Authors: Deborah Bedford
“Look, Tuck,” he’d said. “I will not do this. I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“It’s late, Charlie. I know that. Think about it overnight. I can still set something up in the morning. It’s the weekend,
but I can get Judge Foster over the phone tomorrow.”
“I’m not going to change my mind tonight. I’m not going to change it in a hundred years.” He and Tuck had been children together—Webelos,
Mrs. Hammond’s third-grade class, the American Legion baseball team—in what seemed like a different lifetime. “I thought you
believed in me.”
“This has nothing to do with what I believe, Charlie,” his friend said. “It has to do with what is legally smart. And
this
is legally smart.”
“For you, maybe. Not for me.”
“I could get the felony charges dropped. But you’ve got to agree to this prefiling agreement. You won’t have to testify. Neither
will she. It will be a lot less messy.”
“You don’t want me to fight this.”
“You plead no contest to two misdemeanor counts of criminal sexual conduct. The charges aren’t denied but they’re not accepted,
either. You get sentenced to a little community service. That’s it. It’s over. Save your reputation.”
“Guess I don’t see how telling a judge I don’t deny this is going to save my reputation.”
“Look, it won’t get you your job back. But, at this point, there isn’t anything that’s going to do that. This will make it
end sooner. You can go somewhere else, get a different job. Start your life over. Make people stop talking. And we all know
that’s the real enemy we’re fighting against. People talking.”
Charlie had turned around and said it right before he shut the door in Tuck’s face: “I am an innocent man, Tuck. Just chalk
me up as one of those crazy people who think the truth is more important than what other people say.”
Now, turning into his driveway, Charlie had another unpleasant surprise.
Tires had gouged out huge trenches in the front yard. Deep, fat treads had slashed the grass clear past the roots, leaving
red soil exposed like a bare wound.
His headlights arced past the blank spot beside the garage.
The kids must be partying at the lake tonight. He knew it for sure because he’d seen the bonfire reflecting on the water.
And someone had stolen his boat.
ONCE THE GANG
of boys got back to the bonfire with Mr. Stains’s boat, it took them at least five tries to get the trailer backed up to the
water. They dented one fender of the trailer on a tree. They bottomed out the axle on a rock in the middle of the two muddy
ruts someone had the nerve to call a road. Somewhere along the way they lost the license plate.
They backed one way and the boat went another. They backed the other way, and the boat went straight. Then, like a miracle,
as everybody cheered, the boat was unfastened from the trailer and slid smoothly into the lake.
For an hour or so, the students took turns piling people into
Charlie’s Pride.
They shoved each other out. They jeered at the ones who swam by firelight toward the shore.
Tommy Ballard was first to discover the cool thing about the light and the fish. He played his flashlight, drawing designs
out over the water. The brim beneath the boat followed the beam wherever it pooled.
“Look at these things,” he bellowed as he jabbed Adam Buttars in the ribs with his elbow. When he stuck his arm in, he could
feel the brim glancing past his skin, flickering away. “They’re almost tame. I could catch these with my hands.”
“Yeah right, Ballard. Just try.”
So he did. He held the flashlight in his teeth and reached in. He caught one.
And then he caught another.
The fish was writhing between his palms when someone shouted, “Hey, there’s some man standing over there on the shore. He’s
shining a light on us. He’s gonna see the boat.”
Several of the kids on shore began to run. “Get rid of the fish and turn the flashlight off, you doof. Come on, Ballard. Let’s
get out of here.”
“Here, little fishy,” Tommy sang out. “Little fishy going to
fly
.”
One of the girls screamed, “Don’t hurt it,” just as Ballard threw it with the same exactness and strength as he would have
thrown the last-inning fastball, the last out, to send the Shadrach Legion team into the District playoffs.
The fish hit the man square on the left leg and then foundered its way back into the water. From the distance, a dozen teenagers
heard the clatter as the man dropped his fishing pole against the rocks. “No-good
kids,”
he bellowed. “Got no business having a party out here.”
“Hey, grandpa,” Tommy yelled. “Chill. It was just a
fish.”
Sam grabbed Tommy’s shoulder. “Hey, take it easy, okay?”
“We got as much business out here as you do,” Tommy hollered.
“You got business with that stolen boat?”
“This isn’t a stolen boat.”
“Ballard,
stop.”
“Funny. It looks just like the one my friend Bartlett donated last month so the church could auction it away. Don’t reckon
you’re the one who bid on it in the auction, are you?”
“Whatever. This boat’s
mine.”
The old man started wading out toward them, his lantern high overhead. “You bring in that boat.”
Sam tried to stop them both. “Hey, wait. Don’t come out here. We’ll bring the boat in.”
But it was too late. In anger, the man stepped off the shore and surged toward them, sloshing through deeper and deeper water.
“Hey, grandpa. Go back,” Tommy yelled. “We’ll give back the boat. I was just messing with you.”
The boat emptied fast. Everybody bailed out and started swimming, wading, running for shore. The kids scrambled and hid, trying
to get away.
Sam was the only one who noticed when the man stumbled and went down.
“Ballard!” Sam shouted from where he was thrashing toward shore. “That old guy’s gone under. He fell down or something.”
“Did not. He’s hiding. Trying to freak us out.”
For one night, Sam was finished listening to his friend. “That’s where all those old roots are.”
Will shouted, “He’s got his leg tangled.”
“Come on!”
It took precious, long seconds for the boys to find the old man’s head and lift it above water.
LYDIA HAD DONE
plenty of thinking while she and Shelby had driven home from Lichen Bridge. Thinking how trusting God was the same sort of
trust you had to follow when you came down a flight of stairs. Thinking how you put one foot down, knowing the next step was
going to be there.
Of course, the return drive had been bittersweet. Lydia was so happy that Charlie wasn’t to blame, she could almost forgive
Shelby her terrible lie. But to love this girl as much as Lydia had begun to love her also meant to hold her accountable.
“You have to understand what you’ve done, Shelb,” Lydia had said to her. “You’ve accused an innocent man.”
“You wanted me to tell you who it was that day. You kept asking me and asking me,” Shelby told her. “I wanted to tell you.
But my mother said I could never talk about it to anyone.”
“Dearest girl…”
“You
believed
me, Miss P. You were the first person who would ever really
listen.”
And Lydia found herself afraid to speak, afraid of what she might say.
“I saw Mr. Stains walking by the window right then outside and suddenly I got
desperate
. His name was the first one I could think of. I knew he would never… he would never… he’s been so nice to me, Miss
P; he’s the one out of everybody that I could trust.”
“Shelby.”
“I knew he wouldn’t e-ever hurt me.”
Regret, as powerful and numbing as anything Lydia had ever known, overcame her.
But why didn’t I know that?
Why didn’t I think that, out of everybody, Charlie was the one I could trust?
Now, it’s too late. I’ll always be the one who didn’t stand beside him when he needed me the most.
“Every time I told my mother about it, she said she didn’t believe me, that I mustn’t talk like that. She wouldn’t listen,
Miss P. So I was glad when I said it was Mr. Stains, because then she had to hear.”
“Shelb, what are you telling me?”
“Kids know how to tell people when it’s a teacher or somebody like that. But when it’s somebody in your own family, that everybody
protects, there isn’t anything you know how to say.”
Lydia bit her bottom lip and tasted blood. She would wait until the girl was willing to offer more information. She didn’t
want to make the same mistake twice, trying to push for a name. Lydia gripped the wheel, and wondered if the abuser could
be Shelby’s uncle, or her real dad, or Tom.
As they made the last turn toward Shadrach and began to round the Brownbranch toward Viney Creek, they passed a car pulled
off to the shoulder of the road.
A gleaming white 1976 Pontiac Catalina.
Lydia applied her brakes. There couldn’t be another one like that anywhere in St. Clair County.
“Shelb, I think that’s your grandfather’s car. We ought to stop and make sure nothing’s wrong.”
“It’s okay. We don’t have to stop.” The girl said it without ever moving her face. She sank down in the seat and stared straight
ahead.
“You don’t want to?”
“No.”
“But, I think we should.” Lydia signaled, checked her rearview mirrors and hung a U. She turned the wheel hand over hand,
stunned by Shelby’s reaction. “You can wait in the car if you’d like.”
“No. Please, Miss P. Would you just
drive?”
Her voice went even more shrill as the car slowed on the gravel. “Please, let’s just go.”
“Why don’t you want to go check on him, Shelby?”
“I just don’t.”
Lydia braked completely, turned toward her. “You’re afraid.”
Shelby looked straight ahead. She wasn’t panicked, but she wasn’t exactly serene either.
“Shelb?”
Shelby crossed her arms and began rubbing the points of her elbows. “He…” The words came out in a dusty croak. She licked
her lips and tried again. “He took all my stuff out of my locker. He came in there to make sure there wasn’t anything in there
that would make him look bad.”
A chill rushed the length of Lydia’s spine. Something unimaginable began to form in her head.
Shelby didn’t want to go anywhere close to her grandfather.
When they parked this close to the edge, they could see emergency lights down below. “There is something going on down there,
Shelby, but we aren’t going to get out of the car, okay?”
“Okay.”
“There are people down there taking care of things. We’re just going to talk.”
“Okay.”
Oh, Father, I need your words. I need your gentle understanding. If this is what I think it is . . .
And Lydia touched, barely touched, the thing she’d begun to suspect. “So it’s your grandfather who’s been doing this to you,
isn’t it?”
Silence.
“You told your mother about your grandfather a long time ago, didn’t you? And she said you mustn’t talk about it. She said
she didn’t believe you.”
No words came from that side of the seat. Shelby was biting her lip. On her cheeks, the bright flush of shame.
“Is that what happened to you? Is your grandfather sexually abusing you and your mother won’t let you tell anyone?”
Shelby, nodding her head. And Lydia, finally knowing.
Because a mother who has to admit that her father had done this to her daughter has to admit that the same person has abused
her, too.
The whole time during Shelby’s grandfather’s funeral, Sam could not take his eyes off the back of her head. She sat in front
of him in the designated family pew of Big Tree Baptist with her hair pulled back in a navy ribbon.
He had caught glimpses of her when she’d first walked into the sanctuary. With her hair like that, wearing that dark navy
skirt and standing beside her mother, she looked like she was about eleven years old.
By now, of course, everybody in Shadrach knew what Shelby’s grandfather had done. It was lucky that he and Tommy and Will
and Adam B. hadn’t known about that the night the old man got tangled up in tree roots on the bottom of the Brownbranch. Maybe
they wouldn’t have tried so hard to save him, to breathe air into his lungs, if they had known.
But, then again, they probably would have tried just as hard. Pastor Joe Douglas was standing beside a closed casket right
now talking about forgiveness. He was talking about God, how everybody falls short and that there’s nothing anybody can do
to make themselves good enough. He was talking about God being a righteous judge who demands the death penalty. He was talking
about God being a loving father who, on the other hand, paid the death penalty for everyone, himself.
If
a person would just be willing to accept that God had given his own son that way. That—because a man named Jesus died—everyone
got the chance to ask God questions and to grow close to Him and to feel Him loving them when bad things happened, and when
good things happened, too.
That’s all you had to do, if you wanted it, was ask.
Sam wondered if Shelby’s grandfather had ever thought about that.
At the end of the service, when he brushed past her during the potluck supper, Sam hung back, hoping she would grab his arm.
She did.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she told him. “It means a lot to me.”
“Well,” he said, shrugging. “Everybody’s here.”
He was right. At least thirty Shadrach High School students had come to pay their respects and to show Shelby that they were
trying to understand. Even though people were subdued, they still gathered in groups around the room and talked about Lydia
Porter and how she’d found a lost baby in the woods.
“I’m sorry about how I acted after the dance,” Shelby told Sam. “I shouldn’t have run away from you.”
“It’s okay.”
“It was really hard.”
“Yeah, I think it would be, too.”
“There’s some of my friends that are still mad at me, aren’t there? For accusing their favorite teacher?”