Down River Part 13

"I understand perfectly."

"I don't think that you do."

I stepped away from her and my hand found the edge of the open door. She knew that I was going to close it between us. Maybe that's why she said what she did. "There's something that you should probably hear," she said.

"What?"

Robin looked up. "Grace has never been s.e.xually active."

"But she told me-"

"The doctor confirmed it, Adam. In spite of what she said to you, it's pretty clear that she has not had a lot of boyfriends."

"Why would she tell me that?"

"I think it's like you said, Adam."

"What?"

"I think she wanted to hurt you."

The road to my father's house was baked hard, and red dust settled on my shoes as I walked it. The road bent to the north and then rounded east before cresting the small rise that eventually sloped to the river. I looked down on the house and on the cars parked before it. There were a few of them, and one I recognized. Not the car itself, but the license plate, J-19C, a J tag, the kind issued to sitting judges.

I walked down, stood next to the car. There was a Twinkie wrapper on the seat.

I knew the b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Gilbert T. Rathburn.

Judge G.

Gilley Rat.

I stepped away from the car as the front door to the house swung open. The judge backed through it like a dog was after him. One hand clutched a sheaf of papers, the other, his belt. He was a tall man and fat, with a fine, woven hairpiece and gla.s.ses that flashed small and gold on his red, round face. His suit was expensive enough to camouflage much of his size, but his tie still looked narrow. My father followed him outside.

"I think you should reconsider, Jacob," the judge said. "It makes all of the sense in the world. If you would just let me explain further-"

"Is there some problem with my diction?" The judge deflated slightly and my father, sensing this, took his eyes off of him and saw me standing in the drive. Surprise flashed across his face, and his voice dropped as he pointed a finger at me. "I'd like to see you in my study," he said, then turned back to the judge. "And don't you go talking to Dolf about this, either. What I say goes for him, too." Without waiting for a reply he turned back into the house.

The screen door slammed shut behind him, and the judge shook his head before turning to face me as I stood in the shade of a pecan tree. He looked me up and down, studied me over the top of his gla.s.ses, as his neck swelled out and over his collar. We'd known each other for years. I'd appeared in his courtroom once or twice back when I was young and he still sat on the bench of the lower court. The charges had never been very serious, mostly drinking and brawling. We'd never had a real problem, until five years ago, when he signed off on the felony arrest warrant for Gray Wilson's murder. He could not hide the contempt in his eyes. "This is an unfortunate decision," he said. "You showing your face in Rowan County again."

"Whatever happened to 'innocent until proven guilty,' you fat b.a.s.t.a.r.d?"

He stepped closer, topping my height by a good four inches. Moisture beaded on his face and in the hair along the side of his head. "The boy was killed on this farm, and your own mother identified you leaving the scene."

"Stepmother," I said, and matched the man's hard stare.

"You were seen covered in his blood."

"Seen by one person," I said.

"A reliable witness."

"Jesus," I said in disgust.

He smiled.

"What are you doing here, Rathburn?"

"No one's forgotten, you know. Even without a conviction, people remember."

I tried to ignore him.

"We take care of our own," he said as I opened the screen door and looked back. His finger pointed at me, and his watch gleamed on his doughlike wrist. "That's what life in this county is all about."

"You mean that you take care of your own campaign contributors. Isn't that right?"

A deep flush crept up the fat man's neck. Rathburn was an elitist bigot. If you were rich and white, he was usually the judge you'd want. He'd often come to my father for campaign money, and had always left empty-handed. I had no doubt that his presence here had something to do with the money at stake on the river. He'd have his finger in the pie somewhere.

I watched him search for words, then squeeze into his car when nothing came to him. He turned in the gra.s.s of my father's lawn, then blew dust up the hill. I waited until he was gone from sight, then closed the door and went inside.

I stopped in the living room and heard a floorboard squeak upstairs. Janice, I thought, then walked to my father's book-lined study. The door stood open, and I knocked on the frame out of long habit. I stepped inside. He stood at the desk, back to me, and his weight was on his hands. He'd lowered his head to his chest, and I saw the length of his neck, the sunburned creases there.

The sight churned up memories of how I'd played under the desk as a child, memories of laughter and love, as if the house had been steeped in it.

I felt my mother's hand, as if she was still alive.

I cleared my throat, saw how his fingers squeezed white against the dark wood. When he turned, I was struck by the redness of his eyes, the pallor of his face. For a long moment we stood like that, and it seemed like a thing unknown to us, a nakedness.

For that instant his features were fluid, but then they firmed, as if he'd come to some decision. He pushed himself off of the desk and crossed the worn rug. He put his hands on my shoulders and pulled me into a fierce embrace. He was wiry and strong, smelled of the farm and of so many memories. My head spun and I fought to hold the anger that sustained me. I did not return the embrace, and he stepped back, hands still on my shoulders. In his eyes I saw the same raw loss. He let go when we heard a rustle at the door and a startled voice.

"Oh. I'm sorry."

Miriam stood in the doorway. She could look neither of us in the eyes, and I knew that she was embarra.s.sed.

"What is it, Miriam?"

"I didn't know that Adam was here," she said.

"Can it wait?" my father asked.

"Mom wants you," she said.

My father blew out a breath of obvious frustration. "Where is she?"

"In the bedroom."

He looked at me. "Don't go away," he said.

After he left, Miriam lingered in the doorway. She'd come to the trial, sat quietly on the front row every day, but I'd seen her only once afterward, the briefest goodbye as I'd thrown what I could into the trunk of my car. I recalled her last words. Where will you go? she'd asked. And I'd said the only thing I could. I honestly don't know.

"h.e.l.lo, Miriam."

She raised a hand. "I'm not sure what to say to you."

"Don't say anything, then."

She showed me the top of her head. "It's been hard," she said.

"It's okay."

"Is it?"

Something unknowable moved through her. She'd been unable to look at me during the trial, and had fled the courtroom when the prosecutor mounted the enlarged autopsy photos on an easel for the jury to see. The wound was vividly displayed, the shots taken under bright lights with a high-resolution camera. Three feet tall, the first photo showed hair spiked with blood and dirt, shards of bone and brain matter gone to wax. He'd positioned it for the jury to see, but Miriam sat in the front row, just a few feet away. She'd covered her mouth and run down the center aisle. I always imagined her in the gra.s.s beyond the sidewalk, heaving out her insides. It's where I'd wanted to be. Even my father had been forced to look away. For her, though, it must have been unbearable. They'd known each other for years.

"It's okay," I repeated.

She nodded, but looked like she might cry. "How long are you here for?"

"I don't know."

She slipped further into her loose clothing and leaned against the door frame. She still had not met my eyes. "This is weird," she said.

"It doesn't have to be."

She was already shaking her head. "It just is."

"Miriam-"

"I gotta go." And then she was gone, her footsteps a whisper on the bare wood floors of the long hallway. In the silence I heard voices from above, an argument, and my stepmother's escalating voice. When my father returned I saw that his face had hardened. "What did Janice want?" I asked, knowing the answer already.

"She wanted to know if you'd be joining us for dinner tonight."

"Don't lie to me."

He looked up. "You heard?"

"She wants me out of the house."

"This has been difficult for your stepmother."

I fought to remain civil. "I would not want to inconvenience her."

"This is bulls.h.i.+t," he said. "Let's get out of here."

He turned for the back of his study and the door leading outside. His hand settled on one of the rifles propped in the corner and the morning sun flooded the room as the door opened under his hand. I followed him out. His truck was parked twenty feet away. He put the rifle on the gun rack. "For those d.a.m.n dogs," he said. "Get in."

The truck was old, and smelled of dust and straw. He drove slowly, and pointed the truck upriver. We crossed through cornfields and soy, a new planting of loblolly pines, and into the forest proper before he spoke again. "Did you get a chance to speak to Miriam?"

"She didn't really want to talk."

My father waved a hand, and I saw a quick twist of displeasure on his face. "She's twitchy."

"It was more than that," I said, and could feel his eyes on me as I stared straight ahead. He turned my way, and when he spoke, it was of the dead boy.

"He was her friend, Adam."

I lost my temper. I couldn't help it. "You don't think I know that! You don't think I remember that!"

"It'll work out," he said weakly.

"What about you?" I asked. "A pat on the back doesn't make it all right."

He opened his mouth again and then shut it. The truck crested a hill with a view of the house. He pulled to a stop and switched off the ignition. It was quiet.

"I did what I felt I had to do, son. No one could move forward with you still in the house. Janice was distraught. Jamie and Miriam were affected. I was, too. There were just too many questions."

"I can't give you answers I don't have. Somebody killed him. I told you that it wasn't me. That should have been enough."

"It wasn't. Your acquittal didn't erase what Janice saw."

I turned in my seat and studied the man. "Are we going to start this again?"

"No, son. We're not." I looked at the floor, at the straw and the mud and the tattered, dead leaves. "I miss your mother," he finally said.

"Me, too."

We sat through a long silence as the sun streamed in. "I understand, you know."

"What?"

He paused. "How much you lost when she died."

"Don't," I said.

More wordless time, most of it thick with memories of her and of how good we three had been.

"There must have been some part of you that thought I was capable of murder," I said.

He scrubbed both hands over his face, ground at his eyes with the callused palms. There was dirt under his fingernails, and truth all over him when he spoke. "You were never the same after she died. Before that, you were such a sweet boy. G.o.d, you were perfect, a pure joy. After she died, though, you changed, grew dark and distrusting. Resentful. Distant. I thought you'd come out of it with time. But you started fighting in school. Arguing with teachers. You were angry all the time. It was like a G.o.dd.a.m.n cancer. Like it just ate all that sweetness away."

He palmed his face again; hard skin rasped over the creases. "I thought you'd work it out. I guess there was always the chance you'd pop. I just didn't think it would happen like that. You'd put a car into a tree, get seriously hurt in a fight maybe. When that boy was killed, it never occurred to me that you might be responsible. But Janice swore that she saw you." He sighed. "I thought that maybe you'd finally come undone."

"Because of my mother?" I asked, and he did not see the ice in me. He nodded, and something violent thumped in my chest. I'd been falsely accused, tried for murder, and driven out. He was blaming this on my mother's death. "If I was so messed up, why didn't you get me some help?"

"You mean like a shrink?"

"Yeah. Anything."