IT WAS ONE OF THOSE SMALL AND PICTURESQUE SOUTHERN TOWNS that should have and might have been in the movies. Tall, Victorian houses. Grand magnolias. Turn-of-the-century streetlamps. Churches with steeples that reached into the clouds. He passed a row of shotgun houses. One blue, the next yellow, the next pink, the next white. He followed the highway into downtown and turned left on Jefferson Street and passed city hall. The courthouse stood at the end of the block and then he turned right and drove three streets uphill to where the road reached back around behind city hall and from your front yard you could look out across the town. He had the address memorized and he drove slowly along Washington Avenue looking for 722. He found it on the corner, a fire hydrant painted like a jockey at the edge of the sidewalk. He stopped the truck on the opposite side of the street.
It was a two-story blue house with a steep roof. There was an arched window on the second floor that looked like an upstairs balcony. Burgundy shutters. There were two chimneys and a porch that stretched the length of the front of the house and turned the corner and reached down the right side toward the backyard fence. A brick walkway from the sidewalk to the steps and then brick steps and terra cotta pots on each step. Yellow and white petals hung over the edges of the pots. At the foot of the steps a little red wagon was dumped over on its side. Wicker furniture on the porch and empty glasses on the table. Two cars were parked in the street along the side of the house. Something big and black with four doors and something sleek with round taillights. Alongside the house lay a soccer ball and a baseball bat. A plastic slide perfect for somebody small.
All the appearances of happiness.
He put the truck in drive and he drove into the night thinking about his life. With the effortlessness with which he had arrived at this moment. I got drunk and killed somebody with my car. That was it. He had marveled at the stories he had heard from other inmates. At the complications they had fallen into. At the opportunities they were given for things to go right but then they went wrong and it seemed like it was mostly the fault of others. He didn’t have that story. I got drunk and killed somebody with my car. It was as basic a story as you could tell. He thought of her now like he had thought of her so many times. Sleeping between soft sheets. Sleeping in a silent peace or sometimes turning and reaching for him. Maybe it had happened before but he couldn’t imagine it now. Not after seeing that house. Those toys in the yard. He saw her sleeping and her dreams filled with sand castles and birthday cakes and dinner parties while his dreams were filled with hand grenades. Filled with things he didn’t want to see any longer. Filled with things he wished he could forget.
Back in McComb he drove along Delaware Avenue, serene and illuminated by streetlights. Two police cars sat parked next to one another in a pawn shop parking lot with the windows down, the cops talking to one another. He drove on past grocery stores and gas stations and he moved closer to downtown where the streets were lined with churches and he slowed when he came to the First Methodist Church with its high arches and brick steps and wooden steeple that made a wonderful shadow into the street in the afternoons. He hadn’t been a stranger to church or to God as he and his mother and father had gone every Sunday morning. His dad would drop him off at Sunday school and then he and Mom would sit on the seventh pew on the right side when his father joined them in the sanctuary for the service. Mom with her legs crossed and her Bible with LIZA GAINES inscribed on the bottom right of the front cover on her lap. Dad next to her in a black suit that matched all his ties and when Russell would get restless Mitchell would reach around his wife and pinch his ear and look down at him with serious eyes. Russell would then move and sit between his mother and father. His mom would pull a pen out of her purse and let him draw on the bulletin. That would keep him through the message and then they’d stand up and sing and the preacher would stand in front of the pulpit and ask for souls and sometimes one would come but most of the time not and then they’d walk out the front and Dad would shake hands with the preacher and the old men and then they’d go home and eat something with gravy.
He slowed to a stop and parked on the street in front of those brick steps. Then he got out and walked around and leaned on the passenger-side door. He stared up at the steeple which lost its clarity against the backdrop of the night sky.
He had tried again in the pen. The prison chapel was filled with rows of metal folding chairs and the pulpit held a podium and more chairs for the brighteyed young man from a local church who led the singing and the preacher and two guards. The preacher changed by the month, visiting speakers from area churches, sometimes a traveling evangelist, sometimes a budding theologian fresh out of the New Orleans seminary. But he could never get used to sitting next to men who sang the hymns of love and forgiveness knowing what they’d done and knowing they were getting their redemption. Taking advantage of grace while those they had done it to were probably up at night walking back and forth across worn carpet or fumbling in the medicine cabinet searching for the pills to help them sleep. He didn’t like the part of the service when these same men left their seats and stood at the pulpit and gave testimony. It was the same story over and over. Yes, I raped. Yes, I took another life. Yes, I stole. Yes, I raised a fist to my fellow man. But now I have found the love of God. Now I can see the light. Now I am found and on and on to a smattering of amens and hallelujahs and praise the Lords until Russell couldn’t take it anymore and so he gave up. He didn’t believe it worked that way and if it did then something didn’t seem right.
Once he asked the preacher if he thought it was really possible that these men could inherit the kingdom if their repentance was legitimate.
“If I didn’t think it was possible I wouldn’t be here,” the preacher had said. He was a retired Baptist minister. He walked with a limp and he wore a white beard and blackrimmed glasses and something in the gravelly tone of his voice had told Russell that he had heard it all from the mouths of sinners.
“Do you think it’s fair?” Russell demanded. He had been ready with the second question because he already knew what the preacher’s answer would be to the first.
The preacher took off his glasses and wiped them with his tie. Then he held them to the light and put them back on.
“What do you mean by fair, son? What I think is fair or what you think is fair or what that prison guard over there thinks is fair?”
“You know what I mean,” Russell said.
“Yeah,” the preacher answered. “I know what you mean.” And then he folded his arms and stared at Russell. Russell waited. The preacher took a deep breath.
“I don’t think it’s fair, either,” Russell said.
“But it doesn’t matter what I think is fair or what you think is fair,” the preacher answered. “The only thing that matters is what God thinks is fair. He leaves the door open. For everybody.”
Russell pointed to an inmate who was leaving the chapel. “See that guy?” he said. The preacher turned and looked. “That guy beat his grandma to death because she wouldn’t tell him where the keys were to the car.”
“I know,” the preacher said.
Then Russell pointed at another guy. “That one molested his little brother for about five years.”
“His little brother,” Russell repeated.
“I heard you.”
Russell pointed at another but before he could begin the preacher held up his hand and stopped him.
“And what did you do?”
“I made a big fucking mistake,” he answered. “I didn’t mean to. They meant to.”
“I’m not doubting you.”
“There’s more gray than the way you make it sound.”
“There’s gray to us. But only black and white where He’s concerned. Says it in Matthew. You follow or you don’t. I’ll know you or I won’t. It’s a pretty straight line.”
“The way you put it there’s ladders over the line. Or tunnels under it.”
“There’s grace. If you want to call it a ladder or a tunnel then I suppose you can. But I don’t know what you’re trying to do. Trying to justify yourself by condemning them or trying to get me to say you and them are different. But it don’t much matter what I say.”
When the guard blew the whistle Russell turned and followed his fellow inmates out of the chapel. He had never gone back. Many nights he had thought about what the preacher had said. It’s there if you want it. Don’t matter what you’ve done. There was something odd about that. Seemed like there had to be a point of no return. Things you couldn’t take back. He had seen the worst of men and he wanted there to be punishment for that so that he could feel like he was different from them.
He took his eyes off the steeple and he walked up the steps of the church. Wondered if the old preacher was still alive. If he was still helping those kinds of men find their way home.
On that night he had drunk more than usual for no particular reason other than it was one of those hot Mississippi Friday nights when you have a paycheck in your pocket and a good woman who loves you and clear reception on the radio station out of New Orleans that plays the old blues, aching voices that sing of mojo and insatiable women and red roosters and sneaking in and out the back door. One of those nights when the light stays until well into the evening and pushes the night out further and further and as long as there is gasoline being pumped at the gas stations then it seems a shame not to burn it up. Many times he had thought that it might have helped him if there had been some reason. Something that triggered him, shoved him, irritated him, violated him, motivated him to drink so much. Many times he had wished that there would have been something to point his finger at other than his own stupidity. But there wasn’t.
Got off work early on Friday afternoon. Payday. Put some of his check in the bank and kept some of it in his pocket and he drove to a house on the east side of town where his father had asked him to see about something. Got there and knocked on the door and a woman with a baby on her hip and another little one holding on to her leg opened the front door and let him in and took him to the kitchen and showed him the leak. Went back out and got a toolbox from the truck and came back in and crawled underneath the sink and fixed it. Then she took him to the bathroom and flipped the light switch and no light came on and he asked if she had changed the bulb and she shifted the baby to her other hip and swatted at the kid on her leg and said do I look like a fool. Don’t guess so he said and then he took a screwdriver and removed the switch plate and then pulled out the light switch and as in many of the dejected old houses his father had brought back to life there was a loose wire and it was the hot one and he tightened it and flipped the switch and the light came on.
He asked if there was anything else and she said no and he took his toolbox and left. Stopped at a gas station and filled up with gas and started to buy beer but then got that feeling. That Friday night, nothing to do tomorrow, damn it’s a beautiful night feeling. And beer wouldn’t do so he stopped at the liquor store and bought a fifth of bourbon. Old Charter. Aged eight years. The same kind of bottle that his dad had kept in the kitchen cabinet over the stove. Drove over to Sarah’s apartment and she and her mother and her maid of honor were there. Planning. Always planning now. Only a handful of weeks away. He talked to them a minute and kissed her and she asked if he’d take her car and get the oil changed tomorrow and he said yeah. Got his bottle out of the truck and got in her car and slid the seat back all the way. Stopped at a convenience store and bought a giant Styrofoam cup filled with Coke and he poured out a third of the Coke and opened the Old Charter and started up. Drove out on the highway to JC’s. A few trucks and a few motorcycles in the gravel parking lot. Door open to the pool hall and music coming out and he took his bottle in because JC only sold beer. Couple of guys with beards and tattoos at one table and a couple of guys in their work shirts at another and JC sitting behind the bar reading the newspaper. The small, wrinkled man looked up and said hey to Russell and saw the bottle in one of his hands and the giant cup in the other and he opened up the cooler and set two cans of Coke on the bar. He sat and talked with JC and watched them play pool. Some left and others came in and a couple of hours passed and it was closer to dark. A solid dent in the bottle now. Said goodbye to JC and nodded to some men he knew and walked out and got in her car. Head feeling about right and the night feeling about right and his life feeling about right. Drove on and felt good. Couldn’t help but feel good. Stopped on the side of the road to piss and lightning bugs flashed across the field. Hundreds of them. Sat down on the hood of the car and watched them for a while.
Then he had to drive back to town for more ice and more Coke and he ran into an old girlfriend at the convenience store and she made a joke about him getting married and that being the end of it and he told her that he didn’t hear many women talk like that but he knew she wasn’t like many women. She said you damn right, Russell. You by yourself? I am except for half a bottle of Old Charter and she said you need some company. He said I thought you said that was the end of it. She said you ain’t married yet and he smiled and said you don’t need me. The night is young. It always is she said and she slapped him on the rear end and climbed in and they drank and drove through the neighborhoods a couple of blocks back from Delaware. She bit his ear and ran her hand under his shirt and he did the same to her while trying to keep it on the road. She grabbed at his belt and he said you better not and he drove back to the convenience store. She kissed his neck and got in her car and drove off and he did the same. Close to midnight now and back out to the desolate roads. Drinking more than he had planned on but driving and singing now and then with the voices on the radio and stopping at a stop sign and not sure which way to go. Then driving on and stopping at another and not sure which way to go. Eyes lagging behind if he moved his head from side to side. A deer cut across in front of him and he swerved and spilled his drink in his lap and he stopped the car. Got out and wiped his pants with napkins from the glove compartment. Poured another one and got back in and driving on and playing with the radio stations and coming over the hill and picking up speed coming down the hill and never seeing the truck with its lights off parked on the bridge.
The end, he thought. Then he corrected himself.
The beginning.
He walked down the church steps and the exhaustion grabbed him as the chimes in the steeple rang and announced 5:00 a.m. There was nothing to do but go and lie down. Several blocks later he turned onto his street and he saw the truck in his driveway.
Those sons of bitches, he whispered.
He parked the truck at the end of the street and grabbed the 20-gauge from behind the seat and walked toward the house. The light was on in the living room and Russell walked quietly to the front door and it was open, a foot wide. He nudged it fully open with the barrel of the shotgun and he saw Larry standing at the mantel and holding the picture of Sarah.
Larry looked at him and held the frame toward him. “That’s real sweet.”
Russell stepped through the doorway with the gun barrel toward the floor. “Get out of here,” he said.
Larry set the frame down on the mantel. He adjusted the angle once. And then twice. “I don’t sleep much,” he said. He looked back at Russell.
“So what?”
“Just so you know. I don’t sleep much. Ain’t going to.”
“Me either.”
“I guess you know she’s signed, sealed, delivered,” Larry said. He pointed his thumb at Sarah. “Shame, too. She was a good ride. That’s what I hear. Woman’s got to cope somehow when her man is gone away.”
Russell raised the barrel and held it on Larry. “I told you to get the hell out of here.”
“I saw her damn near strip naked downtown one night. Dancing and drunk and it was hot as hell. This ol’ boy started grabbing at her on the dance floor and next thing we knew she was down to her bra. Skirt was up. He had his hands full of it.”
“Where’s your stupid brother?”
“I think I might’ve even stuck a five in her panties. It was a good show.”
Larry picked up the picture frame again and rubbed her face on his zipper. “Like that, honey. Like that,” he said. He grinned and winked at Russell.
“Come on out. I know you’re here,” Russell said.
Walt moved into the living room from the kitchen. He was holding a beer he’d gotten from the refrigerator in one hand and he had a pamphlet he had taken from the manila folder in the other.
“Becoming a citizen again,” Walt read. “How to become a model member of your community.” Walt held the brochure out to Larry and Larry laughed.
“I don’t get the feeling it’s gonna be that easy,” Larry said.
“He’s got a whole file in there,” Walt said. “Looks like they ain’t expecting to see him again.”
“I would not count on that. You know he’s gonna fuck up again.”
“Bound to.”
“Some stupid little slip and he’ll be back.”
“Just one.”
“Like shooting somebody. That’d be real dumb.”
Russell raised the shotgun and held aim on Larry and then he spelled the word trespassing out loud. One slow letter at a time.
“It’s got two s’s,” Walt said.
“It’s got three s’s,” Larry said.
“No it don’t.”
“Yeah it does.”
“No it don’t.”
“You want him to do it again?”
“Shut the hell up and get your ass out of here,” Russell said.
“Here, Walt. You want some of this?” Larry handed the picture to his brother.
“Nah,” Walt said. “I know where all that’s been.”
“I said get the fuck out of here,” Russell said.
“That ain’t exactly what you said,” Walt said.
“You look like a fag with that beard,” Larry said. “Don’t he, Walt?”
“Mostly.”
“Put the picture down.”
Larry dropped the frame on the floor and smashed it with his heel. Walt turned up the bottle and finished the beer and then he threw it at Russell but he was wild right and Russell didn’t flinch as the bottle smashed on the wall behind him. He stuck the pamphlet in his back pocket.
“Our boy has a shotgun,” Larry said.
“That ain’t fair,” Walt said.
“For now.”
“They do make more than one.”
“Where’d you get that?” Larry said. “Part of your package when they showed you the door? Or Daddy give it to you?”
“I’m gonna count to three and then one of you is gonna lose a foot,” Russell said. He put the shotgun against his shoulder and aimed at Larry’s feet.
“Fine,” Larry said. “Come on, Walt. Guess we gonna have to come back tomorrow.”
“One,” Russell said.
“Where’s your girl? The one you left the Armadillo with?”
“Two.”
“See? We’re watching you, boy,” Larry said. “Know where you are. Who you with.”
Walt grabbed Larry’s arm and pulled him on, his eyes a little wider than Larry’s at the sight of the gun. They moved away from the mantel and in front of the couch and toward the front door. Russell circled around them. Walt walked out first and Larry stopped in the doorway.
“You’d better keep that thing close.”
Larry stepped out the door and Russell held the gun pointed at the open door until the truck was cranked and gone. When he was sure he leaned the gun in the corner and he walked outside and down the street to his truck. He pulled it under the carport and he went inside and picked up the pieces of wood and glass from the frame. And then he took Sarah’s picture and he ripped it twice and he walked into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet. Looked at himself in the mirror. The gray hints in the beard. The scar. The eyes that seemed to belong to a stranger.
He glared and was quickly impatient with the image and he headbutted himself and the mirror shattered and cut a gash in his forehead. He felt the blood run down the tip of his nose and across his lips and he leaned his head over the sink and let it drip among the shattered shards of mirror. He held his fingers to the gash and pulled a tiny piece of mirror from it. Then he wadded up some toilet paper and held it on the cut while he went to the truck and drove down to the all-night gas station where he bought Band-Aids. He sat in the truck and wiped the gash clean and covered it with a Band-Aid and then he went back inside and bought a pocket-size notebook and a pack of pens. The eastern sky had begun to change color and the sun would soon be on the horizon but he wasn’t going to stop now.
Back down to Magnolia. He felt the bruises from the fight and a lag from the booze. He drove fast and hoped that the dawn would wait until he did what he had to do. In ten minutes he was idling in front of Sarah’s house. He sat and stared and watched for lights. For movement. When he was certain the house was still he scribbled a note on the small notebook paper. He got out and hustled to the front door and slid it through the brass mail slot on the antique door. Then he got in the truck and left and regretted dropping the note through the slot but it was done now.
On one side he wrote his address.
On the other—Right or wrong I wanted to let you know I was back. Russell.
He drove back to the house and he walked into the bedroom and lay down on top of the covers with his clothes on. Just ahead of the rising sun. The shotgun next to him like a good friend. The bus ride and the fishing and the woman and the beer and the brothers all bunching together and taking over and pushing him to sleep though he hated the thought of closing his eyes. Knowing that the world still had him by the throat.