The Homecoming of Samuel Lake (30 page)

Chapter 39

Out in the yard, Samuel was still waving his arms at God and telling it like it was.

“I’m Yours! Yours, Lord! But that means you’re mine, too! You made a lot of big promises, and I’ve believed every one of them! Now I’m calling on you to keep them!”

Ras came out of the holding pen again and hollered across to Samuel. Hollered across the considerable distance that lay between them. “Go home, Preacher! Go home and see if she hasn’t turned up by now. I bet you good money she’s turned up by now.”

But Samuel wasn’t listening.

“I’m standing on the promises, Lord! Standing right here! Me! Sam Lake! Still standing! I’m standing here, and I’m holding on, and I’m not letting go until you answer!”

Then he heard the cowbell. The
cowbell
! Ringing and jangling to wake the dead. And on top of that sound was the throaty
quackquackquack
of a duck call.

Samuel froze in place. And so did Ras Ballenger. Samuel, knowing what that sound meant. Ras Ballenger, confused as the devil.

“Swan?”
Samuel shouted, starting toward the sounds. Those glorious sounds.

For a fraction of a second, Ras was too much in shock to move. Then he started after Samuel, snagging his bullwhip off the fence. Samuel heard the hiss of the whip as it unfurled, and he snapped around, just as quick. Just as quick. A man can’t move that fast, but Sam Lake did. He threw himself through the air—
through the air, over all that distance.
Flying. A man can’t do that, either, but he flew. Later on, he remembered the flying. The whip never touched him, because Ras turned to run, and Samuel leveled him. They landed on the ground, Ras scrabbling and squirming, facedown, with Samuel on his back, pinning him.

“You best lemme up, Preacher,” Ras warned him. Not so sure of himself now, but still trying to act like it.

Samuel looked around, wild-eyed, trying to get his bearings, and what he saw was a peaceful farm, where hungry animals waited, some in one holding pen, some in another—waited impatiently, stamping their feet, demanding to be turned in to the feedlot.

His glance took in the contrast of brown and green, where the barren, hard-packed dirt inside the lot butted up against the vegetation outside the fence, and then, in one heartbeat, every blade of grass became crisply visible—especially the darker, denser grass that stood out starkly from the rest, leading in a telltale line from the feedlot fence off toward the woods.

The grass that grew over the septic tank field line.

Samuel blinked, the whole picture falling into place. He heard the horses stamping their feet, the sound getting louder and louder, until it was like thunder in his ears, and suddenly he understood everything. The preparations Ras had made. The plans he had for killing Swan and making it so no one would ever find the body. Making it so there wouldn’t be anything to find.

He didn’t even know it when his right hand streaked down and hooked beneath Ras Ballenger’s chin, and yanked the man’s head sideways in one savage movement. Or when his left hand planted itself at the base of Ras Ballenger’s neck.

“What are you doing?” Ras squawked, sounding quivery. He clawed at Samuel’s hands.

“God’s sake, Preacher,” Ras whimpered. “You can’t do a thing like this. You’re God’s man, you just said so.”

Samuel jerked up with the hand that was holding Ras Ballenger’s chin, and he bore down with the hand that was planted at the base of Ras Ballenger’s neck, and he didn’t stop until he heard the cracking, popping sounds that told him it was finished. If Ras Ballenger screamed, Sam Lake didn’t hear.

It took him a while to find the room. The room that didn’t seem to be there. Didn’t seem to exist. It was built into the barn between the feed room and the tack room, like dead space. There didn’t seem to be a way in. If you walked into the feed room and looked around, you saw sacks of feed. Stacks of sacks of feed. So you thought the wall behind the feed had nothing on the other side except that tack room.

But that was where the sounds were coming from. That cowbell ringing and that duck call bleating. And now Swan, calling out to him, answering him when he shouted her name. Samuel tore through those stacks of fifty-pound sacks, picking them up and slinging them aside until he found what he was looking for.

It wasn’t a door. It was just part of the wall. A panel that was almost impossible to see, but easy to remove once he discovered it. All he needed was a crowbar, and he found one of those in the tack room, stuck back with some other tools, barely noticeable.

Samuel pried the panel off and went into that wretched space to claim his daughter. It was dark as a tomb in there, so he couldn’t see the pieces of rope or the strips of cloth or the gunnysack. All those things that lay shredded on the floor. He couldn’t even see Swan, but they found each other in the blackness.

She was crying. He was bawling.

“There were mice,” she told him, again and again, as he gathered her up and took her out of there. “There were mice everywhere. They turned me loose.”

His family met him in the yard. All except Toy, who’d gone off in the truck, and had passed him on the road, and had turned around and followed him home. The boys—all three of them—hung on the edge of the porch, afraid to look. Calla and Willadee ran to the car and cried out at what they saw, and what they understood.

Samuel carried Swan into the house, and laid her on the couch, and stepped back, giving her over to the women. He couldn’t talk at all. Willadee knelt beside the couch and kissed Swan’s face over and over, her tears making tracks through the dirt that was there. Calla went to the phone and called Doc Bismark. Then she went into the kitchen and brought back a basin of water and some tea towels that were old enough to be soft as down. She bathed that little girl’s face and arms, and started to bathe her hands—and then she saw what Swan was holding. What she was holding on to for dear life. A cowbell and a duck call.

“What’s this?” she asked, although she knew.

And Samuel found his voice.

“Swan’s miracle,” he said.

It wasn’t until Doc Bismark came and was tending Swan that Samuel took Willadee into the kitchen and told her what had happened. By then, Calla and Toy had taken the boys upstairs to get them away from everything. Doing their best for them. Those boys needed help right now, too.

Sometime during Samuel’s telling, there were footsteps in another room, but the sounds didn’t register on either of them. Samuel just kept pouring out the story. Later, there were more footsteps, and a door closing, but that didn’t register, either. There were cars and trucks outside—people arriving and finding out that, for the first time ever, Never Closes wasn’t open. All the sounds of people coming and leaving ran together, without touching Samuel and Willadee.

“I killed him, Willadee,” he told her. “After standing right there, and calling on God for help—and getting it. Knowing that He’d sent a miracle. I killed that devil man, and I don’t know how to begin to be sorry.”

“I’ll never be sorry,” Willadee said, with a voice like steel. Then she said the other part. “Unless it takes you away from us.”

Samuel put his arms around her, and drew her close, and rested his head on top of hers, and for a while, all they did was breathe together.

“We’ll just have to trust God for the outcome,” Samuel said. “I’ll have to go into town pretty soon. To turn myself in.”

Willadee said, “I know. But not yet. Stay here just a little bit. For Swan.”

Toy Moses had come downstairs to get the boys something to drink but had stopped outside the kitchen door when he heard what Sam Lake was saying. He’d gone outside after that and found Bootsie Phillips leaning against his logging truck, waiting expectantly for the bar to open. Toy didn’t explain what was going on, but he told Bootsie that Never Closes was shutting down for a while and put him in charge of heading customers off as soon as they arrived.

Bootsie didn’t have to ask if there was trouble. Anything that could keep Never Closes from opening had to be serious. He told Toy Moses not to worry about a thing.

Toy went to Ballenger’s first. When he drove up, he saw the cur dogs fighting over something on the ground, and he knew what it was. Knew and thought that nothing on earth could be more appropriate. He took a flashlight from the truck and went to find the place that he’d heard Samuel telling Willadee about.

When he found the room Samuel had described, he went inside that dark, dead space. He almost could not believe what he saw there.

“Dear God,” he said. And meant it.

It was getting toward ten o’clock when Samuel rolled into Magnolia. He had stayed at home longer than he’d intended, first sitting beside Swan for a while, just sitting. The doctor had given her something to make her sleep, so she may not have known he was there. After that, he’d gone up and talked to the boys, and explained things the best he could without destroying them. They all sat in stunned silence, Blade and Bienville weeping silently. Noble wept only on the inside. Calla sat like a rock, looking on, knowing full well that, if she reached out to comfort them, they’d break in ways she couldn’t mend.

There was a light on in the sheriff’s office. Not just in the building itself. That was always lit. But Samuel was surprised to see Early’s light on. He had figured that one of the deputies would be taking his statement.

Early took Samuel into his office and listened to every word. When Samuel got to the part about how he had flown through the air at Ras Ballenger, Early took a book of paper matches off his desk, and started tearing the matches out, and tossing them at the open-mouthed moccasin—at the ashtray that was centered in the coil.

Samuel finished his story and waited to see what Early would say. For a second or two, the man didn’t say anything. Then he drew a deep breath and got to his feet.

“Well, thank you for coming, Samuel.”

Samuel stood up, too, not knowing what to do next.

“What happens now?” he asked.

Early said, “Now you go home to your family.”

Samuel stared at him. Going home to his family was what he wanted most in the world, but he hadn’t thought it would happen this easily. He hadn’t been at all confident that it would ever happen. Or at least not for a number of years.

Samuel told Early that he appreciated the show of trust, and he appreciated the time to be with his wife and children. This was all going to be hard on everybody, and he was glad he’d have more time to prepare them for what was coming, before he got locked up.

“Nobody’s locking you up, Samuel,” Early said. “I can’t hardly charge two men for the same crime. And Toy’s story sounds a lot more realistic.”

Samuel reached out and took hold of the edge of Early’s desk to steady himself. He was that close to falling over.

While he was still too stunned to say a word, Early added, “And you don’t need to be telling it around what all happened to Swan. She’s got enough to deal with without feeling like the whole world’s looking at her.”

A few minutes later, Samuel was standing face-to-face with his brother-in-law—Early having instructed Bobby Spikes, who was on duty that night, to take him back there for a visit. Toy was standing inside his cell, lounging with his elbows hooked through the bars, looking more relaxed than he had in quite a while. Samuel was in the hallway, tensed like a spring and sick in his soul.

“You can’t do this,” Samuel said.

And Toy said, “It’s already done.”

It was a little dark back there, not much light on in that part of the building at this time of night. Toy’s face was in shadow, and the effect was a softening of all the lines and creases that he’d earned the hard way.

“But you’re not guilty,” Samuel argued. “I am.”

Toy cut his eyes over toward Bobby Spikes, who probably wasn’t supposed to be listening but was. That deputy wasn’t looking at them, but he had an ear tuned in their direction.

“You’re mixed up, Samuel.” Toy kept his eyes on Bobby, hoping that Samuel would catch on and go along. Not expecting it to happen but hoping. “When I brought Swan home, beat up like that, it must’ve thrown you plumb off-kilter.”

Beat up like that.
Not raped. Not mauled.
Beat up.

Samuel stared at Toy, understanding why he was doing this. Why he was taking the blame, and doing his best to hide what had really happened to Swan. It was
for
Swan. All of it. So that she’d have her daddy while she was growing up, and so that she wouldn’t forever have people pointing at her and talking behind their hands. But still, to Samuel, it was all lies, and no good could come of it.

“You can’t do this,” he said again.

“Nothing else I can do,” Toy said. “I’m a cold-blooded killer, and I have to pay the price. Ain’t that right, Bobby?”

Bobby gave him a look that said he couldn’t wait to see Toy fry and said, “Well, I reckon it’s true what they say around here. A Moses never lies.”

Chapter 40

Calla grieved.

She grieved for Swan—for all she’d lost, and for all she’d found out about life that nobody should ever have to find out about, because it shouldn’t ever be. She grieved for Blade—because he was losing, too. He wouldn’t be able to feel that he belonged here now. Might not ever feel that he belonged anywhere. She grieved for the other boys, because their world was in shambles. She grieved for Samuel and Willadee, because it would be their job to build it all back, and she couldn’t see how anything could be simple ever again.

And she grieved for Toy.

When Samuel had come back from town—when he’d unfolded the story for her (hating it, she knew he hated it), she had sat down hard in a chair, and clasped her hands together, and started twisting her wedding ring back and forth, back and forth, on her finger.

“I’m going back again tomorrow,” Samuel promised. “I’ll keep going back until somebody listens to me.”

And she knew that he would. And that it wouldn’t matter. Nobody on God’s green earth was going to believe that Samuel Lake had killed a man. Not if they had to choose between believing it was him who did it and believing it was Toy Moses. Once she’d had a chance for the shock to wear off, she wasn’t surprised about Toy taking the blame. That was just what she’d have expected if her mind could have stretched out that far, to probe into possibilities. But still she grieved.

She sat that night in her room with a box of old pictures that she spread out over her bed. All those pictures of her children, when they were young and coming up. Four boys and a girl. One boy taken, years ago, and now another one going away. After a while, she put the pictures up, except for one of Toy, the day he left home to join the Army. That one she held on to, while she sat up in her chair and asked God for another miracle.

She wanted to believe that she’d get it. That she’d wake up in the morning, and Toy would be home, and Early Meeks would be in the kitchen drinking coffee and saying that they weren’t bringing any charges after all, since Ras Ballenger needed killing so much it didn’t even matter who did it.

She knew better, though. They’d already gotten one miracle that day. A big one. Now here she was asking for another. The way she had it figured, miracles of that magnitude were probably one per customer.

Calla was right about Blade. He didn’t feel that he belonged there anymore, and he was gone when they all got up the next morning. Samuel and Willadee both worried about him, and wished they could know that he was all right, but Samuel knew it was out of the question for him to drive over to the Ballenger place to check on the boy, and he wouldn’t have let Willadee go, even if she had been willing to leave Swan’s side—which she wasn’t. Noble and Bienville both offered to go, but neither Samuel nor Willadee would consider that.

Calla went, though. There wasn’t a soul in this world who could tell that woman what she could and couldn’t do. She wouldn’t let anybody drive her, either. She’d called the sheriff’s office and found out she couldn’t see Toy until after his arraignment, which wouldn’t be over until around noon, so she took off walking shortly after breakfast. Out the front door and down the road. One foot in front of the other.

When she got to the Ballengers’, there were cars in the yard. Not law cars. Those and the ambulance had come and gone in the night. Calla Moses had heard all the sirens. The people who were here were Geraldine’s family and Ras’s family, mainly. They were a rough-looking bunch. One of them, a man who looked to be about Toy’s age, stepped out in front of Calla as she walked across the yard and told her she wasn’t welcome here.

“I know I’m not,” she said. “And I won’t stay long. Thank you for letting me pass.”

What else could he do but step aside?

She caught sight of Blade before she got into the house. Saw him through the screen door. His mother was sitting in a chair, holding a baby and a box of Kleenex in her lap. Blade was standing beside the chair, the way a man would do. Two younger boys were on the floor, the bigger one of the two sucking his thumb and snuffling.

When Calla came into the room and Blade saw her, she could almost see his heart lurch. Geraldine glared at Calla with red-rimmed eyes. Apparently she was finding her husband’s memory a lot sweeter to live with than the man himself had been. Or maybe it was what had happened to him after he died that undid her. What the dogs had done. Calla knew about that. Early had mentioned it when they talked on the phone a while ago. Geraldine yanked a wad of Kleenex out of the box and blew her nose loudly.

“Don’t come over here asking if there’s anything you can do,” she said. “You can’t bring him back.”

No, and if somebody else did, I’d sent him off again.
That was what Calla wanted to say. She didn’t, though. She said, “If you and your kids ever need anything, we’re still your neighbors.”

Illogically, Geraldine reached out and wrapped an arm protectively around Blade. As if he needed protection from Calla Moses. “You’re not taking my boy again.”

“No,” Calla said. “I expect Blade feels like he needs to be here with you.” Then she looked at him. “You’re welcome at our place, though, Blade. Welcome and loved.”

He looked away. Calla turned and left. When she was almost out of the yard, she heard him coming up behind her. Running. She stopped and waited until he came around in front of her, and was facing her.

“I’m
sorry,
” he whispered. So he was back to whispering now. “For what happened to Swan.”

Calla said, “Blade, you had nothing to do with what happened to Swan. You can’t let anything that anyone else has done change the way you think about yourself.”

He didn’t respond to that, so she asked him if he was all right inside. If he was sad about his daddy dying. He shook his head.

“No,” he said. Barely audible. “But I’m supposed to be.”

Then he turned and ran back toward the house.

Swan slept off and on, sometimes waking up crying. When she opened her eyes, there was always someone there. Her mother, her father, her brothers, her grandmother. Whoever it was, she looked away, because she thought they must be seeing what had happened when they looked at her, and what had happened was even harder for her to handle now that she was safe.

“All that’s over,” her mother would tell her.

“No one can hurt you again,” Samuel would say.

But it wasn’t the idea of being hurt again that was bothering her. She knew that Ballenger was dead, and that her father had been the one who killed him, because she’d seen the crumpled body when Samuel brought her out of the Dark Place and loaded her as gently as possible into the car. What was haunting her now was what had already happened that couldn’t be undone.

Her brothers didn’t know what to say, except to ask her if she was all right. She always said the same thing.

“No.”

Before Grandma Calla left to see Toy, she stopped in Swan’s room and sat down on the bed beside her. There was misery in the girl’s eyes.

“Remember you were saved by a miracle,” Grandma Calla told her, trying to help her regain that feeling of wonderment.

Swan dissolved in tears. “It didn’t come in time,” she said. “I was only partly saved.”

“Now, that’s not true,” Grandma Calla said. “And I don’t want to hear it. Your daddy brought you home all in one piece. We got our whole little girl back.”

Swan said, “I don’t feel whole.”

“Well, you will. You will. You will.”

After she was gone, Swan asked her mother to ring the cowbell. Willadee grabbed the bell up off the table beside the bed and rang it loud and long. Swan lay back on her pillows and closed her eyes. That clanging sound made her feel easier, somehow.

“Why do you think God waited so long to help me?” she asked her mother.

Willadee had been wondering the same thing. All she could think of to say was “You’re here. You’re with us. That’s what matters.”

Swan blew out a shuddery breath and tried to keep her thoughts away from that spot by the willows and the Dark Place at Ballenger’s. There were two cowbells and two duck calls still back there in the woods, and she hoped against hope that didn’t mean that anybody else was going to need a miracle. Really needing a miracle was the worst thing imaginable.

Samuel took Calla into town to visit Toy, and while she was back there in the jail, he went searching for Early Meeks. When he found him, he repeated his confession. Early listened, but not as patiently as before.

“Tell me what the inside of that room looked like,” he said finally. “The room where Ballenger was keeping Swan.”

“It was dark,” Samuel said. “I couldn’t see a thing. There was a dirt floor. I remember that.”

“Toy remembers a helluva lot more than a dirt floor. He remembers every last detail.”

When Samuel opened his mouth to argue, Early just shook his head and told him that everybody in Columbia County knew who did the killing in the Moses family.

“Back years ago,” he said, “Toy got away with murder because he was a war hero and Yam Ferguson was a spoiled, rich punk who stayed home and chased other men’s wives instead of doing his part in the war effort. But as much as Yam Ferguson and Ras Ballenger both needed killing, your brother-in-law can’t just go around breaking somebody’s neck every few years. It sets a bad example for everybody else.”

“But he didn’t do it,” Samuel said. “Ask my daughter who came in there and got her.”

“Your daughter,” Early said, “has been through something that could break a person’s mind. She told the doctor that mice set her free. Hundreds of mice. And you know what, Samuel? We found shredded ropes and a gunnysack, and all, just like she said. But we didn’t find any droppings in that room. A mouse can’t run here to yonder without crapping little pellets all over the place. Your daughter set herself free. I don’t know how she did it, but she did. Now, you go home and be glad you’ve still got a daughter to raise, and stop trying to take the credit for something you didn’t do.”

The credit. Early was letting Samuel know that he thought somebody killing Ras Ballenger was a good thing, but he had his mind made up about who did it. Or who he was going to allow to take the blame. Suddenly Samuel wasn’t sure which. Either way, he knew Early Meeks wouldn’t budge.

So he went to see the D.A., a stout old bulldog named Lavern Little. This time, when Samuel told his story, he left out the part about flying. Lavern didn’t even let him finish.

“Folks aren’t a bit happy about this,” he told Samuel. “Not that anybody misses Ras Ballenger. They don’t. But they don’t want Toy Moses deciding who gets to live and die around here. What you need to do is quit trying to throw cogs in amongst the wheels of justice before I decide to try Toy for two killings, instead of just one. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

Samuel got the message. Anything else he said or did was just going to make it worse for Toy.

Still, over the next couple of weeks, everybody in the family tried to talk some sense into Toy. He told them he’d never done a thing in his life that made more sense.

“If they try me,” Samuel argued, “they might call it justifiable homicide. But they’ve got you charged with murder.” They could speak more freely than usual that day. Early had long since decided there was no need to post a guard to prevent Toy Moses from escaping, seeing as how he was so determined to be locked up.

“That’s right, they have,” Toy told him. “And if I was out there with folks, there might be another one they’d have to charge me with.” He didn’t have to mention that he was talking about Bernice. When Samuel was a little slow in answering back, Toy gave him something else to think about.

“Do you know why I killed Yam Ferguson, Samuel?”

Samuel was shocked. Until now, the Ferguson murder had always seemed like a myth. One of those stories that might be true but nobody expected to ever know for sure about.

“I did it,” Toy said bitterly, “to defend Bernice’s honor.”

He laughed then. The laugh was flat, too. And sad as the ages. “I killed a man to defend something that didn’t exist. So maybe that’s what I’m paying for this time, and you get what I got a long time ago. A reprieve.” Then he gave Samuel a level look and said the most important thing of all. “I couldn’t do any good out there the way I am now, Samuel, but you still can. And you’d better. You think life would be kind to your kids, if you was in here? I can tell you the answer, in case you don’t know it.”

But Samuel knew it. Inside, he knew it.

Calla tried to talk some sense into Toy, but he’d already thought things through, and all the talking in the world wasn’t going to sway him.

“I understand why you’re doing this,” Calla told him. “But I can’t stand to see it happening. You don’t deserve half the bad that’s happened to you in your life, and there’s been plenty of it. Plenty of it, and now this.”

“I’ve done my share of wrong,” Toy said peacefully.

“Well, it’s wrong to take the blame for what you didn’t do,” she persisted. “You’re trying to do right by everybody else, but you’re not doing right by yourself.”

Toy said oh, yes, he was. Calla reached through the bars and he took her hand in his. For just a heartbeat, a lonesome shadow seemed to pass across his face.

“I can’t say I’m looking forward to where I’m going,” he told her. “But leaving is just something that happens in life. We all do it someday, one way or another. There’s worse things than going away with the taste of love still fresh in our mouths.”

After Calla left, Willadee went back to see her brother. Her heart felt heavy as a lead weight in her chest.

“I know you’re not going to listen to me,” she said. “You’ve never listened to anything you didn’t want to hear. But this time, you need to, because we all love you and we don’t want to lose you.”

Toy gave her one of his easy smiles.

“Y’all won’t be losing me, Willadee. I’ll just be someplace else.”

She shook her head hard, sending a spray of angry tears flying.

“Stop it, Toy! Stop smiling and acting like this is nothing. All these years, no matter what’s happened, you’ve pretended it didn’t hurt. When you came back from the war with a leg missing—and through all the hell Bernice has dished out to you—but this is different. Surely, if we just tell the sheriff the truth—if we’re Just Plain Honest—no jury in the world would go hard on Samuel.”