The hall was illumined only by a gray light from windows on the street front. Father Tim walked with Buck Leeper to the pool table.
“Mr. Shuford, I believe you have something that belongs to me.”
Pink Shuford didn’t look up; he knifed himself over the rim of the table and studied a shot. “What’s that?”
“Thirty-eight dollars.”
“Make me laugh, Preacher. Can I help it your broke-down car couldn’t keep up?”
“Right,” said Bug Austin from the other end of the table.
“You lost us, which was clearly your intention.”
“Law help, Bug, you recall how we had to hold back to keep ’em behind us?”
Buck moved within inches of Pink Shuford and stood, silent, until Pink looked up.
“I don’t understand why we have to discuss this particular issue,” said Buck. “Father Kavanagh paid you to do something you didn’t do. You can give ’im his money back, or you can lead us to Sammy Barlowe. Take your pick.”
Buck Leeper was a big man, a very big man. His whole physique spoke of physical power; Father Tim saw that Pink Shuford noted this fact.
“Clyde Barlowe, he’s got some bad dogs back in there, ain’t he, Bug?”
“Bad dogs don’t mess with me,” said Buck.
Pink turned away and chalked his cue.
“I can see you and your friend here have all day….” Buck nonchalantly rolled up one shirtsleeve, then the other. “But we don’t.”
Pink Shuford appeared distinctly pained. “If you ever say I run you out there, I’ll say you lied. Where you parked at?”
“Right behind your truck, ready to roll,” said Buck. “By the way, you wouldn’t want to pull th’ same trick again.”
“Right,” said Pink. “No problem.”
Father Tim felt a definite surge of adrenaline. While bad dogs might not mess with Buck, they’d sure messed with him a time or two; at the age of nine, he’d been badly bitten on the ankle. However, with God in control and Buck Leeper second in command, he figured the odds were definitely improved over his last trip down the mountain.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sammy
They followed the truck along a state highway, then veered left onto a gravel lane that ran by the wayside pulpit of Shady Grove Chapel.
Don’t wait for six strong men to take you to church.
Father Tim uncapped a bottle of water and peered at the landscape. “This is a different road,” he said as they made a hard right.
“It better be the right road,” said Buck. “If Shuford don’t deliver this time, I’ll wrap that tattoo around ’is neck.”
Father Tim took a swig of water with one hand and with the other gripped the handle above the passenger door. Pink Shuford was moving, no two ways about it, and Buck was hammering down on the blue truck’s rear bumper. In the absence of air-conditioning, the windows of Buck’s red pickup were cranked open and they were taking on the dust of Creation.
The gravel track was now running beside a shallow river. Its banks rose steeply from a streambed that was randomly paved with large boulders; gnarled vines knit an intricate web among the trees.
“Spooky,” said Buck.
“How far have we come from town?”
“Twelve miles. By th’ way, don’t worry, I won’t wrap Shuford’s tattoo around ’is neck.” Buck grinned. “But he don’t know that I won’t.”
They saw an abandoned farm building with a collapsed roof, then a derelict house overgrown with honeysuckle; at the end of a rutted drive, a dog sat by an open mailbox, panting. Father Tim could no longer ignore the headache that had started in the pool hall. It throbbed in his temples like a hammer.
The blue truck braked so suddenly that Buck swerved off the road. He leaned out the window and shouted, “What’s th’ deal?”
Pink Shuford made a U-turn, heading his truck the way they’d come in. Bug sat in the cab as Pink got out, chewing a toothpick.
“That’s it over yonder.” Pink gestured toward a house trailer set back from the opposite bank of the river. Two pairs of pants hung on a clothesline between the house and a nearly empty woodshed. A chicken scratched in the dust.
Father Tim and Buck got out of the truck. “How do we know that’s it?” asked Buck.
“You asked me to bring you out here, that’s what I done. I ain’t got papers t’ prove whose house it is.”
“Is Barlowe home? I don’t see a car.”
“They ain’t got a car.”
“How does the boy get to town from out here?” asked Father Tim.
“Hitches a ride with Lon Burtie, whatever.”
“Does he go to school?”
Pink shrugged. “I don’t keep up with ’is personal life.”
“Does he go to town often?”
“A good bit.”
“What does he do at the pool hall?”
“Shoots pool.”
“He’s underage.”
“That ain’t my problem.”
Buck shaded his eyes and looked across the river. “I don’t see anybody over there,” he said to Pink.
“So? Somebody bein’ there wadn’t in th’ deal.”
“How does Clyde Barlowe make a livin’?”
“He don’t make a livin’, he gets a check from th’ gov’ment, plus Sammy’s a sharp little pool shooter, he wins enough to help out with a few rations, ’is daddy’s liquor, whatever. Course, he don’t win nothin’ offa me.” Pink grinned, hanging his thumbs in the loops of his jeans.
“Where’s th’ bridge?”
“A little ways down an’ make a right. It’s a hangin’ bridge, you cain’t take a vehicle on it.”
Someone appeared in the doorway of the house. The distance was great enough that Father Tim couldn’t distinguish much more than a blue shirt.
“That’s Clyde right yonder,” said Pink. “We can see him better’n he can see us, he’s blind in one eye. Can’t hear too good, neither.” Pink spit the toothpick on the ground. “That toothpick ain’t gittin’ it. Any chance of bummin’ a cigarette?”
“I quit that foolishness,” said Buck.
“So, look, if y’all got what you come after, me an’ Bug are headed back t’ town.” Pink extended his hand, palm up. “I don’t reckon you’d like to buy a man an’ ’is buddy a cold beer.”
“Nope,” said Buck, “I wouldn’t. Thanks for the ride.”
“Seem like f’r runnin’ y’all out this way twice, thirty-eight dollars ain’t much, you’d of paid more for a cab.”
“When you took th’ father on a wild goose chase, I figure you were on your way home, anyway, so that’s no charge. Today’ll be twenty-four miles round trip at thirty-four-point-five cents a mile gover’ment allowance, which amounts to eight dollars an’ change. This leaves thirty bucks for an hour of your time. I call that good money.”
Pink’s laugh was raucous. “You’re a pretty cool dude, maybe I’ll shoot you a game one of these days. By th’ way, Preacher, you don’t believe ’at ol’ mess about God bein’ real, do you?”
“I know He’s real.”
“How d’you know?”
“I was talking to Him this morning.”
Pink took a step back, laughed again, and walked quickly to the blue truck. He got in, gunned the motor, let out the clutch, and scratched off, the tires digging into the red clay of the riverbank.
They watched the truck disappear around a bend, then turned, silent, and gazed across the river.
“You lookin’ for clean jokes or th’ other kind?” the truck driver asked Uncle Billy. He lifted the top off his burger and removed the sliced tomato, added pickles and a dollop of fries, shook ketchup over the revision, replaced the top of the bun, and mashed down the whole caboodle.
“Clean,” said Uncle Billy. “That’s all th’ kind I tell. Besides, they’re f’r a preacher.”
“They’s some preachers as like th’ other kind.”
“Not this preacher,” said the old m
an.
“I got your wife jokes, your in-law jokes, your schoolteacher jokes…” The driver took a generous bite of his burger. “Then there’s your preacher jokes, which might be a good idea, under th’ circumstances.”
Uncle Billy was dumbfounded at his good fortune. All he’d done was climb on a stool at the Grill, strike up a conversation with a trucker making a run to Greensboro, and look here…
“Plus I got your doctor jokes, your lawyer jokes, your cabdriver jokes…”
“I’ll be et f’r a tater,” said Uncle Billy. “I don’t hardly know where to start at.” He thought the good Lord must somehow be in on this.
“I got a old-maid joke that’s pretty funny.”
“Hit’s clean, is it?”
“Clean,” said the driver, hammering down on his burger.
“Wellsir!” Uncle Billy felt light-headed. All these years scrambling around for jokes, and right here at a feller’s elbow set the Joke King hisself. This called for a celebration.
He felt carefully in his left pants pocket and located the twenty, then looked up and caught Percy’s eye. “I’ll take a order of chicken fingers with y’r honey mustard dip!” he called in a loud voice. It had a been a long time since he’d set on a stool and ordered like a man.
“An’ give me a Pepsi-Cola with that!”
Hope Winchester jumped as if a shot had been fired.
“Excuse me, Miss Winchester…”
She turned quickly and blurted, “Call me Hope!”
“Hope,” he said, smiling. He stooped and picked up the book he’d just dropped. “Gray’s Anatomy, no harm done.”
She hadn’t meant to say what she’d just said, she’d planned to say it when they were conversing quietly about poetry or even the nuances of mail order. “The thirteenth edition before the revision?” She strained to appear casual.
“Yes. I’ll be more careful.”
“I find you very careful, Mr. Gaynor, you handle books as if they were infants.”
“Please call me George. No one has called me Mr. Gaynor since I taught economics.”
“George.” Saying his given name seemed alarmingly intimate. She colored deeply and turned away, reaching for the book lying open beside the register. Her aim was awkward, and the book crashed to the floor.
She was humiliated. She had twice dropped a book in front of him, and of course he had just dropped a book…. Was there some epidemic of the nervous system passing through Mitford?
He walked over and picked it up and handed it to her. “Thank you,” she whispered.
She knew she could no longer bear the crushing fear and attraction she felt, and the terrible conflict between the two.
Hessie Mayhew parked in the no parking zone at Mitford Hospital and took the elevator to the second-floor nurses’ station. Her cargo was destined for Minnie Louder, who had just undergone a kidney operation and turned eighty-four, all in the same day.
She gave the basket a last once-over, critiquing the simple harmony of periwinkle, cinnamon fern, moss from which a tiny red mushroom was growing, and a real bird’s nest that she’d plucked from a pot of ivy after the wrens had flown.
“Oh!” said Nurse Kennedy. “Beautiful! You’ve done it again, Hessie!”
“It could use more color,” Hessie said sternly.
“Oh, nonsense, you’re too hard on yourself! But of course nothing measures up to the basket you gave Father Tim when he was with us.”
“The basket…”
“Yes, it was just glorious, and as big as Johnson County!” Nurse Kennedy would never have confessed that Father Tim had given the basket to her, and that she’d planted everything in it around her birdbath.
Hessie thumped the basket down at the nurses’ station. “Minnie Louder, Two-oh-six!” she proclaimed in a loud voice.
Then, mad as a wet hen, she turned and hotfooted it to the elevator.
“Don’t move,” said Father Tim. The pounding of his heart nearly took his breath away. “Look there.”
They watched the tall, barefoot boy come along the riverbed, walking on boulders that inlaid the stream.
Sunshine filtered through the canopy of trees overhanging the water; as he stepped into a patch of light, Sammy Barlowe’s hair blazed like a coronet of fire.
They had walked to the bridge, crossed over, and come along a path by a pine wood to their left. They paused when they approached the clearing where the Barlowe trailer sat on an underpinning of concrete blocks.
A dog limped toward them with its tail between its legs. Father Tim judged it to be a member of the hound family; he could easily have counted its ribs.
“If that’s a bad dog, I’ll eat a billy goat,” said Buck.
Father Tim reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew the rest of the granola bar his wife had sent on this mission. He unwrapped it and laid it by the root of a white oak at the edge of the yard. “Good fellow!” he said as the dog devoured it and sniffed for crumbs.
“Are you ready?” asked Buck.
“Ready. And praying there won’t be any guns in this encounter.” He was also praying that his headache would ease off. It was the worst he could remember.
“A man with a dog like that prob’ly don’t keep a gun.”
“I’d stop right there if I was you.”
Both men jumped, startled by the voice from the shadow of the woods. Peering into the pine grove, they saw the boy standing by a large outcropping of rock.
“We’re looking for Sammy Barlowe,” Buck said.
“You ain’t g-goin’ t’ find ’im. He’s done m-moved off t’ Statesville an’ ain’t comin’ back.”
Father Tim looked into the face of a younger Dooley Barlowe, and knew he must make an effort to keep his voice calm. “But you’re Sammy, of course.”
“No, I ain’t! An’ you better git out of here right now, this is p-private property.”
The dog sniffed Father Tim’s pant legs. “We’ve come to talk with you about your brothers and little sister.”
Sammy uttered Dooley’s once-favorite four-letter word. “I ain’t got no brothers an’ sisters.”
Had Pink led them on another wild goose chase? No. This was Dooley Barlowe’s blood kin, freckles and all; nothing in him doubted it.
“Jessie doesn’t remember you,” said Buck, “but Poo does, and Dooley. They really want to see you.”
“I’m goin’ t’ b-bash y’r heads in if you don’t git on.” Sammy picked up a stick and brandished it.
“You remember Dooley,” said Father Tim. “He took care of you that time you were so sick with the flu, he gave you his best jacket to wear to school and put a dollar in the pocket. You remember.” He was piecing together fragments of stories Dooley had told him. They didn’t amount to much, but it was the best he could do.
He walked closer to the patch of woods, to the narrow path that led into the cool, chiaroscuro shade. Even from this distance, he saw the anger and fear in the boy’s eyes; he thought he also saw something else—a kind of hope or longing. “And Dooley was saying how—”
“Come another step an’ you’ll fall in a nest of rattlers big as y’r arm!”
“Right,” said Buck, “and Jessie was sayin’ how if she could see her brother, Sammy, she’d give him all the money she’s saved and make him scrambled eggs every mornin’. Jessie makes fine scrambled eggs.”
“I’ve got a shotgun hid under this rock. I’ll blow y’r brains out if you don’t git back where you c-come from.”
“She likes to crumble up livermush in her scrambled eggs,” said Buck, “the same as your granddaddy Russell Jacks likes to do.”
“We’ve got pictures to show you,” said Father Tim, reaching into his jacket pocket. Sammy’s confusion was visible; he appeared ready to turn and run. Instead, he stood his ground as if frozen.
“Sometimes,” said Buck, “Jessie sets a place at the table for you. She turned ten years old last week.”
They were walking into the woods now, toward
the rock, toward the boy with the blanched and stricken face.
Without looking at each other or exchanging a word, the two men knew they had to show Sammy these pictures; it was crucial. Father Tim wondered if there might really be a shotgun, but something in him doubted it. He felt a kind of eagerness about walking into the wood; it had to be done. He smiled at Sammy, though it was Dooley he saw in this thin boy with the scar on his cheek and the lank red hair pulled into a ponytail.
He stood aside to let Buck walk ahead of him on the narrow path, and reminded himself to keep talking. “Dooley dreams about you, Sammy. He saved his first bicycle for you….”
Sammy didn’t move; he was listening now. He was trying not to, Father Tim observed, but he was listening, waiting, letting them come in. Buck drew the pictures from his pocket. Father Tim did the same. Be with us, Lord, send Your Holy Spirit….
As they approached the rock, he looked directly into Sammy’s eyes. The joy this gave him was indescribable; he wanted to throw his arms around the boy and shout, but restrained any show of feeling. They were walking on eggs. Stay calm, stay cool. He laid the pictures on the rock, silent; Buck followed suit, fanning the snapshots like a hand of cards. They had run the bases; they were nearly home.
“That’s Poo, he’s eleven,” said Buck, keeping his voice casual. “His school picture, he made an A in geography, I never even knew where Idaho was when I was in school. This is him with his new bat, he can hit a softball all th’ way to Tennessee…. An’ this is him on his bike….”
Buck breathed deeply, as if he’d held his breath for a long time. “And this is Jessie…her last school picture…she’s ten.”
Father Tim felt the hard knot in his throat; this was a type of miracle and he was standing in the midst of it. He pointed to a picture of Dooley and Cynthia sitting on the front steps of the yellow house. “This is Dooley,” he said, “he’s nineteen.”
Father Tim watched Sammy Barlowe resist the depth and power of his feelings. Sammy was doing what Dooley had always done, hardening his face into a mask, a stone; only his eyes betrayed the depth of his longing to examine the images spread before him.