The Homecoming of Samuel Lake (31 page)

“Don’t kid yourself,” Toy told her. “People turn. They’ve already been asking each other what Samuel did to get put out of the pulpit. Then you add Bernice’s escapades, and the fact that she’s telling it all over the county that Samuel chased her until she gave in, and that he was always sneaking her into your bedroom while you was working in the bar—”

Willadee gaped.

“They won’t say it in front of you,” Toy said. “They never said it in front of me, either, but they said it off to the side. Just because I don’t talk much, people forget I can hear.”

The children came. Swan, and Noble, and Bienville. They were too heartbroken to talk much, so he just hugged them the best he could through the bars, and let them all hang on as long as they wanted.

“We’ll all be grown by the time you come home again,” Swan said sadly.

“You will,” Toy answered. “And I’ll be getting on up in years. But that won’t change the way I feel about you.” Then, to Bienville, he said, “You being a good boy?”

“I’m always good,” Bienville told him, with an old man’s sigh. “I’ve been good so long it’s getting tedious.”

Toy grinned, although the kids couldn’t see that. They had their heads pressed as close as they could to their uncle’s chest, all of them hating the bars that were in the way.

“You all right these days, Swan?” Toy asked next.

“Grandma Calla says I will be,” she said.

“Your grandma’s right,” Toy told her. “You hold on to that.”

And then he spoke to Noble.

“How ’bout you, bud? You makin’ it okay?”

Noble pulled back a little and looked his uncle in the eye.

“I’m keeping my feet under me,” he said. “You taught me to do that.”

Toy nodded, pleased.

“Well, then,” he said, “I reckon I can rest easy.”

Chapter 41

Nobody believed Swan about the mice. They didn’t believe that any more than they believed Sam Lake could fly. They couldn’t explain what was in the dead space at the Ballenger farm, though. All those frayed bits of rope and those minced-up strips of cloth, or the gunnysack that had been reduced to confetti.

One evening, toward the end of April, Samuel sat in the porch swing holding Swan in his lap. She was too big for that, but she was still his little girl.

“I believe you about the mice,” he told her. “I don’t know whether I’ve told you that.”

“You didn’t have to tell me,” she said. “I just knew, same as I knew it was true about you flying.” Then she told him that she was wondering whether they needed to stop telling people about those things. They’d already been Just Plain Honest, and maybe that was enough.

“How else are folks going to find out that miracles still happen?” Samuel asked her.

Swan said, “I think maybe miracles are something everybody has to find out about for themselves. Telling them about it doesn’t make them believe. It just makes them think you’re crazy as a bessie bug.”

At his own insistence, Toy Moses got the speediest trial since hanging days. And one of the shortest. The courtroom was full of spectators for the whole hour and eleven minutes. He insisted on representing himself, waived his right to a jury, and his plea was “Guilty as hell, Your Honor.” When asked to address the court, Toy did more lying in ten minutes than he’d done in the rest of his life put together. The things he’d heard Samuel telling Willadee that night, back at the house, he wove together into a terse but thorough account, and he embellished his story with every single detail that he’d gleaned from his inspection of Ras Ballenger’s hidden room. When he got to the part about wringing the little bastard’s neck, that was just how he put it. He also threw in that some men just needed to be dead, and he was glad he’d helped that particular man to get that way.

Samuel Lake asked to testify for the defense. The defense (Toy Moses) declined.

The judge gave Toy twenty years. Probably ten for Yam Ferguson and ten for Ras Ballenger, although he didn’t say anything along those lines.

Toy thanked him sincerely.

Bernice hadn’t made it to the trial. She had, however, made it down to Shreveport, where she was living with a man named D. E. Shuler. She’d met D.E. in a bar, over at El Dorado, when he’d been passing through town on his way to Nashville to take care of some important business. At least that’s what he said, and Bernice took everything D.E. said as gospel.

What had her hooked on D.E. was that he was a record producer, or would be, once he got his label established, and he was looking for a dynamite female vocalist. Bernice auditioned for him that first night, without singing a note, and they’d been together ever since.

Early Meeks drove Toy out to the house after the sentencing, so he could spend some time telling his family goodbye in a way that wouldn’t be so hurtful to them when they remembered it. What he was doing wasn’t strictly legal, and Bobby Spikes pointed that out to him as they were walking Toy out to Early’s car. Early told Bobby that it probably wasn’t legal to make a deputy’s life a living hell, either, but he’d been known to do it, and might do it again, if riled.

Out at Calla’s, the grown-ups sat around talking, pretty much as if this were any other visit. Sid had bought a pig from a farmer down the road and had roasted it in a pit in the backyard. What with Calla’s potato salad and Nicey’s baked beans and Willadee’s biscuits and corn casserole, it was a meal to remember. Toy told Nicey that her five-day cake was the best thing he’d ever laid glommers on, and she just lit up like a Sunbeam.

Swan and her brothers started out the visit feeling ill at ease and sad enough to die, but before it was over, they’d gotten some peace about things. Toy wasn’t going away forever, he told them. Twenty years didn’t necessarily mean twenty years. It all depended on how things played out.

“In the meantime,” Toy said to Noble, “you get your daddy to help you pull that motor we never got around to. Then you keep that truck running right, so you’ll have something to drive when you’re old enough to get a license.”

Noble told him he’d do it, and that the first time he was allowed to drive it on his own, he’d have somebody take his picture and he’d send it to him.

Toy spent time with each one of them, the way a man does with his kids when he’s going away for a while. Maybe they weren’t his kids in all ways, but they were his in the ways that mattered.

He asked Bienville to send him books to read, and Bienville asked him what he liked. Toy said he liked anything about woods and water, but that Bienville was welcome to broaden his horizons. Bienville got a glint in his eye thinking about that.

After a while, Toy picked Swan up and set her on his shoulders, and walked off with her, leaving everybody else behind. Swan held on and smiled, remembering how she’d once daydreamed about this very thing. Not the circumstances. She never would have imagined those, or wanted them. But this was the closeness she had yearned for.

When they got over to Calla’s garden, Toy set her down and knelt facing her, looking her full in the eye.

“You’ve got my heart,” he told her. “You know that, don’t you?”

Swan nodded, love in her eyes.

“Now you can’t throw it away while I’m gone,” he warned her.

“I wouldn’t ever,” she promised.

“No,” he said. “I reckon you wouldn’t. I sure reckon you wouldn’t ever throw away a heart that loves you.”

They had bonded now, Swan thought to herself. Bonded soul deep, just the way she’d dreamed of that day in the store. Only, back then she really hadn’t known what soul deep meant. She knew it now, though. She knew it now, for true.

There was one kid missing. Blade. Toy asked the others to tell Blade, the next time they saw him, that he loved him like a son. And he’d like it if Blade would draw him a letter or two from time to time.

After a while, Toy hugged everyone who had come, even the men. Samuel’s shoulders quaked—fairly quaked, from all the feelings he was trying not to let go of in front of everybody—when it came his turn. Toy gave him a grin and clapped him on the shoulder and said, “You take care of yourself, Preacher.”

And Samuel said, “You’ll be in my prayers.”

Early didn’t have to tell his prisoner when it was time to go. Toy Moses was not a man who needed to be hustled along. He finished passing out hugs, and kissed the kids one more time, and then hugged his mama again, hard and long.

“You come back,” Calla told him.

Toy nodded and said, “You be here.”

“I’ll do my best,” Calla answered, knowing her best might not be enough. Not necessarily twenty years might still be more than she had left. She touched his lips with her fingers and drew her hand away, letting him go.

Toy stood there for one more moment, soaking in everybody and everything he was leaving. Then he turned to Early Meeks and asked him which one of them was driving.

About the middle of May, Samuel got a letter from Bruce Hendricks, his district superintendent—or the man who had been his district superintendent. Bruce had written to tell Samuel that he thought he might have a church for him, and that Samuel should come on down to the annual conference to see what could be worked out.

Instead of a letter of acceptance, Samuel sent Bruce a batch of newspaper clippings that fully detailed the facts of the trial—including a mention that one Samuel Lake, the brother-in-law of the convicted man, tried for a while to claim responsibility for the murder of Ras Ballenger.

A letter arrived by return mail. The offer of a church had been withdrawn. Samuel read the letter, and handed it to Willadee, and went out and planted some melons.

“Are you hurting over this?” she asked him later on. It must have been sometime around sunset. They were walking in one of Samuel’s fields, where the crops were up in profusion.

“Not hurting.”

“What, then?”

Samuel pointed out some corn that was taller than it had a right to be, and then he showed her some squash that was making like crazy, and after that, he pointed back toward the barn, where their three kids were all grooming Lady. The last of the day’s sun rays were washing over the kids, painting them in all manner of beautiful colors.

“Happy,” Samuel said. “Just happy.”

After a time, Blade started coming back around. There was a quietness about him, and a serious air. His daddy had left marks on people while he was alive, but when he died, he left a stain—and that kind of thing takes a lot longer to wear off.

At least Blade was there. And frequently. Partly to play, partly to see if there might be a letter from Toy (there often was)—or to bring one that he had gotten five minutes before, out of his own mailbox.

At first, Blade found it hard to be around Swan—as though he had been the one to hurt her and couldn’t forgive himself. Finally, one day, she took him aside and faced him with the facts.

“Look,” she said. “You can’t let what happened make you afraid to be my friend. You didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did I.”

“I know.” His voice was low and tragic. “But my daddy’s who I’m
from.
”

She thought about that for a minute. He was right. Up to a point.

“He may be who you’re from,” she said, “but he’s not who you are. I love who you are, Blade.”

That was a lot for the boy to take in and hold. Being told that he was loved. He’d heard it plenty here with this family, but never from Swan.
Love
wasn’t a word she threw around a lot.

“I love you, too,” he said, shyly. Then he cut a cockeyed grin and added, “I’m still gonna marry you someday.”

Swan said, “Oh, hell, no, you’re not. You’re gonna be my brother.”

Sometimes, when it was hot as blazes, Samuel would take the four kids down to the Old Swimming Hole. He’d been meaning to teach his children to swim for years, but he was always too busy with the Lord’s business. Watching them laugh and grow, he began to suspect that what he was doing now
was
the Lord’s business. The way he saw it, God had worked out the outcome just fine.

Farming for a living didn’t keep Sam Lake from driving sick folks to the doctor or spreading the Good Word, just like he’d been called to do. He didn’t always use words to tell folks that God is love. Sometimes his sermon was a mess of greens and a bushel of peas that he left on some hungry family’s doorstep—usually along with a handful of flowers. Sometimes it was just looking some unfortunate person in the eye without flinching when most people would look away.

In the meantime, Willadee had opened Never Closes back up and had started serving home cooking to the regulars. Pretty soon, she stopped selling liquor and took to closing the place before bedtime. That was when the men started bringing their wives and kids, and Willadee told Samuel that she needed a new sign.

Samuel took down the
NEVER CLOSES
sign and was ready to paint another one, but Willadee couldn’t decide what she wanted the thing to say. Samuel knew exactly what
he
wanted it to say, so he just painted out the
N
in
Never
and painted out
Closes
altogether, and painted in another word where that one had been. Then he nailed the new sign above the back door. It said,
EVER AFTER.

Willadee asked him if he thought maybe it should say
HAPPY EVER AFTER,
but Samuel said no, he thought happiness was like any other miracle. The more you talked about it, the less people believed it was real. It was like Swan said, some things, everybody just had to find out about for themselves.

Not that they needed a sign. Folks could smell Willadee’s home cooking for a mile, and they heard about it farther away than that. Ever After was open every night except Sunday (Samuel strictly drew the line at making profit on the Lord’s Day). As time went by, the supper crowd grew until it filled up Ever After and spilled out into the yard. Samuel built picnic tables and benches, and set them out under the spreading oak trees, and those tables filled up, too.

Come dusk, the Moses yard would be full of cars, and people milling around visiting with each other, and kids playing tag and catching fireflies. Sometimes, if you looked close enough, you could actually see laughter bubbling in the air. Folks would sit there at the tables and load up on barbecue and potato salad and baked beans and corn on the cob and Grandma Calla’s spiced pickled peaches. They’d wash the food down with iced tea that was always served in mason jars, and if they still had room, they’d top the meal off with Willadee’s banana pudding or double fudge layer cake, and if they didn’t have room, they made some.

Most nights, after Samuel came in from the fields and got cleaned up, he’d pull up a chair and play his mandolin or his guitar or his fiddle, and anybody who took a notion could join in and sing.

Swan would stand there behind her daddy’s chair with one arm draped across his shoulders, and she’d let ’er rip all the way from her toes. The way the music poured out of her, so clear and fresh and liquid, people would hang on the notes and ride the swells. Hearing that little girl sing was like floating the rapids of the Cossatot River.

Pretty soon it got to where pickers would come from all over the county and sit in, and the old pickers would teach new, young pickers (Noble and Bienville and Blade among them) how to play hot licks. It was enough to make your heart fill up and burst, just being there.

“Sam Lake can play anything he can pick up,” folks would invariably say.

“He can make strings talk.”

“He can make them speak in tongues.”

Nobody ever made a move to leave until Calla would get up out of her chair and say something like “If I was someplace else right now, I believe I’d go on home.”

Then folks would start gathering their young’uns and heading for their cars. All those regulars and soon to be regulars and folks who’d just been passing through, and had heard about the place, and would still be talking about it when they got back to wherever they had come from.