What if? I asked myself. What if I was to write about something that had
really happened?
Like… Mr. Sculley and the tooth of Old Moses. No, no. Mr. Sculley
wouldn’t want people coming around to his place to see it. All right then,
what about… the Lady and the Moon Man? No, I didn’t know enough about them.
What about…
…the dead man in the car at the bottom of Saxon’s Lake?
What if I was to write a story about what had happened that morning?
Write about the car going into the water, and Dad jumping in after it? Write
about everything I’d felt and seen on that March morning before the sun? And
what if… what if… I wrote about seeing the man in the green-feathered hat,
standing there at the edge of the woods?
Now, this I could get fired-up about. I began with my father saying,
“Cory? Wake up, son. It’s time.” Soon I was back in the milk truck with him,
on our way through the silent early morning streets of Zephyr. We were talking
about what I wanted to grow up to be, and then suddenly the car came out of
the woods right in front of us, my dad twisted the milk truck’s wheel, and the
car went over the edge of the red rock cliff into Saxon’s Lake. I remembered
my father running toward the lake, and how my heart had clutched up as he’d
leaped into the water and started swimming. I remembered watching the car
starting to go down, bubbles bursting around its trunk. I remembered looking
around at the woods across the road and seeing the figure standing there
wearing a long overcoat that flapped in the wind and a hat with a green—
Wait.
No, that’s not how it had been. I had stepped on the green feather, and
found it on the bottom of my muddy shoe. But where else could a green feather
come from but the band of a hat? Still and all, I was writing this as it had
really been. I hadn’t actually seen the green-feathered hat until the night of
the flood. So I stuck to the facts, and wrote about the green feather as I’d
found it. I left out the part about Miss Grace, Lainie, and the house of bad
girls, figuring Mom wouldn’t care to read about it. I read the story over and
decided it wasn’t as good as I could do, so I rewrote it. It was hard making
talking sound like talking. Finally, though, after three times through my
Royal, the story was ready. It was two pages long, double-spaced. My
masterpiece.
When Dad, clad in his red-striped pajamas and his hair still damp from
his shower, came in to say good night, I showed him the two sheets of paper.
“What’s this?” He held the title up under my desk lamp. “‘Before the
Sun,’” he read, and he looked at me with a question in his eyes.
“It’s a story for the writin’ contest,” I said. “I just wrote it.”
“Oh. Can I read it?”
“Yes sir.”
He began. I watched him. When he got to the part about the car coming out
of the woods, a little muscle tensed in his jaw. He put out a hand to brace
himself against the wall, and I knew he was reading about swimming out to the
car. I saw his fingers slowly grip and relax, grip and relax. “Cory?” Mom
called. “Go lock Rebel in for the night!” I started to go, but Dad said, “Wait
just a minute,” and then he returned to the last few paragraphs.
“Cory?” Mom called again, the TV on in the front room.
“We’re talkin’, Rebecca!” Dad told her, and he lowered the pages to his
side. He stared at me, his face half in shadow.
“Is it okay?” I asked.
“This isn’t what you usually write,” he said quietly. “You usually write
about ghosts, or cowboys, or spacemen. How come you to write somethin’ like
this?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just thought… I’d write somethin’ true.”
“So this is true? This part about you seein’ somebody standin’ in the
woods?”
“Yes sir.”
“Then how come you didn’t tell me about it? How come you didn’t tell
Sheriff Amory?”
“I don’t know. Maybe… I wasn’t sure if I really saw somebody or not.”
“But you’re sure now? Almost six months after it happened, you’re sure
now? And you could’ve told the sheriff this, and you didn’t?”
“I… guess that’s right. I mean… I thought I saw somebody standin’ there.
He was wearin’ a long overcoat, and he—”
“You’re sure it was a man?” Dad asked. “You saw his face?”
“No sir, I didn’t see his face.”
Dad shook his head. His jaw muscle twitched again, and a pulse throbbed
at his temple. “I wish to God,” he said, “that we’d never driven along that
road. I wish to God I’d never jumped in after that car. I wish to God that
dead man at the bottom of the lake would leave me alone.” He squeezed his eyes
shut, and when he opened them again they were bleary and tortured. “Cory, I
don’t want you showin’ this to anybody else. Hear me?”
“But… I was gonna enter it in the con—”
“No! God, no!” He clamped a hand to my shoulder. “Listen to me. All this
happened six months ago. It’s history now, and there’s no need dredgin’ it all
up again.”
“But it happened,” I said. “It’s real.”
“It was a bad dream,” my father answered. “A very bad dream. The sheriff
never found anybody missin’ from town. Nobody missin’ from anywhere around
here who had a tattoo like that. No wife or family ever turned up huntin’ a
lost husband and father. Don’t you understand, Cory?”
“No sir,” I said.
“That man at the bottom of Saxon’s Lake never was,” Dad said, his voice
hurt and husky. “Nobody cared enough about him to even miss him. And when he
died, beat up so bad he hardly looked like a man anymore, he didn’t even get a
proper burial. I was the last person on this earth to see him before he sank
down forever. Do you know what that’s done to me, Cory?”
I shook my head.
My father looked at the story again. He put the two pages back on my
desk, next to the Royal typewriter. “I knew there was brutality in this
world,” he said, but he kept his eyes averted from mine. “Brutality is part of
life, but… it’s always somewhere else. Always in the next town. Remember when
I was a fireman, and I went out when that car crashed and burned between here
and Union Town?”
“Little Stevie Cauley’s car,” I said. “Midnight Mona.”
“That’s right. The tire tracks on the pavement said that another car
forced Stevie Cauley off the road. Somebody deliberately wrecked him. The
car’s gas tank ruptured, and it blew sky high. That was brutality, too, and
when I saw what was left of a livin’, breathin’ young man, I—” He flinched,
perhaps recalling the sight of charred bones. “I couldn’t understand how one
human bein’ could do that to another. I couldn’t understand that kind of hate.
I mean… what road do you take to get there? What is it that has to get inside
you and twist your soul so much you can take a human life as easily as
flickin’ a fly?” His gaze found mine. “You know what your granddaddy used to
call me when I was your age?”
“No sir.”
“Yellowstreak. Because I didn’t like to hunt. Because I didn’t like to
fight. Because I didn’t like to do any of the things that you’re supposed to
like, if you’re a boy. He forced me to play football. I wasn’t any good at it,
but I did it for him. He said, ‘Boy, you’ll never be any good in this life if
you don’t have the killer instinct.’ That’s what he said. ‘Hit ’em hard, knock
’em down, show ’em who’s tough.’ The only thing is… I’m not tough. I never
was. All I ever wanted was peace. That’s all. Just peace.” He walked to my
window, and he stood there for a moment listening to the cicadas. “I guess,”
he said, “I’ve been pretendin’ for a long time that I’m stronger than I am.
That I could put that dead man in the car behind me and let him go. But I
can’t, Cory. He calls to me.”
“He… calls to you?” I asked.
“Yes, he does.” My father stood with his back to me. At his sides, his
hands had curled into fists. “He says he wants me to know who he was. He wants
me to know where his family is, and if there’s anybody on this earth who
mourns for him. He wants me to know who killed him, and why. He wants me to
remember him, and he says that as long as whoever beat him and strangled him
to death walks free, I will have no more peace for the rest of my life.” Dad
turned toward me. I thought he looked ten years older than when he’d taken the
two pages of my story in his hand. “When I was your age, I wanted to believe I
lived in a magic town,” he said softly, “where nothin’ bad could ever happen.
I wanted to believe everyone was kind, and good, and just. I wanted to believe
hard work was rewarded, and a man stood on his word. I wanted to believe a man
was a Christian every day of the week, not just Sunday, and that the law was
fair and the politicians wise and if you walked the straight path you found
that peace you were searchin’ for.” He smiled; it was a difficult thing to
look at. For an instant I thought I could see the boy in him, trapped in what
Mrs. Neville’s dream-shape had called the clay of time. “There never was such
a place,” my father said. “There never will be. But knowin’ can’t stop you
from wishin’ it was so, and every time I close my eyes to sleep, that dead man
at the bottom of Saxon’s Lake tells me I’ve been a damned fool.”
I don’t know why I said it, but I did: “Maybe the Lady can help you.”
“How? Throw a few bones for me? Burn a candle and incense?”
“No sir. Just talk,” I said.
He looked at the floor. He drew a deep breath and slowly freed it. Then
he said, “I’ve gotta get some rest,” and he walked to the door.
“Dad?”
He paused.
“Do you want me to tear the story up?”
He didn’t answer, and I thought he wasn’t going to. His gaze flickered
back and forth from me to the two sheets of paper. “No,” he said at last. “No,
it’s a good story. It’s true, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir.”
“It’s the best you can do?”
“Yes sir.”
He looked around at the pictures of monsters taped on the walls, and his
eyes came to me. “You’re sure you wouldn’t rather write about ghosts, or men
from Mars?” he inquired with a hint of a smile.
“Not this time,” I told him.
He nodded, chewing on his lower lip. “Go ahead, then. Enter it in the
contest,” he said, and he left me alone.
On the following morning, I put my story in a manila envelope and rode
Rocket to the public library on Merchants Street, near the courthouse. In the
library’s cool, stately confines, where fans whispered at the ceiling and
sunlight streamed through blinds at tall arched windows, I handed my contest
entry—marked “Short Story” on the envelope in Crayola burnt umber—to Mrs.
Evelyn Prathmore at the front desk. “And what little tale might we have here?”
Mrs. Prathmore asked, smiling sweetly.
“It’s about a murder,” I said. Her smile fractured. “Who’s judgin’ the
contest this year?”
“Myself, Mr. Grover Dean, Mr. Lyle Redmond from the English department at
Adams Valley High School, Mayor Swope, our well-known published poet Mrs.
Teresa Abercrombie, and Mr. James Connahaute, the copy editor at the Journal.”
She picked up my entry with two fingers, as if it were a smelly fish. “It’s
about a murder, you say?” She peered at me over the pearly rims of her
eyeglasses.
“Yes ma’am.”
“What’s a nice, polite young man like you writin’ about murder for?
Couldn’t you write about a happier subject? Like… your dog, or your best
friend, or—” She frowned, at her wit’s end. “Somethin’ that would enlighten
and entertain?”
“No ma’am,” I said. “I had to write about the man at the bottom of
Saxon’s Lake.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Prathmore looked at the manila envelope again. “I see. Do your
parents know you’re enterin’ this in the contest, Cory?”
“Yes ma’am. My dad read it last night.”
Mrs. Prathmore picked up a ball-point pen and wrote my name on the
envelope. “What’s your telephone number?” she asked, and when I told her she
wrote that underneath my name. “All right, Cory,” she said, and she summoned
up a cool smile, “I’ll see that this gets where it needs to go.”
I thanked her, and I turned around and walked toward the front door.
Before I got out, I glanced back at Mrs. Prathmore. She was bending the
envelope’s clasp back to unseal it, and when she saw me looking she stopped. I
took this as a good sign, that she was eager to read my entry. I went on out
into the sunlight, unchained Rocket from a park bench, and pedaled home.
No doubt about it, summer was on the wane.
The mornings seemed a shade cooler. The nights were hungry, and ate more
daylight. The cicadas sounded tired, their whirring wings slowing to a dull
buzz. From our front porch you could look almost due east and see a single
Judas tree up in the forested hills; its leaves had turned crimson almost
overnight, a shock amid all that green. And the worst—the very worst for those
of us who loved the freedom of summer’s days—was that the television and radio
trumpeted back-to-school sales with depressing fervor.
Time was running out. So one evening at supper I broached the subject.
Bit the bullet. Took the bull by the horns. Jumped in headfirst.
“Can I go campin’ overnight with the guys?” was the question that brought
silence to the table.
Mom looked at Dad. Dad looked at Mom. Neither of them looked at me. “You
said I could if I went to Granddaddy Jaybird’s for a week,” I reminded them.
Dad cleared his throat and swirled his fork in his mashed potatoes.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t see why not. Sure. You guys can pitch a tent in the
back and make a campfire.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean campin’ out. Like out in the woods.”
“There are woods behind the house,” he said. “That’s woods enough.”
“No sir,” I said, and my heart was beating harder because for me this was
really being daring. “I mean way out in the woods. Out where you can’t see
Zephyr or any lights. Like real campin’.”
“Oh, my,” Mom fretted.
Dad grunted and put his fork down. He folded his fingers together, and
the thought lines deepened into grooves between his eyes. All this was, I knew
from past experience, the first signs of the word “no” being born. “Way out in
