Authors: Jane Bradley

You Believers (50 page)

We got the plants, the mulch, the topsoil, jugs of water, tools. We weeded. We raked and worked in new dirt, good dirt that was clean. I watched Livy tamp the dirt down around a lantana plant, its petals like bright confetti. She poured water, watched it seep. I asked where she wanted to put the angel, and she placed it precisely where I’d found the jawbone. There was no talk of scattered bones and mud-caked jeans. She looked at me for approval. “That’s good,” I said. “That works.”

Thunder rolled from a distance. We looked up see the cloud thick and white mottled with gray. The thunderhead sat poised across the flat blue sky like a giant fist. There was a sudden coolness in the air. We both felt it. She stopped, said she needed some cold water to drink, asked me if I wanted any. I told her to go ahead and get a couple bottles from the cooler.

I dug at the hole for the butterfly bush. Bits of broken glass floated up. I thought of bodies, broken bottles, broken bones, floaters in the swamps. I scooped up the dirt and dug. Thunder rolled again, and I plunged the shovel hard, heard a crunch of something, and looked down and saw a shattered skull. My stomach lurched, but I didn’t flinch. I just sucked back a breath and crouched for a closer look. It was a dog. My head went swimmy, and I breathed in, out, in, slowly, squinched my eyes shut, opened, focused. Yes, it was the head, the body of a dog, tufts of fur, a brown collar dangling loosely at the vertebrae exposed. And there. A bullet in the dirt with scattered flecks
of bone. The story, I wondered. What was the story? A dog with a collar, shot. It must have been sick, must have been old. Not murdered, not shot for fun, I hoped. It happens. Neighbors shoot neighbors’ dogs for sport, revenge. Sometimes a man has to shoot his own sick dog to ease the pain and suffering. “Your cell phone’s ringing,” Livy called. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I said and used my hand to scoop dirt back into the hole. I felt the sting, saw the green glass in the dirt, the oozing line of blood on the side of my hand. It was a shallow cut, a little thing, but it burned. I stood, used the shovel to push more dirt back. I felt her watching me, turned, and gave a little shrug. “There’s a tangle of tree roots here. We’ll have to plant the bush over there instead.”

“Your cell phone,” she said again. I let it go to voice mail, stamped the ground solid over the dead dog. Thunder rolled again, and a cool breeze rushed with that ozone smell I like so much with storms.

“We need to hurry and finish getting these plants in the ground before the storm hits.”

I dug the new hole, got the bush in the ground, watered it. I stood watching the water pool up, then sink into the ground. I was thinking of Darly. We’d never marked the spot where they’d found her. I suppose we chose to forget it, not look back, carry on. But Darly, she’s always with me. Even though I never saw her there, I’ll always see the picture of her bones scattered on the ground.

Livy touched my arm, and I jumped.

“Sorry,” she said. “But would you look at that? Some kids have built a little tree house over there.” I looked across the cornfield, saw just about six feet up in the low limbs of an oak the rough plywood boards, a hunters’ blind. They must sit up there and watch for the deer to come foraging for corn. Livy, she was smiling at the sight. She’d told me how she liked to watch the kids play in the empty lot next to her house. She was seeing a happy thing. I let it go.

“Yep,” I said. “We better finish up. It’s going to rain.”

“Sometimes storms pass over,” she said.

“But this one’s coming down,” I said. And I knew she saw the tears. I couldn’t stop the tears running down my face. I wiped at them with the back of my hand as if they were sweat. “Damn, it’s hot,” I said.

She grabbed a trowel, knelt with me on the ground, and we dug. The angel seemed to watch, but in truth her eyes were just a concrete stare. I planted faster, wanted to be back in the truck and safe and dry when the storm hit. I couldn’t shake my thoughts of Darly. I told myself I’d go back to Georgia. And with Roy’s help, we’d find the old records, I’d find a way to find the place where Darly had given the last of anything to the earth. With every plant tamped down I said a little prayer:
Let it grow
;
let nothing but birds and bees and butterflies touch what’s blooming here
.

Livy patted the dirt, said, “I like to think her spirit will help these things grow.”

“Yes, she will,” I said, and I thought of blood and flesh and bone.

“We’ll need to say a prayer when we’re finished.”

I told her, “I’m saying a little prayer with every plant.”

“You?” Livy laughed. And I could see her daughter’s smile, hear her daughter’s laugh, feel the life of the woman Katy would have grown to be. “You don’t believe in things.”

“I try,” I said, and then I kept working. I told myself,
We will do this, and I will do this for Darly one day
. I told myself that in a world of so much sorrow, so many lost calling to be found, we can only do what we must do. We weed. We dig. We plant. We water. We pray. And then we will do what we can only do in the end. We will stand and walk away.

Acknowledgments

I first must give my deepest thank you to Penny Carr Britton. I never would have started this venture had it not been for your astonishing grace and strength when facing and enduring the loss of your own lovely daughter, Peggy. You will always inspire me and help sustain me in my own hard times.

And then there are so many others to thank who helped bring this book along:

Thank you, once again, Kyle Minor, Bob Welly, and Page Armstrong. If you hadn’t pushed me, I may have let this story stew inside for eternity. And Bob, you went way past simple support. Thank you for the many dinners out to free my days to write, and thank you for your days of tedious proofreading.

And deep thanks to my agent, Catherine Drayton, who believed in this book from the start. You’ve been much more than an agent. Thank you for helping me revise and reshape this story, and thank you for your heart as well as smarts in seeing this book through to print.

Many thanks to my editor, Greg Michalson, who had enough faith in this dark story to bring it to the light of day, and to readers out there. You’re one fine editor, who knew just the final adjustments needed to sharpen up the storyline, and to make it a tighter, better book overall.

This novel is dedicated to the memory of Peggy Carr, Rebecca Wight, and my sister’s childhood friend, Debbie. Their lives were taken far too young and
with a calculated violence that will forever compel me to wonder at the nature and range of evil in the world.

And my deepest love and thanks to Susan Falco and Sarah Elder who keep me believing in the redemptive power of love.

Ten percent of the author’s profits from this book are contributed to C.U.E. (Community United Effort, Wilmington, North Carolina), a generous and tenacious organization that gives steady guidance and comfort to those seeking loved ones lost.

Table of Contents

What This World Needs Is a Little More Awareness

Just Nature She Loved, Flowers and Fangs and All

Love Calls Us to Things of This World

The Luckiest Girl in the World

Dubious Designs