In the Night of the Heat (38 page)

“What are you up to, Sheriff?” I said.

He looked at me in the rearview mirror. “That man over there is my dad. His name is Eric Kelly. He and Wallace Rubens met a long time ago.”

Right again. “Is that so?”

“Did Bear mention my father's brother got killed back in '67?”

I hear a girl also got raped
, I thought, but I didn't need to say it aloud. Mercy had made its own accommodations with what happened in 1967, long before I appeared.

“Didn't come up. We talked about music, mostly.”

“My father doesn't remember those days, not for a long time now. He's got Alzheimer's. I don't know how much longer I'll have him, so I just try to keep him comfortable. He was a good father. A good man.” Sheriff Kelly's voice shook, but I couldn't see his face. “Even if he made mistakes when he was young.”

A truth as ugly as Mercy's deserved airing, but neither of us was prepared to bring it to light. The car sat idling for a moment.

Finally, the sheriff drove back to the road. It was just after seven when we got to the interstate. Less than an hour to Tallahassee! Could I dare to hope that I was about to make it home after all?

“Did you ever meet T.D. Jackson?” Sheriff Kelly said, breaking a long silence. The Super Bowl ring was in my back pocket; I could feel it beneath me.

“A couple of times.”

“What was he like?” With the sheriff's thick accent, the word “like” came out “lack.” But I heard a hunger in his voice that went beyond a fan's admiration. Or a sheriff's curiosity. Maybe he'd been hoping for a little family reunion one day.

“Troubled,” I said.

He nodded. “Guess that's no secret now.”

“But a hell of a ballplayer.”

“Just like Bear,” the sheriff said sadly.

That was the last we spoke of it.

I made it to my plane with time to spare.

I MADE MY CONNECTING FLIGHT
and caught tailwinds into LAX, so we touched down ten minutes early. Even with rush-hour traffic, my cab was pulling me on to Gleason by six thirty, a half hour before the kid was scheduled to pick up Chela for the dance. I wanted to kiss the sidewalk. There's no place like home.

A white stretch limo pulled in right after me and parked across the street, in front of Mrs. Katz's house—I would hear about that later, since she grew her rosebushes too close to the road. I tried to peer into the limo's darkened windows. It was empty. I knocked on the driver's door. “Hey, man,” I said. “Did you come with…Bernard Faison?”

The driver was white-haired. He shook his head. “Waiting for Chela Hardwick. Fifty-four-fifty Gleason.”

I had never heard Chela use my surname, even as a joke. And how had Chela been able to afford a limo? Had Dad ordered it? “Whose name is on the bill?” I said.

The driver checked his records and recited a Russian name: Katerina Marmeladova, a character from Dostoyevsky's
Crime and Punishment.
I knew that alias well.
Mother!

I'd told Mother about Chela's homecoming dance when I visited her in Brentwood, and Mother hadn't forgotten. Maybe there was a heart down inside her somewhere after all. I almost wished I could tell Chela who had sent the limo. Almost.

“What the hell happened to you?” the limo driver said.

“I took a wrong turn on vacation.”

“Remind me never to go wherever you were.”

Inside my house, everything looked and smelled right. Like always, Sidney's dignified poses greeted me from Alice's wall. I smelled Marcela's food cooking in the kitchen, probably enough for a feast. And the fish were still alive, rioting at the top of the tank for dinner.

I heard rattling as Dad's wheelchair flew across the tiles, and he met me at the end of the foyer. “Damn,” Dad said when he saw my face. I'd called Dad earlier to tell him that Rubens was dead, and that we'd had a scuffle, but I hadn't mentioned my loose back tooth, or swollen jaw. I must have looked like I'd been through something. It hurt Dad's eyes to see me that way.

“Glad you went?” Dad said.

I shrugged. “Yeah. Just not glad about the way it turned out.” I hadn't killed Rubens, but he had died on my watch. So had Carlyle. I was carrying something new.

“Tell me. Dinner's ready.”

He wanted the details, of course. But I wasn't ready to talk about Mercy, even to Dad, so I went to the stairs instead. “Is Chela in her room?”

“I wouldn't…go up there!” Dad called behind me.

I knocked on Chela's closed door. “Chela?”

A frantic shriek answered me.
“Oh my GAAAAAWWWWD. You can't see me until we finish putting on the dress!”
Rehearsing her wedding day.

“Twenty minutes!” Marcela called out next. “Men stay downstairs!”

Dad chuckled when I came back down. “Told you,” he said. “Get some food, Ten.”

For the next fifteen minutes, while I ate Marcela's famous Cuban
arroz con pollo
and sweet fried plantains called
maduros,
I told my father about Mercy. While I described Bear's story of the Sunshine Bowl, Dad made sure I had water in my glass. Even when his own hand was shaking, he spooned seconds to my plate. It felt good to have someone take care of me.

Dad shook his head, thunderstruck that Donald Hankins was implicated in so many killings, and by the burden he and the members of the Heat carried. He was confounded by the Florida sheriff's attitude. Had Kelly's family kept quiet about the suspects in their son's murder for fear that half the boys in town would be implicated in rape?

I couldn't share the ultimate ironies with him, but he saw his own.

“It's almost like…it infected the next generation…too,” Dad said. “Sins…of the fathers.”

For a moment, there was sad silence in our house. I thought about T.D. Jackson's Super Bowl ring, and about how even when families move on, their stories follow them. I wondered how many untold stories from my family history were alive and well in me.

A timid knock sounded on the front door at ten to seven.

“Must be him!” Dad said, rolling toward the door. Dad had more energy than I did.

Bernard Faison was tall for his age, although he as was the thinnest wrestler I had ever seen. A strong wind would have turned him into a kite. Wiry strength, maybe. Bernard's tux was smooth. Basic black, down to his shirt and tie. He held a corsage in a plastic con
tainer tightly with both hands, as if it might jump free. I couldn't place his ethnicity: His skin was brown, but his eyes looked Asiatic. Like Chela, he was a mixture—and unless bookworms with glasses were more popular now than when I'd been in school, Faison's brains made him an outcast, too.

“Hey, Bernard,” I said, reaching for a handshake.

“Mr. Hardwick,” he said, and pumped my hand. His hand was broad and firm. He reached for Dad's. “Captain.”

A boy with some manners might be a boy with some sense.
Dad used to say something like that when I was a kid, and I finally understood what he'd meant.

Bernard was fascinated by the bruises on my face, but he didn't dare ask. He only fidgeted, losing some of his composure. He hadn't learned to stand at his full height yet; I might have to take him aside and teach him to stop worrying about being taller than anyone else.

“You be…a gentleman,” Dad told Bernard.

“Yessir,” Bernard said, glancing down at Dad in his chair, and his face seemed to go waxen. I gave a start when I saw the butt of Dad's gun peeking out from the blanket on his lap. Faison had seen Susie, too. I slapped Dad's shoulder and covered up the gun.

Bernard's shocked expression didn't change after my apologetic shrug. Dad had made the impression he wanted to make. I felt sorry for the kid, even as I tried not to smile.

“Here she comes!” Marcela called from upstairs. “Cameras ready, gentlemen!”

Dad had his old Polaroid hanging around his neck, the same one he'd used at the beach when I was a kid, and I grabbed my digital camera from the television cabinet. “Give me two seconds,” I said, turning on the camera and aiming toward the stairs.

“Will you
please
stop making such a big deal?” Chela's voice came from upstairs. “God, you guys are so embarrassing…”

Her shadow moved down the stairs first; and then Chela appeared.

Maybe it was the track lighting, or because the day we'd been shopping seemed like a year ago. Mostly, it was Chela's haircut—she'd chopped her hair much shorter while I was gone, a more playful style that reminded me of Janiece's. For an instant, the sick feeling in my stomach came back, as surely as if I were still tied in that tobacco barn. But then I saw the glow on Chela's face as she walked down my stairs in a dress that made her look priceless. I had never seen such a wide smile. Mercy disappeared into its happy depths.

My chest floated.

Bernard needed help popping his eyes back into their sockets. I reminded him to give Chela her corsage, and took a photo while he pinned it. Dad, Marcela, and I filled the room with flashes. For a night anyway, Chela was a superstar, a memory no one could take away.

Chela wasn't going to turn into Janiece. We had gotten to her in time.

“Shit, Ten, what happened to your face?” Chela said, finally noticing me in the flurry.

Dad clucked, and Chela pressed her hand over her mouth. No cussing in the house.

“Long story,” I said. “We'll talk about it tomorrow. Go have a good time.”

“Are you okay?” The concern in her doelike eyes was exaggerated by her makeup.

“Much better now.” I smiled at Chela. “You're beautiful, kid.”

I am?
Her eyes shone in a way that melted my heart.

“Let me get Chela and Bernard together,” Marcela said, waving her camera.

“Hurry, guys,” I said. “The limo's waiting.”

“That's
our
limo outside?” Bernard said, gazing at me with questions. He looked dazed.

“I told you he's the coolest dad in the world,” Chela said.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2

Evangeline Jackson answered the phone when I called first thing in the morning, and she asked me to come to the house at two. “Emory will be at a fund-raiser,” she said, her voice hushed. “I want us to be alone.”

I felt a twinge of disappointment that I wouldn't see Melanie, but I knew that was best too. Melanie wasn't the woman I was missing; she was just closer, easier to touch. April and I each had one round in phone tag, so I hadn't talked to her since my return from Mercy. It was my turn to try, but her voice was more bittersweet with every call; she was a retreating silhouette.

At her door, T.D. Jackson's mother was dressed in a somber gray sweater and long black skirt, her hair in a perfect bun. Standing so close to her, I realized how tiny her frame was. I hadn't noticed so much when I saw her in the garden, but I towered over her.

“I tried to talk him into canceling his commitments this month,
but Emory never can back out,” she said, inviting me into her house. “He can't walk away.”

We sat in the living room, among the flower arrangements that hadn't yet wilted, well wishes from all over the globe. The room was filled with a sickly-sweet scent. T.D. Jackson's high school photograph stared at us from an easel, poster-sized. I studied T.D.'s facial features—especially his oddly colored eyes. I hadn't noticed before that T.D.'s skin was fairer than either of his parents'.

She sat expectantly, so I pulled out the ring box. I set it on the table in front of Evangeline Jackson. She stared at the box, frozen. She didn't move to open it. Her cheeks quivered as fat tears rolled down. She looked like she wanted to run out of the room. Her face was horrified, confused, broken.

“You had it…the whole time?”

I shook my head.

“Then…who?”

“Wallace Rubens died the day before yesterday. In Mercy. Heart attack.”

Mrs. Jackson's eyes widened with a gasp so deep that it sounded like a death rattle. She hadn't known Bear Rubens was dead. She hadn't expected to hear his name.

“I'm sorry,” I said. Open boxes of Kleenex sat everywhere, and I offered her one. She held the tissue to her face, almost as if to hide herself. Her eyes were mad with questions. “He asked me to return it to you.”

Evangeline Jackson let out a wail from deep in her belly. It was the deepest pain I'd ever heard from the lips of someone who wasn't dying. It was the sound of lost love, regrets, and more. It was the sound of the swamp.

She took a pained breath, meeting my eyes again.

“He asked me to tell you he loved you.” I couldn't remember if
Rubens had said those words, but I knew he felt them. She looked like she needed to hear it.

“Wallace Rubens,” she said through her sobs, shaking her head. “That man would do anything for me.
Anything.
”

“Even go to the library,” I said gently. “He told me. The five of you were inseparable. You and the Heat.”

Bird's eyes surrendered, assumed I knew everything. Almost. I understood the separate bedrooms. Emory and Evangeline Jackson had only married because of duty, not love. Emory Jackson soothed his guilt over a horrible night when he let his friends down—and Bird tried to love the son that reminded her of a night of screaming horror.

“He told you.”

I nodded.

More confusion and grief. She crossed her chest with her arms as if she were naked.

“I'm the first he ever told,” he said. “He was dying.”

Evangeline shook her head. “So…he took the ring from T.D.'s study? That's why the police never came?”

A cool wind blew through my chest. The last, missing piece.

“I wondered why nobody found it,” Evangeline Jackson said, voice filled with wonder. “I left it on his desk, in plain sight. I never planned to hide. I never planned to deny it. But nobody asked. Not a single person—not even you.”

“Why?” I asked, knowing there could be no healing answer.

“It was his eyes,” she said in a hoarse whisper that dragged the floor. “Every time I looked in T.D.'s eyes, I saw
them.
I tried so hard not to, but I always did. And then it was like he turned out…warped already. Just like
them.
When he killed Chantelle and that poor boy, I knew that history was repeating itself.” The words spilled from her mouth now, a torrent. “I had to do it. I was the only one who could make sure he wouldn't hurt Maya and Tommy. I had to be
sure.
”

Evangeline Jackson told me how she'd complained about a migraine after Sunday dinner, so no one had disturbed her after she closed her door. She snuck out of her room after her husband retired to his, and she'd left her property through the back garden fence. She had driven away undetected and let herself into T.D.'s house with her key.

“I didn't drive there with an intention to hurt him,” she said. “That's not how it happened. I was just desperate to get through to him, not to coddle him like Emory did. To make him understand that he couldn't go on the way he was, that he could be a better man. I called Wallace because he was the only one I could talk to in my worst moments.” Her eyes were red-rimmed defiance. “My soul mate. I don't know if a man like you could understand something like that.”

“Probably not,” I said, voice low and soft.

“I asked him what kind of woman would wish her own son dead.” At that, she crumpled where she sat, sobbing. “Wallace never told me he was in town. It was his cell phone. He just told me to lie down. ‘Don't lift anything you can't carry, Bird,' he said. But by then I was already parked behind T.D.'s house. I got off the phone and let myself in. T.D. was
so
annoyed when I showed up. Asked me if I knew what time it was. Said he was about to go to bed. When I told him Maya said he'd hit her, he called Maya a liar. We were arguing in his study. I knew he kept his gun in his drawer. The gun ended up in my hands. I was so startled when it went off, I yelled out.”

She paused, eyes far away. “I watched myself do it. For the longest time, I just stood there. Then I left the ring T.D. gave me and did what Wallace said. I went home to bed. I thought someone would ask me about the ring from the very first, but no one ever did. I thought Emory had it…maybe the police had taken it to protect him. It's been a sword of Damocles, Mr. Hardwick. Hanging over my head, waiting to fall.” The edge of a sad, sick little smile twitched at the edges of her mouth.

When Rubens arrived at T.D.'s house and found T.D. dead, he altered the scene to cover up her crime. Took the ring. Fired the gun again, pressing T.D.'s dead finger on the trigger.
That's how T.D. ended up with gunshot residue on his fingers. That's why there's a hole in the wall.

And that was why Evangeline Jackson sat before me like a person shattered in two. I wondered how she had kept her sanity. Or had she? She looked like a woman who had buried her heart somewhere out in a Florida swamp—but was she a danger to her husband or her grandchildren? How could I turn her in? But how could I let her stay free?

“What happens now?” she said, her eyes glimmering with anxiety.

My eyelids felt grainy and leaden. What could be done for Evangeline Jackson now?

“My father always starts with prayer,” I said.

She nodded. She already knew that about my father.

“Professional help?” I went on. “I know people it's worked for. Beyond that, I don't have any answers, Mrs. Jackson. On a good day, I ask the right questions. Best I can do.”

“What kind of person am I?” she said, beseeching me; the same question she said she asked Wallace Rubens the night T.D. died.
“What am I?”

A violent gang rape. A hasty marriage with a guilt-ridden bridegroom. Their honeymoon must have been a riot. A son she couldn't love—who grew up to be a murderer. How much of T.D.'s rage had taken root in the gaps left by his parents' missing love? I wouldn't want to be inside Evangeline Jackson's head when the lights go out at night.

“‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,'” I said. “I've got no stones to cast. Find a way to heal. You'll never be able to
really love those grandkids if you can't heal. Love yourself somehow. I think there's been enough damage, don't you?”

“Please don't tell Emory,” she whispered.

“He might understand if you told the truth,” I said. “But I'll leave that up to you.”

I'll never forget the relief on her face.

I didn't mind the secret. If I could walk away from the secrets in Mercy, I could walk away from Evangeline Jackson's. I doubted that Emory Jackson wanted to know that his wife had killed the man he raised as his own son. Or the grandkids to know that Gramma blew Daddy's brains out. I was sorry I knew the whole sick, sad business myself.

 

I don't know if it was the codeine or other residual drugs in my system, but my dreams that night were vivid and troubling. They reminded me of the dreams I had when I was a kid, as if time had stood still.

In the dream, I was back in the swamp. It was nearly dark. I saw flashbulbs under the trees. Chela and Bernard Faison were posing for pictures in front of a swarm of paparazzi. Instead of wearing her homecoming dress, Chela was wearing a pink piggy dress from Pig'n-a-Poke. Something large and monstrous began moving toward them through the swarm of photographers.

In a blink, Chela and Bernard were gone. Instead, they had turned into Wallace Rubens and Evangeline Jackson, their faces decades younger. They were dressed for a wedding, holding hands as they fled through the swamp. A pack of dogs pursued them. The swamp they ran through was littered with dead bodies lying facedown in the muck.

I woke up in a cold sweat, practically panting. I expected to find
myself in the tobacco barn. I could even
smell
the barn, and Rubens's hand-rolled cigarettes.

But I was in my own bed, without any dogs. I didn't sleep the rest of the night.

Instead, I went down to my screening room and composed a letter on my computer. I'd planned to write the letter in the morning, but I couldn't wait:

I didn't sign the letter although I knew he might guess it was from me.

I drove to the post office to put it in the mail that same night.

But I still couldn't go back to sleep.