Stones in the Road (20 page)

The roaring wall of sound tore at my ears. I expected the house to fly apart at any minute, or to be lifted up from its roots like Dorothy’s house in
Wizard of Oz
with me and Papaw sent hurtling into space. The boards and beams moaned and hollered. The floor rumbled. The roof above us screamed in protest.

I was standing in the middle of the living room when something flew loose and slammed into my back, and I went down like a sack of potatoes. I tried to tell Papaw we needed to get inside a doorway, but no words came out of my mouth. Instead there was a sudden and not altogether unpleasant silence. It was dreamy, that silence. Dreamy and sweet, like when you first wake up in the morning but you’re not quite awake.

And then, just as suddenly, there was blackness.

“I
T
’
S
TIME
to say good-bye,” Papaw said, holding out his hand to me.

I shook my head.

“Come on, boy,” he said. “He’s your daddy. You’ve got to say good-bye.”

“I don’t want to,” I said, my voice choking with embarrassed, childish tears.

“Daddy, please,” Mama said. “Leave him be.”

“I’ll go with him, Martha,” Papaw said. “He’s a young man now. He can do young man things. And he’s a Cantrell. And the Cantrells ain’t a bunch of pussies. Ain’t that right, boys?” He looked to me and Billy for confirmation.

I stared at Papaw, miserable, wiping at my eyes and feeling stupid. Papaw didn’t like it when we cried, and I had tried so hard not to, but as soon as we had walked into the funeral home and seen the casket with Daddy inside it, I had burst into tears and couldn’t stop.

Billy, a look of indifference on his thirteen-year-old face, stood, jerking his head in the direction of Daddy’s casket as if to say,
Come on, let’s get this over with, you frikkin’ loser
. Unlike me, Billy had not cried a tear, not when the deputies from the county had come to the house the other day to tell us what had happened, not when everybody started coming over to the house shortly afterward, and not now, as the visitation was about to wind down and we were getting ready to go home and prepare for tomorrow’s funeral service.

I stood up, and Papaw took me by the hand.

I felt like I was in a dream, like none of this was real, like I was sleeping and would soon wake up.

But….

“Wiley!”

Someone called my name. I looked over my shoulder and saw a lot of people sitting there, but no was paying any attention to me.

Papaw and I walked slowly to the front where the casket was. I felt the reassuring weight of Papaw’s arm around my shoulder as he pulled me a bit closer and walked more slowly to accommodate me.

Billy went straight up to the casket, looked down at Daddy for a long moment, said nothing, made the sign of the cross, turned around, and walked back to his seat.

Papaw steered me closer, and I rubbed at my eyes and tried to stop crying.

“You miss your daddy, and you should,” Papaw said, bending to whisper in my ear. “He’s in a better place now, God rest his miserable soul. And Jesus, Mary, and the saints, have mercy on his sorry ass, amen. I know he was mean sometimes, but he was your daddy, and you’ve got to respect that. And you do respect that, I know. And you’ve got to say good-bye to him, Wiley. Hear me? You don’t have to say anything out loud. But just… say something. Say good-bye. He was a miserable old shit, but he did one thing right. He made you. Didn’t he? Of course he did. You and your brother. So he wasn’t always bad. If nothing else, honey, you can thank him for that and tell him good-bye.”

I turned to Papaw and buried my head against the fabric of the suit he was wearing. I’d never seen Papaw wear such fancy clothes. I tried not to get snot on them.

“Ssshhhh,” Papaw whispered. “It’s okay, sweetie. I’m right here.”

“I don’t wanna tell him anything!” I blurted out too loudly.

“You don’t have to say anything, honey. You don’t have to use words. Just tell him with your heart.”

“I can’t!”

“Sssshhhhhh. It’s all right, sweetie. It’s all good. Papaw’s got you.”

“I wanna go home,” I moaned. “Papaw, I wanna go home!”

“We gots to do this, sweetie,” he whispered. “You can do this. I know you can. You’re a Cantrell, and you got balls, don’t you?”

He pulled away and looked down on me, using his large thumb to brush tears from my cheek. He nodded, encouraging me. But I simply stood there, staring up at him, immobilized, caught up in feelings I couldn’t fathom. Whatever it was my balls were supposed to be doing, they weren’t doing it.

“Okay, honey,” he said gently after a long silence. “I’m gonna say good-bye to your daddy, and you can go with me. Okay? I just got one thing I want to say to that man, and I’ll be done. You don’t have to say a word, but maybe you could just stand with me, ’cause I’m a little sad too, and I could use your help. Okay? You wanna help your miserable old Papaw?”

Given this choice between the lesser of two evils, I nodded.

Hand in hand, we approached Daddy’s casket. I stood in silence, clinging to Papaw’s hand, biting my lips and clenching my jaw so I wouldn’t burst into another spasm of uncontrollable tears. Papaw looked down on me and smiled, releasing my hand so he could step up to the coffin. He bent low, whispered something to Daddy that I couldn’t hear, then came right back, taking me in hand again and standing there with me, his arms around me, and for a long time we simply stood there, about five feet from Daddy’s body, and said nothing.

A fresh wave of tears came upon me.

I couldn’t understand it. When Aunt Margret came to the house that first night and loudly proclaimed that we should be glad the mean old bastard was dead, I had heartily agreed. Every bit of my ten-year-
old body had immediately understood the truth of those words. “And the bastard had insurance, and you can pay off the house!” Aunt Margret had exclaimed. “At least he did one thing right, the miserable shit.”

“You okay, honey?” Papaw asked, bending to whisper again in my ear.

I nodded miserably in what I thought was an encouraging way.

“You’ve always got me,” Papaw said. “Don’t forget that. You’ll always have your papaw, and ain’t nothing in the world will ever change that, even if I’m a lousy old sinner like your mama says. You’ll always have your papaw. You understand me? And you’re a Cantrell, and a Cantrell’s got balls, don’t he?”

“Wiley!” a voice exclaimed rather loudly.

I looked around to see who it was.

It sounded like Billy.

“Wiley!”

The voice came from somewhere far, far away.

I turned back to Papaw, but he was no longer there.

Neither was the casket.

“Papaw?”

Confused, I turned about in a small circle, suddenly afraid and anxious.

Everyone was gone.

“Papaw? Where are you?”

“Wiley!” the voice came again.

There was a pain in the back of my head. Sharp, insistent throbbing. I tried to open my eyes, feeling incredibly tired, wishing I could fall back to sleep, or wake up, or something.

“Wiley!”

I felt someone or other grasp me by the shoulders. I opened my eyes to see who this was but couldn’t see clearly, couldn’t focus on the person talking.

“Jesus!” the voice exclaimed.

It was Billy’s voice. I’d know his “Jesus!” anywhere—lots of heavy emphasis on the first syllable, making him sound like a Baptist preacher.
Jeee-sus
!

“Billy?” I muttered, thinking we must have gotten into a fight and he had roundhoused me.

“Is he all right?” Mama called from somewhere.

“Stay out of here, please!” Jackson ordered. “Bill and I can take care of this.”

“Daddy!” Noah cried, his voice distant.

I saw Jackson swim into focus, then dissolve. My eyes were irritated. I lifted my hand to rub at them.

“Leave your eyes alone,” Jackson said in a tight voice. He grabbed at my wrist, held it so I couldn’t move my arm.

“Oh my God,” Bill said. “Look at his arm!”

“He’ll be all right,” Jackson said.

“Jesus!”

I closed my eyes, but this did little to relieve the pain and irritation in them. There was a weird, throbbing pain in my cheek.

“Daddy!” Noah exclaimed somewhere in an anguished voice.

“Y’all stay out!” Bill shouted.

“Daaaaadddddddyyyyy!”

“Shelly, keep him quiet!” Bill ordered.

I tried to say I was okay, but when I opened my mouth to speak, my face exploded in angry, hot pain.

“Noooooo!” Noah moaned angrily. “Noooooooooooo! Hah! Haaaaaaaaahhhhh!”

“We should get him out of here,” Bill said.

“We’re not moving him,” Jackson said.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaa!”

“This whole house could come down on us!”

“The ambulance will be here soon.”

“We’ve got to move him!”

“Why don’t you wait outside?” Jackson’s voice was calm. Sort of. There was an edge of something or other to it that I did not quite understand.

“I ain’t leaving my brother in here,” Bill vowed.

“Then why don’t you shut up and let me take care of him? I told you not to come in here.”

“He’s my family, not yours!” Bill spat out angrily. “And I don’t need
you
telling me what to do.”

“He’s my family too,” Jackson said.

“He’s my
real
family,” Bill said. “And we can’t let the whole goddamn house fall down on top of him.”

“I’m a nurse, Bill, so I guess you’ll just have to trust me, and when I tell you we’re not going to move him, we’re not going to move him. He could have all kinds of injuries, and you’re only going to make it worse.”

“Why the stupid ass came back inside this house, I’ll never know. Jesus fucking Christ on a shingle! I’m so sick of his goddamn—”

“Bill, you’re not helping. Would you please give me some room?”

I opened my eyes again, following this conversation as best I could but not really understanding it. I wanted to see Noah. I wanted to make sure he was okay. We’d been in an accident. Or something. Exactly what, I couldn’t quite figure out. It was just there, on the edge of my memory, but I couldn’t get at it. And for some reason I was thinking of Daddy’s visitation and how Papaw had bent down and whispered something in Daddy’s ear that day as he lay silent in his casket. “Thank Christ he finally shut up,” Papaw always used to say, which never failed to make me smile.

“Jack?” I muttered.

“Right here, baby,” Jackson said, his face suddenly swimming into view.

“They’re coming!” Mama shouted from somewhere far away.

“Who?” Bill demanded.

“The ambulance! They’re down the road. Y’all got to get him out of there!”

“We should move him,” Bill said, somewhere very close now.

Jackson said something in response, but I drifted off.

I
WOKE
in a hospital bed.

I looked around, frowned.

“Oh, thank God!” Mama exclaimed. Her face suddenly appeared not inches from mine. “Oh, my baby! Wiley, honey? Can you hear me?”

“Mama?” I muttered.

“Wiley, honey, I’m here,” she said, grasping my hand.

“What happened?” I asked. I couldn’t get enough breath, so my question was a whisper.

“Oh, Wiley, honey!” she exclaimed unhappily.

Then she burst into tears.

“What, Mama?”

Lost in a crying jag, she couldn’t answer.

My right arm felt itchy and too heavy. I lifted it, surprised to see it was in a cast. My chest was also bandaged rather tightly, making it hard to breathe.

“Mama?”

She used a Kleenex to wipe her nose, tried to get hold of herself.

“Thank God you’re okay,” she said at last. “We’ve all been praying for you. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, thank you! I think I’ve said about a hundred rosaries just sitting here.”

“Why are you crying, Mama?”

“I was just scared. But thank God you’re all right.”

It hurt too much to talk, so I was still.

Jackson Ledbetter, dressed in scrubs, walked suddenly into the room. He came to the side of my bed, looked down and smiled.

“Hey,” I said feebly.

“Hey,” he replied.

“Where’s Noah?”

“He’s with Bill and Shelly.”

“What happened?”

Jackson didn’t answer. He moved closer, put a hand gently to the side of my face, looking at me with a strange sort of compassion.

“How do you feel?”

“I’m fine,” I muttered. “Why won’t anyone tell me what happened?”

“There was a tornado,” he said frankly.

“And?”

“You remember the tornado?”

“Well, duh!”

“Just checking. You fractured your left cheekbone, broke your right arm and three ribs. Got a nice cut on your forehead—you lost a lot of blood. We’re worried about possible brain injuries. How is your vision?”

“Things are a little blurry,” I admitted.

“Maybe it will pass.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then you could be in trouble. You got banged up pretty badly. Rattled your brains. Might be good for you, though, now that I think about it.” There was a trace of a smile on his lips.

“But I’m not going to die?”

“Not anytime soon.”

“How is Noah?”

“He’s fine.”

“He wasn’t hurt?”

“He was in the shelter with the rest of us. Where
you
should have been.”

“But he’s not hurt?”

“He’s fine, Wiley.”

The thought that something might have happened to him—that he might have been killed—gripped me in a strange, painful way.

“Are you sure he’s all right?”

“Don’t worry. He was a little scared, but we all were.”

“I want to see him.”

“That might not be—”

Jackson was interrupted as Shelly and the kids came into the room.

“Uncle Wiley, you look like shit!” Mary exclaimed straight off, standing at the foot of my bed.

“Mary, I swear to God!” Shelly snapped.

“What?” she asked innocently.