BY NOON I got down to the hospital and checked in on my father-in-law. Marvin was due to be released in a week. I told him I’d be back a few nights before that, to take him home.
On my way out of Mason Falls, I stopped at the Websters’. I found the reverend in the church by himself, praying. He was dressed down this time, in a simple white T-shirt and jeans.
We moved out to a garden, and I told him the whole story. Even the parts that I wasn’t sure what to make of. The voices heard on the wind, the roadside baptisms, and the signs I’d seen on trees.
I told him about Lena and Jonas. About the accident. How it shaped what I believed and didn’t believe in these days. About Cory Burkette and his innocence. How the reverend hadn’t failed in saving the soul of an ex-Nazi.
When I finished, Webster’s face was wet with tears.
“I don’t imagine that’s the story that you’re putting in your file, is it?” he asked.
“Some of it,” I said.
“I’m glad you were the one to stand up for Kendrick,” he said. “He would’ve liked you. For the same reason he liked Cory.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“He rooted for the underdog. Kendrick used to do BMX, you know. He’d watch these extreme sports competitions on TV. He always picked the guy in the most pain.”
I put my hand on the reverend’s shoulder, and we both sat in silence on the garden bench, two fathers who’d lost sons. Two men who’d fed better versions of ourselves to the insatiable soil, the vengeful earth.
“What if the ground goes dead?” I said to him finally. “What if they’re right and Harmony fails?”
“Harmony will be fine,” Webster said. “The Lawless One uses all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie.”
It sounded like a Bible verse, but I didn’t ask. Webster’s point was simple. That all those rich folks believing in luck or evil—it gave them strength.
“And the rest of us,” I said. “Believing in the goodness of Harmony overcoming—we have that same power?”
Webster stood up and smiled, nodding. “Have a good trip, Detective.”
I got in the car then and drove, just me and Purvis.
We made our way through Georgia and into Florida. Past Gainesville and Orlando. We spent the night on Lake Okeechobee and kept going the next morning.
We all live under the shadow of a three-century history that has pitted color against color. And we all need to change.
To me—there are no people more capable of that change than people from here.
We’re not ignorant of what outsiders think. They see a mix of beautiful mansions from the 1800s—and weeds thigh-high in the next house over.
But for me, this area of the country is heaven. There’s no place I’d rather travel than in the South. And no place I’d rather live in than Georgia.
Even with our history, when I’m at Publix buying groceries, I see interracial couples. Lots of us. More than in other places. So as much as we struggle here with race . . . in some ways, our struggle is closer to the surface. And I hold out hope that this means it’s easier to fix.
U.S. Route 1 became a single road leading into Key West. The rains disappeared, and the heat rose. When I was out of land and reached the bottom of the Keys, I parked my car in front of the lime-green hotel where Lena and I had gone on our first weekender.
Purvis and I walked to the shore, and I emptied Lena’s ashes in the still water.
I said a prayer, watching as the tiny flakes floated on the surface and then slowly submerged. First into the water. And then down into the ground. To the floor of the earth, which remembered and forgot all secrets.
I sat on the dock with Purvis, who looked at me, his brown eyes wet and shining. He licked my face.
She believed in you, Purvis said.
I smiled, pulling him onto my lap.
Not every memory was a good one, but the year was starting new.
I’d made mistakes. But forgiveness was coming, and I could sleep nights now, without liquor in me, even in the heat of the Keys.