his hand, and the light hit him in the eyes again. He looked from my grandpa up to me where I stood behind the screen door.

“You figuring to stick around this time?” the sheriff said.

“We'll see,” my grandpa said.

“I guess we will,” the sheriff said. My grandpa stood up from the steps real slow to let the sheriff pass. Then the sheriff opened the screen door and I moved out of his way too. He took off his cowboy hat and held it down by his side.

“Where's your mama at?” he asked me.

“In the bedroom,” I said and pointed to the next room.

I watched him walk through the front room and into the dining room, and I heard his boots on the hardwood floor, and then I heard him open the bedroom door.

“Mrs. Hall,” he said. He closed the door quietly behind him.

I looked outside and saw my grandpa standing at the bottom of the porch steps. He had his foot propped up on the bottom step, and he was looking up at me. It was the first time I'd gotten a good look at him. He had gray hair curling out from under his baseball cap, and he had gray whiskers too. His eyes were just as blue as Daddy's, and his nose was crooked. I heard voices coming from the road, and my grandpa turned around and looked out into the darkness at the top of the yard.

“Mr. Hall,” Mr. Gene Thompson's voice said from out in the dark, “Mr. Hall, I want you to know that we're all sorry for your loss.”

“Stay away from my family,” Daddy said.

I
WAS SITTING BY MYSELF ON THE SOFA IN THE FRONT ROOM WHEN
Miss Lyle came back inside the house. Her hands were full of washcloths that were soaked through with blood. She walked right past me toward the kitchen.

“This is all just a mess,” she said to herself as she went by.

I heard the bedroom door open off the dining room, and I heard the sheriff's boots walk across the floor. He stepped into the front room and looked over at me on his way to the door. He put his cowboy hat back on and looked out the screen door. I heard my daddy and my grandpa talking quietly out in the yard, but they stopped talking when the sheriff opened the screen door and walked out onto the porch. He walked down the steps, and I heard him moving through the grass toward where I figured my daddy and my grandpa were standing.

I could just barely hear all three of them talking, but they were being too quiet for me to understand exactly what they said. But then I heard somebody raise his voice like he was mad.

“That ain't your decision to make.”

“It ain't yours either,” the sheriff's voice said.

“It's all right,” said Daddy's voice. “He'll run him home. It's all right.”

“You sure?” the sheriff asked.

“Yeah,” Daddy said. “I'm sure.”

“Can you take care of that boy?”

“He's my grandson, ain't he?”

“I reckon so,” the sheriff said.

I
T WAS HOT AND SMELLED LIKE SWEAT IN MY GRANDPA
'
S TRUCK
, and there were papers and stained napkins and balled-up cigarette packets tossed all over the floorboard. The truck's windows were rolled down all the way, and I watched Daddy and the sheriff walk up the porch steps to go back inside Miss Lyle's house. Mama was waiting on the other side of the screen door for Daddy. My grandpa put the key in the ignition and started his truck. When the engine fired up, it sounded like pieces of old metal were beating against each other under the hood.

“Are my mom and dad not coming with us?” I asked.

“No, they're going to stay with your brother,” he said. “Just for tonight.” He pulled his pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and shook one out, and then he pushed in the lighter on the dash to get it hot. “I'm going to carry you home and stay the night at your house, if that's all right with you.” He looked at me and tried to smile. The lighter popped, and he pulled it out and brought the orange glow up to his face. When he lit up his cigarette, I saw that his fingers were twitching. He went to put the lighter back, but his hand shook so bad that he couldn't hardly get it in. I heard it tapping against the dash until he finally fit it back in there.

He left the cigarette burning in the corner of his mouth and pulled the gearshift down. He put his arm across the back of my seat and turned his head to back into Miss Lyle's driveway so he could turn his truck around.

The moon looked like it might've been hiding somewhere behind the clouds and the road was dark except where his headlights shined, but his truck was old and his headlights weren't as bright as the lights on my daddy's truck, even though my daddy's truck was a pretty old one too. I couldn't hardly see a thing except for what was right out in the road in front of us. His truck was so old that the insides of the doors had started to rust. When Daddy saw rust like that, he called it “car cancer,” and I'd heard him say that if you get it inside your truck you might as well give up hope and let it die. I reached out and touched the rust with my fingers, and it crumbled into my hand. I wiped my hand on my blue jeans and saw that it left a dusty brown stain.

“This is an old truck, ain't it?” my grandpa said, but I didn't say nothing back to him.

We rode alongside the river and I looked through the windshield down past the other side of the truck, and I could just barely see the water shining in between the trees in that little bit of moonlight. I thought about me and Stump and Joe Bill skipping rocks this morning, and then I thought about how long ago it seemed that we were all together down there on the bank. Through the trees I could see the lights from Marshall twinkling farther down the river. I knew we'd pass the church soon and if I wanted to I could look to my right out my window at it when we did, but I decided that I didn't want to. I just stared straight out at the headlights, but I knew when we passed the church just the same.

My grandpa took the road up to the highway, and I felt us climbing the hill and I heard his old truck pulling hard like it was straining to make it. When we stopped at the stop sign at the top of the hill, an ambulance turned off the highway and passed us and headed down toward the river from where we'd just come. The ambulance didn't have its emergency lights on or its siren blaring, and I noticed how slow it was driving. I looked out the back window and watched its taillights disappear into the darkness at the bottom of the hill. When I turned around again, I saw that my grandpa was staring at it in his rearview mirror. He sat there just looking at it for a second longer, and then he put his foot on the gas and we turned left onto the highway.