Hearts Left Behind (20 page)

I didn’t know what to do.  Should I wait to see
if Edie came back for the letter?  Even if Keller only mowed half the
cemetery it would take him at least an hour.  I looked down at my lunch
sack, saw my book, and decided to stay.  Questions raced around my mind,
bouncing into and off of one another. 
Why
was Edie writing these letters?  Had he killed Katie or did he just know
who had? 
None of it made any
sense.

The Old Man and his mower had been noise-polluting the
cemetery for about twenty-five minutes when he got to the bushes camouflaging
me.  I looked down at my clothes and thanked God for thinking to put a
green shirt on me when I hadn’t thought to do so myself.  I scrunched up
small, knees pulled up to chest, arms wrapped around knees.  The Old Man
went in and out of view, left to right, right to left, blade on blade.

Then something unexpected happened.  The Old Man
put the mower in park and swung himself off of it.  I lowered my head for
a better view between the branches, but couldn’t see what he was doing from my
seated position.  I stood and watched as he walked around to the other
side of the mower and bent down out of view.  When he stood again, the Old
Man looked directly at the bushes I was hiding behind.  He shot furtive
glances to the left and the right, then walked back around and took his
rightful place atop his grass-chopper.  As he sat down, however, something
caught my eye. 
Just a tiny little corner of something
sticking out of the back pocket of the Old Man’s denim overalls.

Something yellow.

He pulled away and my eyes locked on the rock in front
of James Johnson’s headstone.  The letter was gone.  The Old Man had
taken the letter I had written to Mr. Innocent.  Why?  He was going
to mess this up for me, but I didn’t know what to do about it.  Looking
around at the places he had already mowed, I saw that the other Grave Letters
were still in place.

The realization hit me like a Son Settles sucker
punch.  It wasn’t Edie Dales, it was the Old Man.  The Old Man is Mr.
Innocent.

I sprang out from behind the bushes and ran to the
grave of James Johnson.  The Old Man looked up and saw me.  “Jesus
Christ, Tucker, you scared the ever living shit out of me,” he yelled over the
top of the mower.

I walked closer to him, holding his gaze.  I
reached down and turned the key of the Cub Cadet, killing the engine.  Its
rumble echoed in my head for just a second and then all was quiet.  The
world was still.  Not a bird, not a car, not another human being. 
Just me and the Old Man.

His voice quivered.  “Again, Tuck?  What do
you want with me this time?”

“Answers,” I said.  “I want answers.  And
you’re the guy who has them, aren’t you, Alvin?”

The Old Man chuckled.  “Answers, huh?  I
hope the questions are easy,” he said, pointing at his head apologetically.

I said nothing, just watched the Old Man squirm in the
silence.  It wasn’t an interrogation technique
, exactly.  I really didn’t know what to say
next.  The quiet got the best of him.

“Good for holding hats, not much else,” he laughed,
pointing again to his head.  “My mom, she’d always say, she’d say ‘Alvin,
the day the good Lord was handing out brains, you
musta
-“

I interrupted, “This isn’t about brains, Alvin,
it’s
about honesty.  You just
be
honest with me, okay?”

“Sure, Tuck, yeah, of course…of course, I’ll be honest
with you.”

“Good,” I said.  “That’s good.”

“What’s
eatin
’ at
ya
, Tuck?”

The world smelled like freshly cut grass and I
breathed in as much as my lungs could hold.  One of the fringe benefits to
the
job, that
smell.  A green smell that I
imagined rising in rings and swirls from the decapitated blades of grass

“What’s in your back pocket, Alvin?”

“Oh, is that what this is about?”  He reached
back and pulled out the envelope. 
“This letter?”

“Yes, Alvin, that’s exactly what
this
is about.”

“Well, sure, I know it’s one of them, what are they
calling them – Grave Letters?  Yeah, they’re all over the place out here”
he said lifting his arm and turning in his seat to reveal them to me. 
“Get in my way when I mow – some of ‘
em
, anyway.”

“I’ve been watching you the whole time, Alvin. 
You only picked up one letter.  And you didn’t just pick it up, didn’t
just move it.  You put it in your pocket.  Why did you do that,
Alvin? 
Why just the one letter?”

His eyes darted left and right.  “Hell, I don’t
know, I guess –“

I raised a warning finger.  “Don’t! 
Goddammit
, don’t lie to me, Alvin!”  Then, in a quiet
voice, I said.  “Just don’t, all right?  You know exactly what that
letter is.  Now tell me what else you know.”

Lips parted slightly, eyes
narrowed,
the Old Man was churning something over in his mind.  “Okay,” he said,
“Okay, I know what the letter is.”

“And?”

“And,” he hedged, “I suppose I’ve written a couple-few
myself.”

“Why did you write them, Alvin?”

He pulled the cap off his head and ran his fingers
over silvery-white bristles.  “I don’t know.  I guess, well, to be
honest,” he said, looking up at me, “you kind of made me do it?”

“I made you do it?  How the hell did I make you
do it?”

“It was that night up at Mustang’s.  You and that
Skinner kid was talking and I overheard you.”

The stop-and-go of the Old Man’s confession was
getting to me. 
“Enough with the twenty questions
routine, Alvin.
  Just spit it all out.  All of it.”

“Fine, fine,” he said, the words dipped in disdain. 
Then his head lowered and his eyes dropped down and to the right where he found
the memory of that night at Mustang’s.

“Like I said, you and that Skinner kid were talking
and you got to talking about that Cooper girl who got killed back when, what
twenty years ago or
so?  Well, he
says something to you about how he seen
ol
’ Slim Jim
break into Ben
Halpern’s
house that same night and
come out with a gallon of milk or
somethin
’. 
Well, that was the first time I’d heard that
Halpern
story and I get to
thinkin
’ about it myself and I
figure that Skinner kid is probably right. 
That sure
don’t
sound like a man who just killed a little girl.  I mean,
ol
’ Slim Jim, he wasn’t all there – touched in the head –
but he sure as hell had enough sense to know to not stick around.  Hell,
just look at his past and you can see that.  Lots of petty theft and even
then he’d leave town and move onto someplace new.  That’s just what he
did.  You
gonna
tell me that he knew enough to
leave St. Charles
Mizzou
after stealing a bag of
chips but he’s
gonna
hang around Willow Grove after
killing a little girl?”

“Okay, so what’s all of this got to do with you? 
I still don’t understand why you wrote that letter.”

“Just my conscience, I guess.  I started to
feeling
guilty and my conscience got the best of me. 
You see, I had a part in getting’ Slim Jim put away.”

A million little memory dots swirled through my mind
and two of them connected.

“You were the anonymous tipster?”

The Old Man nodded.

“I don’t get it,” I said.  “The story was that
the anonymous tipster saw Slim Jim taking Katie down the tracks.  You’re
telling me now that you never saw that?”

He shook his head slowly side to side and with eyes
closed said, “I didn’t. 
I didn’t see
nothin
’.”

“So you just call up and say that you saw something
that you didn’t see.  Why? 
And why anonymously?
 
Why not just step out and tell Sheriff Buck, nobody would have doubted you.”

“That’s not exactly how it happened.  You see,
someone else did see Slim Jim taking that Cooper girl down the tracks.” 
Then crinkling his eyebrows together he said, “At least, that’s what they told
me.  But I just don’t know any more.”

“Who was it?  Who told you they saw them and why
didn’t they just come forth on their own?”

He wrestled hard with something inside himself,
grimaced, and shook his head.  Looked at me and I could see that in that
moment the Old Man hated everything inside and outside of himself. 
Hated it all.
  “It’s complicated, Tucker.”

“Alvin,” I said.

Unspoken words inflated his cheeks.  Then he
blurted them out.  “It was that Andrew Dales.  He’s the one who seen
Slim Jim and Katie going down the tracks. 
Wasn’t going
to come forward and tell anybody, the little bastard, so I done it.”

“Edie?
  That doesn’t
make sense, Alvin.  Why wouldn’t he just come forward on his own?”

“Hell, I don’t know.  He said that Slim Jim used
to get him
beer and pot sometimes and he
knew Slim Jim would tell his
folks if he found out it was
Andrew who had ratted him out.  Just protecting
himself
,
I suppose.  Said that telling people what he saw would mean getting in
trouble himself, so he asks me to do it for him.  When I tell him that he
can make an anonymous call as easy as I can, he says that there’s a chance that
the person giving the tip might have to come out and identify himself at some
point.   A small chance, he says, but a chance.  Plus, hell, if
they recognize his voice or can somehow trace the call….Anyway, I tell him I’ll
do it – that’s all. 
Never regretted it either, not really.
 
Not until going to Mustang’s the other night and hearing the two of you yapping
about it.  Should have just minded my own damn business, I guess.”

S
o
yet again things were pointing to Edie Dales.
  But something about
the Old Man’s story just wasn’t sitting quite right with me.  I wasn’t as
willing to believe Edie’s story as Keller seemed to be.  Or maybe it was
Keller’s story I didn’t believe.

In the Gaines family, Sunday has always been a day
reserved for Grandparents, the gridiron, and God (and in that order if I’m
being honest).  And in that regard, this Sunday was the same as every
other.  The whole family had gathered.  
Dad
and Aunt Paula.
 
Gavin and his wife, Donna.
 
Heather and her husband, Steve, and their twin boys.
 

On this Sunday, though, Grandma wasn’t in the k
itchen cooking.  Rather she was confined to a bed
that faced the window to the front yard so she could watch her great
grandchildren laugh and tumble under a shimmering sinking sun.  There was
nothing more they could do for Grandma at the rehab center, so we brought her
home.  This would be the last of a thousand Sundays with Grandma.

Evening pushed in and still the children played
outside that window, ignoring both darkness and death.  I went outside to
check on Tory and to see if Gavin needed a break from babysitting, but he was
still going strong, finding it easier to deal with what was out here than what
was in there.  I turned and looked through the same window that Grandma
was looking through, but the view from this side was grim.  White blankets
over white sheets. 
Pink gown over gray skin.
A nicely framed picture of death.

Aunt Paula rose and drew the drapes closed, but the
light in the window framed Grandma’s silhouette.  I remained standing
there for minutes, staring at the still shadow of my father’s mother.

One by one, we each said our goodbyes to Grandma that
evening. 
First her great grandchildren, then her
grandchildren.
  G
randma was
too tired to smile, but you could see it in her eyes.  Grandpa sat quiet
and motionless in a stuffed chair in the corner of the room – not watching, not
listening,
not
talking.

When it was my turn, I held Grandma’s hand and kissed
her one last time.  I told her that I loved her.

“I love you, too,” she said back to me.  “And, Tucker?”

“Yeah, Grandma?”

“Go back and look at the barn again, would
ya
?  See if you don’t see something on the other side
of that hole.”

“Okay, Grandma.  I will.”

“And if you still don’t see anything, then just keep
going back until you do.”

I smiled down at her and told her again that I loved
her,
wanting those to be the last words I
ever said to her.  It would be right for her to die now. 
In this way, in this house.
 
On a
Sunday.
  And later on that night, Grandma did what was right. 
After the last of us left
her
that night, the last of
her left us.  But when she passed, a light was still on in that
window.  And forever a light will be on in that window.

When I went to bed that night waiting for her to die,
I lay there wrapped in the afghan she had made for me years ago when I went
away to college and I tried to feel the life she had knit inside of it. 
It was Tory’s napping blanket now and she couldn’t sleep without it, which was
more than okay with me.

It smelled like simpler times and it warmed me that
night as it always has.  It’s maroon and very long.  I’m tall (6-3 or
6-4, depending on my mood) and Grandma made the blanket large enough that I
could cocoon myself from the cold of my freshman year dorm room.  She also
put a name tag on it because she didn’t want anybody stealing it, which was
sweet but silly.  Guys in dorms might steal your music, your beer, or your
girlfriend, but never your afghan. 
Especially the
afghan that your Grandma made for you.
  But especially
especially
the afghan that your Grandma made for you that
has your name on it, which is why she did it I suppose.

Almost fifteen years later, there are a few loose
strands of yarn and one small hole the size of my big toe, but still in good
condition overall.  I wrapped it around me and thought about how Grandma’s
fingers touched every square inch of it.

You want to believe that you can feel her.  That
you can smell her, that you can hear that laugh of hers.  And you sort of
can, but not really.  Really, all you can do is remember.  But when
you remember and you touch that blanket you do feel the love and the
warmth.  So much love, like every hug she ever gave me. 
So much warmth as to make you thankful for cold times and cold
places.

Dad came back over the next day to make the funeral
arrangements with Grandpa and Aunt Paula.  Before leaving, Dad gave me a
gift – his old Army jacket.

“Here, Tuck.  I want you to have this.  I
know,” he said, “I know you’ve always liked it.”

“Are you sure, Dad?  I mean, I know this means a
lot to you.”  I held it out in front me and shook it a couple times for no
real reason.  It made a nice sound, like a flag flapping in the
wind. 

“I’m sure,” he said.  “I don’t need it anymore.”

A strange gift and stranger still in
the timing of it.
  Offered awkwardly like some strange comfort,
or maybe defeat.  With his mother having just
died, maybe Dad just needed to convince himself how easily he could let go of
things.  Still, knowing Dad there’s probably a lesson I’m supposed to get
from this.  Perhaps this war emblem is to serve as a reminder that there
are bigger things in this world than just one life.  There is enough
history between us for me to resist the lesson, yet I have enough past lessons
in me to respect the man and his good intent.  The problem, though, was
that the jacket was too small for me now.

I watched Dad walk to his car and drive off toward
home, though probably first stopping somewhere along the way for a drink with
some old or new buddy.

Again I held that jacket up in front of me and shook
it.  Over the right pocket it said “Gaines”, over the left “U.S.
Army”.  I’d call it kind of a pea-green, though it’s darker than
that.  Maybe olive, I’m not real good with colors.  Printed on the
tag on the inside collar was:

MEDIUM REGULAR

CHEST: FROM 37 TO 41 INCHES

HEIGHT: FROM 67 TO 71 INCHES

STOCK NO. 8405-782-2939

This saggy sack of a jacket has hung unworn on hooks
and hangers for the better part of thirty years.  It smells musty but has
sort of a raggedy, hunched-over dignity about it.  Embroidered deep within
its fabric is the sweat and tears of a soldier and a husband and a young
father. 
The airs and odors of a foreign land.
 
This jacket is sewn of much more than I can ever understand.

I was fifteen when I first asked Dad for this
jacket.  He wouldn’t give it to me then. 
Probably
because he just wasn’t ready to part with it, but maybe because I wanted it for
the wrong reasons.
  It was not a jacket to be used to
make a
fashion statement nor a political statement.  A
jacket like this must be worn with something more than pride.  You have to
earn the right to fill those sleeves.  I understand this now and would
like to wear it to show the pride I have for both father and country.  I think
maybe I will put this jacket on the day Dad dies.  Like so many things of
his, it will not fit me.  But I will at least put it on. 
In honor.

Gavin, Heather, and I were going through a box of old
photos to select some for the collage to be displayed at the visitation.

“Oh, my.”
Gavin said muffling
a frightened laugh with his free hand.

“What?” I asked.

He held up a black and white photo of an old woman
wearing a black dress, white bonnet and a scowl that would have kept any garden
free of crows for three generations.  She was holding a broom at such an
angle as to suggest she was caught in the middle of sweeping something away,
like all things bright and beautiful.

“That’s Grandma’s Aunt Elsie,” I said.  “She was
a Quaker.”

“Does she…does she have a goatee?” Gavin asked incredulously.

“She sure does,” I said remembering Grandma telling me
how Elsie refused to do anything about her abundance of sideshow facial
hair.  “According to Grandma, Elsie always said
The
good Lord put
it there and the good Lord can take it away if that’s what he wants.

“If that was the Quaker in her speaking, it’s no
wonder the modern world has left that religion behind,” said Gavin.

“Just think, she might have had a completely different
life if somebody would have just told her that God helps those who help
themselves and then handed her a razor,” I added.

“That must have been the good Lord’s way of ensuring
that she never married and reproduced,” Heather said.  “That’s a whole lot
of ugly to carry around.”

A suppressed laugh chortled from my nose.

“What?” Gavin asked with a smile.

“Nothing.
  I was just
thinking about Dad.”

“How do you mean?”

“For some reason, I just imagined Dad having to tell
us Aunt Elsie has died,” I said.

When he has something serious to discuss, Dad will
affect this very solemn sort of tone.  He’ll sit down, lean forward on his
knees, clasp his hands loosely together, and look up at you with one eyebrow
raised higher than the other.  So, I strike the pose and impersonate a
never-happened conversation of Dad breaking the news to me about Aunt Elsie.

“Tuck, I’ve got some bad news,” I say in a very sober
Dad-like tone.

“What is it, Dad?  What’s going on?”

“Well, Tuck, Aunt Elsie died today.”

“Aunt Elsie died?  How?  What happened?”

“It was the ugly, Tuck.  It was the ugly that
killed her.  Her old body just couldn’t take it anymore.  It couldn’t
carry around all that ugly.”  Then, with a final big sigh and a shake of
the head, “She was just too goddamn ugly.”

After the laughter subsided, Heather passed me another
photo.  “Look at this,” she said.  “I g
uess Grandpa wasn’t always bald.”

It was a picture of Grandpa when he looked to be about
fourteen or fifteen years old.  He was shirtless, shoeless, and smiling in
the photograph.  His left arm was slung around the neck of a boy holding a
rake upright like the old man in American
Gothic
.

“Who’s this with him?” I asked, handing the picture to
Gavin.  “He looks familiar.”

“Let me see it,” Gavin said, taking the picture. 
“Oh, I know who that is.  It’s Old Man Keller.”

“Old Man Keller?”
I said, “I
didn’t know he and Grandpa were friends.”

Gavin turned the photograph over to see if anything
was on the flipside.  “Not only friends,” he said, pointing the words
written on the back, “
Best buds forever
.”

“Let me see that.”  I grabbed the picture back
from him.  There it was, written on the back of the photo in faded pencil:
Best buds forever!

I tossed it all around in my head – Katie, Slim Jim,
Keller, Grandpa, the anonymous tipster, Mr. Innocent, - trying to write an
alternative ending to a story that has already been written.  Trying to
find understanding
where none was to be
found.  The Old Man didn’t cover up for Edie – that never sat right with
me – he covered up for Grandpa.  He covered up for his
Best bud. 
My mind did a fast rewind through all of the memories of Grandpa I
could
process,
trying to remember ever feeling afraid
of him, but there was no such memory.  I always suspected he drank too
much.  And then there was his strange distant behavior during Grandma’s
illness.  But there was nothing that could lead me to think he was capable
of killing a child.  I had nothing but good memories, which made
me
feel guilty and foolish.  All of those memories were
now tainted:  Picking wild raspberries in the forest together. 
Him teaching me to drive his riding lawnmower.
 
Playing checkers.
  All of it tainted now.  The
chubby, laughing, gentle old man of my memories had morphed into an evil-eyed,
sharp-toothed predator masquerading as protector.  A lascivious lurking
evil disguised as anything but. 
A dragon monster.

It is strange how quickly we can believe a something
so unbelievable.  A something new to believe that is so inconsistent with
everything we thought we knew that we can feel the truth in it.  It is in
the way we learn such things, I suppose.  The gritty, sticky certainty
that the truth is rolled in before handed to you.  Not evidence.  Not
proof. 
Something deeper than that.
 
Certainty.
 
Somehow I just knew it was true.

Grandpa had killed Katie.