Chapter twenty-two

In the evening, we drove to Yardley’s place. We went one more block on Main until it intersected with Grand. To our left, we saw gas stations and a supermarket, a little mall. Beyond that, there were small, gloomy two-story houses. One porch after another, one lawn after another.

As we stopped at the intersection, we could see a train crossing down past those houses. We could see the red lights flashing and the guards lowering. We could hear the warning bells and the whistle of a freight.

On the other side of the tracks, the wrong side, box elder and elm trees crowded the curb, blocked out the light with overhanging branches. But even so, I had a sense of the dismal places hidden in the shadows. I could imagine the white paint chipping off the sides of two- and three-family dwellings; the old woman’s face in the window of the apartment above the grocery; the yellow stare of a man on a porch rocker during working hours. I thought of Yardley saying, “You have to understand: this used to be Ku Klux Klan country.” I realized—with a small shock—that Nathan Jersey was a black man.

And the freight barreled by, by and by without end, blocking the view.

We turned away, onto Grand Street. The old, white houses here were not luxurious, but they were well kept. Some had signs in front advertising candy stores or antique shops inside. The lawns grew wider, greener as we drove along. The houses grew larger, older. We passed a stretch of turn-of-the-century homes with rising turrets and shingled walls. Then, at the end of Grand Street, there was a traffic circle surrounded by antebellum manses, their white porticoes upheld by stately columns. At the center of the circle, on an island of grass, a bronze union soldier stood atop a pedestal on which were carved the names of Hickman’s Civil War dead.

We followed Route 312 out of the circle. It wound beneath the budding branches of maples, willows, and white oaks: proud old trees stretching from powerful trunks. They guarded the iron gates of long driveways that ran toward the colonnades of the finest old mansions. We passed these on a road that had become a two-lane highway. It carried us on past an old stone church, then past a couple of stark, ugly modern churches, and then through the center of a cemetery that vanished over the crests of gentle hills on either side of us. And then we were in the farmlands.

The evening sun was sinking now. The sky was a metallic blue. To our right, the east, where they caught the sun, the houses, barns, and silos gleamed. To our left, they sank into shadow, and the hills melded with the horizon.

Susannah kept her eyes to the window. She watched the scenery with intent interest. More than that. She stared at the changing colors of the clouds. Turned to catch the subtleties of light on distant hills. Shielded her eyes to see the hawks fly. Breathed all of it in deeply, as if she wanted it inside her.

I stole glances at her from the driver’s seat. I remembered how I’d found her in the mist outside her dormitory three days ago. I thought of her wild and weary eyes then. Of the dream haunting them.

I thought of her laughing in the snow outside her father’s house.

Susannah gazed out the window, hungry for the rolling hills and the wide sky. She belonged here, or someplace like it. She was born here, after all.

The dirt road appeared suddenly to our left. I hit the brake, but it was a hard turn. The tires bounced, spitting rocks at the muffler as we left the blacktop.

The road ran into the rolling hills. It ran past a post fence and past a gate in the fence that led to a farmhouse. Then it lifted to a crest of land where a row of hickories stood. The car bounced through the trees. A small valley opened below us. Susannah drew in her breath with a sharp hiss. It was lovely. There were hills on every side. A little stream ran through it. The water caught the scarlet of the sinking sun. Thin young elms stood here and there, their light green buds fading into the twilight. To our right, nestled among sycamores, was Yardley’s place: a two-story cottage. A little shabby, actually, but sort of quaint all the same. There was a battered white Chevy in the drive out front. Slowly, we bounced toward it down the dirt road.

Yardley met us in the doorway. Yardley and his cats. Two orange ones and a calico with cute names that ended in y.

Susannah said, “It’s so beautiful here!”

For the first time, Yardley looked directly at her. He seemed surprised she’d noticed. Then he glanced toward the western hills where the sun was setting. “That it is,” he said.

Toting our baggage, we went inside. It was drab in there. Everything was threadbare and shoddy. It smelled of age. We came into the kitchen first, where the yellow linoleum was peeling up from the black foundation beneath. We went down a hall lined with ancient wallpaper and into a living room where torn curtains dangled over dirty windows and colorless furniture shed its stuffing through tears and burst seams. The stairs groaned as we went up. I saw Susannah run her finger over the railing, leaving a trail in the dust. Yardley directed us to two bedrooms. Mine had a four-poster in it, draped with fading lace. It had a rocker with a wickerwork seat ripped to pieces. It smelled musty. I thought of an old woman propped up in bed, peering through the fading light at life.

Yardley took Susannah to her room while I unpacked.

When I came downstairs, they were in the kitchen. I heard Yardley say: “I’m not very good at this.” I heard Susannah laugh.

I walked in. They were standing next to each other, making ham and cheese sandwiches on a rickety wooden table.

Yardley glanced up at me. “I was just telling Susannah: I haven’t had time to fix this place up since my mother died.”

“She only died two months ago,” Susannah said.

I said I was sorry.

“No, no, she was sick a long time,” said Yardley. “God, forever.” He said this without bitterness. “But the thing is, she couldn’t keep up the house and we couldn’t afford much help. It was everything I could do to pay off the property taxes to keep the place together. Anyway, that’s why it’s sort of in disrepair. Like, falling down around your ears.”

“It’s fine,” Susannah said. “And the land … it was worth keeping.”

He smiled at her. Laid a last slice of ham on a piece of white bread and said: “I give up.” She laughed again. He sat down at the table. She continued to stand over him, slicing cheese. He slapped a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. I did the same.

I said: “I guess we ought to talk about—”

“Let’s not.” Susannah had stopped working at the table. She looked up at me, then at him. ‘Just for a little while,” she said softly. “Let’s not.”

I shrugged. “Okay. How about them Buckeyes?”

We ate at the kitchen table. Yardley talked. He talked a lot. He was smart and he was funny, and he probably didn’t have too many people to talk to. He seemed to want to tell us everything, fast, the way lonely people do, like they’re afraid you’ll stop them. He talked about Hickman’s politics, and the county’s. He made Susannah laugh with stories about the clowns on the town board. And he had some good crime stories with an eerie rural quality to them. Every now and again he’d stop and say to me, “I guess that’s nothing compared to some of the stuff you’ve covered.” But I didn’t tell any stories.

After dinner we had drinks. We took them outside. Yardley put out some beach chairs. We held off the deepening chill with the liquor and looked at the stars.

“I’ve always liked this time of year,” Yardley said. “It’s easy to find the zodiac early in the evening. It cuts right across the middle of the sky.” He gestured at the night with his cigarette.

“Oh, I can never find anything,” said Susannah. “Show me where.”

He showed her the lion, and the crab and the twins. He showed her where Orion battles the bull and told her about the scorpion who chases the hunter through the year. I drank silently.

It was just after ten when Susannah got up to go inside. We hadn’t slept much in the past few days. She looked exhausted. Yardley rose from his seat and offered to show her to her room. She laughed: a pretty laugh that made him look bashfully at his shoes. She went indoors alone. In a few moments we saw her light go on behind a curtain on the second story.

Yardley snorted, embarrassed. He hid his face behind the blaze of a match and the smoke of still another cigarette. As he sat back in his chair, a cat jumped onto his lap. He stroked it. It purred.

He cleared his throat. “She’s very nice,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Are you, uh, are you guys …”

“No,” I said. Then I took a breath. Then I said: “She’s my sister.”

“What?”

I told him. Not everything, but enough. I told him what I had remembered that afternoon, and I told him about getting shot at in the alleyway. I didn’t tell him about my story or her dream—or anything that might hint that we had been lovers. I did tell him about the scarred man. When I was done, he glanced up at Susannah’s window.

“Sounds tough,” he said.

I didn’t answer him. I listened to the peepers and the cicadas and all the whirring sounds of the night.

He said: “I’ve always sort of wondered about her: the sister, I mean. She wasn’t in any of the clips. She was mentioned in the first story, maybe the first few, but after that …”

Still I said nothing.

“Why do you think that is?” Yardley asked.

After a while I said: “I’d like to know.”

My voice sounded harsh, even to me. It seemed to bring Yardley out of a reverie. “Okay. Okay,” he said. “How do you want to do this?”

We talked it over. We needed to know more about the rape: who was in the lynch mob, who might have been angry enough to kill my father because he’d protected Jersey, who might have been smart enough to set up a frame. I left that job to Yardley. For myself, I wanted to talk to Jersey’s lawyer.

“I don’t want this poor bastard to fry while we play the Hardy Boys,” I said.

But Yardley’s gaze had drifted around to the house again, to the window. The light up there went out.

“What’s his name?”

“What?” said Yardley.

“Jersey’s attorney. What’s his name?”

“Oh. Uh. Wait a minute. Marks, his name is. Howard Marks.”