Authors: Leisha Kelly
“Yes, sir. Not too far from there.”
“Land sakes, boy. What’d you do, walk?”
“I run most the way, sir.”
“Looking for your pa? Son, he must know someplace open later’n I care to be. He’s having a rough time. Let him get his drinkin’ done. He’ll come home.”
I took a deep breath and leaned up against his wall for a minute, I was so awful exhausted. “You don’t understand. We’re not sure he will come home. Pa’s not well. I mean, he just don’t manage the way he oughta. He . . . he might be anywhere.”
“Boy, you need to sit down.”
I shook my head. “I gotta go. I gotta find him.”
“Can I get you a drink first?”
I shook my head.
“Coffee, I mean. I got coffee. Warm your insides. Sit and think a minute. You can’t be running like a dog chasing its tail. There must be somewhere you can figure he might go.”
The words made sense, and I was tired and cold enough that I let him usher me inside for a cup of his coffee while I caught my breath and tried to think what to do next. Where would he go?
The school? He’d gone there once before, thinkin’ I wouldn’t find him, and I hadn’t thought he’d do it again because I knew of the hiding place now. But he was clever sometimes. He might know I’d not expect that. And at least he’d be out of the wind. I should have thought of it before.
I swallowed what hot coffee I could and got up to head for the door.
“You done already?” Mr. Fraley asked me. “Why don’t you let me take you home? Don’t fret so much. I’m sure your pa’ll be all right. I understand him. Lost my little boy when he was just a baby. Never had a well day in his life. Born with a bad heart. It’s a hard thing, worrying over one of your kids. An’ your pa’s got three to be fearin’ for. He’ll prob’ly drown in a bottle tonight like he did last night. Sure is gettin’ a late start, but he’ll be home some time tomorrow. Surely he will.”
“Mr. Fraley,” I told him. “I don’t want a ride home. But if you’re serious in your offer, I’d take a ride to the schoolhouse.”
He was serious. He didn’t understand me, but he was willin’ not to have me leaving to go so far again on foot. And when we stopped on the lane by the school, I thought he’d turn around and just leave me there, but he waited.
“You sure he’d think to come here?”
“No, sir. But he did once before. I have to be sure.”
The building was dark. It stood ominous against the fading moonlight. I tried to tell if there was a window open again, but I couldn’t see until I got close.
The first window to the right of the door was broken. Somebody or something had bashed it in. “Pa?”
I was scared, real deep scared of what I’d find. I’d been a long time goin’ all the way to Fraley’s. And nobody else would think to come here. Pa’d already been a long time alone. And there was a rope in the schoolroom. The teacher used it sometimes to hang a curtain down from ceiling hooks when she wanted to divide the room. But right now it was plaguing my thinking, and I hoped Pa hadn’t been mindful of it being there.
“Pa?” The silence was ripping me up inside. I didn’t want to go in, but I couldn’t stand not knowin’. He hadn’t answered me when he was here before. He could be in there.
With Buck Fraley watching, wonderin’ what I could be thinking, I boosted myself up and climbed through the broken window. Somebody’d done it before me. Most of the glass was busted and scattered across the floor inside.
“Pa?” I called again. With my heart aching, I looked around and didn’t see anythin’ at all I could identify as a person. But it was so dark in there. I went to the teacher’s desk again for the matches. I lit one and even found the candle in the inkwell right where I’d left it. Its little light spread across the room, but there was nothin’ there. I looked by the stove. I looked in the coatroom. Nothin’ was different, not even the ceiling hooks. It was almost a breath of relief, and yet at the same time I knew I still had nothin’. Where could I look now?
I was about to leave when I saw somethin’ I’d missed before. Somethin’ definitely out of place. An overturned bottle lay on the floor beside a student desk. I picked it up. The smell was unmistakable. And it was empty. I hadn’t seen him leave one here before. Did he bring it with him, drain it here, and then carelessly drop it before movin’ on?
I took it with me when I climbed back outside. “Is this the stuff my pa drinks?” I asked Mr. Fraley.
He gave me a funny look. “It is one of his favorites. But I told you, he wasn’t in tonight.”
“I know. He wouldn’t have had time to get there and back here without his horse. But did he ever take any with him? The whole bottle like this?”
“Sure. Sometimes. He said he liked to keep one set back for a stash. Hidden, you know. Where he could grab a guzzle if he needed to without his kids knowin’.”
It seemed incredible. Would Pa have a hidden bottle someplace and then carry it with him all the way back to the school to drink it down? He wouldn’t have had to leave home for that! He could just hole up in the machine shed or somethin’ and have his fill.
But he wouldn’t want me to find him at it. He didn’t want to stay home. And maybe this bottle had never been there. Maybe he’d had it with him the night I found him here. Maybe he’d hid it from me, and then come back for it after all this time.
“Listen, boy,” Mr. Fraley said nervously. “I don’t think you’re accomplishin’ nothing out here. I could get in a lot a’ trouble, bringin’ you an’ then you climbing in an’ all.”
“You can go if you want.”
“Let me take you home first. You hadn’t oughta be runnin’ around like this. Get some sleep. Maybe your pa’s home by now.”
I didn’t like it, but I had to admit he was probably right. I ought to at least go home long enough to see where the others had searched and whether they’d found anything. Mr. Fraley seemed real relieved to take me, and even more relieved to be goin’ on once he’d dropped me off. I thanked him, but I didn’t take the time for anything else. Ben’s car was back, in a slightly different spot. I wanted to know if he’d found out anythin’.
He and Harry, along with Lizbeth and Sarah, were all sittin’ at the table when I came in. Sarah and Lizbeth both jumped up right away.
“Frank!” Lizbeth exclaimed. “Lordy, you must be half froze. We were pretty worried. Thank God you got back all right.” She hurried to pour me some coffee.
Sarah didn’t say a word, but she was the one that grabbed Mama’s quilt and pulled it around my shoulders when I managed to get myself to a seat. I must have looked pretty bad. They were all starin’ at me.
“What about Pa?” I asked them.
“Oh, Franky,” Lizbeth answered for all of them. “There’s no sign. But—but I think you’re bleeding. What happened?”
I had a cut, just a little one, on my cheek from the schoolhouse glass. And another one on one hand. I wasn’t bleedin’ anymore. It must have looked like I was still bleedin’ a little because I hadn’t wiped the blood away. But I hadn’t even noticed till now. And I didn’t care.
“You didn’t find nothin’?” I pressed them, looking at Ben this time.
“No, Frank,” he answered me. But he was solemn over something, and I knew he wasn’t done. I waited.
“Frank, Mr. Post’s truck was stolen a little while ago. It was there when we went by, but Mr. Wortham and Sam stopped when they saw Mr. Post in his yard. He told them he’d heard somebody start his truck and leave with it. He tried to run out and see, but he couldn’t get there fast enough. He knows they went up to the corner, but there was no telling which way after that. By the time Mr. Wortham got there, there was no way of knowing which way to go. They’re on their way into town now to talk to the sheriff. Mr. Wortham said we might as well be home and let the sheriff handle it from here. No telling which way Dad Hammond could have gone. And we were starting to get worried for you. I was about to go looking.”
None of what he was sayin’ made much sense to me. “Do you think Pa stole Mr. Post’s truck?” I had to ask him. “Why would he do that? He ain’t even drove but once or twice in his life! And if he was gonna take a vehicle, why wouldn’t he just get in yours? It was right outside.”
“We don’t know,” Lizbeth answered. “Maybe he didn’t want to take somethin’ that belonged to family.”
“Mr. Post is a good neighbor,” I protested. “That’s almost the same thing. And Pa knows stealin’ ain’t right anyhow.”
“I know he knows,” Lizbeth said sadly. “But something’s wrong with his thinkin’. He’s sick, Frank, even if we never heard of a name for any kind of illness like this. It’s surely the grief and worry doin’ it, but he’s still sick.”
They didn’t have any better answers for me. There was nothin’ else anybody could say. And I was so chilled through that I couldn’t get warm even with the quilt around me, so Lizbeth and Sarah made me move to the fireside while Harry threw a couple more logs on. They doted on me, bringin’ me more coffee when I hadn’t even finished the first cup. It bothered everybody about Pa being gone, I could see that. But they also seemed to be bothered for me, and I didn’t like that one bit.
“I’m just warmin’ up a minute,” I told them. “I can go right back to searching—”
“Frank.” Ben shook his head. “We can’t do any good if we don’t know where to go.” He looked so weary when he said it that I felt sorry for him.
“I know,” I answered him. “I just don’t wanna give up.”
“We have to,” Harry said gravely. “We shoulda known all along it wasn’t no use. We shoulda just let Pa do whatever he wants.”
But Lizbeth disagreed. “We can’t do anythin’ to help what he does now. But when he was here, you did right to look out for him. He hasn’t been himself for a long time. I should have known better, when he got up tonight. I should have thought this through and been more watchful.”
Pa’s words from the timber came back into my mind, and I knew I should tell her what he’d said. It occurred to me now that despite whatever was wrong with him, he’d had a lot of things all thought out. “Lizbeth, Pa told me today that there was none of this that was my fault, that I wasn’t supposed to blame myself for anythin’ that happened. I think that was a message for all of us. For right now.”
She looked at me with tears in her eyes, and I had to go on.
“He also said he loved us. Every one of us, and I was supposed to tell you all, because he couldn’t say it himself.”
Lizbeth lowered her head to her hands. “Oh, Lord.”
Sarah reached and touched her. “Why does that make you more sad?” she asked innocently. “Maybe he’s doing the kind of thinking that he needs to. Maybe he’s going to try to be closer to you all.”
But Lizbeth wasn’t comforted. “Pa’s different than that, Sarah,” she said tearfully. “I’m afraid it was his way of saying good-bye.”
I’d wondered if Lizbeth and Frank were worrying too much about their father. Surely he’d just come home once he’d gotten his fill of his foolish drinking like usual.
But this time they were right. Sheriff Law found Mr. Post’s truck overturned in a ravine near Rend Lake. Mr. Hammond’s body was beneath it. No one knew whether drunkenness, his driving inexperience, or something else had caused the wreck. My father came with the sheriff about midmorning to tell us.
Harry shoved his chair hard against the kitchen wall. A metal bowl fell from a shelf with a clang, but nobody moved to touch it. Dad and Ben had to sit Harry down to calm him. Lizbeth fell apart in tears. Rorey cussed their father, yelling that he’d probably done it all on purpose, and that made Berty yell at her. Only Frank was quiet. He sat for a long time like he didn’t even hear what was going on around him. In a little while the sheriff left, and I was glad that Emmie was with my mother. It would be hard enough when she was told, but I didn’t think she could have handled it very well over here right now.
“Mr. Wortham, what are we gonna do?” Bert asked.
Dad sighed. I knew he didn’t know how to answer that. Frank stood to his feet, and I hoped he would quote a Scripture. I wanted him to so badly, because I knew that Frank’s spirit as well as mine and everybody else’s could latch onto one of the Scriptures and find some kind of foothold. But he didn’t say anything. He just walked to the window and stared outside.
“We’ll help,” Dad finally said. “We’ll work things out.”
“Does the pastor know?” Lizbeth asked gently.
“We asked the deputy to tell him,” Daddy answered her.
“Didn’t he think of us?” Harry raged. “How could he do this?”
“Maybe we won’t ever know that,” Lizbeth answered quietly.
I was watching Frank. His eyes seemed to be focused on something far away, but I had no idea what it could be.
Touch him, Lord God. Help him. Everybody looks to Frank around here, maybe more than any of us have really known. We need him to be all right.
“Sam’s still at our house with his family and Emmie,” my father said solemnly. “They don’t know yet. Do you need me to stay? Or would you rather I take them the news?”
Ben was the only one who knew how to answer him. “Maybe you’d better stay here, Mr. Wortham. I can go tell them.”
Lizbeth nodded and hugged her husband. Mary Jane was playing on the floor like she knew nothing of what was happening. My father hugged Ben as he was leaving, and then sat down to pray with Bert and Harry. Bert was still sick, coughing some, but I knew it wasn’t the cold now that was making him shake. And Harry was still angry. With one fist doubled, he looked like he’d like nothing better than to find somebody to blame and then whale into them for all he was worth.
Rorey went up the loft ladder, and I could hear her upstairs crying on her bed. I prayed that Frank would cry. Or talk. Or get mad, or something. But he just kept staring out the window, until finally he turned. Without a word he went past everybody and walked outside.
“Daddy,” I said. But I couldn’t wait for his response. Something was moving my feet without me hardly thinking about it. Frank hadn’t spoken to anyone, hadn’t given his hand to comfort any of the others. He hadn’t even looked at me, or at my father, who was the friend he’d shared work and wisdom with for years now. For him to close us off scared me because it seemed like Frank always coped best by first helping someone else cope. I didn’t know what I could do. But I couldn’t stay still. Without waiting on anybody else’s word, I took off out the door following him.