CHAPTER 56

I pulled all the machinery and tools from the barn, tinkered, oiled, rubbed the rust off, but had no urge to use them. My farming days were over. I went to Durham, bought a television, and would sit watching it for hours, turning it off when there was news about the war.

I dreaded the nights and my dreams. I began to roam the woods in the dark again, slipping in and out of the shadows, reliving the jungle. Other times, I’d just sit and talk to Grandma. “You always knew more than you said. I need the comfort right now to know I’m not completely lost.” I never sensed her around me.

I was still haunted by the rush of war. Lieutenant Heaney had warned the taste for that feeling of living on the edge caused many soldiers not to be able to adjust to regular life. It drove many to risk everything to feel it again, others to drugs to dull their minds, and some simply disappeared. I would see Huy over and over, asking me why. I still didn’t have an answer. Many times I considered sticking the rifle in my mouth, but was never brave enough, or maybe desperate enough, to do it.

At the end of October, Roy had a heart attack sitting at the supper table. I did as much as I could for Clemmy, paying for the funeral in a way she wouldn’t know it had come from me. As long as Roy had lived in the community, and had at some time or other worked for about everybody in it, I was the only white person at the church. “Glory be to God for letting us have such a fine man all these years,” said the preacher. “Amen,” echoed the congregation. I listened to Clemmy cry. The choir sang beautiful hymns, and I couldn’t help but think it would have been a big comfort if Fancy had been there for her momma. I sat in the pew and confessed silently to Roy about what happened to Lightning. Maybe he could forgive me. In the graveyard, I watched another box lower into a hole in the ground.

Mr. and Mrs. Wilson assured Clemmy she could stay on in the house as long as she helped Mrs. Wilson. Mr. Wilson said he’d plant her a garden so she could make do. It turned out to be a blessing. Mrs. Wilson had a major stroke the first of January 1970, and was bedridden. Clemmy looked after her because Mr. Wilson was too frail to do it. He fixed up a room so Clemmy could stay in the big house at night. I wondered what the neighbors thought.

* * *

In late spring, May I think, an old dog wandered up in the yard. He was bowlegged and ratty-looking. I chased him off. “You need to get your behind somewhere else, mutt, ain’t nothing for you here.”

For the next couple of days, I would see the dog hiding behind the barn or lying at the edge of the trees. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t just move on. One morning he was under the woodshed.

“Dog, I thought I told you to stay away from here.” He lay looking at me, wagging his tail. “Dogs don’t make out too good around this place.”

He didn’t make any effort to get up, and I wondered if he was hurt. I squatted and looked him over. He stumbled to his feet and licked me in the face. It didn’t look like he had any injuries. “Are you just hungry? I’ve been hungry.” I went in the house and got a bowl for water and some leftover chicken. “When you finish this, move on down the road. Go find somebody else to mooch off.” That night when I looked, the dog was gone.

The next morning, I went out the porch door and almost shit in my pants when the dog ran out from under the steps. “You son of a bitch, git your ass away from here!” He took off across the road and into the woods.

That night I found him in the woodshed again. I sat down on a peach basket. “Persistent cuss, ain’t you.” He got up and shyly walked over to me, head down, looking up with sad brown eyes. “Think you’ve found a home, do you? Two old lost souls wandering around in this world.” By the time I fed him for a month, he turned out to be right good-sized, and younger than he looked when he first come around.

The dog got so he followed me everywhere. Pretty soon, he was sleeping in the house, and rode in the truck like a person. We got in the habit of riding over to a little country store a few miles away every day after supper to get us a five-cent ice cream cup. I’d eat mine with a wooden spoon and he’d lick his clean.

I named him Grady. We had many long conversations, him being almost as good a listener as Sally Mule. “What makes a man take pleasure in killing other men, Grady? I didn’t start out like that, just seemed to happen.” He would sit and watch as though he was interested, then give me a sloppy cheek kiss when I was through. Grady showed up just when I needed him.

Thanksgiving Day that year came in cold. The sky was a deep cobalt blue, but the bright sun didn’t offer much warmth. Since there was only Grady and me, I didn’t want any big meal, just some chicken and dumplings from a can. After dinner, I went for a walk in the sunshine. At the edge of the yard, I remembered Momma and Daddy driving off the last time I ever saw them, her blowing kisses and laughing. Grady followed me behind the house to the old iron pot, and I thought about the time Grandma and me sat plucking a chicken, seeing her patient smile when I asked questions, and the way her nose wrinkled when her glasses slipped down. In the woodshed, I sat on the kindling stump and relistened to Granddaddy’s stories of the old days, and what he intended to be life lessons for my future days. And I remembered the funerals for all of them.

I thought about Fancy when she was a little girl, scared of anything that went bump in the night, and how she’d become my partner, willing to stand with me and face the world. I missed her a lot.

Thanksgiving night the temperature dropped low, and Grady decided he wanted to snuggle under the quilt. I slept deep and dreamed I was walking in fields of clover. The day turned to night and I lay down in the sweet-smelling grass. Huy was lying next to me, the watch I gave him stuffed in his mouth. The air filled with fireflies; they began to attack me like a swarm of angry bees. Lightning was speaking some Vietnamese gibberish to the fireflies while he struggled to pull bullets from his chest. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Grady woke me licking my face. In the darkness I got up, put on clothes, grabbed the gun on the way out the door, and headed to the woods. Grady wanted to follow, but I chased him back to the house. At the edge of the field, I slid to the ground beside an oak tree. The butt of the Remington went between my knees, and the barrel under my chin. I closed my eyes. “God forgive me for what I’ve done. I ask for mercy.” I thought about Mo and hoped he had prayed for me.

I lifted my eyes to a sky lit bright with stars and a winter white moon, and located the Big Dipper. I wanted to keep that vision as I passed from this world. I wondered if it would hurt. My finger tightened on the trigger.

Something touched my leg. I opened my eyes. It was Grady. “Git, dog! Get your ass out of here!” I needed to get this over with. I shifted the rifle and slapped at him. He ran a few feet and stopped.

I moved the barrel back beneath my chin. Grady came again, whining and pawing. I moved the gun. It was my intention to hit and run him off, but things got mixed up. Instead, I pulled him to my lap and buried my face in his fur. Grady lay in my arms, his nose against my neck. After a while, we went back to the house and the bed. Grady slipped under the covers, and I slept without dreaming for the first time in months.