A Land More Kind Than Home Read online

  “You want this door open or closed?” he asked.

  “Closed,” I said.

  I LAID IN BED IN THE DARK AND LISTENED TO THE SOUNDS OF THE crickets outside and the little noises of the house settling itself to sleep. That’s what Mama used to say at night when I heard something that scared me.

  “That’s just the sound of the house getting settled,” she’d say. “It’s getting comfortable so it can go to sleep too.”

  I saw that the kitchen light still burned under my door, and I listened as my grandpa opened and closed the cabinets and the drawers like he was still looking for something. I heard him open the door and go into Mama and Daddy’s room too. I turned away from the door and away from Stump’s side of the bed and looked out the window.

  There was just a little bit of breeze out there, and I could feel it coming in on my face and I could see it moving the branches on the tree outside the window and I could hear it playing on the wind chimes. If it had been daylight, I could’ve looked out at the field and seen the tops of the burley swaying back and forth. There were still some lightning bugs out there, and I watched their lights wink off and on while they floated through the yard. My eyes got heavy, and before I knew it I was drifting off to sleep again, and when I looked up I was sitting at the dining room table back at Miss Lyle’s house. I didn’t think there was anybody else there but me.

  I heard the screen door slam shut, and I wondered if it was somebody coming inside the house or if it was just somebody stepping out onto the porch. I sat at the table just as still as I could, and I listened hard and soon I heard somebody’s footsteps crunching in the gravel. It sounded like they were walking away from the house and down the driveway toward the road, and I wondered where they were going. I wondered if it was Daddy leaving Miss Lyle’s to go to the hospital or if it was the sheriff leaving Stump on the bed with Mama, or maybe it was Miss Lyle stepping outside to wipe the blood off those men’s faces. I couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore, but I knew they hadn’t stopped but had just kept on walking until they were so far down the road that I couldn’t hear them anymore. I wanted to push back my chair and open my eyes, but I was so sleepy that I couldn’t hardly get myself to wake up.

  I pushed the sheet off me and rolled over toward the window to try and see where the footsteps in my dream had gone. It had gotten foggy outside, but there was a little bit of soft light coming from the moon and shining down on the field. The way it looked made me think I might still be dreaming. There wasn’t nobody out there that I could see. It was just my daddy’s field and the moon and the noise of those crickets chirping and the sound of the breeze rustling the leaves and blowing on the wind chimes hanging on the tree outside the window. My daddy’s tobacco swayed back and forth in the wind, and I stared out at the field until my eyes got heavy and I felt them going back to sleep. But just before I got them closed again I saw a light burning in the field, and I saw something moving way out in the burley. I tried to open my eyes all the way to get a better look, but I was so sleepy that I could just barely see the light from the lamp at my grandpa’s feet where he stood out in the middle of the field under the moon. He had a burley knife in his hand, and he was sticking my daddy’s tobacco.

  Clem Barefield

  ELEVEN

  THE BEST I CAN REMEMBER, I’D HAD JIMMY HALL IN handcuffs three times before my son died: twice for slapping his wife around and once for being drunk and disorderly at the high school football game. I couldn’t ever get his wife to press charges on him after I’d come all the way up there to Gunter Mountain to get him off her, and at the football game he didn’t do anything but bust out his own teeth falling down the steps up in the bleachers. He was a real piece of shit, and even though he’d come back to Madison County to find his oldest grandson dead, I had a hard time feeling the least bit sorry for him. But I felt different about Ben.

  Seeing them together, still father and son, an old man and a young man after all these years, made it hard to believe that I’d once tried to protect Ben Hall from his daddy. It was even harder to believe after he’d made some kind of name for himself on the football field up in Cullowhee, harder still when I thought about my son, Jeff, lying dead on the side of the road back in Madison. I never figured I’d have to protect my own boy from Jimmy Hall too, and I guess there’s no way I could’ve known. But still, when I get to thinking about it, there are times when I want to be pissed at Jeff and pissed at those boys for not having the balls or the sense enough to complain about him showing up to work like that, but then I catch myself. Slow down, I think. You ain’t got nobody to be pissed at but yourself for letting Jeff go with him. You knew better than all the rest of them. And that’s true, and I know it. I knew better than that. But for some reason I didn’t stop Jeff. I trusted Jimmy Hall with my son when I wouldn’t even trust him with his own. And then I get to thinking, This one’s on you, Clem. You ain’t got nobody else to blame but yourself.

  I’ve heard it said before that those who don’t learn from the past are bound to repeat it, and I just don’t know what I think about that. I figure I don’t have too much use for it. The past will just weigh on you if you spend too much time remembering it. It’s like putting on a pair of heavy waders and stepping out to midriver where the fishing’s best. Those waders will fill with water if you get too deep, and if you’re stupid enough to stay out there a while there ain’t a damn thing you can do to keep from being pulled under. I think about that sometimes when I recall the sound of my secretary’s voice coming across the CB. In my mind it feels like I’m hearing her from deep under the water, something about an explosion on the lines outside of town. I’m right there, listening just below the surface of that water, wondering why this is something I have to hear.

  “Is it Jeff?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “They don’t know who it is. They can’t tell.”

  “Jesus, Eileen, is it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said again.

  “I’m headed that way.”

  “Bill’s going to meet you there,” she said.

  Eileen didn’t even have to say it, because something told me that it was Jeff. I threw on my siren and drove as fast as I could through the snow down Highway 25/70, and on the whole drive over I couldn’t keep from thinking about how unfair it would be if it was Jeff. But since then I’ve learned to just go ahead and take fairness out of the equation. If you do, things stand the chance of making a whole lot more sense.

  SOMEBODY HAD MOVED HIM OUT OF THE ROAD BY THE TIME I GOT there and left his body at the edge of the woods. Bill Owens was standing by him when I pulled up. When he heard my car he turned around, and I sat there behind the wheel and watched his mouth twitch like he was trying to think of the words that could tell me. But I reckon he couldn’t find them, so he just took off his gloves and lowered his eyes and pointed out there toward the tree line.

  I sat there for just a second longer and watched the snow come down and light on the branches. It was quiet, seems like snow always makes it quiet and it seems like I’m always surprised by that. I knew that when I opened the car door things would change forever, and I reckon it took some building up to it for me to go ahead and do it. I stepped out and walked toward Owens, but I stopped when my eyes hit on what lay under that rhododendron thicket. They’d draped a blue sheet over him, and it was flecked white where the snow had managed to drift down through the branches. The sheet didn’t quite cover all of him, and I could see his work boots, and when I looked closer I could see his toes where the rubber soles had burned away. They steamed against that cold air. Me and Owens stood there together in silence and listened to the sound of steam hissing under that sheet.

  “You sure?” I asked

  “I am,” Owens said. He raised his hand like he was going to touch me on the shoulder, and I can’t rightly remember if he did or not. But I remember the sound of his hand dropping to his side when he couldn’t think of what to say next. There wasn’t anything for
him to say, and I knew it. Not a thing he could’ve done but just stand there with me. He looked down the road, and when he did I turned and saw where a group of boys had huddled up around the ambulance. We were too far away to hear what they were saying, and it seemed like the snow swallowed their voices. It was coming down in big, heavy flakes and making everything white. It couldn’t have been no more than fifteen degrees.

  “I should ask those boys some questions,” he said. He lowered his head and walked down the road. When he was gone my stomach lurched, and I figured I was about to empty my gut right there on the roadside. I squatted down and picked up a couple handfuls of snow and rubbed it all over my face to keep from getting sick. I could hear footsteps crunching in the snow behind me.

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff,” somebody’s voice said. I looked up and saw that a paramedic had left the group at the ambulance and was standing right over my shoulder. He looked like he might’ve been twenty-five, just a few years older than Jeff.

  “You haven’t called my wife.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Don’t. Make sure nobody does.”

  I picked up a few more handfuls of snow and rubbed it down the back of my neck and covered my eyes with my hands. My fingers burned from the cold. I held that snow to my cheeks until my face went numb.

  When I stood up, my stomach jumped again and I turned my back to the tree line and spit in the snow. I looked down the road and saw three boys in coveralls and heavy coats smoking cigarettes and talking to Owens. He had a notepad in his hand and looked like he was asking them questions. I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my coat and nodded toward them.

  “Who are they?”

  “Part of the crew,” said the paramedic. “They’re pretty shook up. One of them must have pulled him out of the road when he came off the line. He was lying under them bushes when we got here.”

  I looked down and saw that the tracks that had been left from dragging Jeff out of the road were beginning to fill with snow, and my eyes followed them to where his body lay covered under that sheet. The line to the blown transformer ran through the trees overhead, and the wooden pole around the box was scorched black from the explosion. I looked at Jeff’s body under the arbor, and then I turned and walked down the highway toward the ambulance. The boys saw me coming and put out their cigarettes in the snow with the toes of their boots. I didn’t recognize any of them.

  “All three of y’all work on this crew?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir,” said a short blond-headed boy. His hair was cropped close and sharp and made his ears look bigger than they probably were.

  “Where’s your foreman?” I asked.

  He didn’t have nothing to say to that question, and I faced him and squared my shoulders. His eyes were scared, and he looked like he was about to cry.

  “Where is he?”

  He looked to the two boys standing behind him for help, but they both lowered their eyes and I could tell they didn’t want to say nothing either.

  “He left before the ambulance got here,” the first boy said. “He took the service truck and told us to wait.”

  “Was he drinking?”

  He wanted one of the other boys to answer that question, but they wouldn’t even look at him. One shook a cigarette from a pack and the other kept his eyes fixed on the road.

  “Goddamn it, was he drinking!”

  “Sheriff,” Owens said. He placed his hand on my arm like he was thinking about pulling me away from the boy, but I shrugged him off and stepped closer.

  “Answer me!”

  “I don’t know,” the boy stammered. “I don’t know for sure.”

  I looked down the road where that blue sheet was just barely visible through the trees.

  “Which one of you moved him out of the road?” I asked.

  “Mr. Hall did,” the boy smoking the cigarette finally said.

  I stared at him until he looked away, and then I pulled Owens aside and asked him what they’d had to say. He looked down at his notepad, but I could see that he hadn’t written a thing.

  “Jeff was on the line working the transformer,” he said. “They figure something must have made contact, maybe something on his tool belt. It wouldn’t let him go. They had to wait for him to come off.”

  “Jesus, Bill.” I turned away from him and put my hands over my eyes and then rubbed them across my face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You should go on home to Sheila. I can take care of this.”

  “You can’t take care of this,” I told him. “Nobody can take care of this.” I turned to walk back to my cruiser, but I stopped and faced him again. “I want you to find Jimmy Hall. I want you to radio me when you do.”

  When I got back to the cruiser, I sat in the driver’s seat and stared down the road and watched Owens talk to the boys. One of the paramedics had pulled the ambulance around and was backing it toward the woods.

  I picked up the CB and radioed the office in Marshall and Eileen answered immediately.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “I haven’t thought about it yet. I need you to call the house and tell Sheila that I’ll be home late.”

  “You need to be at home right now,” she said.

  “I can’t,” I said. “Jimmy Hall’s done run off. I need you to telephone Sheila.”

  I put the CB on the cradle, but then I thought better of it. I picked it up and radioed Marshall again. The static of Eileen’s voice came back over the line.

  “Eileen,” I said. “She doesn’t know about any of this. Tell her I’m running late. That’s all.”

  It was getting dark, and the snow took on an eerie blue color against the clouds. I sat and watched the paramedics unfold the gurney out of the ambulance and roll it toward the shadows at the edge of the woods. I didn’t want to be there when they carried Jeff away, so I cursed myself out loud and turned the car around in the road and drove north toward Gunter Mountain.

  NIGHT WAS FULL ON WHEN I KNOCKED THE CAR INTO FIRST GEAR and headed up the mountain. There was already a set of tire tracks in the snow, and I eased the cruiser into them. The gravel heading up the mountain was warmer than the asphalt had been on the road, and I could feel my tires searching the snow for pieces of rock to catch the tread. There weren’t any streetlights up there, and the trees rose up out of the darkness on both sides. Even though I couldn’t see it, I knew the land fell away sharply on my right and rolled down toward the bottom of the cove. Had it been daylight, I could’ve searched through the trees and seen farms and houses tossed like shot across the valley floor.

  It had been a couple years since I’d been out to Jimmy Hall’s place, but I’d been out there enough to know exactly where it was. Ben was up at Western then, and Hall’s wife had left him for good about three years before. Things had been quiet until now.

  I turned my headlights off in front of Hall’s place and pulled into the gravel drive. A light burned in the window, and a wisp of smoke escaped the chimney. I parked the cruiser by the house and opened the door slowly and sat there half out of the car and wondered what I was going to do.

  The porch steps squeaked under my boots, and I stopped and listened like somebody else had made the sound. I undid the holster snap over my pistol and knocked on the door. There wasn’t any noise from the inside, and I stood there and listened close to make sure. I imagined Hall behind the door with a hand cannon, drunk as hell and holding his breath, hoping I’d leave. I knocked again and didn’t hear a sound. I gave the door a try, but it was locked.

  I turned the car around in the gravel and headed back out to the road. My high beams fell into the trees across the way, and I could tell by the sagging limbs that the snow was getting heavy. I looked to my right and saw the tire tracks I’d followed coming up the mountain, but just as I was about to turn out of the driveway, I noticed another pair of tracks on the left that I hadn’t seen on the way up.

  Hot air gushed from the vents in the dash, and I
sat there with it blowing in my face and I stared out at those tracks and wondered who could be at the top of that road. I didn’t know what the hell I’d do if it was Jimmy Hall up there, but I knew either way I didn’t have a choice but to go and take a look.

  MY FRONT FENDERS MADE AWFUL SCRAPING SOUNDS AS THEY PLOWED through the high snow. The ruts were deep, and my car had trouble on the inclines where the snow was packed hard and frozen solid. I held tight to the steering wheel and stared out at the headlights. Every now and then I looked out the windows and searched for tire tracks that led to side roads and switchbacks, but the light in front of my car made the darkness on either side seem that much darker.

  I hit deep snow just before the crest of a hill and my car struggled, and I knew if I stopped I’d be stuck for sure, so I eased onto the gas. I didn’t know the road at the top bore to the left, and I came over too fast and fought with the turn. My back end came around and threw me out of the tracks, and I slid sideways into a ditch. The car lurched like it was about to tip. I held my breath and waited for the car to flip and the roof to cave in and trap me inside.

  But when the car came to a stop, I realized it wasn’t going to flip, and I could tell that my right-side tires were a couple feet below the road, and, although I knew it wouldn’t help, I pressed hard on the gas and listened as they dug themselves deeper into the gully. The left-side tires kicked up snow and mud onto my windows.

  I killed the engine and sat there and stared at the CB. I picked it up and thought about radioing the station, but then I looked out at the tracks. They continued out of the reach of my headlights and climbed farther up the mountain. I shut off my lights and stepped out of the car and onto the road. My eyes adjusted to the dark, and I could see that the snow was deep up here and still coming down. If it’d been fifteen degrees outside of Marshall, then I knew it couldn’t be no more than ten up on Gunter. But I figured that if the tracks had been more than a few hours old, they’d have been covered by now. I pulled my coat tight around me and set out walking up the mountain.