By Jason Sanford Apr 25, 2008, 14:56 GMT
Map 1: World of the Patriarchs
(Including the possible locations of Sodom and Gomorrah; the route of the journeys of Abraham; and Wetumpka, Alabama, in 1962)
A dead man's Bible. My Bible. Jedediah holds it to his nose as if the acid paper crisp and saddle-stitched decay still keeps me alive.
Jed does this every Sunday before getting dressed for church. He rubs his hands across the Bible's crack-worn leather and lets his fingers pick at the flaking yellow tape that patches the bayonet slice across the front cover. My son barely remembers me, but he loves my Bible.
Last Christmas, my damn brother-in-law Hank gave Jed a new Bible with slick leather, gold-trimmed pages, and the words of Christ in red. It sits unread on Jed's little bookshelf. You see, Jed's got sense. He knows a dead father's Bible--a dead-father-killed-in-Korea-war-hero Bible--is worth more than all the new in the world.
That's gotta drive Hank crazy.
"Jed. Come on," Eliz yells softly from the kitchen.
Jed walks stiffly down the hall. He's outgrown all his good clothes and now his belt cinches tight on the last hole and he hunches over slightly to avoid popping out the back seam of his blue blazer. All that fits are his socks and penny loafers. In the tongue notch of the right shoe he keeps an Indian head penny that Eliz says I gave to Jed when he was a baby.
I didn't, but it's a good-hearted lie and I appreciate her for saying it.
In the kitchen, Eliz inspects Jed. My wife is wearing a modest white dress with embroidered flowers that rise and fall across her lovely breasts. She spins Jed like a top then stops him face forward. "Almost time for new pants, I see. Definitely need a bigger blazer."
"Yes mahm."
Before they leave, Eliz puts a lemon cake with vanilla frosting in a small basket and covers it with a towel. Eliz rarely puts this much effort into Jed's clothes or cakes, but today a traveling preacher is visiting the church. His name is Brother Daniel Satorius. Dan. He grew up with me. Was best friends with me. But Eliz ain't making all this effort because of what Dan once meant to my dead self.
"You be sure and tell Brother Satorius you want to be a preacher when you grow up," she says.
Stay away from Dan, I yell without words. Anything he says about me is a lie.
But Jed can't hear me as they get into that old Ford car of mine. Back at Chosin Reservoir, Dan and I often wished we'd had that Ford to bust out of that damn Chinese trap. Coulda outrun anything with that car, even with the stiff-up Korean cold which killed machines and rifles and men.
Eliz still sends letters every few months seeking new information on me. Those dumb ass Pentagon paper-pushers always send the same form letter back: "Billy Stanton is still considered killed in action, location of body unknown."
Lord, give my wife the truth. Give it to her good.
Just don't let Dan be the one to do it.
As Eliz drives away, Jed rubs two quick wipes of his hands across the leather of my Bible. He does this because Eliz once told him that Bibles cracked and went brittle if you didn't hold them occasionally and mix hand oils into their leather. He then opens the Bible to the black and white maps in the back and traces travel routes to the places he wants to one day see.
Don't go there, I mutter as his fingers dance across Asia into Korea. I stir up a slight breeze and the Bible pages flutter until he's looking at a map of ancient Egypt.
Map 2: Exodus from Egypt and the Conquest of Canaan
(Including the probable route of the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness)
On the way to church, Eliz picks up her brother, Hank.
Hank is twenty years older than Eliz--so much older that I once asked if their parents had been surprised at Eliz's birth. Hank said their mom had just turned fifty, so of course they were surprised. He then added that this gave his little sister a purpose in life, that it fated her toward greater things than getting pregnant at seventeen and married to me.
It's comments like that which made Hank unwelcome in my house when I was alive.
Hank eases carefully into the car so he doesn't crease or wrinkle his suit, which is tight on his body just like Jed's clothes. Hank's a big man from his work as a lineman for the telephone company. Eliz swears she once saw Hank lift an entire telephone pole by himself, and I've never doubted she was telling the truth.
Jed's favorite bedtime story is how his Uncle Hank once slammed a grown man through a solid oak door. This happened when Jed was a baby, but he's heard it so many times he half believes its his own memory.
The story starts on one of those rare Sunday afternoons where Hank wanted everyone to go to a restaurant for after-church dinner, instead of just eating at someone's house. Anyway, this damn drunk man at the table behind them started cursing at the top of his lungs--cursing the food, cursing the waitress, cursing the whole room. Hank warned the man to hush up. He said that there were women and children present and besides, that was no way to talk on the Lord's day.
In response, the man cursed Hank.
Dumb. Dumb ass. Hank stood up, turned around, and punched that man through the bolted-shut side door of the restaurant. The police later said Hank had done the right thing. They also had the decency to let an ambulance take the unconscious man to the hospital before they arrested him.
As Hank sits down in the passenger's seat, the car rocks heavy to the right. Jed keeps the rocking going by slamming his weight from side to side in the backseat.
"Stop that," Eliz says. Hank laughs and helps Jed keep rocking the car until Eliz glares at them both.
"I see you got that lemon cake," Hank says. "Bet that'll get Brother Satorius to give up his wandering ways."
Eliz tells Hank to hush up or he won't even get to smell the cake.
Who says a widow can't have spice?
I feel Jed--he's still thinking about the story of Hank punching a man through a door. What Jed don't know is that the man was me. It was me cursing because Hank wouldn't let me sit beside my own wife in a restaurant, just on account of me being drunk on a Sunday.
When I came before the judge for that, he took into account my past troubles and said I could do six months in jail or two years in the Marines. Dan had joined the Marines a few weeks earlier, so I told the judge that's what I'd do.
Damn bad choice--that's what hindsight gets me to knowing.
Map 3: Wetumpka from 1932 to 1952
(Including the digging of the mine and God's introduction of fire ants)
It sounds so good, the way me and Dan and Eliz grew up. We all lived on this little country road outside Wetumpka, with Dan's house just a hundred feet from mine and Eliz's just another quarter mile away. The three of us played together near our homes almost every day, and I probably spent more nights sleeping at Dan's house than in my own home.
Truth told, this suited my family. My dad cut lumber and spent months at a time on different logging jobs across Alabama. My mom liked this and when my dad wouldn't be coming back for a while she'd also disappear for a few days or weeks. During these times, I lived with Dan's family, who took me in without a word about my parents or what they might be doing.
Dan, Eliz, and I had so many places to play we had trouble deciding where to go. Sometimes we'd play hide and seek in the cotton fields behind our houses. Other times we'd go to this V-cut ravine where the waters off the nearby fields sliced a hundred fifty feet down into the land. We'd climb the eroding slopes and pretend the sun-baked clays were distant mountains in far-off lands.
Once, the three of us dug a mineshaft high up on one of the older parts of the ravine. We dug twelve feet into that clay before Hank came looking for Eliz and told us to stop. He called us fools. Said we were gonna get caved-in on and killed.
After he took Eliz back home, Dan and I went back to digging and we soon dug right into the guts of a fire ant bed. Fire ants were still new to Alabama and we'd never even seen one until those ants poured over us and we ran screaming and crying to Dan's house. His father looked at us and the dozens of welts on our arms and legs and said, "Dang. So that's what a fire ant does."
Years later, in Korea, Dan read a Stars and Stripes newspaper article that said fire ants came from South America and had been introduced to the United States by way of Alabama. We both felt a strange honor at reading about our home state in a newspaper in Korea.
The mine we dug is still there. Once, when Jed was visiting Hank's house, Jed went exploring and found it. Before he could poke his head in, I floated in and suddenly knew that Hank had been right--that hole could collapse and kill a kid.
Don't go in, Yella Hawk, I yelled, using the nickname I had given Jed as a baby. Suddenly he stopped and listened. I felt his only memory of me flash through his head--a memory of the metal toy car I bought him before I left for Korea. The car had been painted yellow, had racing stickers on the hood, and we used to push it back and forth across the wood-plank floor of our house.
Instead of entering the mine, Jed ran to Eliz and asked about if his father'd ever given him a nickname. Eliz looked horrified at not being able to remember it. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's been so long." For the next week, Jed kept after her to remember, but she never could.
Yella Hawk, I said. Yella Hawk.
Map 4: Prophets in Israel and Judah
(Including where Jonah was swallowed by the fish and Elijah goes up to heaven in a whirlwind)
The Wetumpka Church of Christ is a three room affair, with two small classrooms and a main hall where forty people can gather on the whitewashed oak pews. Hank, Eliz and I grew up in this church and half the people here are related by strange ancestral routes, which means the marrying options for those not related are by necessity limited.
'Least, that's how Hank once explained away me and Eliz getting married. When I said I thought it was because I got her pregnant at seventeen, Hank backhanded me harder than most men could hit with a two-by-four.
Anyway, nothing has changed in the church since I was a kid. For example, there's been an argument going on for forty years over whether or not to buy cushions for the pews, with some of the church's older sisters wanting them while another group of equally old sisters says cushions would make people get too comfortable in the presence of the Lord. All this means that when Jed sits down, his butt slides over the same splinters that mine once endured.
The service has a while to start, so Jed folds an airplane out of scrap paper he keeps in my Bible. He's just finishing the wings when his cousin, Elijah, sits down. Elijah is fourteen--three years older than Jed--but Jed feels that Elijah's really the younger one.
"Did you see the preacher's car?" Elijah asks. Jed shakes his head.
"It had to be towed here. Brother Satorius lost control in some mud, hit a tree, and bent his axle."
"Let's go look," Jed says. They bolt to the door, but Eliz tells them both to go sit down. "No playing in your suit," she warns.
So Jed and Elijah build paper airplanes. Of course, the temptation of paper airplanes is that they must fly, so Jedediah and Elijah spread apart on the pew and toss the plane back and forth, where it climbs and dives just like a Corsair bombing the shit out of anything moving.
"Pa told me Brother Satorius fought in Korea with your dad," Elijah says, catching the airplane by smacking his hands together in a silent clap. He unwrinkles the wings and flings it back to Jed.
"Never heard that," Jed says.
That's because he ain't listening to me, and Eliz tells him nothing. Jed throws the plane back to Elijah just as Hank stands to start the church service, causing the congregation to go quiet.
Now me, I ain't much of a haint. I can't wail at midnight or rise glowing from a grave. Still, I can flutter a little air. I jump Jed's airplane in mid flight so it flies up high until it's right before Hank's eyes. 'Course, I'd meant to put it into one of Hank's eyes, but it still gets him to coughing in anger as he grips the podium. Elijah and Jed grab their Bibles and pretend to read.
Hank leads the congregation in a song, a prayer, then announcements. "There will be a fish fry next Sunday," he says. "See Sister Sanford to sign up on what to bring."
After three more songs and another prayer, it's time for the sermon. Hank usually gives the sermon--going on and on for what seem like hours--but today he simply introduces Brother Dan Satorius and sits down.
Dan walks to the podium. Hey Stickman, I yell. Back in high school, Stickman was his nickname. Even when he and I played on the football team, Dan didn't have muscles or coordination and was stuck at third-string defensive tackle until, damn if that ain't the way with him, the two guys in front of him got hurt. Dan then started six games and actually made some plays. The coach would say, "Stickman, get the hell in there and wrap someone up." That was all Dan could do--wrap his long arms around the runner, hold on, and hope he eventually made the guy trip or something.
So Dan is still Stickman as he spreads his stick arms above the podium and says, "Amazing that God can grow 'em as big as Brother Hank. Praise the Lord, but Brother Hank's already halfway to heaven by size alone." The congregation laughs.
"The prophet Elijah," Dan continues, "found everything he was within his name. The literal meaning of his name was, 'The Lord is my God.' How many of us here today could live up to a name like that? If our name was something like 'Everything I do represents the Lord,' would you be able to do everything for the Lord?"
On the pew next to Jed, Elijah laughs. "So that's what I mean," he says. "Means I'm practically saved already."
"Means you're gonna get beat if you don't hush," Jed says.
Jed watches Dan. I know my little Yella Hawk--all his life in church and he can't remember even one sermon. Oh, I can feel him remembering lines from sermons here and there. But in truth, sermons blur into a messy gunk for Jed. He knows the words in my Bible backward and forward; knows everything he is supposed to learn in Bible school. But until Dan speaks, my son's never known the inspiration that one man's words can make.
Dan's words fly through my son: people worshipping the idol Baal goes into God bringing Elijah goes into God bringing a drought goes into Elijah showing how powerless Baal is against the Lord Almighty.
"How could anyone consider that idol a god if it couldn't even bring the rains?" Dan asks. "No rain meant no little god."
Jed understands. He rubs my old Bible and truly understands.
"You think Brother Satorius really was there with my dad?" he asks Elijah.
Hell yeah, I say. Hell fire yeah he was there. And back then it wasn't Brother Satorius, it was just plain old Dan, who found me wounded on that frozen ground and couldn't do a thing because I was bayoneted good and going on dead.
I don't deserve Dan.
Map 5: Jesus' Ministry
(Including the transfiguration and all of His miracles)
Dan is talking and greeting the congregation as they file out the front doors. Each man or woman waits in line until they reach Dan, then they say stuff like "Lovely sermon, Brother Satorius," or shake his hands and mutter how good he is to be spreading the word of God across this heathen land. When Hank gets to Dan, Hank leans in and whispers that he's gonna steal Dan's sermon, next time he finds a church that ain't heard it. They grin as if sharing a secret preacher joke.
As Jed approaches the preacher, I try to get Dan's attention but he's only looking at my son. I tell Jed not to listen to Dan, but that only gets Jed to cock his eyes briefly at the door, as if hearing a ways-away echo.
"And what's your name, young man?" Dan asks.
"Jedediah Stanton," he says.
Don't tell him, I scream at Dan, who also cocks his head for a moment before shaking me off.
"Mighty fine to meet you," Dan says. "Heard a lot of good things about you." Behind Dan, Hank nods to Jed.
Jed stumbles for what to say. "I really learned a lot today, Brother Satorius." He searches for more words. "It's the first time I've listened to a sermon."
Hanks eyes cloud over, but a laugh from Dan stops him from saying anything.
"I know what you mean," Dan says. "Sometime we preachers just drone on and on and you can't remember anything we said, just that you liked what you heard and you'll come back next Sunday. I'm honored you got something specific from my talk."
Hank frowns at the droning and droning part--hot damn Hank, but you know Dan's speaking the truth--then he finally laughs and clasps Jed on the shoulder.
"Maybe we should get you up there one day," Hank says. "Keep me from droning so much." Jed nods. He starts to run out the door to join Elijah but Dan grabs him. "You need to talk with me after dinner today," Dan whispers in Jed's ear.
After Jed nods, I whisper into Dan's ears: Leave my son alone. He don't need to know any more than he already knows.
The problem with being dead is people don't listen to you.
Sorta like when Hank gives a sermon.
Map 6: Jerusalem in Jesus' time
(Including the site of the Last Supper and the conning of the rich man)
Sunday dinner is at Hank's house, so everyone piles into two cars and drives over. Dan sits in the front with Eliz and talks as she steers.
"Not been too long, is it, Eliz?" he asks. Jed sits in the back seat, waving at Elijah and Hank and everyone in the car behind them.
"Not been too long," Eliz says. Jed mishears and says he agrees, that Dan's sermon wasn't too long.
"I really liked it, mom. Did you know that Elijah's name means he's the Lord my God."
Eliz and Dan laugh. "Means 'The Lord is my God,'" Eliz says. "It's a good thing your cousin was born before you, or you'd have been named Elijah." She looks at Dan quick like before turning back to the road. "Remember Papa Elijah, Dan?"
"Couldn't forget," Dan says. "He'd come by Billy's house every few days at first light with fresh milk and eggs. If he caught any of us kids asleep he'd yank us out of bed, sling us by the legs to the water trough and dunk us awake. First time he came by when I was sleeping over, I didn't know why Billy bolted that bed so quick until Papa Elijah had me upside down by the ankle, going head first up and down in the water. And it was mid winter, mind you, frost everywhere."
Dan turns to Jed. "You know who Billy is?" he asks. Jed shakes his head. "That's your father. We grew up together. Lived just a hundred feet apart."
"They gonna fix your car, Brother Satorius?" Jed asks.
"You bet, but it's going to take a day or two." Dan smiles. "Guess God is trying to tell me something."
Eliz gently touches Dan's hand and shakes her head so Jed can't see. Dan makes an offhand comment about the car riding well, then keeps quiet for the rest of the ride.
The car. I shouldn't be jealous of Dan because he's helped me in so many ways. Like the car. Without Dan, Eliz wouldn't be driving this old Ford. I mean, how many 20-year-old guys give their wife a new car when they're about to go to war?
I got the car a week after I told the judge I'd join the Marines. I was hanging around Manness's Gas Station, where Dan worked as a mechanic and tow truck driver, when Dan pulled up in the tow truck with a muddy car racked up behind him.
"Belongs to one of Montclair's sons," Dan said. "The idiot parked it on the boat ramp but forget to set the brake."
Dan and I inspected the car. It was a '52 Ford Victoria. I ran my finger across the hood and traced a purple stripe in the mud. There was a big wheel cover over the back bumper, fins coming out to a point over the lights, and what looked like chrome all over the place.
"There's a beautiful car under that mud," I said.
Dan agreed. But he was more excited about something in his pockets. He slapped around in his overalls until he finally found what he was looking for: the keys to the car.
"Mr. Montclair gave them to me as I was pulling the car out of the river," he said.
I must have looked dumb, because he slugged me in the arm. "The car was turned off when it went in the water," he said. "Ain't nothing wrong with it but a lot of mud and water."
That got me excited. If the car hadn't been running then water probably hadn't gotten sucked into the engine. Probably only needed a little work to get it going again.
"Is Manness here?" Dan asked.
"No."
Dan dragged me to the garage and told me to put on an old work shirt. Soon Mr. Montclair and one of his sons drove up in a large Cadillac. Montclair and his family had only recently moved to the area from Birmingham. He was building a factory north of Wetumpka near Martin Dam.
"How much is it going to cost?" Mr. Montclair asked, walking carefully around the mud-drip puddle caused by the car.
"Can't say," Dan said. "The engine will have to be replaced, along with the seats and dash and just about everything but the metal."
Montclair shook his head. "Son," he said, looking at Dan. "I wasn't born yesterday. Doing all that costs more than just buying a new car."
"Yes sir. But water in the engine, nothing I can do to fix that but put a new one in."
Dan and I stood quietly while Montclair walked around the car some more. "How much to just tow it off somewhere?"
"Twenty dollars," Dan said. Montclair gave him the money and got back in his Cadillac. Dan and I towed the car to his house, where we washed it down good, took the seats out and dried them in the sun, then spent five hours getting the water out and changing the oil, air filter, and spark plugs before we drained the gas tank and filled it back up.
When we put the key in, the car started with a roar.
"You ought to give it to Eliz," Dan said. "Thrill her with something other than you going away."
I did. Eliz never loved me as much as those two weeks between the giving of the car and me leaving for basic training. She'd sit in the passenger seat and hold Jed in her lap while we raced the hills and backroads with the road dust swirling all around us.
Hell, Jed probably thought he was flying just like a Yella Hawk.
Good memories. I got Dan to thank for them.
Map 7: The Apostles' Early Travels
(Including the traditional location where Philip meets the eunuch)
Jed sits between Dan and Eliz on the back porch of Hank's house. Normally, Eliz would be inside with Maulky, Hank's wife, making Sunday dinner. Instead, she's out here and Hank's in there actually trying to cook something.
Every few minutes, Elijah comes walking around the porch to see if Jed wants to go play. Go play, I say. But Jed stays and talks with Dan.
"How do you get to be a preacher?" Jed asks. "I mean, how'd you write that sermon?"
Dan laughs. "Good sermons are like caster oil," he says. "They move through you when you need it." Jed laughs and Eliz makes a face. "Just kidding, Eliz," Dan adds.
Jed waits for Dan to tell him more about where sermons come from, but Dan doesn't. Truth is, Dan's never been good at explaining stuff. Either something just comes to him or it doesn't. When the Marines loaded us on our troop ship, someone told Dan that it was summer right then in Korea. For the next two weeks Dan kept telling everyone who'd listen that the seasons in Asia were the reverse of America. "It's winter in America, means it's summer in Korea," he'd say, then add that him and his buddy Billy were used to the heat. We were built for the heat.
When the troopship docked in Korea and the coldest wind we'd ever felt ripped our clothes apart, everyone kept asking Dan if he was built for this heat. Dan didn't say a word. He just eased up against me as we formed a human windbreak.
The wind is gusting dust around the back porch where Dan and Eliz and Jed sit, so I grab me a handful and throw it toward them. It misses them and whips into a little dust devil than dances away from the house.
"That means the devil's angry because you ain't sinning enough," Eliz says. Dan laughs. He says he'll do something bad to fix that.
I doubt its possible for Dan to do something that bad.
Map 8: Paul's Missionary Journeys
(Including the shipwreck on Malta and the final journey to Rome)
After dinner, Dan takes Jed for a walk out back of Hank's house.
They walk a few hundred yards and stop on the edge of that ravine we used to play in. While Dan and Jed look over the ravine, I float out and see that the mine we dug is still there. A little worn and partly caved in, but still there. I go into the hole and feel good and happy, as if I'm home.
When I come out, I wait for Dan to say something about him and me playing in this ravine as kids. Instead, he tells Jed that this place is cursed.
"God's got no need for places that can't grow anything," he says. "Take away all the topsoil--that's how you send the land to hell. People too. Also applies to people."
Jed nods, but he and I don't get it. What the hell does that mean? Dan talks on about how all the water rushing off this hill is taking the good soil downstream and down river toward the Gulf of Mexico.
"I been down in the Gulf, where the Mississippi empties out, and you can see miles and miles of dirt streaming by. It clogs up the shipping lanes. Builds up into salt bogs and marshes."
Jed asks if there's any way for the dirt to be brought back.
"Naw, but they bring other things up from the Gulf. Fire ants, for one."
I wait for Dan to explain that to Jed, but he doesn't, as if the fool can't even tell my son one thing about what we all used to know. I spin the dead pine straw and leaves off the ground with another dust devil. Dan and Jed watch my little wind rip across the air as they sit on the edge of the ravine and dangle their legs into space.
"What was it like?" Jed asks. "The war and all."
"Well, it was cold," Dan says, laughing. "But nothing your dad and I couldn't handle."
I feel Jed's heart jump at the mention of me--and I get nervous as I wait for Dan to say more. You promised, I yell in a whisper to Dan. You promised you wouldn't let my son know. Tell him something else. Tell him how it was so cold that when the snow came there was lightning--lightning in a snow storm. Tell him about the fountain pen in my breast pocket and how the ink froze and split the pen. Tell how we had to open and shut the breeches of our M-1 rifles all the time so they wouldn't freeze shut. Tell how you once chipped the ice out of my nose so I could breathe.
But Dan doesn't hear all of this and I wait for him to tell my son how his father really died. How those endless waves of Chinese came at us. How I got so afraid I jumped up and left Dan alone in our foxhole, left my best friend to die just because I was afraid. I wait for Dan to tell my son how when he found me later, a bayonet through the gut and almost dead, all I could do was cry on and on and make him swear not to tell my family how much of a coward I'd been. I mean, damn, there I was dying without a thought about my wife and child. Not a care except how people remembered me.
I wait for Dan to tell Jed about all of this. But Dan doesn't say anything else about the war. Instead, he looks at Jed and says, "You remember that nickname your Dad used to call you?"
Jed shakes his head.
"Yella Hawk," Dan says. "Don't know where he got that name, but he called you Yella Hawk."
The little dust devil I've been spinning falls apart in a straightening of the winds. When Dan and Jed walk back to Hank's house, I follow even more silently than normal.
I can't believe it. Even after all I've done wrong, Dan's still doing right by me.
Map 9: The World Today
(Including the free world, the communist states, and Wetumpka in 1962)
Dan and Jed have barely walked in the front door of the house before Dan turns right back around and goes for a walk with Eliz. Jed tries to go with them but Hank stops him and tells Jed to go help Elijah feed the chickens out back.
Too much walking going on here, Lord, I say. You hear that? Way too much walking. Still, I follow Dan and Eliz.
"Did you tell him?" Eliz asks when they're down the road a bit. The air around me turns cold--Did Dan already tell Eliz? But instead of saying what I expect, Dan simply takes hold of Eliz's hand and says, "I figure there's no need. Just be around a while and he'll get used to me."
If I'd still been alive I'd scream and kick at the sight of them holding hands. Instead, I think of how Dan's always done right by me, and I think about how my son needs a father. Thinking these thoughts gets me happy and sets little winds to blowing. I send them to rustle Dan and Eliz's hair and make them feel nice and calm on their walk.
Later, on their way back to Hank's house, Eliz tells Dan she received another letter from the Marines, who still can't find my body.
"He's dead, Eliz," Dan says. "I was with him. We talked about you and Jed and how much he loved both of you and then he was dead."
I float over to Eliz, who is now smiling. I wish I had said that before I died, I tell her, but I didn't. I was too busy begging Dan to forgive me.
That's when I know that it doesn't matter if Dan tells people the truth about me. Everything I've done and been is passed. It don't matter anymore who I am. Maybe now, in death, that's all I am--a passing comment to my son, a word or two about something I did here or there, a story about how Hank once punched a man-who-was-me through a restaurant door.
But when I think about what I really was like, maybe being just a few passing comments aren't so bad after all.
I'm sorry for everything, I say to Dan and Eliz. I'm sorry.
Eliz glances around as the wind blows her hair. She and Dan are still smiling.
Once back at Hank's house, Dan talks to Eliz about fixing up his parent's old place. He says the place needs a new roof, and the back porch has fallen down, but he thinks with a little work he can make it good. He also mentions that Hank said the church would offer him the full-time preacher job.
"'Course, I'd still need to find a real job to earn some money . . ."
I drift away at that. I don't need to hear more.
When Eliz and Jed arrive back home before sunset I'm tired and barely there. Jed goes to his room to dress for bed. When he doesn't come back, I go to see him. Eliz joins me a moment later.
"You okay?" Eliz asks. Jed sits on his bed, rubbing my Bible.
"He said Dad used to call me Yella Hawk. Why'd he call me that?"
Eliz smiles, as if the nickname brings back memories of her own. "Does it matter why?" she asks. "He was a good man who loved you."
I know why, I should say. I know why I called you Yella Hawk. I know why Dan has come back here and I know why I am still here and I know why I'm tired of this and I know why I am.
I know why.
But I don't try to say anything--not even my normal sighs and angry winds. Jed just smiles at his momma, nods to her words, and I'm gone.
And no one knows.
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